Happy Holidays everyone! I hope you had a good gift-giving season and will have fun on New Years. Heres some news from the last few days.

  • Ubisoft starts up an AI research facility
  • Super Mario Land 2 DX releases
  • The Golf game hidden in the Switch is removed
  • ARMS updates for the last time

La Forge, Ubisoft’s AI Facility
Ubisoft is looking to merge together the gap between gaming AI research, and scientific AI research with their new facility, La Forge. The gimmick here is that Ubisoft staff and academics will work together to help make advancements in AI. some of which will be used on their games, some of which that will be released academically. This is supposed to be mutually beneficial, though it’s too soon to know how well it works.

Super Mario Land 2 DX
Super Mario Land 2 was considered much better than the more popular predecessor, but it was still flawed. Fans have banded together to create a ROM hack of the game that has some notable changes. The biggest one being that it has been converted into full color. They also fixed the input lag and even added Luigi as a playable character. I always love seeing passion projects completed. You can see the ROM for yourself here.
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3784/

NES Gone
A while back, gamers discovered that by performing certain actions, a motion control version of the classic NES Golf could be played within the Nintendo Switch’s software. Many believed this to be a homage to the late Nintendo CEO, Satoru Iwata. In a recent firmware update, that easter egg has now been removed. The removal as equally unknown as its inclusion.
I actually have a copy of NES Golf, its one of my favorite NES games. After Iwata’s passing, I wrote his name and dates on the back as a tribute. Rest in Peace Iwata, you are missed.

ARMS update
The popular Switch fighting game, ARMS, had updated to version 5.0. This new version includes a new character, the Scientific CEO madwoman, Dr. Coyle (she’s my favorite for sure). Unfortunately alongside this update is the announcement that from here on out, ARMS would only receive balance patches and no more additional content. This is a shame for ARMS players, what few there are.

Thanks for reading again! no news yesterday because its Christmas, the same can be assumed for next Monday on New Years, depends on how free I am.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for more of the latest and greatest in gaming news. Until then, have a great night!