Sephiroth From the FINAL FANTASY Series Slices His Way Into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as a Playable DLC Fighter
By Staff Reports
In a new trailer that debuted during The Game Awards, Nintendo announced that Sephiroth, the iconic villain from the FINAL FANTASY series, is joining the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game as a playable fighter this month. Sephiroth is part of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Fighters Pass Vol. 2 DLC, which also includes DLC fighters Min-Min from the ARMS game and Steve & Alex from Minecraft, along with three yet-to-be-announced fighters. Sephiroth joins Cloud as the second character from the FINAL FANTASY series available as a playable fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. More information about Sephiroth will be revealed in a special video dedicated to the upcoming fighter on Dec. 17 at 2 p.m. PT.
In addition to the Sephiroth reveal, more Nintendo Switch news was announced during the live virtual show. Development and publishing partner Capcom debuted an announcement trailer for Ghosts ’n Goblins Resurrection, a new entry in the classic Ghosts ’n Goblins series, releasing digitally on Nintendo Switch on February 25, 2021. The new action platforming game features beautiful storybook-like graphics and pays homage to Ghosts ’n Goblins and Ghouls ’n Ghosts.
Fans that want to play the first two games in the Ghosts ’n Goblins series will be able to do so with the just-announced Capcom Arcade Stadium game, a digital collection of 32 classic Capcom games, coming to Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch in February 2021. The game collection includes WWII-shooter 1943 – The Battle of Midway – as a free download, with additional packs that can be purchased containing more games, including classics like BIONIC COMMANDO, STRIDER and SUPER STREET FIGHTER II TURBO.
A new trailer for Monster Hunter Rise from Capcom was also shown off during The Game Awards. The new trailer for the action-filled game, which launches for Nintendo Switch on March 26, 2021, revealed new monsters and a new location, as well as an announcement that a free downloadable demo for the game will hit Nintendo Switch in January 2021. More details about the demo will be announced in the future.
“We hope the numerous fans who watched The Game Awards were excited about the reveal that legendary character Sephiroth is joining the cast of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate,” said Nick Chavez, Nintendo of America’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “We are very happy to be a part of another great TGAs, and thrilled to show fans a small preview of what’s to come for Nintendo Switch in 2021.”
During The Game Awards, Animal Crossing: New Horizons took home the award for Best Family Game. Several games from Nintendo’s development and publishing partners that are available to play on Nintendo Switch also won awards, including Hades for Best Action Game and Best Indie Game and Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate for Best Fighting Game.
Nintendo also announced this morning that players can save up to 33% off the digital versions of select Nintendo Switch games, including Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which won Best Strategy Game and Player’s Voice Award at The Game Awards 2019; Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which was nominated in a number of categories at this year’s show, including Best Art Direction and Best Action/Adventure; CARRION, which was nominated for Best Indie and Best Debut Game; and Raji: An Ancient Epic, which was also nominated for Best Debut Game this year. Fans can head to Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch for a full list of discounted games or visit https://nintendo.com/deals.
Remember that Nintendo Switch features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information about other features, visit https://www.nintendo.com/switch/.
ATLANTA — Vice-President Mike Pence has seemingly been holding rallies everywhere in Georgia lately. Everywhere, that is, except Atlanta and its inner suburbs.Pence touches down in Georgia again Thursday for a pair of rallies in Columbus, on the state s western edge, and Macon, in middle Georgia, to support incumbent Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler ahead of runoff elections on Jan. 5 that will determine control of the U.S. Senate. Pence has been to Augusta in the east and Savannah on the coast and has rallied voters in the north Georgia cities of Gainesville and Canton, in the far reaches of metro Atlanta s exurbs. President Donald Trump rounded out the map with a Dec. 5 rally in Valdosta in south Georgia.The anywhere-but-Atlanta strategy is a window into Georgia’s new political geography. Democrats dominate in the urban areas and in nearby suburbs, while Republicans are increasingly dependent on high turnout in rural areas, small towns and small cities across the state. It’s a Trump-era pattern that puts the once-red state in line with battlegrounds across the country, and Democrats are hoping it outlasts his presidency.“The fact is they’re going to places where Republicans have the best margins, trying to energize their voters, said Brian Robinson, a GOP strategist in Georgia, while noting that the events get statewide media coverage and, therefore, still reach Atlanta-area voters.“In some of these rural counties, Perdue and Loeffler really need to hit 80-plus per cent of the vote, Robinson said, “and they need to juice the turnout in those counties as much as they can.”In his repeated trips, Pence has pitched Perdue and Loeffler as the last line of defence to preserve work done under the outgoing Trump administration. A win by either Perdue or Loeffler would keep the Senate majority in the hands of Republicans. But a sweep by their Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, would yield a 50-50 split in the upper chamber, giving the tiebreaking vote to Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris.“With the support of people all across this state, and with God’s help, we’re going to keep on winning,” Pence told a crowd of several hundred in Augusta last week. “We will win Georgia and save America.”Tim Phillips, president of the conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, described two tracks of the Republican electorate: voters who identify more with Trump’s brand of populism and voters who fit more traditional GOP moulds — a group that includes both Trump loyalists and Republicans who are uneasy with or dislike the president.The first group dominates in small-town and rural Georgia, and it’s an important component of maximizing Republicans’ vote hauls in the exurbs that ring the sprawling Atlanta metro area and the swaths of the electorate that surround the Democratic cores of Georgia’s midsize cities.That’s why Trump visited Valdosta, near the Florida state line, to draw a massive crowd from across south Georgia, and why Pence’s multiple trips have included Savannah and Macon to draw non-metro-Atlanta crowds and Canton and Gainesville to hit the periphery of the metropolitan area.In a battleground like Georgia, Phillips said, it takes strong turnout across all those slices to make a victorious Republican coalition, before even beginning to account for swing voters that are more common in the close-in suburbs of Atlanta.“Our first target audience has to be the presidential-only or Trump-centric voters. We need them to turn out,” he said. “A drop of 10% or 15% in places like Valdosta,” he added, could make “swing voters in Gwinnett County” moot.Recent election returns demonstrate Phillips’ argument.In 2014, Perdue won his first Senate term with a comfortable statewide margin of 198,000 votes over Democrat Michelle Nunn. Across the heavily Republican areas of north Georgia, beyond Gainesville, where he campaigned with Pence last month, Perdue consistently won as much as 75% of the vote. In Lowndes County, where Trump visited earlier this month, Perdue won 12,513 votes, good for 58%.In November, Perdue pushed his margins across many of the north Georgia counties to 80%. His raw vote total in Lowndes County spiked to 25,620. But despite all those gains, he led Ossoff by only 88,000 votes and failed to reach the outright majority required to avoid a runoff.___Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Augusta, Georgia, contributed to this report.Ben Nadler And Bill Barrow, The Associated Press Pfizer vaccine: FDA says extra doses in vials can be used, potentially expanding US supply. Some vials contain up to two extra doses, which could boost supply by 40%, though Pfizer has not yet recommended how they should be used