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SEGA’s 60th Brings Big News, backwards-compatible Classics

TODAY: Famitsu has Sega news as important as the next-gen console announcements — Season 4 will bring new weapons to Call of Duty Warzone — Now you can finally play Doom in VR wherever you go

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Top Story

Thousands of classics are backwards-compatible with Xbox Series X

Backwards-compatibility is a bit of a holy grail for console owners, since it would allow them to keep playing their old games on next-generation consoles – and Microsoft claims Xbox Series X will finally be fully backwards-compatible.

In a new Xbox blog update, Microsoft’s Jason Ronald says that they have completed “100,000 hours of play testing already,” and that “thousands of games” are “already playable on Xbox Series X today, from the biggest blockbusters to cult classics and fan favorites.” He added that “switching between generations is seamless.”

All native: “Backwards compatible games run natively on the Xbox Series X hardware, running with the full power of the CPU, GPU and the SSD. No boost mode, no downclocking, the full power of the Xbox Series X for each and every backward compatible game.” Older games can also be enhanced with “significant reductions in in-game load times from the massive leap in performance”.

No extra work: He secifically mentions all Xbox One games “and earlier” working on Xbox Series X. The new Quick Resume feature should also support legacy games, and all this and more can happen with “no additional work from title developers.” Read the whole update to learn more.

Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?

Which vital mechanic was removed from the US version of Resident Evil?

  • Auto-AimTargeting
  • Herb Mixing
  • Ink Ribbons
  • Item Boxes

The answer will be revealed at the bottom of today’s issue. Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss what the answer could be.

Daily Fact

Pokémon Sun & Moon celebrated the series’ 20th anniversary with changes

Pokémon Sun & Moon for Nintendo 3DS marked the Pokémon franchise’s 20th anniversary. It was game director Shigeru Ohmori’s debut on a new generation of titles, and he introduced Trials & Totem Pokémon to replace Pokémon gyms and help tie the game to the tropical Aloha region.

The character Sophocles had another nod to the series’ 20th anniversary: a T-shirt with a picture of a Game Boy with a link cable attached. The early Game Boy games like Pokémon Blue & Red required a physical cable for trading, later replaced by wireless connections that made trading much easier and more accessible.

Join up with our community on Twitter and Facebook to discuss today’s fact.

SEGA Announcement

Japanese magazine Famitsu will publish big Sega news next week

Something is clearly brewing, since Famitsu journalist Zenji Nishikawa claims to have a scoop as big as Wired’s PlayStation 5 exclusive.

Whatever the big story might be, it’ll be published in the June 4th issue of Weekly Famitsu, and Nishikawa mentioned Sega during a live stream. When asked for clarification, he said, “Did I say Sega? Then it’s Sega.” He said that the scoop is not related to the Dreamcast, so don’t expect any Dreamcast Mini.

Exclusive scoop: “My column in next week’s issue of Famitsu is crazy. I got a huge scoop… It’s a world premiere article. And an exclusive. It may not be Nikkei or Weekly Bunshun, but if you want to know if it’s a scoop that big…it totally is! It’s a scoop from a game company that everyone loves. An insane scoop,” Nishikawa boasted.

60 years of Sega: “…it’s OK for me to tease it (laughs). I was told that it’s OK to do so at various meetings. It’s being talked about in other places. Just not by the media. It’ll rile up the games industry.” It’s probably not a coincidence that Sega’s 60th anniversary – which the company has been celebrating all year – is on June 3rd.

Call of Duty Season 4

Call of Duty: Warzone season 4 trailer confirms previous weapon leaks

A list of new weapons for Call of Duty Warzone leaked recently, and the Season 4 teaser confirms that the leak was accurate. The teaser mostly highlighted events from earlier seasons.

Avid fans might notice two new weapons: The Galil Ace assault rifle and the Kriss Vector submachine gun. Dataminers already found references to the weapons when digging through patches, suggesting they would be added soon.

Data-mining: The community paid close attention to the new guns to find out what attachments and ammunition they would support, as well as their overall stats. The Galil Ace will use 7.62x39mm rounds like the AK-47, while the Vector Kriss will be called Fennec and use .45 ACP rounds.

Price is right: The leak also revealed that the mid-season weapon is a sniper rifle called Rytec AMR, based on the XM109. Five new maps are also expected in Season 4: Garden, Broadcast, Oil Rig, Scrapyard and Harbour. Fan favorite Captain Price will be the season’s main operator.

VR Bits

Sorcery Update for Blade and Sorcery

After a few delays, WarpFrog is finally ready to launch the biggest Blade and Sorcery update to date: The Sorcery Update. Magic has taken a backseat to swordplay in Blade and Sorcery, but all that’s changing now. The update is adding lightning, gravity and fire spells.

The team has also redesigned the UI, added a new map and revamped the armour system as well as the bow and arrow. Check out the changes on Steam and get ready for launch on June 4th.

QuestZDoom launches for Quest

Now you can finally play Doom on the go in VR thanks to the tireless efforts of the QuestZDoom team. QuestZDoom is an engine port for Quest which allows players to enjoy most popular Doom mods.

You’ll need to provide your own Doom wads, but the games go on sale all the time, so that shouldn’t present any problems. The official trailer shows off features like room-scale support, but beware: Doom is a very fast-paced game and inveterate VR users might get motion sickness.

Valve add liquid physics to Half-Life: Alyx in latest update

Valve isn’t finished with Half-Life: Alyx just yet, and the latest addition is proper liquid inside the game’s bottles, which sloshes around in a most satisfying manner when you shake them.

That doesn’t sound so important, but considering the amount of bottles littered around the game world, it makes sense. Valve’s visual effect developer Matthew Wilde has worked on the effect while in lockdown, and just posted a minute-long video showing off his real-time liquid simulation.

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What Else Happened Today?

Quiz Answer - Did You Get It Right?

Which vital mechanic was removed from the US version of Resident Evil?

Answer: Auto-Aim Targeting!

Can you even imagine a classic Resident Evil game without auto-aim? That’s what yanks who played the original version had to deal with!

That’s even weirder when you consider that the Japanese version featured auto-aim, and the reason for that is literally a blast from the past: According to Shinji Mikami, it was thanks to the American game rental industry. Removing auto-aim made the game harder, and that made it more likely that players who rented the game would have to rent it more than once to manage to finish it.

This wasn’t a concern in Japan, where videogame rental was practically unheard of. The Director’s Cut and Dualshock versions brought back auto-aim, so if you remember the first game being inexplicably hard, that’s all thanks to Blockbuster.

Today’s issue of DailyBits was written by Gavin Herman, Erlend Grefsrud, Simon Priest, Christian Vaz and Jamie Davey.