Sorry for not posting much in the last day or two. I have the flu. I hope to resume posting soon. When I do, I'll try to make up for missed days. Thanks for your patience.

insoul_xiii has created a Krystal mod for Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, a game that is a love letter to the Jet Grind Radio series. There are different colorations for Krystal, all in her Assault outfit. The mod also includes custom graffiti tags, so you can add some Krazoa Spirit to the neighborhood. The graffiti is by Z0.

Another cosplayer named Dreamarts302 has created a Krystal cosplay modeled around the Dinosaur Planet version of Krystal. The cosplay debut was at Kami Con, an anime convention in Birmingham, Alabama taking place in February 2024.

According to her, Krystal has been a favorite character of hers since she was a kid when she played Star Fox Adventures at age 5. She had always wanted to dress up like her. Her mother assisted her with the ears, tail, and dress. Dreamarts302 did the makeup herself. Not counting her face, her body was covered in a blue suit to mimic Krystal's coloration. The cosplay features a glowing staff that's quite unlike any Krystal staff I've seen before. It may have been a staff originally designed for a different character. Any ideas?

More recently, she posted a winter photoshoot with a nice fur-based shawl to go on top of the dress. There's also a video of her running through the snowy forest.

Here's all the photos she posted:

• Tons of photos from all over the con
• Meeting Ryan Drummond (Sonic voice actor) and other photos
• Suit-up shots, photos at the con, and a video of her holding a massive gun
• Winter photoshoot

As an artist, Dreamarts302 has done many drawings, including several of Krystal. Dreamarts also drew a Dinosaur Planet Krystal fanart which she sells as a sticker on her Mercari store.

Always happy to see the love for Krystal manifest as creative costumes. Good job Dreamarts!

The universe of Warhammer 40K is savage. Discord user anactualfox747 has created "The Krystal Korps", a set of T'au fighters made up of AI remnants of the former Star Fox team, with Krystal remaining alive as the leader of their advanced mecha squadron. According to anactualfox747's story, the yellow figure contains the AI copy of Fox McCloud, though he has gone crazy. Krystal saved survivors of an invasive force in the Lylat System, while the rest of the Star Fox team stayed behind to help their escape. That's why Krystal is the only survivor.

You can see that the mechs and vehicles have Krystal's tattoos and coloration for the most part. The Krystal head for the lead unit is a modified and 3D printed version of the Krystal bust by Kagekitsoon. Anactualfox747 did all the painting himself.

Thanks to anactualfox747 for the photos and info on his project.

Cosplayer mililani_lilo dressed up as a human-style Krystal in the Star Fox Adventures outfit. The cosplay appearance occurred at Holiday Matsuri, an anime con in Orlando, Florida during December of 2022. I like that she took the time to add the tattoos.

The clothes and armor were made by mililani_lilo with some assistance from her mom. The ears were made by crystalpawz_creations (deactivated account) and the tail was made by MyLarissa on Etsy (also deactivated).

There are several more photos, which you can see at these links:

• Peeking around tree
• Rock poses
• Other poses

More recently in 2023, mililani_lilo has also done a Miyu Cosplay.

It was previewed a couple days ago, but now the Walled City level of Star Fox Event Horizon is mostly complete. This video shows an entire run, from the initial charge, to betrayal, to confronting the RedEye King in the pyramid. This is the seventh level in the Sauria campaign. It represents an alternate path to get to the CloudRunner Fortress. You'll see Krystal and Fox riding Tricky during the assault, as well as the King and Queen EarthWalker, Princess Kyte, and tons of allies and enemy soldiers. The gameplay of this level is chaotic, and UndyingNephalim says it's his favorite so far. The level isn't completely done yet. The voice acting hasn't been recorded for this level yet, and no doubt it will need additional polish before release. But well done, UndyingNephalim. I get some serious Hyrule Warriors vibes from this level.

I missed this because I mistook it for ShadowSnake's Krystal Mod where a Krystal mesh, some effects, voice clips, and a bunch of other small changes were used over the top of Dark Pit's fighter. Thus, Krystal inherited most of his moveset. That mod worked pretty well, but it was not a completely new fighter.

This new mod, which was a collaboration between Light5585 and much of ShadowSnake's work, has resulted in a complete fighter. This mod gives Krystal her own moves, weapons, and effects.

Here's a video of some Smash players trying it out (Language Warning).

Her Final Smash unleashes a huge blast of both fire and ice from her staff. Her Up-B is the staff's Rocket Boost. Down-B creates a force field that reflects projectiles. Forward-B is Ice Blast from the staff, while Neutral-B shoots a fire projectile across the stage. She runs very fast and has lots of staff-based jabs. She even has new taunts. This really does feel like a complete fighter mod for the game.

As with the previous mod on which this is based, it supports both her Assault and Adventures outfits. The mod has been given a few updates since launch about 6 months ago, with the mod's initial development taking about a year.

The mod can be downloaded from GameBanana, and is about 91MB in size. There are some requirements to get it working on your system, like the previous mod.

Thanks to Light for this amazing moveset, and ShadowSnake for the work on the original mod. This all turned out great! And thanks to Raiando on Discord for bringing the difference between the two mods to my attention!

God Hand is a beat 'em up game for the PS2 by Cover Studio, the same people who made Ōkami. According to AngelTheVixen, there are some new modding tools for the game, and that means only one thing. That's right, trying to add Krystal into the game! You can check out AngelTheVixen's video post on X/Twitter to see some demo footage.

No idea if AngelTheVixen plans to further develop this mod or if it was just a test, but it looks like fun. AngelTheVixen is still dealing with illness and this was a way of taking a break from another Krystal project. Hope you feel better soon, Angel!

Thanks to ChrisHighwind for the heads up.

Found this out today. You can play as Krystal in the single player mode of Star Fox Assault. It just requires an Action Replay code.

Force Player 1 to be Krystal USA: 002A2CA3 00000003
Force Player 1 to be Krystal PAL: 002BD063 00000003

This only works on levels where the Krystal model is loaded, which is level 6 (Sauria) and level 9 (Aparoid Homeworld). On other levels where Krystal never accompanies you out of the Arwing, your character shows up invisible and most functions don't work. If you do certain moves, your controls no longer work, soft-locking the game.

You can even encounter the Krystal who joins you on the mission. It's like looking in a mirror!

It is suspected that with some additional codes, Krystal's model could be forced to load into all areas, similar to how the Krystal Mod for Adventures, "Amethyst Edition" works. If so, Krystal could probably become playable in all on-foot missions. A few more codes, and we could replace the Arwing Fox model with the Arwing Krystal model. I wonder if the creator of this code, ModSault, will look into this further. You can check out the original comment with these codes, codes to do the same thing for Slippy, and links to a ton of other codes for Star Fox Assault on this Reddit thread.

Thanks to Niko on the Discord server for the heads up.

The Switch 2 has been announced. That means the there's probably going to be another Super Smash Bros game in development if it isn't already. You don't have to look far for rumors and speculation about what characters will make an appearance.

I was watching Game Maker's Toolkit's video on How a Super Smash Bros. Fighter is Designed today, and I was reminded of the fact that Sakurai chose to include Wolf instead of Krystal in Super Smash Bros Brawl to save on time (see 4:31 in the video).

It's important to remember that game development is a huge endeavor that takes a lot of hard work by many people, especially on a game series as large and popular as Super Smash Bros. Sakurai has said the next game in the series would have to reduce the size of the character roster, as what they did with Ultimate was the limit of what was feasible. That's probably realistic. 89 characters is an absurd number given how unique the characters are, even excluding Echo Fighters.

To that end, I would like to propose an idea to think about. If we're going to have to reduce the number of characters, why not have a meta-theme of "Sideline"? There are tons of characters from popular series that are sidekicks, secondary characters, or less-common variants on popular characters, or characters who ALMOST made it into Smash Bros, but didn't quite make the cut. Keep the core characters, Mario, Link, Samus, Fox, Pikachu, and the like, reducing the main characters down to 10 to 12 representatives of their series. Then, the rest of the roster of maybe 40-50 characters could be filled with fighters who have never fought in a Smash Bros game before.

Obviously, Krystal would be my pick. But it's crazy that Paper Mario has never appeared as a fighter given how unique his moveset could be. Geno would be a popular choice, as would Waluigi. Skull Kid from Zelda could be there. Isaac from Golden Sun would make for an interesting fighter. There would be room for new third party characters too, like Shantae, Shadow the Hedgehog, or even Master Chief.

What do you think? There's no avoiding controversy no matter what happens, and I do think it's reasonable to reduce the roster. Since you can't please all the fans of existing fighters by whittling down the list, why not bite the bullet and provide the most room for new faces as possible?

That's my idea anyway. What do you think? And besides Krystal, what other characters would you like to see in Smash Bros that have never been a fighter before?