TODAY: Master Sword power-up coming to Super Mario Maker 2 — Former Westwood devs take another shot at the Command & Conquer: Renegade formula — New Gunfight modes in Modern Warfare

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Squash the bugs and save the world

Developer Slitherine has teamed up with Sony Pictures for real-time strategy game Starship Troopers – Terran Command, scheduled to launch on PC next year.

“If you take one of the most iconic movies from the 90s and shape it into a strategy game of survival, that mixes classic real-time mechanics, tower defense and tactical deployment of units then you have ‘Starship Troopers - Terran Command’ in a nutshell,” said Slitherine’s Iain McNeil.

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The game is based on the 1997 Paul Verhoeven adaptation of the Robert A. Heinlein novel – famous for its cheerfully dystopian tone and unisex showers – and will feature a campaign mode where the story and missions “develop according to your choices and achievements on the battlefield.”

If you stick to Terran Command's orders, you are rewarded with special units and abilities – but if you use your better judgement instead of following your superiors' occasionally suicidal edicts, you can become a true hero of the federation.

“When creating this game, we aimed to capture the essence of the original movie and its universe,” added McNeil. Belgian developer The Aristocrats have been quietly toiling away on the game for nearly 2 years already, and with a bit of luck they will have squashed all the bugs in time for the game's 2020 release.

Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?

Which of these characters is NOT a boss from the Metal Gear Solid Series

• Laughing Octopus
• Fatman
• The Sorrow
• Liquid Raven

The answer will be revealed in tomorrow's issue of DailyBits. Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss what the answer could be!

News Bits

Play as Link in Super Mario Maker 2

Super Mario Maker 2 will be updated once again on December 5th, featuring a bunch of new content: New course parts, a new game mode called ‘Ninji Speedruns’ and a bunch of new power-ups.

In addition to Spike, Pokey, Frozen Coin, P-Block and Dash Block there's a Master Sword power-up that transforms you into Link, who can swing his sword, block, throw bombs and shoot arrows to traverse all-new challenges.

P.T.’s Silent Hills rumoured to have had ‘real-world messages feature’

Rumour has it that the cancelled Kojima-helmed Silent Hills would have been able to contact the player in real-life with emails and text messages. Unfortunately, the project fell apart when Kojima left Konami, and all that ever saw the light of day was the now-legendary P.T. demo. Since then, the franchise has lain fallow, unless you count Konami's gambling machine adaptations – which is almost too horrible to conceive of.

Daily Fact

Tales of Phantasia didn’t have room for other people’s side of the story

Namco Bandai's Tales of Phantasia for Super Famicom was originally going to provide three different perspectives on the story. Unfortunately, this was 1995 and cartridges didn't have a lot of storage space, so they cut it down to Cress Albane's story. You could also play briefly as Rhea Scarlet, but her segment was considerably shorter than originally intended...

Wolf Team planned to let you play as Winona Pickford, who meets and follows the game's villain Dhaos, and sees him transition from idealism to brutality. Afterwards, the story would focus on Rhea Scarlet, recently orphaned by Dhaos' war effort before finally introducing Cress Albane. Since the developers had to compromise, the story ended up focusing on just Cress Albane.

Come and join the rest of the community and discuss today's fact on Twitter and Facebook.

Daily News

RTS/FPS Earthbreakers from former Westwood developers out in 2020

Petroglyph Games is working on a spiritual sequel to Command & Conquer: Renegade called Earthbreakers, scheduled for release in 2020.

Petroglyph is composed of former Westwood developers, clearly eager to do their old idea justice. The studio is already working on Command & Conquer remasters for EA, but Earthbreakers is their own IP and attempts to fuse real-time strategy with first-person shooting the way Command & Conquer: Renegade did.

It's not exactly the same game, of course: Petroglyph is modernizing the formula, adding more real-time strategy elements such as base building that allows you to recruit different types of soldiers and construct different vehicles and defenses, all fueled by a resource gathering system that replaces the classic Tiberium with Vilothyte.

Flame tank rushes for a new generation

Earthbreakers is set on Earth in 2060, where all-out global war has erupted as nations have collapsed and devolved into bickering city states, vying for control over Vilothyte. Earthbreakers will support up to 32 players per team, and features two different factions. It is scheduled to launch for PC in 2020.

Hideo Kojima would “start from zero” if he created Death Stranding 2

Death Stranding is a bona-fide success, and the question on everyone's lips is whether Kojima Productions will get to work on a sequel. After all, Kojima boasted that Death Stranding would spawn its own genre, and it feels only natural that he should cultivate its development. But will he? The answer, according to Kojima, is maybe.

If he were to make a follow-up, he “would start from zero” although he would be open to keep working with Norman Reedus again. Kojima kept the Metal Gear Solid series running for nearly 20 years, so he is no stranger to sequels.

The last word from Kojima was that he is looking into horror again, perhaps picking up the thread from his cancelled Silent Hill project, which was supposed to star Norman Reedus. Judging by fan interest in P.T., there is a lot of interest in a Kojima-led horror game.

’Death Stranding 2: Next Day Delivery’

Hideo Kojima recently talked to Vulture about his post-Konami work, revealing more about his past, such as his relationship to his mother. He apparently didn't tell her about breaking with Konami and starting his own company, as he didn't want to worry her – and that she passed away before he had a chance to tell her. Her death was one of the events that spurred Kojima to make a game where “...you are all connected with the people who are gone.”

Death Stranding will launch on PC in 2020, courtesy of 505 Games.

News Bits

More Gunfight for Modern Warfare

Infinity Ward is planning to add a 1v1 and 3v3 mode to Gunfight in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, according to tweets by Joe Cecot, co-design director for the game's multiplayer. Gunfight is currently a 2v2 mode with no respawns and random weapons, which leads to some pretty tense moments as players scramble to make the best of the situation at hand.

Switch has longer legs than expected

Analysts have run the numbers, and are shocked – as they always are when Nintendo exceeds expectations – to find that Switch is on track to buck all the trends. Consoles usually hit their peak at around the point the Switch is currently at, but “it looks like the Switch may have a longer life cycle,” according to analyst Kazunori Ito. Michael Pachter added that if Switch keeps shifting 20 million units per year, it will reach 100 million units sold in 2023 and could surpass the Nintendo Wii's lifetime sales of 101.63 million units.

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