The First Pokémon GO Fest Exploded Like Voltorb, The World Ends With You is Ten, and the Rest of This Week's Headlines

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Let us wave our hankies at the month of July. Tootle-loo, July. You are truly the best month. I'm not just saying that because my birthday's in July. No bias here.

July's been a surprisingly busy month, thanks in no small part to the official announcement of the SNES Classic Edition – and the subsequent drama around the console, i.e. Wal-Mart putting up pre-orders and subsequently cancelling them. Sigh. It's gonna be a long August.

Thanks for joining us this week. If you couldn't visit daily, here are some headlines, reviews, and features you may have missed.

• Niantic's first Pokémon GO Fest was a hotter mess than a Magmar with food poisoning. Nothing worked (making it very hard to catch Lugia), leading some scorned Pokémon GO players to hit Niantic with a lawsuit. Why do people subject themselves to this kind of torment? Well, Pokemon GO is usually kind of fun.
• The trailer for the movie adaptation of Ready Player One dropped, and it's a whole lot of nothing, at least from our angle. Wait, didn't reviewers sing the praises of the Ready Player One novel when it dropped? Yeah. Matt remembers.
• Caty reviewed Pyre, Supergiant's newest game. It prompted her to look back on what might be Supergiant's masterpiece, Transistor.
• Speaking of reviews, I'm still rating the SNES Classic's menu game-by-game! A couple of very important games this week: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Mario Kart.
• Square-Enix's cult classic RPG, The World Ends With You, is ten years old! Kat reminisces about what makes the game special, and we invited Caty to discuss the game with us on this week's Axe of the Blood God podcast.
• Dragon Quest 11 is coming west in 2018, because God decided it's high time he sent us a sign that he can be merciful.
• Freelancer Brock Wilbur went hands-on with Uncharted: Lost Legacy. Here are the cool deets. Look for the game in August.
• Splatoon 2 is still hot, but what do you expect from a game universe with such hip and fashionable characters? The Eldritch horrors in Sundered are also awesome, but more in a "Oh my God" kind of way.
• On the topic of haunted things that will kill us all, never forget Mario's hat is coming to get you. Your time on this primitive mudball is almost up, fleshling.

Caty's review of Pyre reminded me of how awesome the soundtracks are for Supergiant's games, especially Bastion. I featured Setting Sail, Coming Home on Note Block Beat Box before it became part of Staring Screen, but heck it, here it is again for our Ending Credits tune.

Bastion Soundtrack - Setting Sail, Coming Home (End Theme)

Watch on YouTube

It's a bittersweet song for a bittersweet ending. No matter which path you choose at the end of your journey, someone's going to get left out in the cold. Well, that's life on a giant flying stronghold for you.