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The Expansion Pack service (which officially launched last night) has been divisive from the start. While just about everyone assumed that Nintendo would eventually launch a new “tier” for their online service that included access to additional retro titles, fans immediately wondered whether Nintendo would find a way to justify the Expansion Pack’s price ($50 a year compared to the base Switch Online service’s $20 a year subscription fee). Well, initial impressions of the service’s features and functionality suggest that fans may have had good reason to worry about not just the price increase but what they are getting for their money....

Recently, a ResetEra forum user named AshenOne shared a mysterious Steam Database listing for a project known only as “Oregon.” Based on the information they were able to discern from that listing (namely its anticipated category tags and a few key pieces of mined data), they suggested that the project listing was almost certainly a codename for a PC port of the 2021 PS5 exclusive, Returnal. That suggestion sparked a debate among ResetEra users who couldn’t believe that the PlayStation team would bring one of the PS5’s few true exclusives to the PC so soon after its release....

When we last left Outlander at the end of Season 5, the men of Fraser’s Ridge had freed Claire from her abductors and rapists and Marsali had poisoned one of the men behind the attack, while Bree and Roger failed to travel back to the late 1960’s. Season 6 picks up the thread of increased political and social tensions in the colony of North Carolina as the story is now very close to the start of the American Revolution....

“While we do not release details related to manufacturing, the information provided by Bloomberg is false,” says Sony. “We have not changed the production number for PlayStation 5 since the start of mass production.” The report in question from Bloomberg suggested that Sony has lowered its PlayStation 5 production estimates for the upcoming fiscal year by as much as 4 million units. They claimed that the problem was based on manufacturing issues....

As is usually the case with Pokémon games, Scarlet/Violet is structured in a way that mostly helps ensure you will be able to beat the game regardless of which starter Pokémon you pick. Actually, the game’s more open-ended structure means that it’s easier than ever to play with any of the starters, simply because you avoid certain roadblocks early on. If you pick a starter Pokémon simply because you think they look the best, you’ll still have a great time with the game....

The first split of the Unrivaled Charizard Tera Raid Battle Event will start on Thursday, December 1st at 4 p.m. PST (7 p.m. EST). It will end on December 4th at 3:59 p.m. PST. If you miss that event, you’ll be able to join the second split of the Charizard Tera Raid starting on Thursday, December 15th at 4 p.m. PST (7 p.m. EST). That second split will run until Sunday, December 18th at 3:59 p....

Quantum Leap Episode 6 “What a Disaster,” the sixth installment of the Quantum Leap continuation series, carries extra baggage. First, the pilot switch: originally, Dr. Ben Song’s (Raymond Lee) leap to San Francisco was slated to be the focus of the pilot episode. Ben finds himself in the body of John Harvey, a middle-aged man decked out in high-waisted jeans, dad sneakers, and a windbreaker, who has just been asked by his wife, Naomi Harvey (Jewel Staite), for a divorce....

Nonetheless, it was still a surprise that when discussing those movies on a recent podcast, Tarantino revealed his love for Lester’s Musketeer duology is also responsible for one of his few fears in cinema: watching the belated sequel to that sprawling effort, 1989’s The Return of the Musketeers. While appearing on the Unspooled podcast alongside Roger Avary to promote their own podcast, The Video Archives, Tarantino spoke at length about his love for the ‘70s Musketeer movies....

A handful of the shorts were featured in previous editions of RiffTrax Live, but are also available on their own. Then there’s the Christmas Shorts-stravaganza, which not only featured a bunch of Christmas-based short films, but also a film about serving pork and some kind of competitive swimming event. Weird Al was there too! At the show…not…not the swimming event. Like when I discussed the 30 Most Insane RiffTrax Shorts, I’m going to give both the lucid explanation of what each short or movie is supposed to be in a sane, reasonable world and what we actually get....

Through two seasons on TBS and one on HBO Max, Search Party has defied genre expectations. While ostensibly a comedy about young Brooklyn millennials, each new year of the show has brought another unexpected tone to the table. Season 1 was a Nancy Drew-style mystery, with Dory Sief (Alia Shawkat) and her friends searching for their old missing college acquaintance Chantal Witherbottom (Clare McNulty). When that search went…poorly, season 2 dealt with the life and death consequences and added “paranoid thriller” to its genre collection....

In short, Veranke is the queen of the Skrull Empire who served as the primary villain of the 2008 crossover Secret Invasion. For fans of the MCU, Skrulls are a relatively recent and largely sympathetic alien race. They first showed up in Captain Marvel, and while they initially clashed with Brie Larson’s Vers and the other members of Kree special forces, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and his fellow Skrulls soon revealed themselves to be refugees, seeking shelter from the imperialist Kree....

The Snowpiercer is the last refuge of humanity from a new Ice Age that was accidentally started in 2014 through a disastrous attempt to combat global warming. Now, 17 years later, the poor exist in degraded and near-barbaric conditions in the rear compartments of the train, while the elite and wealthy live in far more luxurious and even decadent surroundings at the front. As the story opens, a fiery young man from the rear compartments named Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) prepares to lead the latest attempt to break out of the train’s tail, reach the front and hijack the engine from the train’s creator and driver, the near-mythical Wilford (Ed Harris)....

To say that Soul is ambitious for a kids’ movie, or even a Pixar film, is an understatement. Here is a film for the whole family that deals with the terror of oblivion and thrusts its protagonist on a journey through a metaphysical cosmos which winkingly evokes the imagery of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Interstellar during its opening credits. Yet all of that is still just prologue—a pretext for exploring something much more complex and challenging: the existential need for inspiration, and the agony of not achieving your aspirations....

At this point nothing can slow down South Park, not even a global pandemic. Comedy Central announced that the long-running animated series will return on September 30th with an hour-long event titled “The Pandemic Special.” The special airs at 8:00 p.m. ET. Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the episode is a special event, not the premiere of season 24. No further information on the official premiere date for season 24 was given by Comedy Central....

“We are still in development on Section 31, so there will be more news on that soon,” said Paramount+ Original Scripted Series President Nicole Clemens during the Paramount+ Executive Session during today’s TCA Winter Tour. The news was vague, but hopeful, especially considering Paramount+ has greenlit so many other Star Trek shows, a line-up strategy company execs refer to as an “always-on slate.” Yeoh’s Georgiou exited Star Trek: Discovery last season, presumably to lead her own show....

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Episode 10 The season 1 finale of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a love letter to the series that started it all, an at times shot-for-shot and line-by-line remake of the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Balance of Terror,” which originally introduced the Romulans to the franchise. The hour gives us a glimpse at a potential alternate future in which Pike is not disfigured or paralyzed and retains command of the Enterprise, but it’s one that comes at a terrible cost....

Star Wars: The Bad Batch Episode 12 Look at that: it’s a two-parter after all. The Bad Batch take a bit more of a front role in their own show as they reluctantly help out in “Rescue on Ryloth,” directed by Nathaniel Villanueva and written by Jennifer Corbett. The show still feels too entwined with everything else in Star Wars to have mass appeal, but this episode in particular learned more from Rebels than from The Clone Wars in terms of giving characters the time to talk to one another and allowing beats to sink in between all the action....

“Rampage” brings the Bad Batch to Ord Mantell, where underworld player Cid hires them to rescue a child named Muchi from slavers. Muchi turns out to not be what they expected, and the bounty hunt nets them more than they bargained for. Along with the new characters come a wide variety of connections to other parts of the saga, as well as some video game in-jokes. Take a look at all the Star Wars references and connections we found this week:...

Rumors of a big cameo surrounded The Bad Batch in the days leading up to its eighth episode and “Reunion” doesn’t disappoint. The show has thus far worn its ties to The Clone Wars on its sleeve, down to its very protagonists, characters who were first formally introduced in season 7 of the Prequel era-set animated series. But it’s this cameo that solidifies The Bad Batch‘s place as a straight up sequel to The Clone Wars....

The Book of Boba Fett Episode 1 For a while now, December has been Star Wars time. With the movie slate wiped clean, this year’s holiday season premiere is the smaller scale The Book of Boba Fett, which already feels fated for a more niche audience than its loosely affiliated cousin The Mandalorian. Trading in the more universal story of an orphan warrior and his adopted baby for an introduction tied up in a whole host of other Star Wars lore, The Book of Boba Fett‘s competently crafted first episode feels like half a story....