It's been a busy several few months for fighting game fans between the likes of Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8 and Mortal Kombat 1 arriving. Another game is entering (or more accurately re-entering) the fray as Warner Bros' platform fighter MultiVersus will return on May 28. It will be available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Steam and the Epic Games Store.

MutliVersus is Warner Bros' take on the Super Smash Bros. series. The aim is to weaken enemies enough to knock them off of a platform. Instead of controlling the likes of Mario, Link, Pikachu and Sephiroth, the roster is made up of characters from across WB properties, including DC Comics, its movies (hence the inclusion of LeBron James from Space Jam: A New Legacy) and even HBO. It's an enjoyable two vs. two take on the format.

The free-to-play game debuted in open beta in July 2022 and it was an instant hit. It brought in 20 million players in its first month. However, the player count dwindled quickly (at least on PC) amid complaints of a lack of updates and new characters. Developer Player First Games said last March that it would take the servers offline in June so it could work on the game ahead of its full release this year. One aspect of this that angered some fans was the fact many spent money on the game to unlock characters and cosmetics, only for it to go offline for what turned out to be another 10 months.

Along with the full release date, game director Tony Hyunh announced some of the updates to MultiVersus. There will, of course, be new characters. Hyunh didn't reveal any of the fresh faces, but I have my fingers crossed for a couple of names from Succession and The Last of Us showing up, just because. You can also expect more stages and fresh attacks for each character. We'll learn more details in the lead up to the release date.

Player First Games rebuilt the game from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5 to improve character lighting and the visuals. Hyunh says the team incorporated new rollback netcode to minimize lag for online play and to ensure consistent performance. There will also be a player versus environment mode that will allow you to play the game without having to square off against other players.

MultiVersus is returning just after Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to focus more on live-service, mobile and free-to-play games with a long-tail rather than single-player experiences. That's despite the disappointing performance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (a live-service title) and colossal commercial success of Hogwarts Legacy, which sold 22 million copies last year.

Apple has reversed its decision to ban Epic Games’ developer account after it emerged that European Union officials were investigating the issue. And the EU is currently fining Apple for almost two billion dollars, so it's probably wise to pay attention.

This means Epic can bring its own app store to iPhones and iPads in the EU. “Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA [Digital Markets Act] policies,” an Apple spokesperson told Engadget.

Earlier last week, Apple killed Epic’s developer account, claiming Epic was unlikely to abide by contractual agreements and even describing Epic as “verifiably untrustworthy.” Now, nearly four years after its disappearance, the publisher can more easily bring Fortnite back to those devices in the bloc.

Yes, Fortnite was last (officially) on iOS four years ago.

— Mat Smith

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Another Super Mario Bros. movie is coming in 2026

And the first is coming back to theaters this summer.

Nintendo and Illumination are releasing a second animated film for the Super Mario franchise, and it’s expected to come out April 3, 2026. The news comes from series creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, who tweeted it from the Nintendo of America X account on Sunday as part of the ongoing Mario Day shopping push celebrations. Based on his description, it doesn’t seem like it will be a direct sequel to the first, though. To kill time until 2026, you can play some Mario game remakes and make Mario Kart Lego sets.

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Oppenheimer ruled at the 2024 Oscars 

Apple and Netflix were nearly shut out.

Despite combining for 32 nominations, Netflix and Apple TV+ were nearly shut out of the 2024 Oscars, with Netflix winning just a single award for Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Best Live Action Short Film). Netflix scored six prizes last year. The big surprise was Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple TV+) not gaining a single award. Oppenheimer claimed prizes for Best Picture, Best Director, editing, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Original Score and Cinematography. 

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Marilyn Monroe gets digitally resurrected as AI

Thanks to a company that owns the rights to her likeness.

ABG

At SXSW on Friday, Soul Machines unveiled Digital Marilyn, an AI chatbot designed to look and talk just like Marilyn Monroe. It was made in a partnership with Authentic Brands Group, which owns the rights to Monroe’s likeness and those of numerous other dead and living celebrities, including Elvis Presley and Shaq.

Soul Machines introduced its Marilyn Monroe AI to the public in an International Women’s Day Instagram post. Notably, all of the other AI celebrities the company currently offers chats with are men who are alive, and who can weigh in on their inclusion.

Continue reading.

Despite combining for 32 nominations, Netflix and Apple TV+ were nearly shut out of of the 2024 Oscars, with Netflix winning a single award for Wes Anderson's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Best Live Action Short Film). The big surprise was Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple TV+) not gaining a single statue, notably Lily Gladstone losing the Best Actress prize to Poor Things' Emma Stone. 

Universal was the big winner with Oppenheimer (Best Picture, Best Director, editing, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, original score, cinematography) while Poor Things (Disney's Searchlight Pictures) garnered four prizes. The other half of "Barbenheimer," (Barbie, ofc) took just a single prize for best song with What Was I Made For (and not I'm Just Ken, sung live at the ceremony by supporting actor nominee Ryan Gosling). 

The gala was a letdown for Netflix, which scored six prizes last year. Netflix has won 23 Oscars since 2017, but has yet to win in the Best Picture or Best Actor/Actress categories. That's despite four nominations this year for Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan (Maestro), Colman Domingo for Rustin and Annette Bening for Nyad. 

Lily Gladstone was perhaps slightly favored over Stone to win for Killers of the Flower Moon and she also would have been the first Indigenous American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor or Actress. The studio was also up for Best Supporting Actor with nominee Robert De Niro and Best Director for Scorsese. Apart from Gladstone's loss, though, awards were distributed largely as anticipated. 

This year, it couldn't be said that judges were swayed by a lack of theatrical presence from streamers. Killers of the Flower Moon had a fairly wide release in cinemas, while Maestro stayed in theaters for a month prior to its Netflix release. Both chalked up decent box office numbers. 

The ceremony itself appears to have been decent, with Deadline proclaiming that producers "finally made an Academy Awards ceremony for the 21st century" and The Hollywood Reporter calling it "busy and eclectic." USA Today did describe it as "boring," but every Oscars for the past 20 years has gotten the same knock.

Riding the success of 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Nintendo and Illumination are releasing a second animated film in the franchise that’s expected to come out April 3, 2026. The news comes from series creator Shigeru Miyamoto himself, who tweeted it from the Nintendo of America X account on Sunday as part of the ongoing Mario Day celebrations. Details are so far scant, but Miyamoto says the team is “thinking about broadening Mario's world further, and it'll have a bright and fun story.”

Based on his description, it doesn’t seem like it will be a direct sequel to the first, though that remains to be seen. In an announcement video also featuring Miyamoto, Chris Meledandri from Illumination said the team is already “storyboarding scenes and developing set designs for new environments.” Animations are due to begin soon. The next movie set in the Super Mario Bros. world will be released in the US and other areas on April 3, 2026 before coming to other regions later that month.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie absolutely crushed at the box office when it was released last April, becoming the highest-grossing video game movie at opening. It hit $1.3 billion worldwide by the beginning of June, Variety reported. If you didn’t get a chance to catch it in theaters then — or you’re just dying to see it on the big screen again — AMC Theaters is bringing The Super Mario Bros. Movie back to theaters this year on June 28, as spotted by GoNintendo.

An update to Google Wallet has further simplified the process of getting all your passes in one place. Per this week’s release notes for Wallet, spotted by Android reporter ​​Mishaal Rahman, Google says movie tickets and boarding passes will now be surfaced automatically after purchase, as long as the confirmation email has made it to the user’s Gmail inbox. It might not work for every theater chain or airline just yet, but Google says the feature is live for “some” and more should be added in time.

Google little by little has been tweaking Wallet to make it more useful. The company last month expanded Wallet passes to WearOS so Android smartwatch users could have easy access to their tickets from their wrist. That includes boarding passes, event tickets, gym memberships, loyalty cards and more. Per the latest release notes, Google has also added a way for users to manually archive most of their passes from either their smartphone or smartwatch. These will be moved to a section called Archived Passes, where users will be able to undo the action if they’ve made a mistake or need to refer to an old pass.

There’s been a lot of discussion in recent years about the practice of capitalizing on celebrities’ digital likenesses without their consent, whether after they die or while they’re still alive. Zelda Williams, for one — the Lisa Frankenstein director and daughter of Robin Williams — slammed the “disturbing” trend of people trying to recreate the voices and faces of the deceased last year, as striking actors fought for, among other things, better protections around studios’ potential use of AI clones. Yet despite the obvious ethical issues, companies keep doing it. The latest? Soul Machines just unveiled “Digital Marilyn,” an AI chatbot designed to look and talk just like Marilyn Monroe.

The company, which specializes in what it refers to as Biological AI-powered Digital People, debuted the Marilyn bot at SXSW on Friday in a partnership with Authentic Brands Group. ABG owns the rights to Monroe’s likeness and those of numerous other celebrities both dead and living, including Elvis Presley and Shaq. Digital Marilyn, powered by GPT 3.5, is “hyper-real” and capable of responding with “emotions and nuanced expressions,” Soul Machines says in a press release. She can hold a roughly 20-minute conversation.

“More than just an impressive impersonation, Digital Marilyn is an autonomous Digital Person capable of engaging in natural, dynamic conversations that feel authentic and responsive,” Soul Machines wrote in a blog post. “It’s as if the spark of Marilyn herself has been translated into the AI age, offering a unique and deeply personal connection for both devoted fans and curious newcomers.” Anyone else’s skin crawling?

Soul Machines touts its digital celebrities (there are others, including an upcoming Carmelo Anthony bot) as a way for famous people to “engage 1-on-1 with their fans, without limits” and “deliver 24/7 connection.” Notably, all of the other AI celebrities the company currently offers chats with — Mark Tuan, Francis Ngannou and Jack Nicklaus — are men who are alive and thus able to weigh-in on their inclusion. Soul Machines introduced its Marilyn Monroe AI to the public with an Instagram post for International Women’s Day, because nothing says “celebrate women” like exploiting the likeness of a female celebrity who is no longer around to give permission.

Microsoft appears to have blocked several prompts in its Copilot tool that led the generative AI tool to spit out violent, sexual and other illicit images. The changes seem to have been implemented just after an engineer at the company wrote to the Federal Trade Commission to lay out severe concerns he had with Microsoft's GAI tech.

When entering terms such as “pro choice,” “four twenty” (a weed reference) or “pro life,” Copilot now displays a message saying those prompts are blocked. It warns that repeated policy violations could lead to a user being suspended, according to CNBC.

Users were also reportedly able to enter prompts related to children playing with assault rifles until earlier this week. Those who try to input such a prompt now may be told that doing so violates Copilot’s ethical principles as well as Microsoft’s policies. “Please do not ask me to do anything that may harm or offend others,” Copilot reportedly says in response. However, CNBC found that it was still possible to generate violent imagery through prompts such as “car accident,” while users can still convince the AI to create images of Disney characters and other copyrighted works.

Microsoft engineer Shane Jones has been sounding the alarm for months about the kinds of images Microsoft's OpenAI-powered systems were generating. He had been testing Copilot Designer since December and determined that it output images that violated Microsoft's responsible AI principles even while using relatively benign prompts. For instance, he found that the prompt “pro-choice" led to the AI creating images of things like demons eating infants and Darth Vader holding a drill to a baby's head. He wrote to the FTC and Microsoft's board of directors about his concerns this week.

“We are continuously monitoring, making adjustments and putting additional controls in place to further strengthen our safety filters and mitigate misuse of the system," Microsoft told CNBC regarding the Copilot prompt bans.

Game design is a daring and dangerous endeavor for Niklas Åkerblad, who creates under the name El Huervo. When he describes the artistic process behind ULTROS, a neon-speckled platformer set in a demonic cosmic uterus, he talks about pushing against the sharp edges of introspection and sanity, drawing from wells of creativity buried deep in his psyche. It sounds like he could’ve slipped and fallen down any of those wells at any second, never to be seen again.

“I had a pretty rigorous discipline when it came to creating the world of ULTROS,” Åkerblad told Engadget. “It involves deep meditation while working and maintaining 100 percent focus to be able to know when harmony is achieved when working with such a dense flow of shapes and colors. It is almost impossible to cerebrally analyze this process, but it is rather something you have to feel, thus any external disturbance can greatly impact the process. It is perhaps not something I recommend others do without proper experience in creating visual art.”

Niklas Åkerblad

At the same time, Åkerblad is extremely practical about the business of making games. He’s been in the independent scene for years, and he’s enjoyed incredible success as the collaborator who provided the cover art and other assets for Hotline Miami and its sequel. You know the vibe — grizzled but radiant, with the threat of violence in every other pixel. He also composed a handful of songs for those games, including “Daisuke” and “Rust,” and he went on to develop else Heart.Break(), a 3D adventure set in a digital city of hackers, artists and activists that implemented programming as a core mechanic. Else Heart.Break() came out in 2015 and was a finalist at the Independent Games Festival that year.

His latest project, ULTROS, is a 2D exploration of The Sarcophagus, a looping world in a black hole that cycles players through environments overrun by alien plant life and vicious demons. Every scene in ULTROS is packed with detail and brilliant color; the backgrounds are alive with monsters and organic machines. Streaks of black delineate the boundaries of walking paths, ceilings and platforms, contrasted against shifting rainbows of luminosity.

Hadoque

There’s a lot going on in ULTROS at any given moment, but the protagonist stands out with a glowing green helmet, vermilion cloak and an evolving arsenal of platforming gadgets. One lesson from else heartbreak() that Åkerblad fed into ULTROS was the idea that games can have way more fun with color palettes. ULTROS is purposefully packed with visual interest.

“I felt video games tend to not push the boundaries of colors so much beyond ‘green is good’ and ‘red is bad,’ and whatever metrics are used for loot tiers,” he said. “I feel that there is this misunderstanding in design that less is more, and my gut tells me it's the opposite and I worked very hard on ULTROS to prove my theory. Undoubtedly there will be those who do not agree with me, but I feel it has more to do with taste and personal or physical preferences than academic truth — if there is such a thing.”

As a cyclical Metroidvania title, ULTROS is completely different from Åkerblad’s previous projects, but it’s also undeniably El Huervo. Actually, in this case, it’s Hadoque — around 2017, Åkerblad and game director Mårten Bruggemann started building the prototype that would become ULTROS, eventually bringing in composer Oscar “Ratvader” Rydelius and Fe designer Hugo Bille. Other artists joined over the years, and they ended up calling themselves Hadoque, a loose organization of creators who could float in and out as a project called to them.

Hadoque

“We wanted our group to be associated with its own thing, so we decided on Hadoque,” Åkerblad said. “It's a cool name that looks a bit weird and it suits our vibe. Also, it allowed everyone to still have their own thing on the side and not be legally tied to anything if they wished to pursue other venues.”

El Huervo AB remains Åkerblad’s own corporate entity, useful for dealing with the bureaucratic aspects of making video games. Through El Huervo AB, Hadoque received backing in 2019 from the gaming fund Kowloon Nights, which has also supported titles like Sifu, Rollerdrome, We Are OFK, Sea of Stars, Spiritfarer and Tchia.

“El Huervo AB merely functions as a sort of bureaucratic condom, and Hadoque as a name to be used when a group of developers come together to make art as games,” Åkerblad said. “Sort of like a band name. People come and go, but the vision remains.”

ULTROS is a game about life, rebirth, aliens, monsters and peace, and it all plays out in a technicolor dreamscape of vicious creatures and gorgeous foliage. This is the palette of surreal sci-fi, to Åkerblad.

Hadoque

“The themes explored in ULTROS are of an existential and spiritual nature, and I find that surreal sci-fi is a good genre to explore these themes in, as it has a long tradition of doing so,” he said. “In this regard, Ursula K. Le Guin has been a huge inspiration. Hopefully, what we manage to evoke in players is a sense of introspection and comfort.”

Despite the amount of deep thought that he’s done about the nature of art, sci-fi and play, there’s no singular message that Åkerblad is trying to convey with ULTROS. Instead, he and the rest of the developers at Hadoque encourage players to identify their own journey as they cycle through The Sarcophagus. As Åkerblad put it:

“Please enjoy ULTROS any way you want and don't try to look for a ‘true’ interpretation, but rather find your own meaning. This goes for any art, I think, in general. Interpretation is purely subjective and I want to keep telling stories that invoke and allow this subjectivity to exist.”

ULTROS is available now on PlayStation 4, PS5, Steam and the Epic Games Store, published by Kepler Interactive.

Ever compared Cassidy to Spike Siegel or gunslinger Ashe to gun-toting Faye Valentine? Write this date down: March 12. That's when Blizzard is launching Overwatch 2's collaboration with legendary anime Cowboy Bebop, which will bring five skins based on the show to the game. The trailer released for the collaboration also shows the hacker Sombra dressed as her fellow hacker Ed, the Tank hero Wrecking Ball/Hammond as the data corgi Ein and the Samoan warrior Mauga as Jet Black. 

Speaking of that trailer, it certainly looks and feels like Cowboy Bebop's opening animation — it even uses the same theme song. Clearly, this collaboration is looking to appeal to the anime's fans, though we wish it could've happened sooner, say during the show's 25th anniversary last year. Blizzard did launch an anime tie-up in 2023, but it was with Japanese superhero show One-Punch Man.

Wrecking Ball's Ein skin will be available for free to all players, but the other skins will be sold through the Overwatch 2 shop. The collaboration will also give you access to new emotes, highlight intros and other items you can buy. Blizzard will officially introduce each skin and item on March 11, perhaps so you'd at least have an idea of how much you're spending a day later. 

Journalists, creators and long-winded VCs on X now have a new way to be exhausting on main. X now allows verified organizations and Premium+ subscribers to publish long-form “Articles."

The feature adds a basic text-editing interface that includes embedded media and some text formatting options, like the ability to make bulleted lists. It also appears that articles can be longer than the 25,000-character limit currently in place for premium subscribers’ “longer posts” feature. According to my initial tests, I hit the character limit for articles at just over 100,000 characters or about 15,000 words.

Here’s what the editing interface looks like:

Screenshot via X

Notably, Twitter began working on longer form posts long before Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. The company showed off an early version, originally called “Notes” in 2022, as it looked to lure newsletter writers and other creators to the service. Musk confirmed last summer that the publishing tools were still in the works.

The rollout of publishing tools is notable as Musk has often been hostile to journalists on his platform. Last year, Musk directed a change to X’s recommendation algorithm so that links to newsletter platform Substack would not appear in users’ “For You” feeds, which has throttled many independent writers’ reach on the service. X also stripped headlines from news stories shared on the platform last fall (headlines eventually returned, in a much smaller font).