Games

Many popular animated shows like Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, American Dad, South Park, and Rick and Morty likely wouldn’t exist without The Simpsons. So, the announcement of The Simpsons Movie 2 – twenty years after the first film – should have been a big event. However, the news came out quietly in mid-2025 with a release date of September 3, 2027, and hasn’t generated much excitement among fans. It’s unclear why that is, but it could be a worrying sign for the future of The Simpsons.

The challenges facing live service games are becoming widespread, even affecting popular titles like Fortnite. Recently, The Cube, Save Us, a promising new game, announced it will close its servers just weeks after its official launch. This points to deeper issues with the MMO game format itself, and the difficulties these games face in today’s crowded gaming market.

As a big Spielberg fan, everyone always talks about The Land Before Time, and rightfully so. But I think Monster House really deserves more love! It’s this fun, slightly spooky animated movie from 2006, directed by Gil Kenan and produced by Spielberg’s company, Amblin Entertainment. The story kicks off on Halloween night and follows a group of kids who realize the creepy, old house on their street is actually a living monster that… well, eats people! It’s become a real cult favorite over the years, and I was excited to see it recently hit Hulu to celebrate its 20th anniversary this year.

A user named Mayday______ shared a post about discovering a large collection of 1980s Kenner Star Wars figures in her mother-in-law’s attic. She’s been asked to sort and sell the figures, along with collections of Warhammer and Transformers toys. The toys are in remarkably good condition, and the user has previously shown a history of sorting and identifying Warhammer figures, which adds to the collection’s credibility. The collection includes some particularly valuable items, like two R2-D2 Pop-up Lightsabers (currently worth around $500 each) and a lot of accessories. The most valuable find is a Yak Face figure – one of the last 17 figures released, and worth approximately $700-800 if complete and in good condition.

Starfinder is a science fiction role-playing game created by Paizo, the same company behind Pathfinder. It’s set in a futuristic version of the Pathfinder universe. While Pathfinder released its updated rules in 2019, Starfinder just recently updated its ruleset in 2025, followed by a new adventure. Paizo has now revealed more details about its next adventure book for Starfinder 2e, and the approach will likely seem familiar to those who have followed the recent changes to Dungeons & Dragons.

Even well-made science fiction films can be confusing. While using clever concepts can make a movie seem smart, it can also make the story hard for most viewers to understand. This often leads to fans rewatching the film multiple times, trying to fully grasp the more complicated ideas the filmmakers included. Complexity isn’t always a flaw, but the following movies are so intricate that repeated viewings are almost required.

Animator Butch Hartman, creator of The Fairly Oddparents and Danny Phantom, recently shared that a crossover between his characters and those from SpongeBob SquarePants almost happened. Hartman, who was friends with SpongeBob creator Steve Hillenburg, proposed the idea to Nickelodeon. While Hillenburg was enthusiastic, Nickelodeon executives rejected it, wanting to keep both franchises separate. Hartman found this odd, as he had previously successfully done a crossover with Jimmy Neutron. You can watch a video about this reveal below.

The character experienced a successful revival with the release of Tomb Raider: Legend, though the game’s creators preferred to call it a reimagining rather than a reboot. Launched in North America on April 11, 2006, the game was a major success and breathed new life into the Tomb Raider series. Without it, Lara Croft might have faded into obscurity instead of becoming a prominent figure in the gaming world again.

It’s a comic book tradition: powerful weapons eventually get broken. Captain America’s shield has been damaged many times, and even mighty items like Mjolnir and the Infinity Gauntlet (though I still think of those powerful objects as ‘Gems,’ the movies have made ‘Gauntlet’ the standard) have been destroyed. Hercules’s Golden Mace was often said to be unbreakable, so naturally, it met its end. What makes its destruction interesting isn’t just that it happened, but who destroyed it: Wolverine. In Wolverine (Vol. 8) #18, Logan and Hercules fought, and the Golden Mace was broken in a conflict that was much larger than their personal battle.

The 1990s produced a lot of fantastic animated films that are still enjoyable today, but some great ones have faded from memory. While Disney films like The Lion King, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast were huge hits, other worthy animated movies were often overlooked. These hidden gems remain excellent to watch, even though they didn’t get as much attention when they first came out.