Though there were only a handful of Super Mario games showcased during Awesome Games Done Quick 2025, his brother Luigi was everywhere — and it’s pretty clear why.
In the gaming community, Mario’s taller, greener brother is beloved in his own right, celebrated for his goofiness or memed because his genial nature apparently conceals something a bit darker. However, in light of the actions of Luigi Mangione, the man charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the gaming community’s love for Luigi has taken on a different significance. That significance was on full display during AGDQ 2025 where his name popped up early and often.
During the charity speedrunning marathon, there were frequent opportunities for viewers to have their donations fund bidding wars for things like the player completing a specific task during the run or for naming rights to a character. For example, during the Pokémon: Let’s Go Eevee run, viewers could donate for the privilege of naming the trainer, and they picked Luigi. Throughout the marathon viewers submitted Luigi for almost every naming-based bid war, and it won quite often.
Luigi was the character name in Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim. He was the name for the warrior in Guantlet IV and it was the file name in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. And of the four named characters in Final Fantasy Legend 2, “Lugi” was three of them (as the game only supports four-letter names). Overall, all of the bids for Luigi — not just those that ultimately won — earned over $18,000.
Games Done Quick has a reputation for its inclusiveness and social consciousness — once cancelling a live event in Florida in 2023 over the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and lax COVID-19 policies. So while it’s impossible to know for sure whether or not the preponderance of Luigi was due to typical gamer memeing or if it represented some kind of tacit statement of support for Luigi Mangione’s actions, it’s probably easy to say it was a little bit of both.
Break out your batons and call the King of Red Lions because The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker music has been added to the Nintendo Music app. The game’s arrival adds 133 new tracks to the app along with three Wind Waker themed playlists: Makar, Tetra, and Medli. Wind Waker joins a growing list of Zelda soundtracks in the app, including Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild, and Ocarina of Time.
While its great that Wind Waker music is available for your study or work sessions, the announcement couldn’t not have come at a busier time. With all eyes watching for the imminent reveal of the company’s next console, getting a push notification — any push notification — from the Big Red Company is likely to cause a bit of a commotion. In fact, it seems like Nintendo’s doing a bit of plate clearing ahead of its Switch 2 reveal, announcing Alarmo retail sales and the Lego Game Boy set.
Stand down, this isn’t The Announcement just yet, but it is coming. At least for now we can all chill out to “Makar’s Prayer” while we wait.
Awesome Games Done Quick 2025 has concluded, raising just over $2.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Every Games Done Quick event is worth tuning in to either live or later via VODs, but this AGDQ was uniquely fantastic, filled with runs that’ll go down as some of the best GDQ has to offer. Here are some of our favorites:
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
The great thing about the speedrunning community is that it’s often not enough to be the fastest runner of a particular game. That’s boring. For Wes, simply running New Super Mario Bros. Wii wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He had to get creative with it, deciding to master playing the game as fast as possible while playing the piano. But how can someone play a video game if both their hands are occupied, you ask? The answer is obvious: by controlling the game with your head and feet. I don’t know what inspires a human to do this kind of thing, and I don’t care. All that matters is that Wes put the depth of human ability (and multitasking) on display, and it was brain-breaking to watch.
Elden Ring bonus showcase
Speaking of incredible human talent, how about playing Elden Ring — a game known for its punishing difficulty — with a saxophone. I was looking forward to this run all week, and Dr. Doot did not disappoint, but not for the reason I expected. It’s one thing to beat the likes of Malenia, Blade of Miquella with a specially programmed aerophone. But nothing could have prepared me for every input, from landing an attack to using consumables, sounding a hilarious “doot” noise. I cried laughing it was so funny.
Super Metroid
Super Metroid is a GDQ staple, often anchoring the event’s last day in a week’s worth of programming. But lately, GDQ has gotten away from featuring a mere run of the game to instead showcase all the work the Super Metroid modding community has put into keeping this game from 1994 fresh and interesting. This four-way race of Super Metroid included a map randomizer, meaning the game’s normal layout had been shuffled around and put together in an all-new configuration.
Map randomizers for a Metroid game are uniquely dangerous because all of the abilities you need to progress are no longer laid out in a logical fashion. Samus might run into the fiery pits of Lower Norfair long before finding the heat-shielding Varia suit. And with the map randomized, it’s now way harder (and takes way longer) to find where the suit is. Now add an element of competition, and you’ve got one of the finest races in AGDQ history.
Crazy Taxi with live backing band
It used to be that if you wanted to avoid DMCA strikes for playing a game on Twitch with licensed music, you just turned the music off. But AGDQ has come up with a novel way to get around this old problem. For this run of Crazy Taxi, every song was played by a cover band that transformed AGDQ from a speedrunning video game event into an impromptu punk rock show — mini-mosh pit and all — and it ruled. I’m not gonna share any details. Just go watch it for yourself.
GDQ is a uniquely special event for more reasons than featuring cool, creative, or crazy-ass runs. In a world where cowardly corporations have decided it’s okay to call women and LGBTQ+ people slurs, and one where gamers have a unique reputation for being awful to each other for differences beyond our control, Games Done Quick has been very vocal in its support of marginalized people. Whether it be its diverse programming with Frame Fatales or Black in a Flash or the mere fact that every other donation featured a message of “Trans Rights,” which was enthusiastically read aloud and enthusiastically cheered by the live crowd.
Games Done Quick has been a shining example of how intentionally curated communities can foster acceptance and be a source of joy and goodness in a climate that needs it, and AGDQ 2025 was one of the best.
Leaks and rumors supported by multiple third-party manufactures make up the bulk of info out there about the new Switch.
Nintendo’s announcement of the Switch successor is imminent. Just how imminent is anyone’s guess, with the company stating that it would reveal info on the console before the end of its fiscal year in March. With just over two months to go until the promised deadline, speculation about the console, its specs, physical profile, and more have reached a fever pitch. So before the official reveal, here’s everything we think we know about Nintendo’s next console.
The only concrete, Nintendo-confirmed piece of information we know about the new console is that it’ll be backward compatible with the Switch. Everything else has come by way of leaks and info supplied by third-party manufacturers. Late last year, one such manufacturer, Dbrand, debuted its Killswitch carrying case meant for the Switch 2. According to Dbrand CEO Adam Ijaz, the Killswitch is based on the “actual dimensions” of the new console obtained from a “3D scan of the real hardware.” But in an interview with The Verge, he declined to say exactly how or where Dbrand obtained such information.
Image: Dbrand
Dbrand’s render of its Killswitch 2 case.
If the Killswitch’s design is indeed derived from the real thing, the new console will be larger than the Switch OLED with an 8-inch screen, and feature a kickstand that will span the length of the console similar to the OLED model. That the new Switch will be larger than previous iterations is supported by leaks and info from other accessory manufacturers as well as the idea that the Joy-Con controllers will attach via magnet instead of sliding and snapping into place. The new controller design will also incorporate magnets in the joysticks to combat against the dreaded “Joy-Con drift” that plagues the Switch even now.
CES 2025 provided even more fodder for the rumor mill, with accessory manufacturer Genki showing off a 3D printed mock-up of the console on the show floor. In an interview with The Verge, Genki CEO Eddie Tsai went into detail about what he knows about the new Switch reaffirming rumors regarding its larger size, magnetic Joy-Con, and more.
While there’s a lot of speculation and potential evidence about what the new console will look like, there’s less circulating about what it can actually do. Beyond an alleged photo of the console’s motherboard, there hasn’t been much out there about the console’s hardware specifications. Because Nintendo has never made consoles at the bleeding edge (or, honestly, even the cutting edge) of graphics or processing power, it’s hard to guess how well the console will perform or what additional features, like a microphone, it’ll have.
Though the console’s internals remain a mystery, we do know that it’ll be backward compatible with Switch games. We can also reasonably guess at least one game that’ll be a launch title: Metroid Prime 4. Announced in 2017, and undergoing a change of studio and a development reboot two years later, Nintendo debuted gameplay footage for the first time last year and shared a soft launch window of 2025. When Twilight Princess launched in 2006, it debuted on both the GameCube and served as a launch title for the Wii. Breath of the Wild was also cross-gen, debuting on the Wii U while launching with the Switch in 2017.
Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
At CES 2025, The Verge saw a 3D printed mockup of the Nintendo Switch 2, here it is next to the Steam Deck.
Knowing that the new Switch and Metroid Prime 4 both launch in 2025 and with Twilight Princess and BotW as examples, it’s speculated that the reason for Metroid 4’s long stint in development hell was, at least in part, because the game was being tooled for both the Switch and its successor. Also, you just can’t have a new Nintendo console without a Mario game. Super Mario Odyssey came out the same year the Switch debuted, and though there’s been other new releases like Super Mario Wonder, there hasn’t been a new, standalone (put down your pitchforks Bowser’s Fury fans) 3D Mario game since then. It’s all but assured one will be announced with the new Switch. The recently announced Pokémon Legends: Z-A is also a good launch title candidate as Nintendo curiously worded the game’s debut trailer with “releasing simultaneously worldwide on Nintendo Switch in 2025.”
For all the rumors and reasonable guesses supported by increasingly convincing evidence, it’s helpful to remember that at the end of the day, we’re still talking about Nintendo. The company has always tread a separate and unpredictable path from the other two major console manufacturers and that oddball strategy has mostly worked very well. Though the company is not immune to the same layoffs and delays (the Switch 2 was originally pegged for a 2024 release) plaguing its peers and indeed has its own manifoldissues with how it treats and pays its employees and contractors, it seems to be the major publisher that is best navigating the current crisis ravaging the industry.
It is folly trying to predict what Nintendo will do, and that applies to its new console. All we can count on is that it’s coming soon, and when it arrives, it’ll be big.
Corrections, January 12th: This story initially misstated the timing of Super Mario Odyssey’s launch and how close the Switch 2 deadline is. Odyssey debuted the same year as the Switch; it was not a launch title. The Switch 2 deadline is just over two months away, not under.
Awesome Games Done Quick, the annual charity speedrunning marathon is in full swing, already amassing over $500,000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. With three more days to go, there’s a great many runs of popular games coming up. But relying on the schedule or your own preferences to determine when to tune in is a surefire way to miss the best AGDQ has to offer.
Take today, for example. I’ve never played Batman Forever: The Arcade Game, but after watching the speedrun, I might have to. It’s a Batman-flavored beat-’em-up that bears precious little resemblance to the movie it’s based on. The runner, LRock617, chose to play as Robin and within moments of starting the game, I was hooked. The graphics were reminiscent of the early Mortal Kombat games, appropriate since it was published by Acclaim Entertainment. But there was a surreality to them that — when combined with Robin’s overpowered abilities (like one that has him essentially go Super Saiyan), the runner’s charisma in explaining what’s happening, and the audience getting in on the fun with funny donation messages — gave the run an absurd goofiness that was a sorely needed shot in the arm at 9AM on a Wednesday morning....
Annapurna Interactive is known for its quality of indie titles including the cat adventure game Stray. | Image: Annapurna Interactive
The games published under Private Division, Take-Two Interactive’s former indie label, are under new management. Bloomberg reports that the former employees of Annapurna Interactive have formed a new, as-yet-unnamed company that will take over Private Division’s games portfolio.
Last year, Take-Two sold off the indie label to a then unnamed buyer that Bloomberg reports is Haveli Investments, a private equity firm based in Texas. Also last year, the staff at Annapurna Interactive, the games arm of the Annapurna Pictures media company, resigned en masse sparking questions about the fate of its own portfolio of games. The resignations came after negotiations to spin off Annapurna Interactive into its own independent company apparently broke down. Annapurna’s former employees have come together with Haveli Investments to form a new company and Bloomberg reports that Private Division’s existing employees will face layoffs but the details are currently unclear.
You can finally make your PS5 gaming set up all black everything. Sony has announced that it will soon release the rest of the PS5 suite of accessories in the midnight black colorway.
Sony’s offering the Dual Sense Edge Controller, the Pulse wireless headphones and earbuds, and the PlayStation Portal in sleek and sexy midnight black to match the PS5 cover and Dual Sense controller it released back in 2021.
With theMarvel Rivals train firmly on its way, it’s time to start the game’s first official season. In a short trailer, Marvel Rivals developer Net Ease has announced that season 1 begins later this week on January 10th.
According to the trailer, season 1 features the arrival of Dracula who plunges New York City into eternal night by *checks notes* teaming up with Dr. Doom to tamper with the moon’s orbit. (Hey, it’s a comic book game, weird nonsensical stuff is supposed to happen.) Apparently Dracula has imprisoned Dr. Strange in a pocket dimension and has also unleashed a horde of vampires because messing with the moon just wasn’t enough.
To fight against this nefarious plot, Rivals will add four new characters to the game’s roster — The Invisible Woman, The Human Torch, Mr. Fantastic, and The Thing — the hero collective known as The Fantastic Four. Throughout the week leading up to season’s launch, players will be get a first look at the new heroes and their abilities starting January 7th. The addition also has a bit of synergy with the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe as The Fantastic Four movie starring Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby releases in July of this year.
✨ Season 1 Kickoff Awaits!
Join Emiru, xQc, and their creator friends for a thrilling sneak peek of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman! Tune in live on January 7th at 2 PM PST. Don't miss the action!
Marvel Rivals appears to be scratching the hero shooter itch reminiscent of the early days of the original Overwatch. Developer Net Ease announced that the game has surpassed 20 million players shortly after the free-to-play game’s launch in early December.
After years of of chasing live-service and open-world blockbusters, games like Astro Bot and Balatro showed that old formats could be a solution to modern industry problems.
Metaphor: ReFantanzio is one of 2024’s best games racking up a stack of Game Awards including best RPG, best art direction, and best narrative. But one category in which Metaphor particularly stood out was its music. The soundtrack, produced by Shoji Meguro – the long-time music director of the Persona series, is one of the outstanding achievements in video game music this year, particularly its battle theme which became a viral hit. In an interview with The Verge, Meguro talked about his work on the Metaphor soundtrack including what went into what is perhaps the coolest piece of video game battle music ever made.
Meguro, known for his work producing the pop-y, jazzy vibes of the Persona soundtracks, acknowledged that Metaphor’s heavy orchestral / choral sound is not something Persona fans would expect from him and definitely outside his own wheelhouse. He said in order to effectively change gears from Persona to Metaphor, he had to relearn classical music theory.
“But that’s what makes creating this score so exciting,” he said. “When I was first told about Metaphor: ReFantazio, I was told it would be an epic, high-fantasy RPG. And immediately I heard the sound of great...
Variety is reporting that Paramount Pictures is planning to extend the Sonic The Hedgehog trilogy by yet another movie. Sonic The Hedgehog 4 has been greenlit with a target release window of spring 2027.
The news comes mere hours before Sonic The Hedgehog 3 releases in theaters on Friday December 19th. The movie once again stars Ben Schwartz as Sonic, Colleen O’Shaughnessey and Idris Elba as his friends Tails and Knuckles, with Jim Carey returning as their nemesis Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Sonic 3 will also feature the arrival of Keanu Reeves playing Sonic’s on-again off-again enemy-turned-friend Shadow The Hedgehog.
With Sonic 3 anticipating tidy profits as North America prepares for the Christmas / New Year’s moviegoing season, developing a fourth movie makes sense. There are several rogue characters from the Sonic universe aiming for their silver screen debut. (See what I did there?) Neither Variety nor Paramount Pictures have confirmed any plot details or who might get their Sonic movie debut. We’ll probably get a hint though, in the post-credits for Sonic 3.
Sony has announced that it has increased its holdings in Japanese media giant and FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa Corporation. Sony acquired the shares for 50 billion yen or roughly $300 million, bringing its total ownership to 10 percent and making it the Kadokawa’s largest shareholder.
The news comes after earlier rumors that Sony was considering acquiring the company outright. Kadokawa confirmed that Sony had expressed interest in acquiring shares, but that, at the time, no decision had been made. An acquisition would have brought Kadokawa’s considerable holdings in Japanese movie, television, publishing, and video game production — which includes the Elden Ring developer and Danganronpa studio Spike Chunsoft — under Sony’s control.
Getting its hands on more IP seems to be the name of Sony’s game with this announcement. According to the press release, Sony and Kadokawa will, “discuss specific initiatives for collaboration” regarding adaptation, development, and production of Kadokawa IP. Or to put it more simply, there’s now a not-small chance that an Elden Ring live-action movie might be on the way.
The ever-dwindling field of games media has a new player: Walmart. Restart is new website run by Moonrock — a marketing company specializing in bringing brands to video games — and sponsored by the largest retailer in the United States.
A new games site sponsored by Walmart doesn’t seem inherently bad, especially as the games media landscape continues to shrink. Publications are shutting down, ad revenues are drying up, and existing sites now operate with fewer and fewer employees. Earlier this year, Ziff Davis, IGN’s parent company, acquired a handful of media sites including Eurogamer;Rock, Paper, Shotgun; and VG247. In the time since, there have been staff departures and layoffs including buyouts offered to employees earlier this month. According to a report in Aftermath, this latest round of buyouts has apparently left GamesIndustry.biz, a site that’s been around for over 20 years, with only one full-time employee.
Restart’s business model isn’t wholly unique. Before it was unceremoniously shut down earlier this year, Game Informer magazine was owned and operated by GameStop, and for decades Nintendo ran its own magazine. Other websites like IGN, Polygon, and The Verge also run sponsored content and include affiliate links in articles. To survive in the current digital media landscape, the support of deep-pocketed individuals or corporations is all but required. In this regard, Restart is just like any other publication.
According to its editorial mission, “Restart is sponsored by Walmart, but we operate as an independent site.” The mission statement explains that while its articles will feature affiliate links to Walmart products, the site itself will receive no portion of the sale. “We hope you can see this gives us zero incentive to provide biased review scores or other information about a game.”
But Restart is also entering a media landscape where the wall between corporate interests and editorial independence has become perilously thin, and with a few rare exceptions, games media has slowly shifted away from providing readers thoughtful discussion and critique to providing a product that can be monetized to hell and back. That driving ethos is clearly outlined in a post by Moonrock on its Substack. “Restart.run serves as a dynamic hub where gaming content meets retail opportunities, allowing gamers to transition effortlessly from discovering new games to purchasing them on Walmart’s platform.”
The Game Awards’ final world premiere was Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. Developed by Naughty Dog, Intergalactic is a futuristic space opera with the kind of futurepunk vibes that remind me of Cowboy Bebop. That comparison is apt as Intergalactic game director and Naughty Dog studio head Neil Druckmann mentioned on the game’s website that it stars a space bounty hunter. Indeed, the trailer even featured an anime playing in the background reminiscent of Dirty Pair.
Set thousands of years in the future, Intergalactic puts players into the role of Jordan A. Mun, a dangerous bounty hunter who ends up stranded on Sempiria — a distant planet whose communication with the outside universe went dark hundreds of years ago. Jordan will have to use all her skills and wits if she hopes to be the first person in over 600 years to leave its orbit.
Tati Gabrielle, who played Prudence Night in the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, stars as Jordan. Ironically, Gabrielle was part of the cast of another Naughty Dog project playing Jo Braddock in the Uncharted movie. It also will feature comedian and actor Kumail Nanjiani who makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance as the bounty Jordan’s after. Druckmann ended Intergalactic’s announcement with the news that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have taken a break from winning all the awards for their movie soundtracks to work on the music for the game.
There’s no release date yet, but the game is in development for the PS5.
Josef Fares is back and so is his penchant for cursing. The director of Hazelight Studios has returned to The Game Awards to debut his next game: Split Fiction.
Split Fiction is a game that feels very much in Hazelight’s wheelhouse. Like It Takes Two and A Way Out before it, Split Fiction is a two-person split-screen co-op game. In it, two game developers have been trapped in a world they created and must play together to escape.
It’s been a quiet but massively successful handful of years for Hazelight Studios. In 2021, it took home Game of the Year for It Takes Two in which two players must work together to overcome the myriad dangers of their home (and their failing marriage) Honey, I Shrunk The Kids-style.
Earlier this year, the studio announced that It Takes Two sold 20 million copies. Polygon did a deep dive into the game’s sales numbers, determining that it sold at an astonishingly consistent and enviable clip of half a million copies per month since its release in March 2021. A truly remarkable feat given the game had very little marketing outside its initial release window and at a time when most consumers’ multiplayer tastes were wrapped up in “forever games” like Call of Duty: Warzone and Fortnite. With bona fides like that, it’s safe to say folks will be looking at Split Fiction, launching March 6th on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, with great interest.
FromSoftware, the studio that just this month said it was “not really considering developments such as an Elden Ring 2,” has revealed a game that looks a lot like it could be Elden Ring 2.
Elden Ring Nightreign is the next entry in the Elden Ring series. The trailer, debuting during this year’s The Game Awards, didn’t share much narrative details, but from the game’s official announcement, it doesn’t seem like game director Hidetaka Miyzaki told a fib. Nightreign goes in a completely different gameplay direction from the base game and the Shadows of the Erdtree DLC. Described as an action survival game, Nightreign is a standalone co-op multiplayer game lets up to three players work together to survive a single day in a parallel universe to the Lands Between.
Players, called Nightfarers, will have up to eight different characters to choose from each with unique abilities and ultimate attacks. Each day, they have to fight through a battery of monsters to ultimately face off against a tough boss.
While we don’t yet know when this takes place in Lands Between chronology, the trailer did show off a ton of gameplay. It appears to be similar to Elden Ring but with a greater emphasis on aggressive, flippy-dippy martial arts moves rather than the slower, more thoughtful combat in Elden Ring and Erdtree. The announcement also mentioned a constantly changing map that shrinks with each day along with abilities and gear players can use to customize their characters upon death. Taken all together, it sounds like FromSoftware put a little Hades chocolate in the Elden Ring peanut butter with a dash of Fortnite co-op and Overwatch hero classes for flavor.
FromSoftware has, so far, only confirmed Xbox, PlayStation, and PC platforms and, surprisingly, a release date. Elden Ring Nightreign will launch sometime next year.
