The Weekly Round-Up: The Simpsons return, a shady Scarface and AI Law & Order?
Our light-hearted recap of the week’s most interesting news
Chris Scullion
This is a blog post, where VGC writers post irreverent and (occasionally) entertaining coverage of video game culture.
It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for another of our weekly news round-ups.
For those new to our round-ups, we’ve been doing these recaps of the weekly news on Patreon for more than a year, and have decided to bring them to the main site. These are our way of winding up the past week by recapping its more interesting stories, often signed off with a bad punchline.
VGC Patreon subscribers on all paid tiers will continue to get this in newsletter form on Friday afternoons, so if you enjoy the below article and and would like to get more like them sent to your inbox earlier than the site gets them, you might want to consider supporting us on Patreon.
That said, let’s crack on with this week’s round-up.
The Intellivision (‘intelligent television’) console was released by Mattel in 1979 and was responsible for starting the first ever video game console war, going head-to-head against the Atari VCS (later renamed the Atari 2600).
Now, following Atari’s acquisition of the Intellivision brand in 2024, the first ever console war has been definitively ended with the announcement of the Intellivision Sprint, an updated Intellivision to be released by Atari.
The Intellivision was infamous for its unique controller, which featured a round dial and a 12-button keypad similar to that found on a landline telephone.
Understanding that she’s too young to know what an Intellivision looked like, I tried explaining this to my daughter, then realised she doesn’t know what a landline telephone looks like either.
In an interview for the website of music association JASRAC, Uematsu said he has never tried generative AI and doesn’t feel it would be rewarding to do so.
“I’ve never used it, and I probably never will,” Uematsu said. “I think there’s more satisfaction in something you’ve created yourself after some effort and struggle.”
“Also, when people listen to music, part of their enjoyment comes from discovering the background of the person who made it, right? AI doesn’t have that kind of background.”
“Maybe that’s because none of you pricks ever bothered to ask me about it,” replied ChatGPT, pointing to the high school trophies on its shelf.
The deal will bring official FIFA competitions to the game, including the FIFA World Cup, FIFA Women’s World Cup and FIFA Club World Cup.
This includes the addition of FIFA World Cup 26 in Football Manager 26, including the official kits of all 48 teams (once they’ve been confirmed) as well as official broadcast graphics and tournament branding.
When it’s released on November 4, Football Manager 26 won’t feature international football management and will be focused solely on club management.
However, Sports Interactive says a revamped ‘International Management module’ will be added to the game in a content update next year, ahead of FIFA World Cup 26 taking place.
VGC understands the reason Football Manager was delayed is because every time a bug is reported, it now has to be sent to VAR to decide whether it actually was a bug.
Zero in the chamber
Reports that a Resident Evil 0 remake is in the works have been given more weight following the discovery of a possible reference to the project in an actor’s resume.
Last year Dusk Golem, who has a history of reporting on the Resident Evil series, claimed that remakes of Resident Evil Zero and Resident Evil Code Veronica were in development, something VGC also understands to be the case.
Now further evidence appears to have been found in the online résumé of actor Jon McLaren, who played Star Lord in the video game version of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
In the ‘voice’ section of his résumé, McLaren refers to Project Chamber, which he says is an “upcoming AAA video game” in which he’ll be playing the lead role.
Resident Evil 0’s main protagonist is Rebecca Chambers, and McLaren bears a resemblance to its other playable character, convict Billy Coen, making it possible that McLaren is playing the character in the Resident Evil 0 remake.
“Yesssss, keep thinking that”, thought the creative director for the as-yet unannounced remake of Activision’s PS1 game Blast Chamber.
That’s according to leaks from numerous Fortnite insiders, who have datamined the game’s latest update and found more information on the apparent upcoming tie-in.
Leakers suggest that not only will the game be getting Simpsons character skins, it’ll also be getting an entire mini season dedicated to The Simpsons.
According to Fortnite leaker NotPalo, the game will receive an entire Springfield map, with separate sections including the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.
In fact, VGC understands The Simpsons will actually be getting multiple Fortnite seasons, not just one, but that it’ll start getting rubbish around Season 10.
In October 2022, Konami broadcast a ‘Silent Hill Transmission’ live stream, where it announced three new games – a remake of Silent Hill 2, a Japan-themed entry called Silent Hill F, and a narrative title called Silent Hill Townfall from Scottish studio NoCode (now known as Screen Burn).
Since that Silent Hill Transmission, both the Silent Hill 2 remake and Silent Hill F have been released to critical acclaim and a positive response from fans of the series.
In a new post on X, Okamoto explained that the decision to announce all three games during the same broadcast was a deliberate attempt to assure those fans that Silent Hill had a future, and wasn’t just going to be a one-off release to appease them.
The fact that Okamoto says Konami announced three games instead of four – the same event also saw the announcement of awful streaming interactive series Silent Hill Ascension – is proper “I have no son” stuff.
Earlier this week a re-release of the official Scarface game – which was originally released on PS2, Xbox and PC in 2006, followed by a Wii release in 2007 – appeared on the Epic Games Store without prior notice, priced at $29.99 / £23.79.
This was followed by a statement by Silent, a developer who said their SilentPatch mod for the old PC version of Scarface had been added to this new release without their knowledge. They also suggested, presumably from their previous work on the game, that they’d be surprised if the Scarface movie rights holder was aware of the release.
“I KNOW that the holder of the Scarface license wasn’t willing to re-release the game, so this is suspect,” they wrote. They then followed up with another post saying they had done some more digging, claiming that the “movie IP rights holder appears to be unaware of this”, and that the “store listings were put up early in error”.
The game’s ‘publisher’ then posted an update saying it had “entered urgent discussions with multiple parties concerning the project’s status” and was hiding the store page.
VGC asked Scarface protagonist Tony Montana for comment. “All I have in this world is my balls and my word – and a watertight contract with NBCUniversal – and I don’t break ‘em for no one,” he told us.
A Dick move
‘Generative entertainment company’ Wolf Games has signed a partnership with NBCUniversal, which will see the release of generative AI games based on its film and television IP.
Wolf Games was founded by Elliott Wolf, the son of TV producer Dick Wolf, best known for the Law & Order series. Dick Wolf has backed the company, alongside other entertainment executives including Jimmy Iovine (co-founder of Interscope Records and Beats Electronics) and Paul Wachter (businessman and investment adviser).
The company claims it’s not focusing on reinventing traditional television and film, but is instead “engineered to be a true creative partner, enhancing the creation process for narrative games with a deep understanding of story logic, character integrity, and world-building”.
NBCUniversal is the home of numerous popular television series, including Law & Order, The Office, Saturday Night Live, Sex and the City, Chicago PD and Night Court.
VGC understands that despite his investment in his son’s company, Dick Wolf is actually unable to play the AI-generated games it creates because every time he says his name to an NPC the game thinks it’s an instruction, leading to very awkward forest encounters.
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