Pretty much every news outlet has reported that, somehow, Super Smash Bros Ultimate leaked a week ago. No-one is sure where the leak came from. Regardless, details about the game have been coming out very quickly. Some are even able to play the game. However, most of the leak info comes in the form of information and audio at this point. The Krystal Archive doesn't support this behavior, and Nintendo doesn't either, suspending people's YouTube accounts over it.

With the game only 3 days away, I hope you all can wait. I will be getting my copy at midnight on Friday if possible. However, there's a couple of Krystal and Star Fox related details that are known now. If you want to avoid spoilers, read no further. If you want to see, hover or select the text below.

In this Tweet from the official Starlink account, the team behind Starlink seem to be hinting that DLC is being worked on and will be shown off soon. There's lots of speculation that this could mean more Star Fox missions and characters making appearances. Only time will tell.

The new Soul Calibur VI appears to have a very customizable character creation mode. So naturally, some people have been trying to create Krystal! I've found three different versions so far.

The first is the video above, a tutorial by WraxTV on how to create a Krystal character.

Then, there's this video of a fight between a custom Krystal character and Kratos from God of War posted by ZEBRA10045.

Lastly, there's this image, featuring a more colorful outfit for Krystal by beardalaxy.

We got a surprise today from GoldenFox51 when, while experimenting with Krystal mods for Serious Sam 3, he found a Krystal-related easter egg in the game! Released in November 22, 2011, I can't believe we didn't hear of this easter egg for seven years!

After going to the Secret Yard of Fame in the first level of the game (Summer in Cairo), the player can look at posters for many (all?) of the game's developers, along with a tagline for each. One person's tagline states:

Anton "Mischievous" Marinov -- Furry for Krystal since 2010

Note: The Krystal model in the screenshot above is a mod. The text and poster behind her are not.

The developer in question is Anton Antonov Marinov, a 3D Environment Artist artist for Ubisoft who has also dabbled in programming and tooling. He has more recently worked on the Assassin's Creed series. His public profile on Artstation actually features Krystal as his avatar! Definitely a Krystal fan!

Don't believe it? Here's a video of kacpi26 playing through the game's various easter eggs, including this one. The poster is shown at timestamp 6:05. (Warning: Language and Blood in other parts of the video.)

V-TAL, who had previously spoken to the the artist, implied that there may be other Krystal easter eggs in other games. I'm going to contact Mr. Marinov about this.

Thanks to GoldenFox51, Jimaki, TheVestige, and V-TAL for screenshots and info.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Whether you celebrate the holiday in America or not, we can always be thankful for our family, our friends, and the great Star Fox-filled year 2018 was. We finally got Krystal in Smash (in a few days!) as an almost-playable Assist Trophy, and we got a new Star Fox game (sorta) in Starlink! I think that's reason enough to celebrate!

The first song is Nova Krystal by ZTPrapheephat.

ZTPrapheephat has made two songs either inspired by Krystal, or titled after her. They are electronic in nature and don't resemble any Star Fox music, but it's cool to see more Krystal popping up. Both songs are available for download.

The other song is Krystal's Dreams by ZTPrapheephat.

SchattenKitsune666 has begun her project to create a blog-like series where she will have Krystal respond to questions. For now, it's in comic form, but in the future, she plans to animate and voice Krystal's responses to comments and questions on her posts.

Language Warning in Video

We've got a bit of a history lesson here, folks. Sit back and enjoy!

UndyingNephalim and Adam Halpin got together on October 20th to talk about their first game project, a long-forgotten fan game called Project Kursed which developed during 2008. If I recall correctly, this was to be the first fangame to star Krystal as the main character. In the end, it turned out that no-one involved in the project actually knew what they were doing, and numerous failures in development led to the whole thing falling apart rather quickly. However, they did manage to produce some concept art, music, voice acting, and a trailer, which the Krystal Archive would help premier.

In this podcast, the two of them go over what it was like working on the project, the absolute levels of cringe involved in the trailer, and how the whole thing has been memory holed by the internet. Later, UndyingNephalim would go on to work professionally in the game industry and then create a Star Fox RTS game and the now nearly complete Star Fox: Event Horizon. (Likewise, I was at DigiPen at the time, studying game programming myself).

For my part, I was approached rather early in the project development to help promote the game. I was on-board and even submitted some voice acting auditions for some of the characters, as there was a call for voice actors at the time. I think I provided repository space on my server so they could host code and track changes. I agreed to help them premier their trailer, which was supposed to be this amazing reveal for the world. Everything was hype. I was ready to promote this game to the ends of the earth!

And then... the trailer appeared. There was an immediate sinking feeling in my stomach. I knew right away that this game was FAR from where it needed to be to be announced, and probably wouldn't ever be finished, if they thought this counted as a suitable trailer. As you'll hear in the podcast, there was almost no content in the trailer, only containing some voice acting and a single render of the 3D Kursed character model.

But, I had promised to premier the trailer, so I did it with gritted teeth and didn't say anything about my misgivings. Most people took it positively, though I don't know why. Maybe they didn't see what I saw. Certainly, from the podcast, it seems that the idea that the trailer was full of cringe wouldn't sink in for a few weeks for even the people working closest on the game!

After that, the project fell apart pretty quickly and I heard less and less from the original team, though lots of people contacted me asking for me to put in a good word for them as aspiring voice actors. Years later, I realized I still had the code repository on my server, but apparently they never used it, so I ended up removing it.

However, never let it be said that Project Kursed didn't have a positive impact on anything. As a matter of fact, because of this debacle, I immediately instituted a policy on the Krystal Archive that I would never agree to promote anything again until I was sure of its quality, AND, I would outright refuse to mention fangames in the future unless they could demonstrate real, working gameplay at the very least. No more "I have this great idea, will you tell people about it?" requests. Let that be a lesson to you up and coming game developers out there. Don't bother showing your game to anyone until you at least have a working prototype.

And here, dear friends, our story ends... but not quite. You see, the two hosts of the post-mortem tried to find copies of the original trailer, but were unable to do so. Apparently the originator of the project went out of his way to remove every trace of the project media from the internet. The hosts had to resort to describing the trailer to the listeners. It's a shame no-one has a copy of that cringe-fest...

...

But this is the KRYSTAL ARCHIVE, son! I have that trailer in my archives. Just pulled it out and watched it, in fact. I even found that they put me in the credits for something, though I don't know what for, maybe "promoted by"? Anyway, I'll have a talk with UndyingNephalim and see if he's cool with an archived re-release of the trailer and maybe a few other things like voice acting clips and concept art. If so, prepare to experience the cringe, all over again!

Tomorrow morning, we get a new (and probably last) Nintendo Direct about Super Smash Bros Ultimate before it launches December 7th. It's going to be 40 minutes long and will be followed by a livestream from Nintendo Treehouse about other holiday games! Rumor has it that there are 7 new characters coming, though I'm extremely dubious about this one.

Watch it at Nintendo's Direct Site at 10AM Eastern (7AM Pacific) on November 1st.

Hopefully we'll get to see our new favorite assist trophy in action.

Sadly, I will be on an airplane during the presentation, so I will have to catch up once I hit the ground.

Well friends! It's time to rock and roll! I know some of you already have your copy. I'm picking up mine later today. Can't wait! Post your experiences in the comments below.