This past August, there were reports that Fox was interested in bringing a live action X-men series to TV. Today, we got details on two new series that are coming to TV thanks to a partnership between Fox and Marvel TV. Hellfire will be coming to Fox while Legion will be coming to FX with a pilot already being ordered. Both projects are executive produced by X-men movie director Bryan Singer, with Legion having Noah Hawley (Fargo) attached to it as head writer. Hellfire will take place during the late 60s and follow the exploits of the club of millionaire mutants that was introduced in X-men First class, and is features prominently in the comics. A special agent investigates the group after learning that a powerful woman is in charge of the group. Legion will tell the story of Charles Xavier’s illegitimate son, David Haller, a powerful mutant with schizophrenia. While there are obviously no details in the way of date, stars, timeslot, or even if these shows are in X-men movie continuity, this is certainly exciting news for fans of Marvel’s merry mutants. It’s even more surprising to see Marvel TV and Fox working together in spite of Fox’s stinginess over the X-men and Fantastic Four rights.

Marvel Puzzle Quest is a popular free-to-play adaptation of D3 Go’s Puzzle Quest franchise. Based loosely on 2009’s Dark Reign storyline, players collected heroes and utilized them in a match-3 game in order to bring down several of Marvel’s top villains, unlocking and leveling up their heroes as the game progressed. Thanks to Wayforward (Contra 4, Shantae, Mighty Switch Force Go), the game will be hitting Xbox One, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Playstation 4 later this year as a fully paid title. The game itself will be $14.99 when it releases, and players won’t have to buy bundles of coins or ISO-8. As the game won’t feature all of the heroes from the mobile game at launch (as of now the mobile versions of the game feature over 80 unlockable heroes including Lady Thor), the game will have downloadable content releases. The game will feature local and online multiplayer, which isn’t in the mobile game. No word on the exact release date, but it will be on display at this week’s New York Comic Con along with a version of Puzzle Quest based on Adventure Time. While I would like to see versions of the game for PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS, this will still be a perfect deal for fans who are intrigued by the game but were put off by the f2p features from the mobile game.

Karate Champ is a different kind of fighting game. A spiritual successor of sorts to old school karate games like Karate Champ, Battle K-Road, and Best of the Best Championship Karate, Karate Master 2: Knockdown Blow puts emphasis on realism rather than fantasy bullshit like fireballs, high jumps, and spinning kicks. Unlike those old school games, this game actually looks and plays well. The game’s graphics area throw back to SNES and Neo-Geo fighters, and the controls are responsive. You are in control of a young martial artist who has a dream of opening his own dojo. You have to master several different styles of combat, increase your fame by competing in tournaments, and earn money by working the forklift. The game tends to get repetitive, but you’ll get into grinding, training, and enhancing your skills. There are several training exercises to unlock, one of them even involves a bull for those of you who played Karate Champ back in the days. The matches themselves utilize real life karate rulesets, and they get brutal. You and your opponents can suffer torn muscles, concussions, broken bones, and other gruesome injuries. While the game could benefit from some customization options, a multiplayer mode, and a bit more variety, the game is still fun, and if you are a martial arts aficionado, you’ll be into its realism. Oh, and it’s on sale for $5.99 on Steam until next Monday.

Project X Zone 2: Brave New World, the mega crossover featuring characters from Capcom, Namco Bandai, and Sega was featured this past week at the Tokyo Game Show, and several new characters were revealed. Chrom and Lucina from Fire Emblem Awakening join the cast, which now means that we could be seeing characters who aren’t originally from a Capcom, Sega, or Namco game. Also, Fiora from Xenoblade Chronicles joins Kos-Mos to form a team. These 4 characters will join characters such as Pheonix Wright, Leon Kennedy, and Jill Valentine as just a few of the many playable characters in Project X Zone 2. There’s another new character coming to Project X Zone 2 as well. Find out who it is after the jump.

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Nintendo, The Pokémon Company and Niantic (Ingress) are working together to bring Pokemon GO to Android and IOS devices in 2016. Like Niantic’s mobile MMORPG Ingress, the game will make use of real world maps to allow players to find, battle, and capture Pokemon in the real world. The game will work in conjunction with a wristwatch peripheral named the Pokemon Go Plus which alerts players of events happening within the game so that players won’t have to spend as much time staring at their screens. Pokemon company president Tsunekazu Ishihara, Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata all had their input on the game. While this isn’t the first time Pokemon has hit mobile devices (The Pokemon Trading Card Game has been available on iOS devices since 2012), this is teh first full fleged Pokemon game developed with input from Nintendo. If this goes well, it’ll be interesting to see how this influences Nintendo’s mobile strategy going forward.

10 years ago, I introduced powet staple $20 Game of the Week with a look at this game. After doing this column almost every week for 10 straight years, maybe now is a good time to revisit it. This is one of the few games that I still have in my collection, and it’s one of the few original Xbox games that are backwardly compatible on the Xbox 360. I remembering purchasing this game like it was yesterday. I had just paid off my tuition for fall of 2005, and I was looking for a game to keep myself occupied until school started. A trip to gamestop saw this title available for only $20. On a whim, I picked it up, and enjoyed it enough to use it as a stepping stone to start a weekly column. While it hasn’t aged well since then, Outlaw Tennis still retains its own unique charm.
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If you had a Super Nintendo, you might vaguely remember Konami’s sleeper hit, Cybernator. In that game, players took control of a mech as they bought untold amounts of destruction upon the enemy. Gigantic Army, developed by Astro Port, seems to be a spiritual successor to Konami’s classic. Once again, players take control of a mech as they bring untold amounts of destitution upon an enemy. Before you begin the game, you select a basic loadout for your mech. You also have a shield, jetpack, and a melee weapon. While most of the game’s enemies are pushovers, the real challenge comes in conserving HP as you battle the game’s larger-than-life bosses. Also, a timer constantly counts down, forcing players to always be on the move. This insures that the action is chaotic and frantic at all times. The story (not that there is much of one) is told through diary entries in between levels. If you’re a fan of 16-bit gaming, you’ll want to check this game out. It’s on sale on steam for only $2.99, so check it out.

Huge multiverse-spanning crossovers seem to be the big theme this summer with DC’s recently concluded Convergence and Marvel’s current event Secret Wars. However, one event you may be missing is Archie Comics’ Mega Man/Sonic: World’s Unite, featuring characters from Mega Man and Sonic, along with Mega Man X, Sonic Boom, and the game libraries of both Sega and Capcom. The sequel to 2013’s World’s Collide, Worlds Unite doesn’t stop with our blue heroes, but instead brings in characters from Street Fighter, Nights: Into Dreams, Breath of Fire III, Alex Kidd, and more to give comic fans the greatest crossover videogame they’ll never play. Check after the jump the see the issue order. With two issues left to go, including next week’s Sonic the Hedgehog 275, you’ll want to catch up on the action.
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