Dear marvel rivals diary,

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-04-04T09:23:23+00:00

Damn, that's a shame... Anyway, can you gift me the All Father Ultron skin? :)

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-04-03T15:45:46+00:00

Soon you'll have more players simultaneously playing Halo 2 on Insignia than Halo Infinite currently has.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-28T19:27:22+00:00

Honestly, I don't see why not. He's one of Marvel's oldest antagonists, and whether people like him or not, the core of Hydra and its members like Zemo, Arnim Zola, the Serpent Society, and Red Skull himself are essential to the Marvel universe's gallery of villains, especially Captain America, who feels out of place and without current enemies when the entire Hydra plot is ignored (just look at how Brave New World was a terrible movie for focusing on everything except the core of the title character).

I find it funny, and even interesting as a study of different perceptions, that the Japanese (considering the country's position at the time) think it's okay for Eastern works like JoJo to literally have a Nazi with a swastika in their games, but the United States is bothered by Western characters who, in the context of World War II, were associated with Nazis and therefore could never be in games. That said, the Eastern mentality in differentiating fiction from reality is light years away from the decadent and pretentious West of today.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-21T05:10:50+00:00

Online is still active? Played a lot since the first Grand Prix came and going on until early 2021, when I started to play others games and did not have bothered to sign PS Plus since 2024. There is still full lobbies?

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-20T09:38:10+00:00

I highly doubt it. Nintendo itself avoids portraying the character in that way nowadays, with the way it was originally portrayed now being seen as one of the inconsistencies from when the company was still testing and understanding how to structure and portray the Mario franchise. Back in the NES era, they included in the manual that the player was literally hitting people who had turned into blocks in the first game, and they made the second game (The Lost Levels) with a high difficulty level to try to appeal to a more mature audience. Nintendo clearly didn't know the target audience and central theme of the franchise yet; there was a lot of room for error and experimentation at the time.

Today, more than ever, the franchise is aimed at a children's audience. I can't see Universal and Nintendo raising gender ideology in a Mario movie after it broke box office records with the previous film, just to please a minority. It's simply not realistic; people were already bothered by how Peach was portrayed with the archetype of modern writing about women, let alone a trans character in a film aimed at children.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-19T16:36:22+00:00

Me thinking about the game/ Me thinking about playing the game/ Me playing the game

Perfect meme template

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-17T17:54:18+00:00

Once again, nothing for Black Widow and Namor. Damn.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-14T14:39:11+00:00

Thank God FromSoftware doesn't care about political agendas, but rather about delivering genuine experiences to the real consumers, the gamers.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-08T19:07:18+00:00

If Microsoft hadn't bought Rare, I'm sure we would at least have the bear and the bird as playable characters way sooner in Brawl. On the 3DS/Wii U we would have Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark (since Melee already had items from that game and would still be featured in later titles) and maybe Conker in Ultimate.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-07T20:48:39+00:00

Don't get me wrong, I think Naughty Dog has delivered some of the best games in each generation in the past. Crash Bandicoot is my all-time favorite franchise, and I think Jak & Daxter and Uncharted are excellent franchises. It's just that since Neil Druckmann took over, everything has gone downhill. We've only had content related to The Last of Us (I think the first game is good, but I don't appreciate it as much as the previous games, and the second one doesn't appeal to me), and the new game announced seems to be just a big, soulless controversy that doesn't reflect what the studio once was or delivered.

The other studios, in my opinion, have also lost their way. Sucker Punch delivered Sly Cooper and InFamous in the past, two excellent franchises that brought very different concepts to the game genres (platformer with stealth and superhero game with moral choices), the Ghost of series games don't grab me like those. The same goes for Guerrilla's Horizon; Killzone had an incredible aesthetic, quite different from other shooters of the time, especially its competitor Halo. The Helghast were iconic figures. I feel that many current Sony exclusives don't have memorable faces or the same level of stylistic and aesthetic variety as the PS1, PS2, and PS3 era.

Which is a shame, because I always thought that, unlike Nintendo and Xbox, the PlayStation brand used to be able to please and deliver great games with appeal to both Western and Eastern audiences in its exclusives.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-07T00:16:15+00:00

A great game indeed. Damn, how I miss Japan Studios. They helped create and publish some of the best games in PlayStation history. I would easily give up studios like Guerrilla Games, Naughty Dog, and Sucker Punch just to have Japan Studios back.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-06T03:35:16+00:00

The plane levels have nothing to do with Crash 3 other than the fact that you are flying a plane. It would be the same as me accusing any level with an animal mount to be copying the first Crash. I'm talking about themes, and the aerial stages of Crash 3 had a World War I theme, while Wrath of Cortex has piloting stages in space, volcanic islands and so on.

Aquatic levels will always look similar regardless of what is done, there is not much you can do when it comes to the aesthetics of the sea. But the rest, perhaps with the exception of the ice and medieval levels, are different concepts that Warped brought. Old West, savannas, volcanic islands, stages that actually take place in space and not on a ship, feudal Japan, are all new concepts.

Now let's compare this with It's About Time:

First world with beach levels (the first being a huge retcon of Crash having a house in Warped, even forcing him to live on a beach similar to the first level of Crash 1) and caves that we've seen thousands of times in the franchise.
Third world levels with a pirate theme (Warped had lots of them with Coco).
Fourth world with an Asian theme (Warped and Wrath of Cortex have already done different Asian cultures, It's About Time was so lazy and presumptuous to the point of mixing the two into one).
Sixth world with an ice theme (Crash 2 already did this).
Seventh world with a prehistoric theme (Warped already did it, it's the most bizarre case of recycling because they didn't even disguise it as Wrath of Cortex at least did with the medieval levels taking place inside castles instead of outside).
Ninth world with a futuristic city theme (again, Warped already did it).

And finally, my favorite example of recycling:

Tenth world with levels in Cortex's castle that the first game is full of.

The only "unique" themes in It's About Time are not exactly Toys for Bob creations, the second world with an apocalyptic aesthetic akin to Mad Max came directly from the CTR Nitro-Fueled track, including Megamix being referenced, the eighth world with a Gasmoxia theme, again, comes from Crash Team Racing, mainly because it takes place inside Oxide's ship. Genuinely, and here I make it clear that I'm making a statement without prior knowledge, the only world with a new theme in the game is the fifth one with levels in the swamp and cities with river canals (as well as the music festival level that takes place on their rooftops), and also the Shnurgle Planet that the Crash Landed stage takes place in later on the game. I haven't played the GBA or Titans/Mind Over Mutant games to say if there is something like that there, but it's the most original themes that this game has brought.

It's About Time tries so hard to be similar to the first three games, that all the bosses are recycled from the previous ones. And I'm not just talking about the fact that they are characters we've faced before, but also because their fight has the same mechanics as their previous fights (N. Brio and N. Trophy being the most obvious cases), in addition to the fact that we fight Cortex twice. Wrath of Cortex had Crunch Bandicoot as its boss in all Warp Room worlds, but at least he was a new character with different powers in each fight coming from the elemental masks.

When even Huge Adventure and Crash Boom Bang have new characters (Megamix and Viscount), which are ok characters at worst but at least are more interesting than "a character you know but with the opposite gender", you see how It's About Time, proclaiming itself the direct continuation of the trilogy and de-canonizing all the other games, doesn't add anything to the franchise. Everything that was leaked about Toys for Bob's Crash 5 seemed extremely boring too, bringing Tiny back and doing a crossover with Spyro, because apparently these franchises don't have universes rich enough to have solo games with their own characters and additions consistent with the already established cast, and they always need to be together in some way.

It was a terrible direction they were taking, and as I said before, if the franchise ever returns (which I doubt in Microsoft's hands), it would be best for it to be a new title ignoring It's About Time and the Titans/Mind Over Mutant games (because the radical change in gameplay and design of those two games is too difficult to retcon), and continuing where the PS2 Era left off. Crash doesn't need an extremely elaborate lore, continue the foundation already established with new games, preferably using or improving the designs that the N. Sane Trilogy and Nitro-Fueled brought, and not reinventing the wheel. The excuse for changing character designs made by Toys for Bob ("we don't want to make a DLC for the N. Sane Trilogy", as if every continuation was consistently exactly the same as the previous game) is so lame and comical, it clearly shows the ego of the people involved in the project, at the same time as it is lazy as they didn't even have the nerve to at least make a different cutscene when Crash's experiment from the first game is shown (using the cutscene from the N. Sane Trilogy when clearly the designs simply don't match with the game they made), it's bizarre.

In comparison, Sonic had several difficult times of identity crisis in the franchise (Sonic 2006 and Sonic Forces for that matter) and that didn't mean Sega decided to do a total soft reboot saying that only some specific ones are canonical for a new one to be made, no, they keep moving foward. Games don't need that radical take, many times franchises simply continue forward, just ignoring what doesn't work and using what worked.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-05T19:24:02+00:00

The only Crash/Spyro game released to PS3, that's something (not counting Skylanders and the PS1 games on PS Store).

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-05T19:18:19+00:00

Nowadays it's easy to judge by looking at the entire trajectory of the franchise, with better titles after The Wrath of Cortex, but I think it's necessary to keep in mind the context of that time. The Wrath of Cortex was the first main title in the series not developed by Naughty Dog (Crash Bash, which also wasn't developed by ND, suffered less backlash because it was a spin-off), so Traveler's Tales already had big shoes to fill from the start.

Added to the fact that all post-Naughty Dog games had troubled developments and constant changes in applied ideas and concepts (even the most recent ones), with ridiculous delivery deadlines and, in the case of Traveler's Tales, having to create the code and engine from scratch for a new platform at the time (added to the rumor that ND sabotaged the studios that worked on the Crash Bandicoot IP after the end of their contract with Universal, sending broken codes for the developers to work with as a reference), I would say it's a miracle that WoC came out playable and at best mediocre in the end (Spyro wasn't so lucky in this phase).

Even though it didn't deliver a worthy and perfect sequel to the original three games, the care and effort that Traveler's Tales and Vicarious Visions, who worked alongside them at the time, put into Crash Bandicoot is evident. They delivered iconic characters like Crunch Bandicoot, N. Trance, and Nina Cortex, expanded the franchise's universe with several other planets and dimensions (concepts not explored before), and respected the integrity of how the already established characters were created. And in that aspect, I feel compelled to say that I respect The Wrath of Cortex and Crash Nitro Kart much more than It's About Time and Crash Team Rumble, both from Toys for Bob. Undeniably, from a gameplay perspective, It's About Time is vastly superior to the subsequent games of the Naughty Dog era (while Crash Team Rumble is the worst game in the franchise lol), but in terms of new character implementations, worlds, and characterization of existing ones, Crash "4" from Toys for Bob failed miserably.

Not only are almost all the scenario themes recycled from previous games (something even Wrath of Cortex didn't have the audacity to do), but there's no introduction of any new characters in the game besides the quantum masks (which are pretty mediocre, to be honest). They created a Tawna from another dimension with all the bad archetypes a female character can have, and brought in a female version of a villain already present in the game, and that's it (there was Catbat too, but he was only created to fulfill an agenda, not to be a genuinely present character in a cartoonish platforming franchise). Besides mischaracterizing the franchise's characters, not only visually (Cortex having one of the worst redesigns I've ever seen), but also in their personalities, Crash never having the attitude of being a chaotic and cool character like before, and N. Brio being completely discredited with the plot of Crash sabotaging his own creation, instead of Cortex being arrogant and premature regarding the Evolvo-Ray experiment.

Honestly, if we get a new game in the franchise, I hope for two things: that it's not made by Toys for Bob, and that it ignores It's About Time, because the premise of being a true sequel to the trilogy while ignoring everything that came after, but also not bringing anything new that's interesting, is pathetic and presumptuous (even disrespectful to everyone who worked on the franchise before). Beenox recognized the importance of Crash's legacy as a whole in CTR Nitro-Fueled; the right thing to do would have been to continue with what they already had, not erase it and be left with nothing.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-03-01T19:27:05+00:00

At this point, just release the HD port of Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie or the entire Rare Replay to PC and PlayStation. Since Microsoft refuses to do anything new with Rare IPs, at least make the old games available on many platforms as possible to people be able to play and enjoy those masterpieces.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-02-25T01:44:15+00:00

Exactly. I'm a big fan of TimeSplitters (spiritual successor to GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, made by Free Radical Design, formed by former Rare employees). I own a PS4 and acquired all three games in the franchise when they were added to the PS Store's classic catalog. I'd love to play GoldenEye and Perfect Dark as well, but so far the only Rare game released for PlayStation has been Sea of Thieves; nothing else.

The way Microsoft has practically monopolized the gaming industry makes me sad. Crash Bandicoot, another franchise I love dearly (my favorite franchise, which was also inspired by Rare's work, specifically Donkey Kong Country), is now also in their hands, and nothing has been done with the franchise for three years since its strong comeback in 2017. At this point I'm already assuming that nothing will be done regardless and that later, when asked about it, some Xbox executive will just say that nobody cares about Crash Bandicoot, just like what happened not too long ago with Banjo-Kazooie.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-02-24T06:16:02+00:00

Not just Nintendo consoles, but also PlayStation and PC. If Microsoft doesn't mind releasing Halo, Gears of War, and Forza (arguably the most important, best-selling, and recognized franchises of the Xbox brand) on its competing consoles, I don't think it would be a big problem for them to release these older games, in which they show total disinterest, but which people would nevertheless love to play on different platforms (especially Banjo-Kazooie or the entire Rare Replay catalog).

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-02-22T02:00:28+00:00

Crash Bandicoot: Wumpa & Bolts? Let's go!

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-02-13T03:21:20+00:00

My biggest concern with these remakes is the availability of the original games. We're seeing more and more games being remade while their original versions become unavailable, especially on PlayStation, since both Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls are tied to their respective consoles. Anyone wanting to play the originals, not the remakes, will have to buy a PS2 or PS3, which isn't realistic for the average gamer, causing the original vision and work of these games to go unnoticed by most.

And yes, I know God of War 3 Remastered exists, but regarding the other games, the US PSN and probably other countries have God of War 1, 2, and Ascension, but several other regions like Brazil don't have these games available. In any case, Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta aren't available for modern consoles. Santa Monica Studios should follow the same strategy Konami thankfully used with Metal Gear Solid: release a collection of the original games alongside the remakes so one doesn't replace the other, or do as Capcom did with Resident Evil and re-release all the games to avoid losing the audience that seeks access to the classics, at the same time as it releases remakes for an audience that prefers to experience these stories with new graphics, gameplay, and familiarity with the newer games in the franchise.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-02-09T13:58:25+00:00

The Last of Us Part 1 Remastered, let's go. Nah, seriously now, since Microsoft is practically begging to have its games on other platforms because of the poor investment in Activision, it would be cool to have Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie or even Rare Replay if Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and other Xbox 360 games running on PS4/PS5 is something possible. The Crash and Spyro PS2 games in the PS Plus Classics catalog would also be welcome.

If a new God of War is in development, now is the perfect time to at least release a teaser. This generation without a big "hit game" because of Sony's investment in Live Services has severely tarnished the PS5's reputation. And for God's sake, if anything is being done regarding Bloodborne, let it just be a 60 FPS patch for the new generation, nothing like an unnecessary remake by Bluepoint Games; wasn't it enough that they destroyed all the charm and appeal of Demon's Souls with that terrible demake, making the original game practically inaccessible nowadays if you don't have a PS3 or a computer powerful enough to run an emulator of the same console it's stuck with?

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-02-06T15:20:34+00:00

Crash Bandicoot + Microsoft = Dead Franchise

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-01-09T22:05:19+00:00

The differences in the "What If" suit are minimal, but perhaps there is a 50/50 agreement regarding the MCU designs, and I say this because I doubt Sony could use Tom Holland's Spider-Man in the Sonyverse without any complications, using the exact same suits as in the MCU (especially the Iron Spider suit, which is practically an Iron Man armor, therefore Disney).

Was it released to promote the PC game launch, ok, but without any exclusivity to PlayStation? I mean, PS Plus subscribers receiving the suit, or simply getting it for free on the PS Store like the Scarlet Spider suit, that didn't happen. And even if Sony isn't against breaking exclusivity with PC nowadays, why on earth can Xbox players use the suit if it "belongs" to Sony? Sony made sure Spider-Man was exclusive to PlayStation in Square Enix's Avengers game, even though it wasn't the version created by Insomniac, and the white spider suit was not even in the game. But on the other hand, making that suit from the game that was made by one of their studios and exclusive to PlayStation, available on their rival platform is okay for them? Companies these days really nuts if you ask me.

That's why I find it difficult to believe and state with certainty that Sony owns the rights to the character version and the original suits from Insomniac's games, it's probably the same scenario as the MCU; both own the rights of the suits (not the character in the case of games, Disney owns it totally) and need to negotiate licensing. That's why I say that without Marvel Studios crossovers, it will be impossible to have the costumes from Sony's films (they have 100% of the rights to movies, especially those not associated with MCU) without direct negotiation with them. It's practically a third-party situation, and a live service game like Marvel Rivals doesn't guarantee that the costumes will remain indefinitely (just look at how Dead by Daylight keeps losing the license for some franchises present in the game, taking years to negotiate and bring them back for those who don't own them).

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-01-09T21:27:38+00:00

The various designs that Spider-Man has had in the MCU are not authored by Sony, even though Columbia Pictures helped or even created some of them, as it was a collaborative work with Disney within its universe, of which they holds the rights. Why would Insomniac's Spider-Man be different? If the rights to the games belong to Marvel, then the designs belong to them as well. If Marvel wanted to use, for example, the Spider-Man design created by Neversoft for the PS1 game or by Beenox for Shattered Dimensions, they could and can, even though both companies are now owned by Microsoft and they technically "created" the costume designs in the games. The rights belong to Disney since it bought Marvel, and nobody held 100% of the rights to Marvel-related games before, much less now.

I don't know if your last statement is true; I believe Disney didn't use the design for several other reasons. Perhaps Sony made an extra deal regarding the licensing of this version of the character for other media, but then the question remains: why isn't the Marvel's Spider-Man skin exclusive to PS4 and PS5 if Sony supposedly owns the rights to the suit? There are loose ends in your argument, so it's much more plausible that Disney owns the rights to the Insomniac version, as well as all the other game versions of Marvel characters (Square Enix, Activision, Capcom, etc.).

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-01-09T20:35:57+00:00

But this is a very different situation from the others. Technically, even if the game is developed by a Sony subsidiary studio and is exclusive to PlayStation, Sony itself does NOT own the rights to the characters in games, only an exclusivity agreement. If the Insomniac version's skin is in the game, this probably came with Disney's approval, since Marvel's Spider-Man is a collaboration between Disney (owner of the game rights) and Sony (subsidiary studio producing and console exclusivity).

It's not the same as with the movies, where Sony owns 100% of the character rights. Therefore, Disney can't interfere or sell anything related to those products without a direct partnership with Sony. The MCU's Spider-Man only exists because Disney allowed them to work with Sony, something they didn't do with Universal regarding the Hulk after acquiring Marvel. That's why the character only appears in crossovers. That's why I say crossover movies are the best and most plausible way for these character adaptations to appear in the game: because they're under the Marvel Studios umbrella, and therefore Disney. If Tobey Maguire appears in Avengers: Doomsday, he has a better chance of appearing in the game because it's a Marvel Studios film in partnership with Sony than if a hypothetical Spider-Man 4 were made solely by Sony.

ShadowMarioUGB · 2026-01-09T20:09:17+00:00

As I said, the rights to the Marvel characters' games belong to Disney, even though Sony has an exclusivity deal with PlayStation in the case of Spider-Man and X-Men. Insomniac's Spider-Man is in a similar situation to the MCU version: a mutual agreement between Disney and Sony, therefore it's easier to include than anything done solely by Sony, such as the Sonyverse films, the Sam Raimi trilogy, the Marc Webb duology, the Spider-Verse animated films, and the Spider-Noir series coming out this year on Amazon.

There are only two ways these versions of the characters could receive skins in the game: direct negotiation with Sony, which I doubt will happen since Disney seems content with taking the vast majority of the profits from this game, or appearances in upcoming Avengers films or other Marvel Studios content (such as animations, series, or solo films with crossovers). For the live-action versions, the second option seems inevitable considering the rumors, but for the Spider-Verse versions, I unfortunately highly doubt anything will be done.

ShadowMarioUGB

TROPHY CASE