Games

Despite some disappointments, the years 2021-2026 still produced some fantastic X-Men stories. Here are five of the best, quickly becoming favorites among fans.

The Backrooms started as an idea on the online forum 4chan in 2019. It’s a fictional, endlessly large place of empty rooms that people become trapped in by seemingly phasing through walls – a phenomenon called “no-clipping.” The concept began with a photo of a Wisconsin toy store being renovated, shared on a paranormal-themed board. Users were asked to share unsettling pictures of empty locations. One user described the original photo, unknowingly creating the name and legend of “The Backrooms.” They described it as a place filled with the smell of damp carpet, unsettling yellow tones, the constant hum of fluorescent lights, and countless empty rooms – a truly inescapable space.

Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman recently discussed the future of their Spider-Man movies on the podcast The Town. When asked about potentially revisiting the interconnected Spider-Verse storyline, he confirmed they plan to do so, but with a complete reboot. This means a fresh start with a brand new cast and no connections to previous films. Rothman didn’t share many specifics about the project.

As a PlayStation fan, I just noticed a really cool update! Sony is now showing the original launch price of games right on their PlayStation Store pages. It’s great to be able to see how much a game cost when it first came out, especially when it’s on sale now. They’re rolling this out to everyone worldwide as we speak!

Okay, so the trailer showed this crazy scene after a fight – wreckage and pieces of a squad floating in the water. Then, these enemy robots show up, and our guy, the Rook, just drops down and starts scavenging through the debris. But get this – one of the wrecked bots, a Destroyer, was still alive! The Rook had to blast it, which of course, alerted the other robots. It looks like our guy had to bail, maybe to come back and loot again later.

As The Boys has developed, it’s made significant changes to its own rules and how things look on screen. For instance, the character Stormfront, originally a Nazi villain in the comics, was reimagined as a modern extremist played by Aya Cash, and Madelyn Stillwell was turned into a more complex, manipulative mother figure. The show also created entirely new storylines, like Becca Butcher surviving and the introduction of her son, Ryan. A major shift occurred when the show stopped the main characters from routinely using Compound V, making them vulnerable outlaws instead of government-backed superheroes. Despite these changes, the core personalities of the show’s main characters have stayed surprisingly true to their original form.

A new anime project called One Piece: Heroines was announced, originally based on a spinoff novel focusing on the series’ popular female characters. However, it’s now been confirmed that this will be a single, special episode. The episode will tell a unique story about Nami and is scheduled to air on July 5, 2026.

Will Wright’s city-building game, SimCity, first launched in 1989 and quickly became a beloved franchise. It remained popular throughout the 1990s and is still available on many devices today. Several spin-off games followed, with The Sims, released in 2000, becoming the most successful. The Sims rapidly gained popularity, eventually surpassing the original SimCity in terms of development and attention. This success isn’t surprising, as The Sims essentially recreates the experience of reality TV – a genre that was also becoming incredibly popular around the same time.

The popularity of superhero movies has opened the door for other comic books and graphic novels to be adapted into films. While superheroes still dominate these adaptations, titles like the memoir My Friend Dahmer, the fantasy adventure Nimona, and the horror story The Empty Man have all made it to the big screen. This might make it seem like any comic book could become a blockbuster movie, but that’s not really the case. Some stories work perfectly as comics and simply wouldn’t translate well to film.

Blizzard announced a new Overwatch game for mobile devices on February 24th, called Overwatch Rush. The company described it as a completely new game designed specifically for mobile players. They released a nearly four-minute video showing early gameplay footage, giving fans a first look at the game’s visuals and how it will play. While the game is still in development and subject to changes, the video provides a good preview of what to expect.