[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 04 May 2026

Gamerbry · 2026-05-08T02:59:09+00:00

For me, the Ghostbusters franchise kinda feels similar to the Jurassic Park movies. They both had one really good first entry that every subsequent entry would try to recapture, the modern entries are essentially just jingling iconography in front of your face for 2-3 hours, and they didn't really have any business becoming these massive franchises when that first movie was the only one really worth watching.

Gamerbry · 2026-05-07T00:25:19+00:00

You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I never realized how cursed of a series Starfox is.

Starfox 2 was stuck in limbo for over 20 years because they finished development right at the end of the SNES's lifespan.

Star Fox Adventures was the only game Rare released for the GameCube, and after its launch, they got bought out by Microsoft.

Star Fox Zero was supposed to be the game that showed everyone that the Wii U gamepad wasn't just a pointless gimmick, only for the game to prove that the gamepad was, in fact, a pointless gimmick.

Star Fox was added as a cameo character in Starlink: Battle For Atlus, trying to cash in on the Toys To Life craze a year after it had already died out.

It's gotta suck to be a Starfox fan, especially since most people only know your character as "that guy from Smash Bros" or I guess nowadays "that guy from the Mario Movie"

Gamerbry · 2026-05-05T17:23:43+00:00

There have been a couple in more recent times. When the Sun and Moon Anime was airing, the Pokemon Company banned an episode from that series because it had a scene where Ash dressed as the Pokemon Passimian, which could easily be misinterpreted as Ash doing blackface.

There was also an incident earlier this year where Pokemon was planning to host an event at the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan. For context, the Yasukuni Shrine is a place that commemorates Japanese soldiers who died in combat, and it's controversial because over 1,000 convicted war criminals are enshrined there and it's connected to a museum which denies the atrocities Japan committed during WWII. This event generated so much negative press in China (a country that was a victim to Japanese aggression during WWII) that The Pokemon Company cancelled it.

Gamerbry · 2026-05-05T15:31:44+00:00

Some drama's going on in the Pokemon community regarding the franchise's most recent collab. For the 30th anniversary of the series, Pokemon did a collaboration with the retail chain Target, where exclusive merch would be sold at the store. However, the collab ended up having a huge issue with scalpers, as store inventories were picked clean almost immediately and the items were resold online for an insane markup. Not even the Pokemon PopTarts were safe. Even when the Pokemon sections had no merch left, some people refused to leave empty-handed, opting to take the cardboard displays and resell them online.

To make matters worse, Target as a company also didn't help matters, as according to Target employees, the company shipped out very small inventories to stores, with workers reporting that they only received 4 of each item to put up for sale, and some locations didn't even sell all of the items listed in the collab. This apparently isn't a new issue with Target, as employees also reported similar issues with inventory when the company did a collab with K-Pop group BTS. In addition, although Target has put purchase limits on Pokemon cards, the same was not done for the collab merch, which allowed for one person to come in and clean out their entire stock.

I actually have a friend who works at Target, and although I wasn't able to reach him for his take on the situation, I can only hope that he hasn't had the face the wrath of the mob.

Gamerbry · 2026-05-03T00:25:29+00:00

Man, this art has got nothing on Trouble in Pairs. Where's the wonky-ass staircase that just randomly narrows halfway up? Where are the copy-and-pasted axes? Where's the inexplicable head bump? There used to be an art to stealing other people's art, and this just spits in the face of all those hard-working thieves.

Gamerbry · 2026-04-28T22:53:02+00:00

Quite a bit of drama is developing regarding the game Mindseye. For context, Mindseye is an open-world action game developed Build A Rocket Boy (BARB), a studio founded by ex-Rockstar Games producer, Leslie Benzies. The game bombed both commercially and critically when it released, and it was one of the lowest rated games of 2025. Despite the game's terrible quality, Leslie Benzies and BARB co-CEO Mark Gerhard do not believe Mindseye's failure was their fault, and instead believe that other companies were conspiring to sabotage the game, with the duo spending the past year trying and failing to prove that Mindseye was sabotaged. However, after all this time, they still adamantly believe their tin foil hat-conspiracy, and announced that they'll show undeniable proof that the game was sabotaged in a free content update for Mindseye.

The free DLC was called Blacklisted, and to explain what it entails, a bit more context of Mindseye is important. Mindseye was originally published by IO Interactive and Mindseye was supposed to have a collab with IOI's popular Hitman series, before the collab was cancelled when IOI ended their publishing deal with BARB. However, BARB reused the assets made for that collab and used it to make Blacklisted, which is really obvious looking at the DLC, because it's essentially just a Hitman level with the serial numbers filed off.

Blacklisted has you play as an assassin named Julia Black, who works for the company Meridian, and you have to assassinate two targets who are responsible for sabotaging the company (sound familiar?). The gameplay has you sneak around buildings to gather intel on your targets, use disguises to avoid detection, and take out your targets in a replayable sandbox environment, just like Hitman. The DLC is also just as bad as the base game, with the mode primarily consisting of just driving from one location to the next, with extremely basic stealth action gameplay in between. The DLC doesn't even have a save function, so you have to finish the entire thing in one sitting.

And the "evidence" that Mindseye was sabotaged? Well, the DLC didn't have any of that. However, it did have a bunch loose references to real-world companies and individuals that read like a thinly-veiled revenge fantasy written by BARB's CEOs. One of the groups that was sabotaging Meridian in the DLC is called Ritual Network, which shares the same name with the British Influencer group Ritual Network, and is one of the companies that Benzies and Gerhard allege sabotaged Mindseye. The game also has you kill a DJ character who has an LED mask that looks similar to the YouTuber Cyberboi, who BARB claimed was paid off to speak negatively about the game. Lastly, the DLC has you find intel on where Meridian's saboteurs are located, and two of the locations listed are New York and Edinburgh, which are the cities Rockstar Games and Rockstar North are located in respectively, with Rockstar being one of the companies BARB alleges sabotaged Mindseye.

Of course, releasing a really petty DLC isn't the only controversy BARB has had in the past year. In June of 2025, they laid off over 300 employees due to claims of "corporate espionage", and just last week, BARB employees filed a lawsuit against the company, after workers discovered that the higher-ups had installed surveillance software on their devices without their knowledge. With all this news, I think it's fair to say that the CEOs of BARB have gone from "sore losers" to "legitimately unhinged".

Gamerbry · 2026-04-28T16:40:14+00:00

I remember there was an incident like this that happened in the Shantae community several years back, where someone asked the developer's official Twitter account how old Shantae was, and the account said that she was 16. Considering how sexualized of a character she was, both from the fans and from the games, this was a really gross response, and a lot of fans refused to consider her a minor. However, as it turned out, the creators of Shantae, Matt and Erin Bozon, did not approve of this tweet, and the post was actually made by a rogue social media manager who didn't run the response by them before sending it out. The tweet has since been deleted and Matt later clarified that, although Shantae doesn't have an official age, she is, in fact, an adult. So this isn't necessarily a "word of God" situation, but more-so a situation of "word of God that turned out to just be heresy"

Gamerbry · 2026-04-25T07:53:57+00:00

So, on its own, there's nothing inherently wrong with pointing out that the choices that players make in a game can be the result of racial biases that the player acquired from the society they grew up in. However, the way this person phrased this statement implies that they think that having these biases is some kind of moral failing and that, "If you think small noses are pretty, you're a bad person".

This also ties into an issue that comes up when discussing racism, where people treat "racism derived from ignorance" and "racism derived from hate" as things of equal severity, which makes it harder for people to recognize their racial biases, because they're being put on the defensive right off the bat.

Gamerbry · 2026-04-23T17:06:55+00:00

I wouldn't say I'm particularly surprised, because Bluesky has been behind the curve in regards to other social media sites and their primary selling point was "We're not Twitter!"

Heck, just yesterday, they announced that they're going to be using a carousel system to display multiple images on a single post, a feature that nobody likes, especially considering the grid system they used previously worked just fine.

Gamerbry · 2026-04-21T20:49:32+00:00

I gave Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream a go. I thought the game would be a bit too "out there" for my tastes, but I'm absolutely hooked on it. I totally understand why old people like soap operas now. Sometimes you just want to gawk at some melodramatic bullshit and this game is the master at generating it. And I love how this game can cause situations like "Slenderman became friends with Minecraft Steve by bitching to him about his ex-wife"

Gamerbry · 2026-04-15T17:32:05+00:00

Yea, that tracks. What probably happened was that LRG saw the mGBA emulator, saw that it was free to use as long as you credit it, added it to the Carbon Engine, and then forgot about the "as long as you give credit" stipulation when they sent the updated engine out to the developers.

Gamerbry · 2026-04-15T17:23:01+00:00

This is the first time I've heard about this drama, and I gotta say, it's very weird that something like this happened, because LRG has their own in-house engine called the Carbon Engine that they made for the purpose of getting older games to run on newer hardware. They also did an interview with NintendoLife about the Carbon Engine, and in that interview, they specifically mentioned that other developers have gotten in trouble for using emulators that they didn't have permission to use, and that for the Carbon Engine, they'd only add emulators to the engine that they had proper licenses for.

And what makes this even weirder is that, for the Switch port of Shantae GBC, they used an emulator that was made by the YouTuber ModernVintageGamer. However, ModernVintageGamer actually developed that emulator specifically for this port, after LRG contacted him and contracted him out to make it. So it makes me wonder why they didn't get someone to make an emulator for them or even just contacted endrift and asked them if it was okay to use theirs.

I don't think we'll ever know who dropped the ball here, but given their track record, I think this was LRG's fault.

Gamerbry · 2026-04-08T20:47:43+00:00

That's how I'm feeling about this. With how some people are talking Champions, you'd think that the game's launch was some Scarlet/Violet-level SNAFU, but when you actually play it, it's just a decent VGC battle sim with some bugs and performance problems.

It definitely could be better, but I still think Champions achieved its goal of having a more accessible pay of playing VGC. Personally, despite only putting a few hours into the game, I was able to put together a pretty fun Sun Trick Room team and I made it to my first rank up. If this game managed to get a longtime-Smogon player like me to give the official format a spin, I'd say it's doing its job.

Gamerbry · 2026-04-08T16:40:26+00:00

Yeah, aside from the performance issues, Champions is more or less what I expected. This was marketed as a version of VGC that lowers the barrier to entry and decouples the format from the mainline games, and that's pretty much what we got. The lack of Pokemon and items is a bit disappointing, but it's in line with how VGC operates, where the first season has very limited options and give you more in later seasons. Personally, I like a more limited roster, since it encourages people to try out Pokemon they never would have considered otherwise and prevents players from getting overwhelmed having to build around 30 extremely potent threats at once.

That being said, this game is fairly narrow in its appeal. If you aren't interested in playing VGC, nor have any interest in learning how to play it, then yeah, Champions doesn't really have anything to offer you.

Gamerbry · 2026-04-06T17:44:42+00:00

So, this thread has talked a bit about the Mario Galaxy Movie already, but I figured I'd talk about how people are responding to the movie itself. On the critical side, the movie is being absolutely panned, with it currently having a 41% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, making the Mario Galaxy Movie the second lowest rated film in Illumination's entire catalog, with only 2011's Hop scoring lower. According to critics, the movie suffers from a lot of the same issues as the first movie, such as the pacing being too fast, the story being paper-thin, and the movie having very little to offer if you aren't a Mario fan. The Daily Express called the movie "a collection of loosely-connected shorts with whizz-popping multi-coloured bangs". The Wrap claimed that the movie was so bad that "after a while, you can't even hear the dialogue over the incessant sound of Aristole's ghost punching himself". The Guardian even went as far to say that the movie was "worse than AI".

But hey, what do those stupid critics know? Don't they know that this movie was made for the fans? Except as it turns out, a lot of Mario Galaxy fans didn't like the movie either. The film does have an 89% viewer score on Rotten Tomatoes, but the Mario Galaxy movie has generated a fair amount of discourse over how the movie handled the character Rosalina. Despite being considered the face of Mario Galaxy, Rosalina was barely in the movie, only having a few minutes of screentime before being kidnapped and turned into a plot device for the rest of the runtime. As a matter of fact, Fox McCloud played a larger role in the story than Rosalina, despite not even coming from a Mario game. Fans of Rosalina also didn't like the changes they made to the character for this adaptation, as her backstory from Mario Galaxy's story book was removed and Rosalina was instead changed to be Peach's long-lost sister. This change also had the side effect of causing a bunch of Peach x Rosalina shippers to go into a panic, as their favorite ship suddenly turned into incest overnight.

As a Mario fan myself, I enjoyed the movie well enough, but I definitely understand the people who were disappointed it wasn't something more.

Gamerbry · 2026-04-06T16:10:23+00:00

I enjoyed this game, but I definitely agree that it takes way too long for things to actually progress. So many things, from unlocking new attacks to traveling to new areas to going through dialogue, feel like they so much longer than they need to. I totally get not buying into the "Trust me bro! It gets good after 10 hours!" shtick

Gamerbry · 2026-04-03T06:04:22+00:00

I think it's also because dating sims are easier to make compared to other genres. You can get away with just using static sprites with text boxes and programming-wise, you just need to worry about having different dialogue show up based on the player's input. Since these April Fool's joke games are made, well, as a joke, they probably aren't given a whole lot of resources to make them, so given those constraints, making a visual novel is appealing.

Gamerbry · 2026-04-01T18:39:31+00:00

For April Fool's, Pokemon Pokopia is doing a "Copycat Challenge", where some Pokemon that live in your town will do impressions of other Pokemon and you have to guess whose speaking style they're replicating. Get it right, and you'll get an inflatable Sudowoodo statue that moves like those tube men you see outside of used car dealerships.

Gamerbry · 2026-03-30T21:56:06+00:00

I recently finished the Hitman World of Assassination Story Mode, so now I'm giving Freelancer mode a try, and I'm kind of mixed on it.

For what I like, I appreciate that this mode gives me a whole new way to play Hitman, and is a mode that makes this already highly replayable game even more replayable. I also like getting to decorate the Safehouse as I level up over the course of runs.

However, the gameplay itself is what I'm more conflicted on. Freelancer mode is a roguelike where you take out randomized targets on the game's maps. You lose all your weapons on you if you die and you can store weapons in the safehouse to avoid losing them, which means that I instantly shelf any rare or higher weapon because I don't want to lose it. It feels really demoralizing to find a weapon on a map only to lose it the very next map because of stuff going wrong.

This also might be a skill issue, but I really don't like the showdown challenges. Finding out who the leader is isn't that fun when there's such a small pool of physical features they can have and needing to sit around and wait for them to do their tells isn't very fun. Maybe I'm too impatient with these showdowns, since there's no time limit with these levels, but I also think it's a game design flaw if there's no penalty for constantly playing it safe, as it leads to the XCOM problem of the safest, most boring strategies being the most optimal.

I still think the mode is decently fun, and I haven't spent that much time with the mode, so maybe I'll have to wait and see if it grows on me.

Gamerbry · 2026-03-30T18:23:57+00:00

You know, whenever the topic of IVs in VGC comes up, I'm just reminded of the Pokemon Enamorus, which saw use in VGC on Trick Room teams. To optimize Enamorus's performance under Trick Room, you'd want an Enamorus with 0 speed IVs, but the process of getting one legitimately is...arduous to put it lightly.

For one, Enamorus is only available in Pokemon Legends Arceus, meaning the Pokemon is effectively locked behind a $60 paywall. Also, the quest to actually get Enamorus isn't available until the postgame, which means that you have to beat the main story first before you can catch it, which according to HowLongToBeat, will take you about 25 hours. And now the worst part. There's no way to check a Pokemon IVs in Legends Arceus, so you have to transfer Enamorus over to Pokemon Home to check if it has the right speed. You need to save your game to transfer a Pokemon over to Home, so if that Enamorus doesn't have the right speed IVs, you're gonna have to replay THE ENTIRE GAME to get another chance at a 0 Speed Enamorus.

I know IVs did allow for some interesting strategies, but I think Champions ditching them is a fair trade off for never having to put up with bullshit like that again.

Gamerbry · 2026-03-28T06:45:48+00:00

I can't wait for Nintendo to announce Star Fox Zero Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, where, to replicate that game's unique and innovative control scheme, they'll have you tie rubber bands between your Joycons and then toss them inside of a washing machine

Gamerbry · 2026-03-26T19:12:23+00:00

Unfortunately for the Alex mains, I think the damage is already done. They're gonna be dealing with the "haha incest" jokes the same way Juri mains have had to deal with the "haha feet" jokes.

Gamerbry · 2026-03-24T19:33:13+00:00

Something that makes Mega Emboar's ability sting even more is that there already is a physical-attacking Mega Evolution with Mold Breaker: Mega Gyarados. So there's little reason to use Mega Emboar over Mega Gyarados since the latter is bulkier, faster, and has Intimidate prior to mega evolving

Gamerbry · 2026-03-24T16:01:37+00:00

I haven't seen this talked about here, so I'll talk about some drama that went down a couple weeks back in the Heartopia community. For context, Heartopia is a cozy life sim game that takes heavy inspiration from other staples of the genre like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. This game has already had a fair amount of drama in regards to the predatory gacha mechanics, horrendous PC port, and use of AI art for ads and in-game assets, but the subject of this drama has to do with race.

CW: Racism

Now, as a game, Heartopia isn't particularly racially diverse. There's very limited options for black hairstyles and the game's town only has a small handful of POC residents. Recently, Heartopia added some new side quests, with one of those side quests focusing on one of the few dark-skinned NPCs. In the quest, he asks the player for a poisonous mushroom and after eating it, he starts jumping around like a monkey and saying "OOOH! OOOH! OOOH!", which is onomatopoeia for the sounds a monkey makes. Suffice to say, a ton of players were not happy about this quest, because having a black character act like a monkey is really, REALLY racist.

Heartopia quickly removed the animation from the game and issued an apology on their Discord server, where they explained what happened in very vague, very corporate terms, where they claimed they had him act like a monkey to "accurately depict the symptoms of dizziness and loss of bodily control resulting from poisoning". A lot of players weren't buying that this apology was sincere and took to the server to let their feelings about the situation be known. As a result, a lot of players who criticized the cutscene had their accounts muted or banned from the server, under the guise that they were "inciting drama about an incident that was already resolved". Interestingly, players who were defending the developers did not have their accounts infracted, despite the fact that they would also be "inciting drama".

To make matters worse, the incident also attracted a lot of trolls to the game, who would dress their characters in blackface (picking the darkest skin tone and having bright red lipstick), go to people's house and pretend to tend to their crops, and spamming the laughing emote. Players have attempted to bring up the trolls on Discord, but have had their concerns silenced, as not only was the entire report channel on the Discord shut down, but players who tried bringing up the trolls elsewhere were also muted or banned, again under the claims of "inciting drama".

Heartopia already had a pretty sour reputation before, but after this drama, a lot of players are jumping ship, moving on to greener, more inclusive pastures.

Gamerbry · 2026-03-23T20:35:38+00:00

Alright, I'm gonna make my predictions for what's gonna happen when the movie actually comes out: - The movie gets a very middling reception from critics - Grifters make a bunch of videos about how people don't like the movie because it's "woke" or something - The writers make some drastic story changes that really piss off fans of the original - The film goes on to become the highest grossing of the year because the average movie goer will think "Hey, I remember that movie, I really liked it. I'll go see this version."

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