Epic Games has announced it is suing an individual from Illinois, named in its suit as one Isaac Strock, for allegedly stealing hundreds of Fortnite accounts which he then re-sold through Telegram.
An anti-cheat update from Epic links to the suit, filed on February 27, in which it alleges that Strock obtained access to the accounts through various means, including trying to “trick” Epic’s own support team, and even had the chutzpah to sell a guide to help others do the same.
“Strock takes control of other players’ Epic Games accounts through fraud,” says Epic’s filing. “Strock contacts Epic’s player support team and pretends to be the account holder of the account he is trying to steal … Epic has caught Strock attempting to deceive its player support team at least four times.”
The suit goes on to detail an alleged attempt on June 16, 2023 when Strock contacted Epic’s player support team to change the email on what he claimed was “my account,” providing certain information that ordinarily only the true account holder would have. Epic adds “another method of gaining access to players’ accounts is to find email address and password combinations for other, non-Epic-related accounts on the Internet (e.g., via dark web searches or data breaches), and attempt to log into Epic’s services with those credentials.”
Once Strock had gained access to accounts, Epic alleges “he sells it through an online message board or ‘channel’ on the Telegram platform.” The suit gives an example of one account sold on September 12, 2024, which had 146 skins and a small amount of V-Bucks and was sold for “$425 worth of Bitcoin.” On the day this account was put up for sale, Epic found it had been accessed from Strock’s IP address.
Fortnite’s regular high-profile collaborations means the game has over 2,000 character skins, most of which are paid-for, and some of which have seen their value rise considerably over time. (Image credit: Epic Games)
Strock’s personal website is also included in the suit, though it is now offline, on which he claimed to have sold 482 Fortnite-linked “products.” Epic further alleges Strock ran a Telegram channel where others sold illegally obtained Fortnite accounts, as well as his guide on how to manipulate Epic player support.
Epic says “Strock has sold access to hundreds of other players’ Epic Games accounts, boasting online about thousands of dollars in profits.”
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An important element of the suit is the EULA, which Strock has agreed to multiple times, and under which Epic prohibits the transfer of items and the buying or selling of accounts. Long story short, Epic alleges Strock was obtaining accounts through deception and profiting from it, as well as costing the developer time and money through its efforts to combat it, and of course defrauding the original account holder who loses everything. Strock is yet to respond.
Ariana Grande in Fortnite. (Image credit: Epic Games)
Epic has been on a tear against Fortnite cheaters and hucksters of all descriptions, and one of its most notable weapons is publicity: It is setting out to publicly name and shame these people where it can. Just last month we reported on a player who was caught cheating in a major Fortnite tournament, who as part of the settlement had to upload a video to their own YouTube admitting wrongdoing, donate his winnings to charity, publicly apologise, and then take a lifetime ban.
No one likes a cheater and, while companies obviously have to be careful about what behind-the-scenes information they share, Epic has clearly made a decision to be transparent where it can and let the huge Fortnite playerbase know when it’s fighting these battles.
Epic is also learning as it goes, recently instituting a “second chance” for first-time offenders, tweaking the hardware requirements for tournaments with cheaters in mind, and continuing to take action against any nefarious behaviour it finds. The sweet smell of justice: It’s enough to make you want to log in, don your Ariana Grande skin, and start doing the floss.
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Almost 30 years later, Suikoden 1 and 2 are still marvellous adventures that expertly combine supernatural shenanigans with the more worldly horrors of bloody war and the politics behind them, sprinkled with just enough silly minigames (cooking) and collectables (for the bath) to give them balance.
Need to know
What is it? Two classic RPGs given an inconsistent polish
Expect to pay: £44.99/$49.99
Release date: March 6, 2025
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Reviewed on: Intel Core i7-7700HQ, GTX 1070, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer? No
Steam Deck: Playable
Link: Official website
These remasters remain so close to the legendary originals I can follow old walkthroughs without making any adjustments, still finding the same items in the same treasure chests and the same friends in the same places. In Suikoden the people you form bonds with could be anything from ancient vampires to cape-wearing squirrels, and the series’ defining base-building feature encourages me to recruit as many of the 108 characters available per game as possible.
Even today, in a world of cinematic Final Fantasys and Falcom’s impossibly dense world building, these stories stand out. Both games effortlessly weave the personal and the political together; sometimes the greater good must be fought for at any cost, and sometimes it’s worth throwing it all away for a childhood friend. The retro-blunt nature of the text, everything short and to the point, only enhances these dramatic scenes. Every line has to serve a purpose, every villain encouraged to go straight for the throat, every heroic sacrifice more poignant because it’s played out before I’ve had a chance to process what’s happening.
The dozens of allies I assemble in each game don’t just fight alongside the lead characters in battle. They can also add new features to my home base: keeping hold of surplus items, setting up shop, even providing my own personal teleportation services. It’s as satisfying to see a wreck of a castle slowly turn into a fortress filled with heroes as it’s ever been, and each game’s relative brevity—these are stories comfortably cleared in 30 hours, not a bloated 300—means there’s always someone new to recruit just around the corner.
Or to fight in the game’s standard, duel, and army style battles.
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Few RPG villains are as shocking—or memorable—as Luca Blight(Image credit: Konami)
That’s a bit more than smoke, Kirkis.(Image credit: Konami)
Nanami’s a little bit pleased to see her brother’s safe(Image credit: Konami)
Regular fights are snappy and chaotic, often showing multiple characters from my handpicked team of six leaping into the fray at once. The view constantly shifts as this goes on, offering an exciting close-up of a critical hit or sneaky counterattack, or pulling back to give a powerful spell room to show off its full effect.
New to this collection is the ability to speed up these (and only these) standard encounters, although as this also speeds up the wonderful music to match I generally preferred to wait a few seconds longer for a bout to finish than subject my ears to ruined tunes.
Dramatic duels also pop up every now and then, tense rock-paper-scissors challenges where I have to guess what my opponent will do next based on their dialogue and react accordingly. On the opposite end of the scale are army battles, with thousands of soldiers mobilised at once. In Suikoden 1 these broadly follow the duel rules, but with the added ability to order sneaky allies to try and find out what the opponent will do next, or wise strategists to maximise the next attack. In Suikoden 2 these are more thoughtful strategy RPG style affairs where I move multiple units around a grid-based battlefield and command them to attack, defend, or perform some sort of special skill. More than simple variety, these disparate styles breathe life into both games’ conflicts, some things just too big or too important for a plucky one-size-fits-all RPG party to handle.
Who gets a slot in my standard group depends somewhat on the outcome of the large-scale skirmishes. Party members can die in army-sized battles—and only in army-sized battles—in both games, the difference between temporary defeat and permanent death nothing more than bad luck. It was a bad idea back in the ’90s and it’s disappointing to see it return unaltered.
And it’s sadly not the only obvious rough spot that hasn’t been polished out of these remasters.
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Suikoden 2’s redrawn backgrounds are often stunning(Image credit: Konami)
Remastered spells have a newfound oomph to them(Image credit: Konami)
Real vampires can’t resist playing an organ(Image credit: Konami)
The redone opening movies look nice and sharp(Image credit: Konami)
One semi-modern convenience that’s conspicuously absent from both games is the ability to save anywhere, or even just suspend the games at will so I can pick them up later. The best this collection has to offer is an extremely infrequent autosave system that only activates in rooms I can save in anyway. Seriously. It’s so useless it’s almost insulting.
Suikoden 1 in particular suffers from a lack of modern polish. That game’s menus are still as awkward as they were the first time around, featuring such irritating “highlights” as being able to rest or save but not rest and save, and the process of equipping freshly purchased armour then selling my old gear involves a ridiculous dance between the shopkeeper and my own inventory and back again. Suikoden 2 fixed both of these issues at the time, and retains its improvements in this remaster. Why couldn’t this 2025 collection extend to the kind of enhancements Konami already implemented back in 1998?
The first game is also conspicuously lacking the grander parts of the HD remaster’s graphical upgrades. In Suikoden 2 a burning massacre casts a warm bloom effect over pin-sharp sprites, and clear water ripples as it flows over a stony riverbed. A vampire’s castle is finally wrapped in the thick shadows it really should’ve had the first time around, and the 3D battlefields used for random encounters are packed with new flourishes that simply didn’t exist before.
Suikoden 1 was always the more graphically basic of the two games, but when subjected to the remaster treatment (which can’t be toggled off) its interiors tend to look sparse and sterile, lacking the clutter and dings that would distract from the sharp edges and make them appear more lived in. Shop counters are the same featureless ruler-straight slabs of brown they were five PlayStations ago, and everyone in the land seems to possess several copies of the exact same wooden stool within their relentlessly right-angled homes.
Other new features thankfully fare better. For the first time ever, Suikoden 1 and 2 have difficulty levels. Easy and normal can be switched between at will, while hard mode is an all-or-nothing game-long choice. And remembering what I’ve done and where I need to go next has never been easier, thanks to a conversation log that allows me to scroll through the last 100 lines, and then save any key pieces of information or helpful direction for later reference.
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Lean a little to the left? Or the right?(Image credit: Konami)
It needs a little work, but this is (eventually) home(Image credit: Konami)
All of the extras introduced in the Japanese PSP release are also included in some form, with diagonal movement the most substantial of the lot. It’s still clear these games weren’t created with it in mind, but these corner-cutting jogs are so convenient it doesn’t really matter. The PSP’s expanded widescreen locations make a comeback (including an odd decision in one area that makes it look like a castle wall is paper thin and propped up by support beams), as does the gallery, although the decision to allow me to listen to every piece of music from the start but only allow me to rewatch events I’ve already cleared after I’ve finished a whole game remains a bizarre one.
These are fantastic RPGs wrapped up in a middling remaster. Many of the new additions have simply been lifted straight from a 19-year-old PSP remake, and rarely address anything that seriously needed more care to improve. An inconsistent lick of paint that in one game highlights as many flaws as it hides and some additional difficulty levels really are the only significant unique features here, and surely not the best Konami could do for these incredible games.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Suikoden-12-are-still-the-fantastic-RPGs-I-played-decades.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-03-05 08:01:472025-03-05 08:01:47Suikoden 1&2 are still the fantastic RPGs I played decades ago, but now they’re wrapped up in a middling HD remaster
Civilization 7‘s “first major update” dropped for PC and consoles today, and for one thing it brings those two versions back into alignment, which has allowed Firaxis to re-enable crossplay.
The biggest feature change in the 1.1.0 update is a rebalancing of the Geographic Society legacy path that makes it “harder for players to breeze through” if they’re the only ones pursuing it. AI leaders will also be generally better at pursuing a cultural victory.
Civ 7’s 1.1.0 update makes other AI and balance tweaks, fixes bugs, and addresses some UI problems—complaints about the UI have been a big contributor to Civ 7’s “mixed” Steam rating—but it’s not a giant overhaul in one go, just the start of many patches to come.
Civ 7 hasn’t been a disaster or anything—we gave it a 76% in our review—but the glowing reception that greeted Civ 5 and Civ 6 has been withheld by most, and some were hoping to see a longer list of patch notes today, judging by the subreddit’s comments.
Firaxis previously delayed Civ 7’s first in-game event, which was originally going to come with this patch, to allow “more time to prioritize quality-of-life improvements.”
One thing the studio presumably couldn’t delay was the first part of the paid DLC package promised in Civ 7’s special editions. With this patch, Ada Lovelace, Great Britain, Carthage, and a set of natural wonders are now available for owners of the Crossroads of the World Collection, which came with those special editions or can be purchased separately for $30.
This update does also add a natural wonder for free: the Bermuda Triangle. It’s an interesting choice for a game whose map is made of hexagons. It’d be cool if planes and ships had a chance of sinking when crossing the tile, but there are no details in the patch notes. Guess we’ll have to try it and see?
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Although this isn’t a monstrous patch, I trust Firaxis to address the biggest UI and bug complaints as it continues to work on the game. The next big Civ 7 patch, update 1.1.1, is coming on March 25, and will add features such as the much requested “restart” button. Beyond that, Firaxis says it’s working on additional UI improvements, a “one more turn” button so the game doesn’t have to end when the Modern Age ends, new map sizes, mod tools, and more.
This blog post contains more details about the Civ 7 roadmap.
The bigger question for me is what major gameplay features we might see added or fleshed out in the future, and how many will come in paid expansions vs free updates. More than a few people think religion, trade, and espionage could use expansion in Civ 7, and it really feels like there should be at least one more age after the Modern Age.
See the full Civilization 7 1.1.0 patch notes on Steam or below:
New features
Modern Age Geographic Society updates:
Natural History Mastery now grants Explorers +1 Sight and the ability to gain artifacts from Natural Wonders.
Completing Future Civic now grants +1 Artifact in the Modern Age.
Completing Hegemony Civic now grants +1 Artifact when an Explorer researches Artifacts.
Explorers have had their cost increased now that Artifacts can be acquired from more sources.
Explorers can no longer create a new Dig site on top of an existing Dig site.
The Continents lens has been updated to show Natural Wonders that can provide Artifacts.
Hegemony has switched places with Militarism and now requires Nationalism and Globalism.
Increased the number of Artifacts that are spawned on Tiny maps.
Holy Cities can now be converted. Note that when players create their own Missionary Units, they will always follow the player’s chosen Religion.
Leaders & Civs
Leaders
Napoleon, Emperor**: Napoleon, Emperor can no longer reject Sanctions for free.
Civs
America: America now receives +2 Resource slots upon constructing their Unique Quarter.
Buganda: Adjusted Nyanza Civic Effect for Modern Buganda to award +1 Happiness and +1 Culture on Quarters adjacent to Rivers or Lakes.
Meiji Japan: Added +1 Resource slots to the Zaibatsu Unique Quarter.
Siam: Increased cost of Siam’s Itsaraphab action to be 50% more than the standard Befriend Independent action.
Siam: Addressed a reported issue where Siam was sometimes not properly unlocked in the Modern Age after unlocking them during the Exploration Age.
Gameplay
AI
AI will now perform better at completing the Modern Cultural Legacy Path, by gaining Artifacts from Natural Wonders, researching at Museums/Universities, completing Civics, etc. (No more AI explorer stacks of doom!)
Addressed a reported issue where the AI would sometimes fail to spend all of their points during an Advanced Start setup.
Economy
Oil Rigs now benefit from Warehouse bonuses granted by the Ironworks and Combustion Tech Masteries.
City Patron Pantheon effect decreased from +3 to +2 Influence on Altars.
In-progress Buildings that are instantly granted to the player will now auto-complete.
Diplomacy
Sanctions can now be used at Neutral Relationship and their cost will decrease as the Relationship gets more hostile.
Crises
Addressed a reported issue with Revolutions Crisis applying more Unhappiness in Settlements than stated.
Military
Naval Units can now disperse Independent Powers.
Refinements made to the Army Unpacking action. Players now have the option to select the Commander hex when choosing an unpack direction. Doing so will unpack the strongest unit in the Commander Unit’s hex and arrange any remaining Units on adjacent hexes based on the current facing direction of the Commander. If the player indicates a direction to unpack by selecting an adjacent hex, the strongest Unit will unpack in that direction, with the next strongest Unit unpacking on the Commander hex. Remaining Units will then unpack on adjacent hexes based on the unpack direction.
Addressed a reported issue with Harassment promotion unintentionally stacking too high.
Addressed a reported issue with incorrect Bombard strength being used for Garde Imperial and Sepoy Unique Infantry Units.
Duplicate Aerodrome Commanders should no longer appear when conquering a Settlement in the Modern Age.
A “ghost” Unit (or multiple Units of any class) can no longer be created when Units are deployed by an AI Commander Unit during normal gameplay.
Natural Wonders
Added Bermuda Triangle Natural Wonder for all players.
Memento Balance
We have made many changes to Mementos to make more of them feel like viable choices. Some Mementos were overshadowing Leader and civ abilities and needed to be toned down, while others were not quite impactful enough to take often.
All-T’oqapu Tunic: Now grants +1 Sight for Scouts adjacent to Mountains (was +3 Sight).
Altar Set: Now grants +1 Culture from Specialists (was +1 Culture and Gold from Specialists).
Chalcedony Seal: Now grants +1 Culture and Gold for Unique Buildings and Improvements (old effect: “+3 Culture and Gold for Unique Buildings and Improvements if you have 3 or more Unique Buildings or Improvements”).
Crown of Napoleon: Now grants 200 Gold per Age when a Formal War is declared against you (was 100 Gold per Age).
Dong Son Drum: Declaring a Formal War against another Civilization grants a Tech Boost (old effect: “Declaring War against another Civilization grants a Celebration”).
Eagle Banner: Now Cities gain +2% Science per Great Work on Display, Max 20% (old effect: “Cities gain 5% bonus Science Efficiency per Great Work they contain, Max 25%”).
Great Imperial Crown: Now grants +2 Science per Age on Towns in Tundra. (old effect: “Cities gain +5% Science per Great Work on Display, Max 25%”).
Imago Mundi: Now grants +2 Sight instead of +1 for Scout’s Search and Lookout abilities (was +3 Sight).
Joyeuse: Now grants +2 Happiness for every Cavalry Unit (old effect: “+2 Happiness per Age for every Cavalry Unit”).
Merchant’s Saddle: Now grants +1 Movement for Scouts, Merchants, Settlers, and Explorers (old effect: “+1 Movement and Sight for Scouts, Merchants, and Settlers”).
Padrón Real: Now grants +2 Happiness per Age on Natural Wonders (old effect: “+100% yields on Natural Wonders, if you are working the most Natural Wonder tiles. +2 Combat Strength for Naval Units if you are not”).
Queen’s Jewelry: Now grants +2 Gold per Age on Natural Wonders (old effect: “+2 Gold on Natural Wonders”).
Uraeus: Now grants +10% Culture in Cities with at least 1 Wonder (old effect: “+10% Culture if you have the most Wonders. +10% Production towards constructing Wonders if you do not”).
Memento Text Updates
Diamond Throne: +1 Happiness per Age on Quarters during a Celebration. (Previously read: “During a Celebration, +1 Happiness per Quarter per Age.”)
Lotus Blossom: Gain Science and Culture per turn equal to 4% of your Gold income. (Previously read: “+4% of your Gold income as additional Science and Culture.”)
Yata no Kagami: Gain 20 Culture per Age at the start of every Celebration. (Previously read: “+20 Culture per Age at the start of every Celebration.”)
UI
Text changes
Updated Maya’s K’uh Nah Unique Building text to state +3 Science instead of +4 Science.
Updated text for the following to reflect changes received in a previous patch:
Majapahit – Nusantura Civic: Exploration Age Culture Buildings receive a +1 Culture Adjacency for Coast.
America – Steel Mill: +6 Production. Gold Adjacency for Resources and Wonders. American Unique Production Building. Ageless.
Prussia – Ruhr Tier 1 Civic Tree Improvement: All Buildings gain a +1 Production Adjacency for Navigable Rivers.
Notifications
The “Not enough gold in treasury” message now correctly appears when attempting to purchase an item the player cannot afford.
Alignment & spacing
The lines connecting the Tech and Civic trees now align properly with their respective nodes
Tooltips
Unit action tooltips now stay within screen boundaries.
General
The Victory Achieved popup now takes you to the correct Civilopedia page if it is the final milestone, and the correct tab in the victory progress screen otherwise.
Descriptions for a civ’s Unique Units will no longer mention their Tier when loading into the game.
Social Policies and Crisis Policies can now be slotted separately when you unlock both on the same turn. This had previously made the screen appear stuck when either table had an empty slot.
The Plot cursor effect should now be more visible during a Growth Event or when placing a Building.
Selecting Factory Resources no longer highlights invalid slots.
A new icon for Natural Wonders in the Continent lens has been added, so it’s easier for players to see where to dig up Modern Age Artifacts.
Updated and Improved the Leader Attribute Menu.
Leader portraits now properly update when Relationships change during gameplay.
Scrollbars now properly respond to mouse wheel input.
Addressed a reported issue where enabling or disabling lenses would hide Resource icons.
Addressed a reported issue where Resources were unable to be assigned to their origin City after being unassigned.
Narrative
Narrative Events
Addressed various reported issues that were occurring on some Narrative Events.
Quests
Addressed a reported issue where the Great Library III Legacy Path Quest wasn’t completing if an Academy Building was purchased.
Addressed reported issues with incorrectly displayed quest text.
Loading screen
Corrected typos and other loading screen text issues.
Miscellaneous
Added additional Audio for various UI events, including First Meet diplomatic events.
The correct citizen character set is now being displayed for Korean Independent Powers.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/1741132673_The-first-big-Civilization-7-update-is-available-now.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-03-04 22:55:492025-03-04 22:55:49The first big Civilization 7 update is available now
AC Shadows, acho que terá um potencial enorme e que vai valer apena toda esta espera, porque na minha opinião eles estão focados em trazer um jogo para ficarmos pasmados, pela sua história, pela jogabilidade, pelo seu grafismo.. eles não querem trazer apenas mais um jogo da saga AC, eles querem que nós possamos jogar e dizer no fim valeu apena!
Não percam a partir de 20 de Março Assassin’s Creed Shadows 😁
Espero que gostem, deixem o like, subscrevam, partilhem e ativem as notificações para não perder nenhum episódio!!!
Segue-me nas redes sociais 📲
LINKS TEMPORARIAMENTE APENAS NA PÁGINA PRINCIPAL DO CANAL!
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/family-thats-what-i-need-assassinscreedvalhalla-assassinscreed-acvalhalla-eivor-valhalla.jpg7201280DecayeD20https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngDecayeD202025-03-04 14:07:512025-03-04 14:07:51family thats what i need #assassinscreedvalhalla #assassinscreed #acvalhalla #eivor #valhalla #odin
Back when Qualcomm first announced the Snapdragon X Arm-based chip for PC, it made big claims about gaming prowess, including supposedly “testing and optimising” the chip with no fewer than 1,200 games. Well, we’re still waiting for gaming on Arm to be a real goer, but apparently Qualcomm already has a follow-up chip coming, the Snapdragon X2 with up to 18 CPU cores.
The existing Snapdragon X comes with up to 12 CPU cores in Snapdragon X Elite models. So, the rumoured uplift to 18 cores according to WinFuture (via WCCFtech) is plausible.
The cores are said to be Oryon V3 spec. Presumably that indicates the third generation of the Oryon CPU architecture, which is roughly analogous to the various generations of Zen CPU designs from AMD.
It’s also thought that this new chip could be part of Qualcomm’s plan to move onto the desktop with its Arm chips, which have been restricted to mobile PCs thus far. That effort, allegedly codenamed “Project Glymur” would no doubt benefit from a CPU with even higher core counts.
The new chip is further said to implement SiP or System in Package technology, which could see both RAM and storage integrated into the CPU package. That’s actually something that would be more beneficial for mobile form factors in terms of packaging, but no doubt the main SoC could be used for both desktop and mobile with different packaging.
All that said, for gaming much of this is academic. The CPU cores in the existing Snapdragon X chips are arguably plenty performant enough. The problem is software support and graphics performance.
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In basic terms, either Qualcomm needs to convince game devs to port their wares directly for the Snapdragon architecture or it needs to do a much better job of emulation. Neither is a simple task.
Meanwhile, this rumour makes no mention of any update to the Snapdragon X’s Adreno iGPU. If anything needs an upgrade for the next gen of Snapdragon to make gaming more compelling, it’s the Adreno iGPU, not the CPU cores.
On paper, the Adreno iGPU is pretty powerful, bettering the raw performance of the Steam Deck, for instance. In practice, the results are patchy, with too many games either crashing outright or suffering very low minimum frame rate dips, making games feel glitchy and buggy.
As it happens, it might end up being Nvidia’s entry into the Arm chip market that eventually makes gaming on a Qualcomm SoC viable. If anyone can get games running well on Arm chips, it’ll be Nvidia.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/1741096609_Next-gen-Snapdragon-X2-chip-rumoured-to-pack-18-cores-and.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-03-04 12:44:392025-03-04 12:44:39Next-gen Snapdragon X2 chip rumoured to pack 18 cores and a new CPU architecture, but we’re still waiting for gaming to really be a goer on the original Snapdragon X
Some of my most cherished early videogame memories are of playing Yu-Gi-Oh games as a grade schooler while understanding about 10% of the rules. I tried to revisit the game once I was older, but found its head-spinning, combo-centric gameplay a mite too head-spinning and combo-centric. I liked Yu-Gi-Oh because I could play Dark Magician and he looked really sick, and there were big numbers on his card, but the modern whippersnapper’s Yu-Gi-Oh has added all these layers of complexity that my geriatric mid-twenties brain can’t reckon with. What I really need is a videogame where I can relive the glory days in peace; or better yet, fourteen of them.
If you’re a luddite like me or just a nostalgia-riddled superfan, you too might get a kick out of Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection, a collaboration between Konami and videogame documentarians Digital Eclipse. It spans the early history of Yu-Gi-Oh!’s forays into a digital space, emulating a variety of Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games. It might be hard to picture now, but there was a time when Yu-Gi-Oh! was as ubiquitous as Pokémon in comic shops and on middle school cafeteria tables, with every kid in the know craving a Duel Disk and trying to make sense of Yugi Matou’s weird purple hair spikes.
Back in its heyday, this popularity scored it a number of straight-up digital adaptations, as well as RPGs and even board games that take the concept and run with it. Not every game on offer in the Early Days Collection is a firecracker, but there are some standouts that haven’t been accessible for over a decade at this point, and some which are available outside of Japan for the first time.
Perhaps the most notable standout is Eternal Duelist Soul, a straightforward card battle simulator for the GBA that adapts the rules pretty faithfully and lets you go head-to-head with a bunch of AI-controlled characters from the anime, collecting cards as you rack up wins. It’s the one I’m most interested in returning to after sampling the smorgasbord of games on offer, but I was also fascinated by Dungeon Dice Monsters, a bizarre board game spinoff involving dice pools and a 50-page instruction manual.
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(Image credit: Konami)
(Image credit: Konami)
(Image credit: Konami)
(Image credit: Konami)
(Image credit: Konami)
(Image credit: Konami)
Admittedly, the collection feels a bit quantity over quality, with a lot of the other games getting mixed reception in their day and faring no better now, but it’s a massive slice of Yu-Gi-Oh! from a simpler time, which is sure to find its niche.
As far as the feature list goes, it’s rock solid and pretty standard if you’ve played Digital Eclipse’s other retro buffets. There’s customizable borders, cheats, time rewinding, save states, a digital gallery with some deliciously old-school artwork, and a small suite of visual screen filters in case you want to pretend your OLED monitor is a CRT displaying an emulated version of a GBA game on your PC. How retro!
(Image credit: Konami)
There’s also online play, but so far it’s only for one game: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4: Battle of Great Duelists (if you’re curious how many times the word “duel” appears in these games’ titles, the answer is 10 times). It makes some sense: you don’t want to split what will probably be a modest playerbase over a dozen titles, and Digital Eclipse has shared that multiplayer will be added to other titles over time, but it’s a bit disappointing that most of these games have a head-to-head mode and only one of them can be played online. It makes it sting all the more that local multiplayer is cordoned off when it does appear, meaning that if you do want to replay some of the old games’ versus modes as they would have functioned back in the day, you’ll have to track down a Game Boy.
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Beyond this, the collection’s biggest downside is simply that it doesn’t not Yu-Gi-Oh! in its videogame prime. This skips over 2001’s exceptional The Duelists of the Roses—and home console games in general, for that matter—and with its lack of tutorialization and archaic mechanics, is a poor gateway to the card game compared to Duel Links or Master Duel.
The collection is robust, runs well, and delivers exactly what it says on the tin. If you’re motivated by nostalgia,or just want to play a legacy version of the card game online against friends, you could do a lot worse than the Early Days Collection. But if you’re looking to dive into things for the first time or play a bunch of excellent card-battler RPGs, you’ll be better served elsewhere.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/1741060556_This-Yu-Gi-Oh-retro-collection-transported-me-to-a-simpler-time.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-03-04 01:46:402025-03-04 01:46:40This Yu-Gi-Oh! retro collection transported me to a simpler time in TCGs, before Pot of Greed was banned and the Avengers were in Magic: The Gathering
The dust has begun to settle on AMD’s RX 9000-series announcement, and I’ve finally had the chance to sit back and look over some of the footage in more detail, rather than scrambling to write about the impressive pricing of the new cards.
And while I’m definitely jubilant about the idea of serious competition in the mid-range GPU market, I can’t help but notice that AMD’s Toyshop tech demo showed some artifacting that makes me more than a little concerned about some of AMD’s image quality-enhancing tech.
AMD says Toyshop is stuffed with cutting-edge graphics tech, including path tracing, neural super sampling denoising, and ReStir lighting computation techniques. It follows a little robot in its journey around, what else, a toy shop, before it makes its way out into a futuristic street filled with fast-moving flying cars. It should be an impressive tech demo of just how far AMD has come with graphics technology in order to compete with Nvidia’s offerings—but in parts, I have to admit it made me wince.
For a start, there’s a lot of ghosting. In the fast moving car section, it’s tempting to write off some visible artifacts as egregious use of motion blur, but zooming in on screenshots from the footage reveals some serious visual errors.
In the shot below, take a close look at the red building in the background. There’s a lot of blurry pixel smearing on an object that is otherwise supposed to be static. Then allow your eyes to move towards the green car in the foreground, with speckled, noisy artifacts on the interior and indistinct, edge-smeared headlights, before finally coming to rest on the green car in the top right quarter of the shot—which appears to be, err, glitching through time.
(Image credit: AMD)
I would assume that FSR 4 was involved in the running of this particular demonstration, given that all the visual doohickeys have been turned up to 11. Seeing all the artifacting introduced here I can only hope that it was perhaps running in some sort of Performance mode as a potential explanation for some of the issues, although that’s pure guesswork on my part.
Nevertheless, I happened to be glancing at the YouTube chat window when this demo was unveiled, and it was full of people noticing the very same things I did—it’s simply full of visual errors, and even streaming compression can’t hide them.
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The scene with the robot staring (briefly) into the mirror at around 0:34 reveals some shimmering in the reflection as it turns and flies towards the camera, making me wonder if it was deliberately scripted to block the shot to prevent more ray tracing nasties from making an appearance. And, at the end of the video, there’s a very, very brief shot of some foliage surrounding a gate. Apologies all, but I’m very quick with the screenshot capture button:
(Image credit: AMD)
Eeesh. Ignore the ticker-tape like effect and the black elements on the right hand side of the screenshot, as that’s a transition towards the AMD logo at the end. Look to the left, and you get a clear idea why AMD might want to quickly move on.
All in all, for something that was supposed to be a triumphant demonstration of AMD’s prowess with graphical rendering, it really didn’t impress me in the way I might have hoped. You don’t need me to analyse it frame by frame to know that there are artifacts here that don’t bode well for image quality with the new cards.
And that makes me wonder. While price to performance ratios are very important in deciding which graphics card to go for in a new generation, Nvidia has traditionally been able to beat AMD over the head with its superior image quality, especially thanks to DLSS.
And now DLSS 4 is here, with impressive visuals, relatively minimal artifacting and Multi Frame Generation, I wonder how many people will favour Nvidia once more if AMD loses out when it comes to image quality. Especially now they can potentially quadruple their frame rate with minimal quality loss if they pick an RTX 50-series card.
Still, this is merely a short demo. I’ll be testing out DLSS 4 versus FSR 4 (and all the new AMD image quality upgrades) myself at the earliest opportunity to perform a more in-depth analysis, and I’m very intrigued to see what AMD has been cooking. By the looks of this demo, however, my expectations in general have been tempered—and that might be cause for concern for potential buyers of the otherwise-impressive looking RX 9070-series cards.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/1741024496_The-RX-9070-series-cards-look-impressive-but-AMDs-Toyshop-tech.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-03-03 17:34:452025-03-03 17:34:45The RX 9070-series cards look impressive, but AMD’s Toyshop tech demo shows some ghosting and artifacting that’s had me scratching my head
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