Rockstar

The new year is upon us, and with it comes new ways to play an almost 30 year old game! Released just a few hours ago, Ocarina of Time has yet again been revamped, this time featuring the mask transformations from sequel Majora's Mask. Created by ROM hacker Aegiker, you can now reexperience one of Link's most iconic journies as a Deku Scrub, Goron, or Zora, with the powerful Fierce Deity transformation also included for good measure. All abilities and interactions are preserved from the original Majora's Mask implementation, with a few niceties thrown in there for good measure, like the Goron transformation's punches acting as the Megaton Hammer. If you want to give this a go for yourself, you can find the patch linked below. Source BPS Patch Download

In this remake, the Tombola (Lottery) is far more generous than in the NES original, and there are now multiple locations to play, each with slightly different prize pools for the mid-tier rewards. How to get Tickets: Shops: You still get a free ticket roughly every ~500-1000 Gold spent at Item Shops. Mersea (Post-Game): The most important addition. In the post-game, a merchant in the southeast corner of Mersea will simply sell you Tombola Tickets for roughly 600G each. This effectively lets you buy the top-tier prizes with enough cash. Tombola Locations: Leftwyne: The first one you find. Good for early herbs and antidotes. Moonahan: The "classic" spot. Tip: After you defeat Hargon, the owner here gives you a free ticket every time you speak to him. It’s tedious, but infinite. Rippleport: Located near the inn. Burrowell: In the underground city. Beran: The main hub for the late game. Dirkandor: Located in the castle town. Cloudsgate Citadel: Only accessible in the post-game after making a wish to Xenlon. Key Prizes to Aim For: Gold (3 Moons): Loyalty Card (Grants 20% off all shops). This is the "Grand Prize" in Rippleport and Moonahan. Get this ASAP to save money on expensive gear in Rondarxia. Red (3 Suns): Golden Claws (Available in the Dirkandor Tombola). In the original, you had to find these in a pyramid basement while fighting enemies every step. Winning them here is much safer!

When Square Enix released the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake last year, they set a high bar for modernizing classic JRPGs. It was vast, customizable, and breathtaking. Now, with the release of Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, the "Erdrick Trilogy" is finally complete. While these two titles are simpler and undeniably older than DQIII, Team Asano has performed a minor miracle here. They haven’t just slapped a coat of paint on these 8-bit relics; they have fundamentally rebalanced them to be playable—and genuinely enjoyable—in 2025. The HD-2D Treatment: Still the Gold StandardBy now, we know what to expect from the HD-2D engine, but it rarely fails to impress. The water effects, the tilt-shift lighting in dungeons, and the reimagined sprites are gorgeous. Hearing the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra’s swelling renditions of the Alefgard overworld theme adds a gravity to the experience that the NES beeps and boops only hinted at. The visual continuity between this and DQIII is the real treat. Seeing the world of Alefgard "age" between the timeline of III and I adds a narrative texture that wasn't there in the 8-bit originals. Dragon Quest I: Short, Sweet, and SolitaryThe first half of the package is the original 1986 classic. You are the descendant of Erdrick. There is a Dragonlord. Go get him. The Good: Respect for Time: The game remains a tight 8–10 hour adventure. Square Enix didn't bloat it with unnecessary fetch quests, though they did add new story cutscenes to flesh out the lore. The "Lonely" Vibe: The HD-2D lighting emphasizes the isolation of a solo hero wandering dark caverns. It’s a unique mood that modern party-based RPGs rarely capture. The Bad: Simplicity: There is no getting around the fact that this is a game with one party member and limited commands (Attack, Spell, Item, Run). Even with the beautiful visuals, the combat loop can feel repetitive. The "Ye Olde" Dialogue: The localization returns to the heavy "Thee/Thou" archaic English. While nostalgic for NES Dragon Warrior veterans, it can feel a bit stifling compared to the charming, pun-heavy scripts of modern entries like DQXI. Dragon Quest II: The Crown JewelThis is where the collection shines. Dragon Quest II was historically infamous for its brutal difficulty spikes and obscure progression. This remake fixes almost all of it. The Improvements: Princess of Cannock: Previously a minor character, she is now a fully fleshed-out party member with expanded dialogue and a stronger presence in the story. The banter between the three cousins (Midenhall, Cannock, and Moonbrooke) gives the journey a heart that was missing in 1987. Rebalanced Combat: The "Prince of Cannock" is no longer a liability who dies if an enemy looks at him wrong. The team has smoothed out the difficulty curve, making the late-game snowy plateau (Rondarxia) challenging but fair, rather than broken. Guidance: Subtle objective markers and the "Recall" feature (which memorizes NPC dialogue) eliminate the need to wander aimlessly wondering where the Silver Key is. Quality of Life UpdatesThe best additions are the system-level changes shared across both titles: Battle Speed: You can crank combat speed up to "Ultra-Fast," making grinding painless. Auto-Battle: For trash mobs, setting the tactics to "Fight Wisely" lets you breeze through dungeons. Quick Save: The ability to save anywhere (outside of battle) is a godsend for portable play on the Switch or Steam Deck. DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake – Story TrailerThe VerdictDragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake is a vital piece of gaming preservation. It doesn't try to hide the simplicity of its source material, but it polishes the friction points until they gleam. If you played Dragon Quest III last year, this is the mandatory epilogue. Dragon Quest I is a charming, brief appetizer, but Dragon Quest II is a surprisingly robust adventure that finally gets the respect it deserves. Score: 8/10

You don't need to enter a button combination on the title screen. Instead, you have to "hack" the options menu. Go to the Options menu from the main title screen. Select Accessibility. Highlight the CRT Shader option (usually the top option). Toggle it Left and Right repeatedly. Do this quickly for about 5-10 seconds. Keep going until you hear a voice say: "Access Granted." Back out to the main Options menu. You will now see a new Cheats option at the bottom. The Cheats AvailableOnce unlocked, you can toggle these on/off at will. Note that using these might disable Leaderboard submissions, but they usually don't block achievements/trophies depending on the platform patch. Infinite Health: You take damage but never die. Infinite Continues: Essential for brute-forcing your way through the final level. Infinite Pipe Bombs: Grants unlimited heavy ammo (very fun for the Cyberdyne level). Infinite Time: Removes the arcade timer (great for exploring for secrets). Other Secrets & Easter Eggs"Easy Money" Shorts: If you play on the easiest difficulty ("Easy Money"), the T-800 will spawn in the biker bar wearing colorful beach shorts instead of being fully nude/obscured. Future John Connor: If you have unlocked the timeline where John survives into the future, look for the "Ain't Got Time to Bleed" achievement/trophy, which triggers during the bunker defense sequence.

The final boss is a multi-phase endurance test that takes place in the Future War timeline. It is famously difficult because it throws multiple boss types at you in a gauntlet before the actual core. Phase 1: The Gauntlet Before you even hit the core, you have to fight back-to-back HK-Aerials and HK-Tanks. Ammo Conservation: Do not waste your heavy weapon ammo (Plasma Rifles/Rocket Launchers) on the HK-Tanks if you can avoid it. Use your standard rapid-fire pulse weapon and focus on dodging. You need the heavy DPS for the final phase. Positioning: Stay mobile. The HK-Tanks track your position on the ground. Jump and slide constantly to force them to miss. Phase 2: The Skynet Core (T-999999) This is a massive stationary boss with multiple turrets and homing attacks. The Homing Projectiles: This is where most players die. The core launches orbs that track you. You can shoot these down. Do not try to dodge them all; you will get cornered. Dedicate short bursts of fire to clearing the orbs before returning fire to the boss. The "Safe" Spots: The boss has a pattern of sweeping lasers. Watch the floor! The panels usually light up or flash before a laser strikes. There is almost always a "safe zone" in the far corners of the screen during the central laser sweep. Target Priority: Focus fire on the turrets first. Destroying them reduces the amount of chaos on screen. Once the turrets are down, unload everything you have into the central "eye." 3 Essential Survival TipsUse "Easy Money" Mode to Practice: The game features an "Easy Money" mode (often unlocked or available in options) which gives you unlimited continues. Use this to learn the boss patterns without the pressure of restarting the whole game. Break the Walls: Like Castlevania, many walls in the Cyberdyne and Future levels are breakable. They often hide Health Refills or Extra Lives that are critical for the final slog. Master the Slide: Your slide gives you a tiny window of lower hitbox profile. Use it to go under the HK-Aerial bullets rather than trying to jump over them.

To see every ending, you must replay the campaign (or specific levels if the game allows chapter select after beating it once) and make different choices at two pivotal moments: The Gas Station (End of Level 8): Decide whether to Reset the T-800’s CPU or Leave it alone. Dyson’s Home: Decide whether to Kill Miles Dyson or Spare him. Ending Name Condition / Choices Required Description The "Canon" Ending (Best Ending) 1. Reset the Chip 2. Reconsider (Spare Dyson) This follows the movie timeline. Dyson helps destroy Cyberdyne, and humanity has a chance. The T-800 sacrifices himself at the steel mill. Sarah Kills Dyson (Bad Ending) 1. Reset the Chip 2. Pull the Trigger (Kill Dyson) Sarah executes Dyson before John/T-800 intervene. This causes a permanent rift between John and Sarah. John runs away, and the future war remains bleak. Terminator Kills Dyson (Worst Ending) 1. Leave the Chip (Locks out 2nd choice) If you don't reset the chip, the T-800 enters "learning mode" failure. It kills Dyson immediately upon arrival. Sarah is arrested, and John eventually has to be rescued in a dark future timeline.

The Verdict at a GlanceScore: 7.5/10 Genre: 2D Run-and-Gun / Platformer Perfect for: Retro enthusiasts, Metal Slug/Contra fans, and Terminator 2 diehards who crave 16-bit nostalgia. Overview: A Lost Relic from 1991Terminator 2D: No Fate is a "lost tape" style game that commits fully to its premise: What if the perfect Terminator 2 tie-in game had actually been released on the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis in the 90s? Developed by Bitmap Bureau (known for Xeno Crisis), this is a side-scrolling run-and-gun shooter that ignores modern gaming conveniences in favor of an authentic, coin-op arcade experience. It is grueling, gorgeous, and incredibly faithful to the source material—sometimes to a fault. The GoodAesthetic Perfection: The pixel art is the standout feature. It uses a rich 16-bit color palette, chunky sprites, and smooth animations that look like the best of the SNES era, but with modern frame rates. The optional CRT filters are some of the best in the business, giving the image that warm, glowing fuzz of a 90s TV. The Soundtrack: The music is a driving, synth-heavy tribute to Brad Fiedel’s iconic score. It pulses with industrial dread and high-octane energy. The inclusion of licensed tracks like "Bad to the Bone" during the biker bar beat-'em-up section is a delightful touch. Faithful (mostly) Adaptation: You play through key beats of the film—the Pescadero Hospital escape, the Cyberdyne raid, and the steel mill showdown. However, the game also wisely expands the lore, letting you play as a future-war John Connor and a pre-incarceration Sarah Connor, adding context that the movie only hinted at. Branching Paths: Unlike most linear shooters of the past, your choices (often regarding who lives or dies) can trigger different endings and levels, adding much-needed replay value to a short campaign. The BadPunishing Difficulty: This is "Nintendo Hard." The game relies on limited continues and arcade-style difficulty spikes. The final level, in particular, is a massive hurdle that may frustrate players used to modern checkpoints. Short Runtime: A successful run can take less than 90 minutes. While this is accurate to the arcade era it emulates, the $25-$30 price tag might feel steep for a game you can beat in an afternoon. Not Enough Arnold: Due to what appears to be licensing costs, the T-800's facial likeness is a bit generic compared to Sarah or John. More importantly, you spend a significant chunk of the game playing as Sarah or John Connor. While they control well, many players will buy this game specifically to play as the Terminator, and might feel short-changed by how often they are stuck as the humans. Gameplay BreakdownThe core loop is pure Contra or Metal Slug. You run left-to-right, locking your aim in 8 directions to mow down T-800 endoskeletons and SWAT teams. Combat: Weapons feel punchy, but you can't carry an arsenal; you rely on temporary power-ups. Variety: The game breaks up the shooting with vehicle chase levels (top-down driving) and a melee-focused bar fight. These are fun diversions, though the shooting mechanics are clearly the most polished part of the package. Final ThoughtsTerminator 2D: No Fate is a labor of love that succeeds as a time capsule. It erases the memory of the terrible LJN Terminator games of the past and delivers the tie-in we deserved 30 years ago. If you can accept the short runtime and the bruising difficulty, it is a blast to play. Recommendation: Wait for a slight sale if you are a casual fan, but grab it immediately if you have a soft spot for 16-bit action games.

Romhacking veteran Marc Robledo and graphic artist NiO107 have given Ninja Gaiden fans quite a surprising and outstanding gift in preparation for the holidays, with their collaborative colorization project of the original Game Boy title, Ninja Gaiden Shadow. Marc Robledo (also known as @marc_max), in collaboration with NiO107, who is currently working on an original homebrew Game Boy game titled Cosmo Knight ZiON, released today "Ninja Gaiden Shadow DX", a brand new colorization romhack for Ninja Gaiden that remasters the original Game Boy title into a fully colorized title, fully compatible with emulators and real Game Boy Color hardware. Marc's polish and quality from his previous romhacks can be expected in full with this new release, with outstanding visuals and coding prowess that is sure to impress with the quality of the colorization in a Game Boy Color title. Those interested in trying out this romhack can download the patch, or even patch their own provided ROM right from the hack's page, directly from Marc Robledo's website. As it's the case with any other romhack, the user must provide their own ROM of the game in order to patch it accordingly. Ninja Gaiden Shadow DX hack page on Marc Robledo's website

Decompilations have opened up all kinds of possibilities and technical wonders when it comes to porting games to other devices that they weren't officially designed for, and one of the most impressive and notorious examples of this are the ports to the SEGA Dreamcast of both Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which took some major reworks and technical prowess to achieve them, and much more so to get them running at playable framerates. But there are times when porting a game goes beyond video game consoles, and sometimes it gets ported to the most interesting of places, with the latest being browser port of Vice City, meaning the game runs entirely through the internet browser, all thanks to the reVC decompilation. Gaming website DOS Zone has achieved such an endeavour, with their efforts being worked on making the entirety of Vice City playable through an internet browser. DOS Zone is a website ran by gaming enthusiasts in which they "adapt historical gaming heritage" by porting titles to browser and making them accessible to everyone. While the guys over at DOS Zone have indeed ported over the entirety of Vice City, playing the game through the browser does come with some caveats, as DOS Zone does try to work alongside copyright law: As mentioned above, players can play a demo of the game running through the browser, and those that do wish to continue playing through DOS Zone the full game, can do so by providing the original files for Vice City, in this case, "gtavc.exe", and the website will perform a checksum run-through to verify that the provided file is correct, and then let the player continue playing with the full game unlocked. DOS Zone also provides multiple videogames aside from Vice City, so for those interested in checking out what other videogames are there to play through, be sure to visit DOS Zone's website. "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" on DOS Zone DOS Zone Website

The original Resident Evil game from 1996 caused quite the stir in the gaming sphere, with the term "Survival Horror" being cemented when it dropped for the original PlayStation, with other titles like Silent Hill really delving into other aspects of what horror games could be. Since then, the game got plenty of ports to other consoles, not as many as Resident Evil 2, and much less than the original Resident Evil 4 of course, but it still got plenty, like a port to the Sega Saturn and one by SourceNext for the PC, as well as having 3 different versions in the original PlayStation, the original 1996 release, followed by the Director's Cut in 1997 and then the infamous Director's Cut Dual Shock version in 1998, which used a completely different soundtrack, and the last official port of the game came in the form of Resident Evil Deadly Silence for the Nintendo DS, which added a lot of new features while still retaining the look and gameplay from the original game. But there was yet another port that never saw the light of day, and one such port was one planned for the Game Boy Color by Software House HotGen back in 1999, but due to the limitations of the hardware, Capcom cancelled the project, but it didn't remain in the shadows, as back in 2012 a beta build of said project came to light, although with a lot of its content still missing, like missing intro titles for the publishers, a debug menu being available, and the game could not be finished with any of the two characters (Chris or Jill). However, another build has recently been found by Games That Weren't, with them claiming that the shared build that was found is one near the moment of cancellation, with a lot of previously unseen footage and information being available in this new build. Interestingly, this new build seems to have the debug menu removed, this being a hint that it was probably in a close-to-finished state, the Tyrant can now be found in this build, as well as some of the game's ending sequences. There's still some slight missing data, like: Zombies not having a proper death animation Hunter sprite data is there but there's no Hunter enemies present Wesker and Barry sharing sprites Some sprites have wrong colouring Some cutscenes are unfinished Additionally, according to several players online, Jill's campaign can be finished from start to end, albeit with some bugs here and there, while Chris' campaign seems to be stuck at the section of the game where a Flamethrower needs to be placed to open a door. Those interested can visit Games That Weren't website and the article they posted regarding the new Resident Evil GBC dump, as well as trying out the new beta as well. Source

Dune: Awakening, Funcom's survival MMO inspired by Frank Herbert’s Dune, is set to receive its biggest free update to date: Chapter 3. It brings a suite of improvements and additions based on player requests and feedback. This includes one of the most popular requests: providing additional progression pathways once players reach tier 6. Chapter 3 also brings combat improvements and continues where the main story left off in Chapter 2. A trailer was aired that summarizes the new additions in the free update: Funcom is also releasing the Raiders of the Broken Lands DLC at the same time as Chapter 3. It is included at no extra cost in the Season Pass and lets players have access to more stuff to build with. More specifically, it includes 73 building pieces and 17 decorations inspired by the Imperium’s Smugglers, as well as a dedicated stillsuit set, a light and heavy armor set, weapon variants, swatches, and emotes. The infographic below summarizes the new contents in Chapter 3 and the upcoming DLC. Dune: Awakening Chapter 3 will be available for free in Early 2026, and the Raiders of the Boken Lands DLC can be purchased for $9.99 or as part of the Season Pass ($24.99/€24.99).

During the Game Awards, Capcom announced the long-awaited return of the Blue Bomber to the gaming scene in the form of a brand new game, titled "Mega Man: Dual Override". After the initial game reveal, the official Mega Man account on YouTube released a video where they announced a Robot Master Design Contest. The contest specifies that people interested in submitting their design should focus on a design for a Robot Master that specifically has a "right arm with immense suction powers", and Capcom provides a design model from which to use as a base for the design submission of the Robot Master: People interested in submitting their design should do so on X (formerly Twitter), and they should follow the official Mega Man account on X. Additionally, in order to be eligible for the contest, the user must: Be at least 13 years old or above that age. Submit their design with a post on X that includes the following, all within the same post: The phrase "Robot Master Design" #MegaManDO and #DesignARobotMaster hashtags Some information about their design Those 3 specific points should all be included within the same post. It should include the "Robot Master Design" phrase, the two hashtags and the design information within the same post in order for it to be considered for the contest. Failing to do so will make the design ineligible for entry. The contest officially begun on December 11th, and will continue all the way up until the new year arrives, closing on January 1st, 2026 at 11:59 pm PST. Official "Mega Man: Dual Override" Robot Master Design Contest Website Mega Man: Dual Override Official Website