Weird Gaming News, February 2021 - Article
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 28 February 2021 / 2,921 Views
Another month has passed. The highlight of February for me was probably the release of Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection. There have been some really weird things happening in the gaming world too, from toddler terrorism to fruity gaming. I've put together a selection of the strangest stories I came across below.
4 Year Old Referred to Anti-Terrorism Scheme Over Fortnite
A four year old in the UK was referred to the government’s anti-extremism and terrorism scheme, called Prevent, after discussing Fortnite at an after school club. The original referral points to the child saying that his dad has “guns and bombs in his shed”.
Transcripts for the interview with the child later revealed that the comments were made in the context of the game Fortnite, however, and the police promptly dropped the investigation.
GameStop: The Movie
Remember when the internet went crazy over GameStonks? If not, it can be summed up as: Reddit users bought up GameStop stock to ruin the plans of Wolf of Wall Street-type short sellers. But I really don’t understand stocks and shares, so I could well be wrong there.
Anyway, Hollywood saw the opportunity to turn the two week drama into a film. In fact there are plans for at least five films and two TV shows according to The Verge.
Everything Was on Game Pass
A while back, Steam put Everything on sale. The company later had to clarify that Everything was a game called Everything, not literally everything on the storefront.
Not to be outdone, Xbox briefly had a storefront glitch that listed every single game and film as "Included on Game Pass". Unsurprisingly, and unfortunately for those who noticed the error before it was quickly amended, you couldn't actually download any of the non-Game Pass items for free - the price would appear if you tried to do so.
$3K Bounty Won for Beating the Credits
Super Smash Bros. games have always included a mini-game during the credits sequence, although sadly I’ve always sucked at them. Super Smash Bros. Melee has a first person shooter style mini-game, with 190 names from the credits that you have to try and blast.
Where's this all going? Well, a YouTuber called Nathaniel Bandy wondered if you could actually 100% the mini-game and hit every single name in the credits. He offered $3,000 to the first person who managed to post a verified video of the feat. And what do you know, it turns out you can! It took the eventual winner, Martin Zarate, 50 hours of training but he finally managed to do it and claimed the $3,000 bounty in the process.
Steam Launches in China
The PC gaming marketplace Steam has launched in China! That in itself isn’t particularly strange, but China has some very strict rules and games can only be added to Steam if they’ve cleared that list of rules.
How many games have cleared the complete list of rules and are now available on Steam in China? A grand total of 53... including DLC. To make matters worse the storefront also lacks all of the community features that western users take for granted, including forums.
It’s worth noting that users can actually access the international version of Steam in China, so for the time being at least Chinese users are certainly better off using that.
Hades Beaten With Pomegranate
Action RPG roguelike Hades launched last year to incredibly positive reviews across the board. When games receive that level of praise, most gamers stop asking "Should I play?" and start asking "How can I play?". As we've seen in previous articles in this series, this apparently then leads to a small group of people wondering if they can play the game using odd contraptions. This month's strange device? A pomegranate.
In fact Hades wasn't just played using a pomegranate but was actually completed using one. Pomegranates play a moderately important role in Hades, which gives an explanation as to why this particular fruit was chosen.
I shouldn't sound too surprised, after all some friends and I once wired everything up to a banana for no real reason at an indie games event.
Soulja Boy is 'Making' Another Console, Backed by Snoop Dogg
Famous rap star Soulja Boy is 'making' yet another video game console, following on from the huge success he had with his 2018 attempt. Here's a look at the new device:
Snoop Dogg even took to Instagram to share his interest in the new Soulja Boy console, after EA servers went down in a game he was playing (presumably a Madden title), saying:
“EA, you n***as got 30 minutes to get them servers back on. If y’all don’t, I’m switching to Soulja Boy… gettin’ me a Soulja Boy console. I know that n***a got some games on that muthafucker that work. Soulja Boy, hit your uncle up. Draco, you got Madden on your shit? ’Cause EA playing games … I done been hit by a thousand n***as … saying they want to play. What the fuck, man? Get it together. Get right, or get left. Soulja Boy, get Madden on your shit.”
It’s nice to see family looking out for one another.
That’s it for this month! Come back in March when I may just post a video of me crying because I’m behind on all my university work. You can check out January’s weird news here.
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How on earth is Hollywood going to make five (!) films out of a sudden stock rally? How desperate for new ideas must they be if they look over an event like this to consider it a movie plot, or even consider pouring serious time and effort into this, I just can't stop shaking my head.
The Wolf of Wall Street made $392 million on a $100 million budget and The Big Short made $133 million on a $28 million budget at the box office. Both were critically acclaimed and so influential, culturally speaking, that they are referenced still (whether in memes or discussions/quotes) all over the place. I think people absolutely have a fascination with the stock market, especially when it does something unique like the housing market bursting or the entire thing crashing. Now we have a David/Goliath situation that we just witnessed from a bunch of 30 something Reddit users taking on the big boys? Of course there should be a feature film and documentaries about that!
My only issue is it is STILL ongoing. We should wait to see how this is played out before anything is set in stone for the movie(s).
I would guess it's mostly to make money. Shocking, right?
