17 Examples of Totally Rad 1980s Box Art

Look, the '80s were weird for all of us. It's time to come to terms with that. These are 17 examples of totally rad (and totally weird) video game boxes from the 1980s. Plus one Journey advertisement because we just couldn't resist:

Bad Dudes (1988)

What’s was up with the 1980s and ninjas? Was there a genuine fear that ninjas were hiding everywhere? Did we live in a world where it was remotely plausible that the president would be kidnapped by ninjas? How did that ninja on the cover even get into the middle of a major metropolitan area?!?

Crack Down (1989)

Crack Down: starring robot Swamp Thing, Satan Goat and... Maybe Bigfoot?

Bonus caption: “Alright, you get the gloves and the vest - I don’t need any of that garbage. Now let’s fire at everything except the horrifying enemies all around us."

Bad Cat (1987)

Bad cat? Great cat.

One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird (1983)

Whether its Flashdance cats or oiled up NBA stars, if you put a tough-looking thing in front a graffitied brick wall, in the '80s your job was 90% done.

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (1989)

In hindsight, this is the 9000th strangest thing Michael Jackson did in his career.

Super Skateboardin' (1988)

Yup.

California Games (1987)

It’s a little-known fact that the annual California Games end in beheadings. Sorta like the hunger games, but with big hair and pastel colors.

Also, do the filthy shoes and socks on the left weird anyone else out?

Skate or Die (1988)

Weird: All the random geometric shapes and patterns that cover stuff from the '80s. Even weirder: This dude's shirt and pants are painted on.

Ninja Golf (1990)

This game makes no sense! Golfing is literally the opposite of what a ninja does. Ninjas lurk in the shadows. They don’t slowly knock a ball into a hole for 4 hours. Also, does this box literally have "NEW" printed on it, in the corner?

Metro Cross (1985)

The world’s first and last extreme sports/chess mash-up.

Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II

Many '80s women picking up this game thinking it it was the video game equivalent to a romance novel were sorely disappointed.

Planetfall (1983)

Look, saying "It's not just a job - it's an adventure!" still means that it's mostly a job.

Bonus caption: "Alright, who space-pooped?"

Dance Aerobics (1987)

This reminds us a little of the weird ending of Cabin in the Woods. Just with way more leg warmers.

Journey (1983)

Don’t stop believin'? More like please stop staring.

Kid Niki: Radical Ninja (1986)

"I swear I’m going to save you in a minute honey. But first I have to make my logo look like a ransom note."

This one scores bonus points for the "ninja" rocking a totally rad rat tail/muscle tank combo.

Wood & Water Rage (1988)

The yin-yangs, the radical Donkey Kong... there's a lot to take in, here. But what's most disturbing of all? That tidal wave is literally about to kill them all.

Saboteur II (1987)

Alright, this is AWESOME. We're not even going to make fun of it. This should be everywhere. Why isn't it on a T-shirt? Why can't we buy this right now? Who painted it? Whoever he is, he doesn't even need business cards. He can just hand this out. To everyone he meets.

Let's break it down. First of all, you occasionally hear about humans having run-ins with a bobcat. Like, one ends up in your neighbor's garage somehow, or something. But we've never heard of one single incidence of a panther/human conflict. Let alone three panthers working together, like a pack of raptors. And then there's the fact that the panthers are squaring off against a KATANA-WIELDING NINJA POPPING A WHEELIE ON A MOTORCYCLE.

But what we really want to know is... what's exploding behind him? Probably another panther.

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Dedicated Hearthstone Players to Receive 'Golden Hero' Cards

Blizzard announced today that rare "Golden Heroes" will be coming to Hearthstone with the game's next patch.

Golden cards already exist in the game as variants to regular cards, with the appeal to them being rarity and animated art on the card's face. With the update, the game's nine heroes will also receive animations with their gold variants.

"When you hit 500 wins in Ranked Play mode with any given Hero, that particular Hero will become golden permanently," said Blizzard. Players can track their progress with any given Hero "quickly and easily on the deck selection screen in Ranked Play mode."

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Guide

Hearthstone: Heroes of WarCraft - All Cards - Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

The Golden Heroes will join unlockable card back designs recently revealed by Blizzard. Like the card backs, the Golden Heroes will be purely cosmetic, with "unique animations to their portrait and Hero Power."

Hearthstone, the card battle game based on the World of Warcraft universe, is still in beta and free to play, although packs of cards can be purchased through the game's storefront. Purchasing card packs can be done through spending the in-game currency earned by finishing daily quests, winning online matches, and completing arena battles. For the impatient, cards can also be bought with real money.

Unlike random golden cards, Golden Heroes cannot be purchased at this time, and must instead be earned.

Are you an avid Hearthstone player? What do you think of the new Golden Heroes? Sound off below.

Seth Macy is a freelance writer and podcaster. Follow him on Twitter @sethmacy and MyIGN at sethgmacy.

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The Winter Soldier: Has America Changed Too Much for Captain America?

Last summer, with Comic-Con just around the corner, I was among a group of journalists who paid a visit to the set of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where we got to see a couple of Marvel superheroes come to life right before our eyes. Captain America himself and the Falcon were in action that day, as Chris Evans and Anthony Mackie, in their full Cap and Falcon costumes (well, minus Falcon's wings), shot scenes from late in the film, doing all they could to stop a desperate situation.

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Trailer

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Trailer #2

Over the course of the day, we had the chance to sit down with several of The Winter Soldier crew -- including Evans, Mackie, screenwriters Stephen McFeely & Christopher Markus (Pain & Gain, Thor: The Dark World), producer Kevin Feige and directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (Community, Arrested Development) -- to find out more about what to expect from Cap's big sequel. While you can already read what Evans had to say that day from an earlier report, you'll find out a lot more below about the new conflicts facing Steve Rogers.

Cap and the Conspiracy

The Captain America: The Winter Soldier team all noted that the film is, essentially, a conspiracy thriller, influenced by the likes of Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View and Marathon Man. Co-writer Stephen McFeely explained, “The first movie was a war movie first and foremost as that made the most sense in terms of the origin story for Steve, but given what he needs to deal with as a man out of time, dealing with different values from his own and everyone he knows is dead and ‘who can he trust?’ and all that, the conspiracy genre seemed a really good one for him and excited the heck out of us and so that’s the direction we went.”

McFeely and his writing partner Christopher Markus noted a conspiracy story dovetailed with using Captain America comic books for inspiration as well, beyond The Winter Soldier story, with Markus recalling, “It seems like in the 70s and 80s, every five seconds he’s throwing down his outfit and going ‘I have to go search America and find out who I am.’ Then the government goes, ‘We own you, Steve Rogers!’” Markus elaborated that they liked the idea of exploring, “Okay, the man who once represented America has become dented by the passage of time, and alien to America and alien to the values and the thought systems.” He added, “In order to represent America, he has to get a better understanding of America, that kind of thing. And there’s great conspiracy stuff. Our bad guy is not Richard Nixon [Editor's note: Yes, this happened in a Cap comic book], but that is a great conspiracy.”

Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans on the set of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Cap being from another era will come into play as he examines how threats are dealt with in this day and age. As Markus put it, “When you have a monolithic evil like Nazis, your choices are clear. It’s not like you’re going to go ‘Well maybe I will appease the Nazis for a little while.’ Once you really get going, you have to stamp out the evil. Now, there’s a few examples of evil, but you can almost always find a counter argument in ‘everybody’s human’ and it’s all mushy and dirty and much less easy to get a read on who is evil and who is righteous. You open the newspaper… ‘is it okay to spy on everybody? Are drones okay?’ You can’t get away from it now and that’s the world he’s in. He would love there to be black and white, but there isn’t anymore.”

Kevin Feige said that when it came to the depiction of Cap, “I don’t mind if it feels old fashioned. I don’t mind if he feels out of place. He is out of place and he is kind of old fashioned in the modern era. I care if he feels two dimensional. I care if he feels boring or if he feels in any way not like a fully formed character. But in this movie we’re embracing that side. That’s part of his conflict with Fury and with some of the other members of S.H.I.E.L.D. is the fact that he’s from a different place. He has a different set of values, I think. Or at least he thinks he does initially. And we want to play into that and run towards that which creates conflict, which creates drama, which creates character. You know, we’re careful not to make him a goofball fish out of water. We don’t spend a lot of time with him trying to understand what an iPhone is.”

09:41

IGN Rewind Theater

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Rewind Theater - Trailer #1

Feige said he liked the conspiracy theory approach because, “We make a lot of superhero movies here at Marvel Studios and I believe the key is to make them all different and to make them all unique and to make them all stand apart while connecting together. And that’s what the comics do. You can find Captain America stories that are as sort of two dimensional and red, white and blue as you would think from the costume. Then you’ve got great stories in the 70s and 80s and then you have the amazing Brubaker run, which is sort of dealing with this notion of conspiracies and authorities and what it seems to be coinciding with when Cap returned in the early 60s and then suddenly ten years later there’s Watergate and he’s gone through the 70s. That’s interesting stuff to me. So we’re sort of pulling from all of those tales for this story. And like the first film was a Marvel superhero origin story masquerading as a World War II propaganda movie, this is a Marvel superhero sequel masquerading as a 1970s political thriller. And then, frankly, all the stuff that’s happening now with the NSA and the news is just pretty amazing timing for us because that’s the kind of thing Cap doesn’t particularly like - that our fake comic book organization and real life national security organization seem to be doing. Which again is always nice, when your big entertaining fun competent movie can touch into some aspect of a grounded real world – no matter how crazy that real world may be.”

Continue to Page 2 to learn more about how the directors of Community and Arrested Development ended up taking on Captain America. 

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Portal Board Game Coming Later This Year

"Portal: Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game" is the working title for Valve's upcoming Portal board game that's set to release later this year.

Valve is working with the popular tabletop company Cryptozoic Entertainment to finalize and publish the board game. Polygon reported that though other companies enlist Cryptozoic's help to develop their board game, Valve has been working on the Portal board game's development internally since 2012 and approached Cryptozoic in 2013.

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Clip

Portal 2 Music: The Friendly Faith Plate

In "Portal: Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game," two to four players use strategy to compete against each other and test the most desirable test chambers on a tiled board, Valve's Jeep Barnett told Polygon.

According to Cryptozoic, "Portal: Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game" playing pieces will feature test subjects, a companion cube, sentry turrets, cake, and is estimated to cost $50 USD. The Portal board game is set to release this year in late Q4.

"This was designed to stand on its own, not as a promotional tool," Barnett said. "While it may appeal more immediately to Portal fans, we tried to create something that was entertaining for everyone who tries it."

Cryptozoic Entertainment announced the Portal board game during the American International Toy Fair. There, we spotted a number of other interesting collectables that caught our attention.

Miranda Sanchez a freelance writer who is obsessed with Persona 4 Golden, Rust and Pikachu. You can get in touch with her on Twitter.

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Forza Motorsport 5 Free With Purchase of Xbox One

Microsoft's Major Nelson has revealed starting next week at select (unspecified) retailers, customers who purchase an Xbox One for the retail price of $500 in the United States will receive a digital copy of Forza Motorsport 5.

The offer will only be available for a limited time and you're encouraged to "check with your local retailer for details."

Forza Mortorsport 5 has already done well for Microsoft's next-gen console, selling a copy for every 3 consoles purchased -- translating to 1 million units.

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Feature

Forza Motorsport 5 - The Evolution of Forza Motorsport

Developer Turn 10 Studios' latest in the racing series has received near-constant updates, and a mix of free and paid DLC. Most recently the paid Alpinestars Pack, and the free Road America track just prior.

Brandin Tyrrel is a freelance writer. There's absolutely no reason to follow him on Twitter.

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BioShock Infinite Developers Discuss Irrational Games' Final Hours

Irrational Games' future has remained uncertain since its recent layoffs, and now former employees have spoken up, anonymously, to discuss what happened during the final days of the BioShock Infinite developer's life.

"Some people did seem worried about layoffs, but it seemed to me that most expected that we were going to have some downtime while the studio leadership figured out the next thing to start working on," an anonymous Irrational employee told Polygon.

05:16

IGN Podcasts

Discussing Irrational Games' Sudden Demise - Podcast Unlocked

Following the completion of BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, Irrational employees didn't hear about an upcoming project. They were essentially told to "recuperate from finishing three DLCs in a row right after shipping Infinite, and to spend some time thinking about improvements to skills and processes."

“

Some submitted to the idea that the company would live forever because they had shipped BioShock.

Employees paint company leader Ken Levine in a conflicted light, as a man who both demanded and often earned the respect of his employees. "He has incredibly high standards — standards that seemed at times to be outrageously tough when I first started," said a Polygon source. "Once I learned better how to work with him, it became clear that his expectations were really no higher or more unreasonable than those of our audience. It did take me a while to understand what a good working relationship with him entailed."

The developers also detailed what might have been if Irrationals multiplayer effort made it into the final version of BioShock Infinite.

Border Control, as Polygon explains it, was "a tower-defense game with an old-fashioned political cartoon art style, replete with racist stereotypes. The mode was itself a game set in the world of BioShock Infinite, meant to indoctrinate the fictional children of its bigoted universe." Another mode, which used the placeholder title Spec-Ops, featured four-player co-op, loot-gathering, waves of enemies, and character progression, all set in arenas with "randomized content."

"Some submitted to the idea that the company would live forever because they had shipped BioShock," a source said.

For more on the BioShock developer, check out IGN's editorial A Closer Look at Irrational Games' Change of Focus, and Ken Levine's last interview as Irrational Games' leader.

Mitch Dyer is an associate editor at IGN. He's trying to read 50 books in 2014. These are the 50. Talk to Mitch about books and other stuff on Twitter at @MitchyD.

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Foul Play Coming to PS4 and PS Vita

In a post on the PlayStation Blog, Mediatonic's Luke Borrett revealed that the XBLA beat-'em'up Foul Play is coming to PS4 and PS Vita.

Foul Play is a theater-themed beat ‘em up in which you'll play as a Victorian Daemonologist named Baron Dashforth. The point of the game is to recreate his adventures, while keeping an audience pleased in the process. In lieu of a conventional health bar, you'll have a "Mood-o-Meter" to keep full. If it reaches zero, you'll be booed off stage.

No release date was given, but it was revealed that the PS4 version of the game boasts full 1080p resolution and will run at 60fps, and that the game will feature Cross-Buy.

IGN liked Foul Play when it was released on the XBLA. We praised its awesome concept and just-right length, but we felt that the boss fights became a little tedious at times.

Jimmy Champane is a freelance writer who just discovered that The Last of Us has an awesome multiplayer mode. Follow him on Twitter and find him on IGN.

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The Making of the Titanfall Atari Games

Titanfall Arcade is a bizarre marriage between Respawn, Electronic Arts, and Atari — one that modifies ancient, awesome arcade games by adding the brute force of a Titan mech. It's a simple thing, but it's amazing to see games players understand so intimately turned on their head.

It's sort of unbelievable that this is a real thing, so IGN contacted the people who made Titanfall Arcade to find out more about the advertising promo.

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Trailer

Titanfall - Launch Trailer

“We wanted to pay homage to the humble beginnings of first-person shooters,” Matt Stafford, associate creative director at Heat, EA’s agency of record. “So, naturally, Atari was the ideal partner. We’re glad they were digging the idea too. Titanfall Arcade wouldn’t be nearly as good if they weren’t on board.”

The idea was to mash together gaming’s next big thing with the purest of its action roots. It's a promotion that's more than your usual ad, something that connects directly with the audience Titanfall's going for -- people who love games. “The idea just snowballed from there.”

“

Centipede will feature the Quad Rocket.

Senior art director Nichole Berger told IGN, “We chose Asteroids, Missile Command and Centipede because there’s still a very strong nostalgia for these titles. They're the ancient ancestors of today’s incredible sophisticated first-person shooters. It was also important for us to choose games that could really show off the unique weapons and abilities the Titans have in Titanfall.”

All three modified Atari games feature some form of Titanfall weaponry as part of its super-powered gameplay.

Asteroids, the first game debuted, features the Arc Cannon, which obliterates rocks in its straight-shot path. “Missile Command will feature the Vortex Blocker; a defense mechanism that sucks-up incoming missiles and spews them back out into other missiles trying to take out your cities,” Berger explained. “And Centipede will feature the Quad Rocket; a weapon that launches four rockets at once, allowing you to obliterate multiple sections of the Centipede and break through any mushrooms blocking your way.”

It’s unlikely we’ll see any more games, of course, with the proper release of Titanfall looming. “But who knows, if you start a petition and get thousands of people to sign it, maybe the powers that be will throw more cash into Titanfall Arcade,” Stafford joked. “Then we can make more games and put a Titanfall Arcade in every Chuck E. Cheese across America. “

So which Atari games didn’t make the cut?

“Atari’s 1983 classic: E.T. The Extra Terrestrial,” Berger said. “But then we quickly buried it somewhere in New Mexico.”

Mitch Dyer is an associate editor at IGN. He's trying to read 50 books in 2014. These are the 50. Talk to Mitch about books and other stuff on Twitter at @MitchyD.

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Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is in Development

After just a brief mention by basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal in January, a proper sequel to Shaq Fu is officially in development.

Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is now raising funds on Indiegogo and is being developed by Big Deez Productions. At the time of writing, the project has raised just under $3,000 USD, with a final goal of $450,000. The team compares A Legend Reborn to Devil May Cry rather than a traditional fighting game.

In a campaign video starring Shaq, he explains the project is being handled by developers who worked on Halo, Street Fighter, Alan Wake, Spec Ops: The Line, and several other big games.

The game's page promises "This time we won't FU it up!"

The titular hero of the game will be Shazam! star and Icy Hot Back Patch spokesman Shaquille O'Neal, 1992's NBA first-round draft pick, who was known for his enormous size and strength on the court.

"[He] really wants to be a part of this and we love that he’s onboard. He's going to have a huge involvement in this and he is not about to let the same mistake happen twice," says Big Deez of the dominating basketball center who also released five rap albums in the 1990s.

"We are gamers, not executives. We know what’s good and we know what stinks. This isn’t about trying to make a quick buck, it’s about creating something that both we and Shaq can be proud of. We want to make a slick, fun, rock-solid game."

O'Neal has promised that 5% of all profits from the game will be donated to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Shaq has already donated one million USD to help fund technology centers in the clubs' facilities.

How hyped are you for this game? Let us know in the comments.

Seth Macy is a freelance writer and podcaster. Follow him on Twitter @sethmacy and MyIGN at sethgmacy.

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Metal Gear Solid 5 Multiplayer Aims for Global Appeal, Accessibility

Kojima Productions Los Angeles is the lead studio on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain’s online multiplayer mode, which Hideo Kojima hopes will have a broader appeal than previous Metal Gear Online efforts.

“Most core users of Metal Gear Online in Japan are still giving a lot of criticism,” Kojima told IGN. "'Why are you creating this online mode in Los Angeles? You shouldn’t have it developed over there,'" fans say.

Kojima has his reasons.

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Feature

7 Reasons Why We're Excited for Metal Gear Solid 5

"Metal Gear Online was a very successful online game in Japan," said Kojima, "but worldwide it wasn’t necessarily a success."

In North America and Europe, Metal Gear Solid 4's multiplayer didn't resonate. It had an audience, but it was small, certainly smaller than the Japanese player-base, which stuck with it for years. Global accessibility is something Kojima mentions often, and he hopes his team achieves this by having a collaborative, global development process.

To reassure Japanese fans, Kojima said, "several core members of our studio in Tokyo that were involved in the development of Metal Gear Online are working hand in hand together with Japan and LA."

That said, their primary goal with Metal Gear Solid 5's multiplayer "is creating an online mode everyone will be able to enjoy whether they’re in other continents or Japan. We are trying to make all the necessary adjustments through trial and error by having everyone work together."

Kojima Productions has yet to unveil its multiplayer for MGS5. Look for more on that, in addition to everything you need on Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain's single-player, stay tuned to IGN.

Mitch Dyer is an associate editor at IGN. He's trying to read 50 books in 2014. These are the 50. Talk to Mitch about books and other stuff on Twitter at @MitchyD.

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Razer's New BlackWidow Innovates Mechanical Keyboard Design

Razer may have made headlines at CES for its ambitious new modular gaming PC concept, Project Christine, but it isn't giving up on its roots as a leading peripheral maker. Today the company announced its new BlackWidow, BlackWidow Ultimate, and BlackWidow Tournament Edition keyboards, which introduces Razer's new mechanical key design that it claims offers superior accuracy and speed, while also operating more quietly.

At its core, the new design registers key depressions faster by raising the actuation point and making the reset point shorter, which in simpler terms makes it so that users don't have to push a key down completely to register a command and the key doesn't have to completely reset to its starting position to detect another. The difference accounts for less than 0.3mm over traditional mechanical keyboards, but for professional players and PC gaming enthusiasts, it could make a significant impact when chaining together commands in quick succession, and believe it or not, limiting fatigue. What's more, Razer says the keys will last longer — an additional 10 million keystrokes, to be precise — than the industry average.

In addition to the new mechanical key design, the BlackWidow keyboard series comes with the expected array of features — LED backlighting, media keys, five programmable macro keys, and USB and audio cable passthrough.

The BlackWidow series is available now from Razer's official website and will hit retailers worldwide later this month or early April. The BlackWidow Tournament Edition is priced at $79.99, while the standard and Ultimate versions will cost $99.99 and $139.99.

Scott Lowe is IGN's resident tech expert and first-person shooter fanatic. You can follow him on Twitter at @ScottLowe.

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Dark Souls 2 PC Release Date Announced

Dark Souls II will be available on PC from April 25 in Europe and Australia, Namco Bandai has announced.

The PC version will be available at retail and via Steam, and will also boast an increased texture resolution and an enhanced frame rate option.

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IGN NEWS

Dark Souls 2 Dev Talks PS4 and Xbox One Versions

Dark Souls II will launch on Xbox 360 and PS3 in North America on March 11, 2014, with a European release date three days later on March 14. No DLC was expected for the game though this has since been contradicted.

If you're looking for more information in the meantime, check out a new trailer revealing some of the monstrosities we'll face, along with the developer talking about the possibility of the upcoming game coming to PS4 and Xbox One.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Junior Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter.

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Ouya Games Coming to Mad Catz MOJO Micro-Console this Spring

Earlier this week, Ouya unveiled plans to bring its platform to other devices, and Mad Catz has announced that its own MOJO micro-console will be the first to offer the Kickstarter-borne gaming unit's operating system and software lineup. The MOJO already has access to Android games from digital storefronts like the Google Play store and Amazon's Appstore, but will also have access to Ouya's library of over 680 games.

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Feature

Mad Catz Project M.O.J.O. Android Console Revealed

"Up until now, the game console experience has been locked inside a box," said Ouya CEO and founder Julie Uhrman. "Together with the hardware veterans at Mad Catz, we end that. Today’s announcement signifies the inception of a truly open platform where independent developers can bring their creations to the platforms where gamers actually play: everywhere."

Mad Catz' MOJO has also received a price drop, down to $199.99 from $249.99. All existing and upcoming Ouya software will be available on MOJO consoles starting later this spring.

Justin is all about his family and his gadgets. Follow him on MyIGN or on Twitter at @ItsTheLingo.

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Killzone: Shadow Fall Dev Addresses Multiplayer Resolution

Killzone: Shadow Fall developer Guerilla Games has addressed the controversy surrounding the game's resolution during multiplayer, promising to be more precise in future.

A blog post written by producer Poria Torkan explains that while single-player sees the game run at full 1080p, multiplayer runs at a native 960x1080 though is upscaled via an innovative technique that relies on previously calculated visual data.

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IGN NEWS

PS4 Sales Pass 6 Million Following Japanese Launch

"In both SP and MP, Killzone Shadow Fall outputs a full, unscaled 1080p image at up to 60fps," Torkan said. "Native is often used to indicate images that are not scaled; it is native by that definition.

“

We will do our best to be more precise with our language in the future.

"In multiplayer mode, however, we use a technique called 'temporal reprojection', which combines pixels and motion vectors from multiple lower-resolution frames to reconstruct a full 1080p image. If native means that every part of the pipeline is 1080p then this technique is not native.

"Games often employ different resolutions in different parts of their rendering pipeline. Most games render particles and ambient occlusion at a lower resolution, while some games even do all lighting at a lower resolution. This is generally still called native 1080p. The technique used in Killzone Shadow Fall goes further and reconstructs half of the pixels from past frames.

"We recognise the community's degree of investment on this matter, and that the conventional terminology used before may be too vague to effectively convey what's going on under the hood. As such we will do our best to be more precise with our language in the future."

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IGN NEWS

Killzone: Shadow Fall Sells 2.1 Million Copies

Whilst admitting "On occasion the prediction fails and locally pixels become blurry, or thin vertical lines appear," Torkan concludes by arguing, "The temporal reprojection technique gave subjectively similar results and it makes certain parts of the rendering process faster. This reduces controller lag and increases responsiveness, which improves the Killzone Shadow Fall multiplayer experience."

Yesterday, the first multiplayer DLC was revealed for the game, which is also planned to add a new single-player Elite difficulty.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Junior Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on Twitter.

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Da Vinci's Demons Exclusive: Meet the New Allies and Enemies Set for Season 2

With Da Vinci's Demons returning on March 22nd, IGN has your first look at the new characters fans can expect to meet in Season 2.

Leonardo da Vinci (Tom Riley) will be traveling to far off lands this season, as he searches for the fabled Book of Leaves and his mother's secret history, bringing him into contact with several new potential allies and enemies. You can learn much more in this exclusive behind-the-scenes video, which includes new footage from Season 2, along with interviews with the cast and series creator David S. Goyer.

02:00

Trailer

Da Vinci's Demons - Season 2 - Meet the New Characters

In addition, check out these photos and bios for the new Da Vinci's Demons characters.

Ima (Carolina Guerra)

The Inca High Priestess is as strikingly beautiful as she is formidable. Ima has an influence over her people that even the emperor, Topa Inca, doesn't possess.

Carolina Guerra as Ima in Da Vinci's Demons.

King Ferrante (Matthew Marsh)

Feared leader of one of the most powerful nations in Italy, King Ferrante’s known to proudly display the mummified corpses of his enemies. But an unlikely alliance proves to be a far more valuable addition to his collection.

Matthew Marsh as King Ferrante in Da Vinci's Demons.

Duke Alfonso (Kieran Bew)

As son of Ferrante and future king of Naples, Alfonso never loses sight of the power within his grasp. However, his own ambitions could be his biggest downfall if he impudently gets in the way of his overbearing father.

Kieran Bew as Duke Alfonso in Da Vinci's Demons.

Amerigo Vespucci (Lee Boardman)

A purveyor of curios, Amerigo does a lucrative business in securing exotica for the wealthy. His connections prove valuable to da Vinci and his friends, but he’s always looking for a way to profit, sometimes at their expense.

Lee Boardman as Amerigo Vespucci with Tom Riley and Greg Chillin in Da Vinci's Demons.

 

04:18

Interview

Da Vinci's Demons: IGN Chats with Da Vinci Himself - NY Comic Con 2013

Da Vinci's Demons: Season 2 begins March 22nd on Starz.

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