Gaming, in brief

Jim Vessella is a producer at EA, the big US games publisher. [1] At a panel at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, a fan show for old games, he said Wing Commander 3 is getting a remaster. [1][2]

Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger is a space fighter game from 1994. [1] It tells its story through filmed scenes with real actors, among them Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, Tim Curry and John Rhys-Davies. [2]

Vessella found 600 of the original video tapes while copying EA's old video archive into digital files. [1] Kotaku says he has been restoring them. [2]

Kotaku says the remaster will clean up the squeezed-down video of the 1994 game. [2] PC Gamer says it will offer both the original footage and a copy enlarged to look sharper on modern screens. [1]

Steve Lin, a board member of the Video Game History Foundation, a group that works to save old games, shared a slide from the talk on Bluesky, a social network. [1] The slide and Lin's posts list 60 frames a second, controller support, and release on the PC game stores Steam and GOG and on the EA app. [1]

The slide also promises 'Kilrathi Saga integration'. [1] PC Gamer and Kotaku both read that as the first two Wing Commander games coming in the same package. [1][2]

Neither report gives a price or a release date. [1][2]

EA rarely brings its old games back, PC Gamer notes. [1] Its Dead Space remake did not sell well enough for the sequel to get the same treatment. [1]

Vessella did not work on the original series, Kotaku notes. [2] PC Gamer asks whether this is his own passion project that EA approved, or the start of something bigger. [1]

Chris Roberts, who directed Wing Commander 3, has led Star Citizen, an online space game, for more than a decade. [1][2] Its single-player spin-off, Squadron 42, opened its Steam page on 10 October and is planned for April to June 2027. [3]

IGN calls Squadron 42 a spiritual follow-up to Wing Commander, again with film stars, Mark Hamill among them. [4]

Why it matters. Watch whether EA itself confirms the remaster with a date and a price, which would show it is a company product and not one producer's side project. [1]

Phasmophobia, a horror game about hunting ghosts, has sold more than 30 million copies on PC and consoles since 2020, its maker Kinetic Games said. [5] It is still in early access, the stage when a game is sold before it is finished. [5] Its director, Daniel Knight, began it alone at his parents' house, hoping to sell 1,000 copies in its first year. [5] The finished version, 1.0, slipped to the second half of 2027 after an update players disliked. [5]

Why it matters. Every one of those copies was sold before the game's finished version, which is now due in late 2027. [5] Kinetic has also opened a publishing arm, whose first game, Contact Protocol, is due in spring 2027. [5]

Cyberleek, an anonymous account leaking footage of Grand Theft Auto 6, posted a new clip of Lucia, one of the game's two main characters, naked and parachuting off a roof. [7][6] It says it will release a playable copy of the game if its crypto coin reaches a market value of $30 million. [6] Kotaku put the coin at about $4.75 million. [6] Take-Two, which owns Rockstar, the game's studio, has tried to use a legal order to make Discord help name the leaker. [7]

Why it matters. GTA 6 comes out on 19 November. [7] The last time Cyberleek went quiet, Kotaku says, it seemingly walked away with about $250,000 from its coin. [6]

A hacker known as Kata took over the Discord chat server of Calamity, a fan-made add-on for the game Terraria, on 9 October. [8] The server had more than 250,000 members. [8] Its owner was tricked into handing over control by two people posing as former moderators, the volunteers who run a server. [8] The hackers filled it with links to a crypto coin named after it, whose price was pushed up and then sold off. [8]

Why it matters. A former moderator, whose admin powers the hackers had missed, wiped the server, and tens of thousands of members left within two days. [8] Kotaku says Kata has hacked dozens of popular Discord servers in two years. [8]

Zach Cregger's Resident Evil film, based on horror games by the games company Capcom, has taken an estimated $320.2 million worldwide after four weekends, IGN reports. [9] That passes Weapons, his last hit, at $270 million. [9] It went back to number one around the world after opening in China, which gave $40.6 million of its $62.65 million fourth weekend. [9] It cost a reported $75 million to make. [9]

Why it matters. Capcom's newest Resident Evil game, Requiem, has sold 8 million copies since February. [10] The Verge, citing the newsletter Game File, says six games in the series have each sold 3 million copies this year. [10]

Arc System Works, the studio behind the Marvel fighting game Marvel Tokon, named all four extra fighters in its first-year pass at Evo France, a fighting-game tournament. [13][12] Phoenix Cyclops arrives on 2 November. [11] Thor (Jane Foster) follows in winter 2027, then Venom in spring and Jubilee in summer. [11] The pass costs $34.99, and each fighter can also be bought alone. [12][11]

Why it matters. IGN says the game launched with bad problems on PC, and its Steam player count still struggles to pass 1,000 at once. [12] Its director apologised for the PC launch, and the team admits winning back trust will be 'extremely challenging'. [12]

Bandai Namco showed the next extra fighters for its fighting game Tekken 8 at Evo France. [14] Roger Jr., a boxing kangaroo with a joey, arrives in early access on 11 November and in full on 16 November. [14] Yujiro Hanma, a villain from the Japanese comic Baki the Grappler, appeared in a short teaser with no date. [14] A full Yujiro trailer is due at the Tekken World Tour Finals on 17 January 2027. [14]

Why it matters. Tekken 8 sells extra fighters in seasons, and Kunimitsu in June and Bob in August came before Roger Jr. [14] IGN expects a Yujiro date when the January trailer airs. [14]

NetEase, the Chinese tech company, revealed ECC: Redline, a free-to-play shooter for PC and phones, with a Steam page but no release date. [15] Many players online called it a near copy of Activision's Call of Duty: Warzone, down to its menus and sounds. [15] Others said they would welcome it, because many Warzone fans miss that game's first years. [15]

Why it matters. NetEase has faced this before, when its Marvel Rivals was compared with Blizzard's Overwatch. [15] Riot Games once sued over Hyper Front, a shooter that drew comparisons with Riot's own Valorant. [15]

Krafton, the publisher of PUBG, is making PUBG Ded.Net at PUBG Madison, its studio in Wisconsin. [16] PUBG is a battle royale, where players fight on a shrinking map until one is left. [16] Ded.Net sets that fight inside a violent game show styled on 1990s action films. [16] Powers and injuries picked in one match carry into the next, like a roguelite, a game played in repeated runs. [16]

Why it matters. Creative director Dave Curd told Eurogamer that new players face PUBG veterans with five to six thousand hours, so run-to-run powers are meant to make losing sting less. [16] He says a lean team builds it, so a miss would not put everyone at risk. [16]

Escape the Backrooms, a horror game for one to four players from Fancy Games, will add three new levels in December in an update called the After Party. [17] Free and paid outfits arrive first, in October. [17] Its publisher, Secret Mode, announced it on 8 October. [17] More than 12 million people have played the game since it went on sale in early access in 2022, on PC, PS5, Xbox and Switch 2. [17]

Why it matters. Like Phasmophobia, it started in early access, and four years on it still adds levels and sells outfits. [17][5]

A copy of Wonder Boy in Monster Land, a 1987 arcade game, has been on sale on Steam since 28 September from a seller called Retro Maniac, PC Gamer reports. [18] The game's own composer, Shinichi Sakamoto, says it is unofficial. [18] PC Gamer bought it and found the original arcade file running in an emulator, a program that copies old machines, with the Sega logo removed. [18] LAT Corp owns the old Wonder Boy games, and Sega owns the name. [18]

Why it matters. Only Sega or LAT can ask Valve, which runs Steam, to take it down, and neither Sega nor Valve answered PC Gamer. [18] Sakamoto says it has been downloaded 10,000 times. [18]

Mick Gordon, the Australian composer of the music for Doom in 2016, told IGN at the PAX Australia fan show that he will not use AI to make music. [19] He said AI learns from what people already made, so it will always lag behind them. [19] He also said he would return to Doom 'in a heartbeat' if many things lined up. [20] In 2022 he accused id Software, Doom's studio, of not paying him for half his work on Doom Eternal. [20]

Why it matters. id Software lost 136 staff in Microsoft's Xbox layoffs in July. [20] Gordon's music next appears in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2, out on 14 October. [19]

A programmer has got Super Mario 64, the Nintendo 64 game, running on the Zune HD, a Microsoft music player from 2009 that the company stopped making in 2011. [21] It plays mostly at full speed, with touch-screen buttons and saved games. [21] It is built on a rebuild of the game's code that fans finished in 2019. [21] Players must copy the game from their own cartridge. [21]

Why it matters. The project's first code change lists an AI as co-author, and Tom's Hardware says AI tools may be why such ports are multiplying. [21] Nintendo's lawyers moved quickly against an earlier PC version in 2020. [21]

Frederik Wessberg, a modder, is building a mod, a fan-made change, that lets ships land on planets in Starfield without a loading screen. [22] Starfield is a big space role-playing game in which landing has meant picking a spot and watching a loading screen. [22] His work-in-progress video shows a ship heating up as it enters the air, passing through cloud and touching down. [22] He rebuilt how the game draws planets from space, using its own maps and climate data. [22]

Why it matters. Other mods already remove the wait on jumps and take-offs, and PC Gamer says landing had looked like the one gap modders could not close. [22]

The Golden Joystick Awards, a games prize now in its 44th year, named the shortlists for the prizes the public votes on. [23] The ten PC Game of the Year picks include Crimson Desert, Escape from Tarkov, Mewgenics, Valheim and Star Wars Zero Company. [23] Voting closes on 23 October, and winners are named on 11 November. [23] Nominees for the top prize, Ultimate Game of the Year, come on 26 October. [23]

Why it matters. Only games released between 1 November 2025 and 25 September 2026 could enter, unless the judges saw them early. [23]

Fuse Games, the studio behind Star Wars: Galactic Racer, tested the racing game's upgrade system as a board game before building it, its leaders told Eurogamer. [24] After races, players pick upgrades for their racer, and some carry over between runs. [24] Creative director Kieran Crimmins said he can make a board-game version in a day from sticky notes and dice. [24]

Why it matters. Chief executive Matt Webster said writing an idea down is still faster than building it in a game engine. [24]

Yoko Taro, who made the Nier and Drakengard games, said he has already done what he wanted to in games and has thought about retiring. [25] He spoke at the Tokyo French Institute last month, the Japanese site Denfaminicogamer reported. [25] He said he keeps working partly for the money, and because it is 'good for preventing dementia'. [25]

Why it matters. He said he hopes to avoid competing with younger, AI-assisted makers before he dies. [25] PC Gamer notes he often jokes, so he may not mean it literally. [25]

Bumper Bout, a two-player pinball game where each player can send balls onto the other's table, was the final game of the Omegathon, the main-stage contest at PAX Australia. [26] Each ball lost costs a heart, and losing five hearts loses the round. [26] It has a free demo on Steam and comes out on 29 October. [26]

Why it matters. PC Gamer notes that games popular at shows often fail to turn that into sales, and Bumper Bout will now find out. [26]