Now that half the internet is riled up [again], let's take a look at the awesome new Netflix original Stranger Things season 2 trailer, hot off the presses from the San Diego Comic-Con.

Remember the Halo live action TV show Microsoft announced way back in 2013? Unlike Spartans that never die, it sure felt like the project's been dead for quite a while. The tech titan told AR12Gaming in an interview, though, that it has never stopped developing the series and that it's still working with Steven Spielberg and Showtime like it said years ago. 343 Industries, the Microsoft Studios subsidiary in charge of the franchise, said it's merely taking its time to ensure that the final product can meet fans' expectations.

Via: Windows Central

Source: AR12Gaming

Our current 90s nostalgia boom has resulted in some good things, and lots of bad things. But I am thankful that it's allowed some stories to finally get a real ending. Hey Arnold! was one of the many Nickelodeon shows cut down in their prime as the nature of animation shifted from 2D to 3D (and not necessarily helped by poorly advertised theatrical releases competing with big CG animated features). 

Because it was cut short, there were a ton of questions left unanswered. Where were Arnold's parents? Who are his parents? Creator Craig Bartlett returns to answer those questions with Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie. Picking up where the series ended, The Jungle Movie is basically what Bartlett's been trying to make since 2004 and the care absolutely shines through. 

Just take a look at this clip featuring a ton of returning faces (with many of the original cast reprising their roles, with new kid actors voicing the kids a la Peanuts) and try not to lose yourself down memory lane. If you had any kind of attachment to the original cartoon, this is probably going to do a number on you. 

Hearing how close these new kids are to the original Arnold and Gerald, and seeing famous Hey Arnold! story beats in different angles (like Arnold's "crazy dance" to get out of fighting Harold) has gotten me right in the heart. 

Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie airs on Nickelodeon this November. 

It's been pretty fun watching Arika find their footing with their "Mysterious Fighting Game." They're adding characters, finding their bearings, and slowly crafting a full competitor. Arika uploaded 50 minutes of gameplay footage (utilizing the latest playable build at EVO) of their staff members showing off what this game can do so far and it looks super fun. 

At glance, this seems to share a lot of similarities with Street Fighter EX (enough to assume this'll eventually be an entry in the Fighting Layer series) but movement is a bit faster. Chain supers (as one can quickly cancel a super into a second one) are here, as well as a Street Fighter X Tekken-esque load out system giving buffs. I'd like to know more about this system for sure. 

If the current incarnation of the project looks this fun to watch, I can't wait to play the full product next year. Skullomania all the waynia. 

50 minutes of Arika’s “Mysterious Fighting Game” gameplay [Gematsu]

Splatoon 2 may have only just unleashed rainbow hell on the world, but it will see its first DLC drop very soon, according to a tweet from Nintendo.

The Inkbrush will be added to the arsenal as a free update for all. Giving you one more way to paint the town red.. and pink.. and..

The Inkbrush is expected to drop in North America tonight at 6pm PST / 10pm EST and overnight in Europe. Hope all you inklings are having a great time with the game so far. Have you already staked your claim in the approaching civil war that is Ketchup VS Mayonnaise?

Capcom announced during their Street Fighter 30th anniversary San Diego Comic-Con showcase that Shin Akuma is actually unlockable in Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers for the Nintendo Switch. 

Here's what you'll need to do to use him: 

• 1. Select Ryu, cancel on Color 1
• 2. Select Ken, cancel on Color 9
• 3. Select Sagat, cancel on Color 8
• 4. Select M. Bison, cancel on Color 7
• 5. Place the cursor on Random, press L and R at the same time

Shin Akuma can't be used in local online and internet battles because he's crazy overpowered (two air hadoukens), but this is very nice! Love little Easter eggs. 

How To Unlock Shin Akuma In Nintendo Switch's Street Fighter II [Gamespot]

I like playing Kingsway at my day job. It's one of the few games that I can have running at full screen without anyone questioning my work ethic. If a coworker or customer happened to glance at my computer screen, there's a good chance they'd assume I'm just some kind of weird Luddite, not an overworked blogger playing a surprisingly deep RPG disguised as a dated desktop interface. 

Now, I should say that I don't necessarily advocate playing video games at work unless your job is A) soul-crushingly boring or B) to literally play video games whenever you can. Between my Real Life job and Dtoid, I'm straddling both points and Kingsway is just too good to put down. Productivity, be damned.

Splatoon, to me, was a big hit for Nintendo Wii U. A fresh new idea during a time when the most common complaint leveled against the company was the reusing of old IPs and re-releasing the same sequels over and over. So it's no surprise on every level Splatoon 2 is one of the more anticipated titles on the Switch.

It has been a slow week for video games, so this episode of Podtoid is mostly just the crew talking about whatever come to mind. One topic was who the press secretary for video games would be. Our guess is Dorito Pope himself Geoff Keighley.

There was some game talk, like how some of the crew is doing videos as a team in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. It was a pretty fun watch. There's also the Destiny 2 beta going on right now, but Brett and Steven didn't want to talk about that.

We round out the episode with some listener questions, an eventful SATPOTPAQ, and a Hot Dish focused on the moon. Give it a listen!

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or download it here.

Ready Player One should be taught in schools across America because it's about video games, virtual reality, pop culture, and Americans getting fat asses. You know, reality. But until national and state by state curriculums get their acts together, Stephen Spielberg is directing an adaptation of Ernest Cline's awesome novel.

Wade Watts, aka Parzival, is a virtual reality game playing teenager, on a quest within The Oasis, a virtual realm of 80s pop culture references, and ... well, peep the trailer, read the book, and check out Amazon for a more succinct summary than I can provide.

I may be even more excited than I was. This definitely improves the first look image we just got. There are a few obvious references here, including the Iron Giant, Freddy Kruger, and a DeLorean. Warner Brothers, also producing Ready Player One, owns the rights to The Iron Giant and A Nightmare on Elm Street, so that's no surprise. And you can use a car from a movie without it being a reference to the movie, hence Back to the Future's DeLorean, despite that being a Universal property. It will be really interesting to see what they're able to pull in from outside their own library. Let's hope a lot.

What about you? Let us know your thoughts!

After no shortage of hype, Warner Bros. is finally ready to show what Steven Spielberg's take on Ready Player One is all about. The studio has released the first trailer for the adaptation of Ernest Cline's novel, and it's clear that the flick is playing up not just the book's disjunction between a dystopic real world and VR, but the endless references to pop culture of decades gone by. Some of them are patently obvious in the clip -- you'll see a famous time-traveling car and a certain giant robot -- but some are of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it variety. Take Duke Nukem in the epic battle above, for example.

Source: Comicbook.com (YouTube)

The 80’s were a fascinating and iconic time in the history of the US-neon, synth, cocaine and some incredible movies and other media came out at the time as well as a swath of crime and gang violence that informed a lot of the identity of that decade. You can tell a lot about the type of society by the media they make, and the 80’s are no exception. The 80’s were before my time and yet for many, yours truly included, they still serve as such a fascinating cultural fusion of interesting themes, ideas, and talking points.

Really, there’s so much rich content from and later inspired by that time period it that it’s hard not to become enamored upon viewing some of it. With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to look at some media either from the 80's or inspired from it to give an idea of what appeals so much and perhaps lead you into some media you will find interesting as well.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, so please add your favorites in the comments below. Let's delve into some Turbowave to the Max standouts!

Following its initial delay, yesterday saw the release of Game Grumps' dating-sim Dream Daddy, which proceeded to shoot straight to the top of the daily sales charts.

The game, developed and published by the popular Youtubers, slides snugly alongside House Party and Hatoful Boyfriend as one of the more unique entries in the dating-sim genre. You play as a (fully customisable) single father, who moves into the sleepy town of Maple Bay with your headstrong teenage daughter, Amanda. Whilst you both acclimatise to the new neighborhood, you will meet, and potentially romance, one of seven other single dads in the area.

Whilst a lot of press has been focused on the game's concept, underneath lies an interesting story of romance, family and grief as you and Amanda both struggle to adjust to the new town and its inhabitants, whilst coming to terms with the loss of a previous partner. As a maturing young woman, Amanda has her own difficulties. How well you respond to her troubles makes for thought-provoking subtext.

This isn't King Lear though, Dream Daddy is a fun, light-hearted game. Hot dad dates take place via themed mini-games, and there are multiple endings depending on your interactions with the other dads (and their offspring) as well as your relationship with Amanda herself.

Dream Daddy is available now on Steam, priced at $15/£11 

Some movies are so bad they're good. Like last week's entry, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon; while it appears that it must have been somewhat self aware (one would hope), at other times, it clearly took itself plenty seriously. Or, The Room, one man's personal attempt to make a serious film written by, directed by, and starring himself; entirely serious, yet entirely awful in that special way that makes it amazing.

Zombeavers is in the other category: it's a bad movie that's aware of exactly what it is and runs with it like an oblivious kid with a kite at the edge of a cliff. That's correct: right over the edge. Sometimes self-awareness can be a beautiful thing.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus is an entirely new breed of gaming notebook. It packs in the most powerful laptop graphics hardware on the market, NVIDIA's GTX 1080, in a frame that's almost half the size of similar machines. Mostly, that's due to being one of the first notebooks to feature NVIDIA's Max-Q design standard, which is laser-focused on slimming down gaming laptops with beefy GPUs. That does lead to some compromises, especially around battery life, but the Zephyrus is still a wonder to behold.

Last week at the D23 Expo, we got an extended look at one of the new worlds coming to Kingdom Hearts III. Much to a lot of people's surprise, the game will feature a level based around Toy Story, famous for being the first full length CGI film. For years, the goal of recreating that film with real-time graphics has been a dream for hardware manufacturers. Sony famously claimed that the PS2 was capable of providing the same visual fidelity, though that was obviously hogwash.

Now, though, it seems totally possible. With a cursory examination of the KH3 trailer, Toy Story looks exactly the same as it did in the film. Woody's movements and scale are recreated flawlessly and Andy's room is basically a 1:1 replica. Have we finally achieved graphical nirvana?

Leave it to Digital Foundry to take a much closer look at things most users would gloss over. While the conclusion is a bit mixed (certain aspects look better while others are just too far out of current GPU reach), it is fascinating to see which elements are stronger than the 1995 classic and which could be improved in a few short years.

At an SDCC panel, Twitch announced an upcoming marathon of '80s video game show Starcade. This is in collaboration with Blu-Ray publishers Shout! Factory, who picked up the rights to day-glow series at the start of the year.

Starcade was a somewhat clunky U.S. show which ran between '82 and '84. Players would score-attack various arcade games to win badass prizes such as metal detectors and electronic chess-sets. One girl even played for a bitchin' Dragon's Lair cabinet. Trivia questions and features would bookmark the show's 300 commercial breaks.

The best thing about the show was the fact that everyone did a sort of "light jog" around the studio, because walking is for squares. The show was hosted for the majority of its run by Geoff "Ready Set Play" Edwards, who seemed wonderfully bemused about the whole affair, but soon became quite the video game fan.

The marathon will feature the back-to-back screening of the show's syndicated run, around 130 episodes. I think it'll be a lot of fun, definitely some great background fodder, filled with colourful nostalgia, classic gaming mayhem and sweet haircuts.

Check it out when the marathon begins August 22, broadcast on Shout! Factory's Twitch channel.

Instagram Is Pushing
Restaurants to Be
Kitschy, Colorful and
Irresistible to Photographers
Casey Newton,
The Verge

It's no secret that Instagram is full of brunch pics and food porn, but restaurants have noticed the trend. The Verge details how food spots are catering to photo-happy eaters with interior design details, eye-catching spaces and the proper amount of light.

20 years ago Michael Jai White and John Leguizamo put on some crazy outfits and delivered an even crazier film with Spawn. While Todd MacFarlane's Spawn will never be as popular as it was in 1997, a film version now makes sense more than ever given our current waning superhero boom as it evolves into a call for weightier, R-rated stories. 

Todd MacFarlane has noticed it himself, and took to Facebook to announce that he is working with Blumhouse Productions (the biggest horror production company right now) on a new "badass" Spawn film: 

We’re now making movies. We’re going. Blumhouse, Spawn, badass, R [rating], it’s coming, get ready for it! We’re going into production.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the first draft of the film's script has already been written, and MacFarlane himself will be directing. The biggest note, however, is that Blumhouse and MacFarlane are aiming for a lower budget, horror/thriller take on the hero. 

Given that Blumhouse has produced films with lower budgets and huge returns, like the Insidiousseries, Get Out, The Purge, and Split, this only makes creative sense. I'm giving MacFarlane the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows what he can and can't do with whatever means he's given. 

Regardless, I'm super pumped about a new Spawny boy movie. I bet they could bring Michael Jai White back and no one would mind. 

New 'Spawn' Movie in the Works with Todd MacFarlane, Blumhouse [THR]

Charagumin's Shantae figurine, that was previously available as an Anime Expo exclusive, is now, unsurprisingly, available for pre-order.

The colour-resin figure, which you click together before giving pride of place on your shelf, can be reserved over at the VolksUSA online store. The delivery date is as soon as August 18 of this year. The figurine, which stands at roughly six inches, is priced at $75. 30 randomly selected orders will have the packaging signed by Shantae's voice-actor Christina Vee.

I want one of these like you wouldn't believe, but not only can I not afford it, but also Volks is not shipping outside of the U.S, Canada or Mexico. So for now, this is one wish that'll stay firmly in the lamp. For any other Shantae fans, you can pre-order the figurine at the link below to get yours reserved. Note that pre-orders close August 14.

Shantae figurine pre-order page [Volks USA]

Roblox has exploded over the past two years. It's not quite a game and not quite a development platform, allowing players to boot up millions of user-made projects, or create their own games and immediately publish them across all supported platforms. In September 2015, Roblox Corporation was happy to report it had 6 million monthly players, most of them between the ages of 15 and 22, across PC, Mac iOS and Android. Hundreds of developers were bringing in at least $250 a month selling items and upgrades in their Roblox games, and the ecosystem overall generated $2.5 million for creators.

Yes, that's real-life money.

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Welcome to the weekend. We'll take a look back at some of the big stories from earlier this week, plus key updates like NASA's tips for viewing a solar eclipse.