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?

Anim Zuddab sent me photos of his Krystal Staff. It looks like the staff was 3D printed with two different kinds of 3D printers. A standard FDM printer for most of the structural elements like the shaft details and the staff tips, and a resin printer for the translucent parts like the blue and orange gems.

Anim Zuddab tells me that the staff is about 2 meters long when fully assembled. It has two swappable tips on the head of the staff, one closed for normal combat, and one opened like when Krystal or Fox shot blasts. The shaft has embossed details surface details which appear to be based on my game accurate texture. Both the head and tail tips glow very brightly, powered by normal 9 volt or AA batteries. The whole staff can be disassembled into smaller parts for travel.

This is so cool, Anim! Nice work. It's good to see another staff at such high detail.

Check out the full gallery of photos!

In my absence, UndyingNephalim has been hard at work with Estelle Ellis and many others continuing to develop Star Fox Event Horizon. From the looks of it, they're well into building Sauria-focused locations and missions.

In the latest preview video, we see a giant dinosaur charge assault on the Walled City, with Fox and Krystal riding Tricky into battle with tons of other EarthWalkers and Kyte flying above. They face RedEye and "HookClaw Riders", the latter of which are based on an unused dino species from beta Star Fox Adventures called the ShadowHunters.

The video is pure chaos, but UndyingNephalim says the level is turning out to be the best level in the game so far. You can see a more detailed view of the Walled City from the foliage pass posted a few days prior. Hope to see more soon.

Here's a quick featured Krystal product by Justin8bits. He has two kinds of Krystal stickers for sale on Etsy. One is a holographic sticker of Krystal in the crystal for $4. The other is a clear-bordered sticker of Krystal with her gatling gun for $3. This one only looks like it has a white border because the adhesive backing is still on in the photo. You can also get them in batches of 3.

Just pointing these out for you Krystal Kollectors out there. You're welcome.

It has been a while since I checked in on Rubiinikettu. In my absence, it looks like she has posted some Krystal cosplay photos recently. One photo celebrating the 22nd anniversary of Star Fox Adventures in September, and a more recent photo from December showing off a (Chinese?) dress in preparation for the New Year. Check out the original posts for much higher resolution images.

I think she's implying that she's working on an Assault suit, which would be awesome to see! Looking forward to what Rubiinikettu will do in 2025.

I'm reminded that some time ago, Rubiinikettu sent me a video of her Krystal cosplay to post and I haven't done it yet. Oops! Sorry, Rubiinikettu! I have it around here somewhere. I promise I'll post it soon!

The most recent photo was taken by Nih.

In case you were living under a rock today, or you saw this and thought it was a fake, let me be the first to tell you that this trailer is real. The Nintendo Switch 2 was officially shown for the first time today, along with very few details. Much of the rumored hardware features appear to have been correct. As such, it has larger, magnetically connected Joy Cons on a larger screen. The rumor is that it uses Hall-Effect joysticks (awesome) and will have power at or slightly better than a PS4 (very nice). We already knew from a previous announcement that the Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch games, and this video confirms that again.

Check the video and look at other articles about rumored features and specs to get a better idea of its capabilities. No games were announced, but we did see Mario Kart shown. It's probably Mario Kart 9, since there are some tweaks visible, including a redesigned Donkey Kong that more closely resembles the Super Mario Bros Movie look.

I've heard rumors that there are over 20 third party games ready to release for Switch 2 on launch. It's likely that Yooka-Replaylee will be there, as well as Hi-Fi Rush, which I've been wanting to play. I've also heard rumors that a new 3D Mario title is already waiting in the wings to be the system's launch title. Given the recent cancellation of Metroid Prime 4 preorders (one I had for many years btw), I think Metroid Prime 4 will be available at or soon after launch, possibly also launching on the Switch like how previous Zelda games came out on multiple systems (Breath of the Wild, Twilight Princess). No info on Star Fox, F-Zero, or other older series, but I remain hopeful.

No doubt more information will come out slowly until the next major Nintendo Direct about it on April 2nd, 2025. I suspect the launch will be mid-summer, since there are going to be Switch 2 Experience tours all the way through June.