Welcome back to Game Scoop!, IGN's weekly video game podcast. This week your Omega Cops -- Daemon Hatfield, Tina Amini, Sam Claiborn, and Michael Swaim -- are discussing the latest Cyberpunk and Witcher news, new PlayStation Plus April 2021 and Games with Gold, Narita Boy, No Man's Sky, Godzilla vs. Kong, and so much more. And, of course, they play Video Game 20 Questions. Watch the video above or hit the link below to your favorite podcast service. Listen on: Apple Podcasts YouTube Spotify Stitcher   Find previous episodes here!

Welcome back to Game Scoop!, IGN's weekly video game podcast. This week your Omega Cops -- Daemon Hatfield, Tina Amini, Sam Claiborn, and Michael Swaim -- are discussing the latest Cyberpunk and Witcher news, new PlayStation Plus April 2021 and Games with Gold, Narita Boy, No Man's Sky, Godzilla vs. Kong, and so much more. And, of course, they play Video Game 20 Questions. Watch the video above or hit the link below to your favorite podcast service. Listen on: Apple Podcasts YouTube Spotify Stitcher   Find previous episodes here!

Rhianna Pratchett, whose narrative mind has shaped stories in games like Mirror's Edge, Tomb Raider, and many others, first met the creator of Lost Words: Beyond the Page at a game jam. At the time, Lost Words was about divorce. But that changed quickly once Pratchett signed on as the narrative lead. "Of course, being a Pratchett, I said, 'Well, what about death?'" Pratchett is referring to her late father, Discworld author, Terry Pratchett -- whose books frequently explore death and grief through their fantasy setting. Speaking to IGN, she says this shift was born out of her own personal experience with the death of loved ones, which ultimately heavily shaped Lost Words as well. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/09/lost-words-beyond-the-page-release-date-trailer"] Lost Words is a narrative-focused platformer game that's been out for over a year already, but one that many may have missed the first time around, as it was a Google Stadia-exclusive until recently, and it's finally coming to Xbox One, PS4, Steam, and Nintendo Switch on April 6. Its story follows a young girl, Izzy, who aspires to be a writer. When she loses someone close to her, she works through her grief by writing a fantasy story in her journal. Play switches between journal segments with glimpses into Izzy's personal life, and the fantasy story she's writing, where she explores the feelings and ideas she's struggling with in reality through her fantasy protagonist. Pratchett, both through her family and in her own extensive work, is a firm proponent of exactly that -- exploring difficult topics through fantasy stories. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=It's%20a%20very%20unique%20time%20in%20your%20life%20when%20you%20experience%20loss%20for%20the%20first%20time%2C%20and%20you%20suddenly%20realize%20that%20the%20world%20is%20not%20perfect."] "A lot of people think that fantasy is hugely removed escapism; it's not really," she says. "It's how we deal with our own world, how we come to understand our world, and how we come to understand other people. "...I thought that it's a very unique time in your life when you experience loss for the first time, and you suddenly realize that the world is not perfect, and bad things happen. And sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. "I have a very tiny family now because I have no relatives left apart from a mother and uncle and a cousin that I've grown up with, but I've lost several sets of grandparents and step-grandparents, and my dad. So I felt I had a lot to say about loss and grief and the intersection of loss of memory, grief, and memory and how we keep people alive by our memories and how we keep a part of them inside us." Pratchett is excited about Lost Words' focus on storytelling, not just as a narrative device, but as part of the development process. Having written for games for nearly two decades, and as a journalist before that, Pratchett has been able to watch the trajectory of games writing and narrative change from something many studios tended to brush off or throw in messily at the end of a game's development, to something developers and audiences care deeply about. And she's proud to have been a part of that. But she still feels that games have a long, long way to go to respect what good writing can do for a game, and refine what good games writing really means. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Writers%20don't%20get%20very%20much%20power%2C%20especially%20in%20the%20big%20games%2C%20and%20you%20don't%20always%20get%20much%20space%20to%20necessarily%20get%20your%20voice%20or%20vision%20across."] "Writers don't get very much power, especially in the big games, and you don't always get much space to necessarily get your voice or vision across," she says. "And everyone thinks they can write because most people can write words, and they think writing words is the same as writing a story. And because they've usually never tried, in their heads, they're sort of unproven geniuses. "In the past, narrative wasn't necessarily done by a writer. People didn't particularly value it enough to push professionals in that field. It created the impression that anyone could write because anyone had been writing. So now, it feels like you have to deal with a lot of feedback, a lot of opinions all the time, usually from people that aren't particularly story-literate...But they often have more power than writers. So if you're trying to balance, you become very flexible, you have to learn to work with other people's ideas...As people start to understand how stories work in games, it is getting better, but I did deal with a lot of people who thought they knew how to write telling me how to write." Which brings her back to Lost Words, where she was not just the game's writer, but was closely involved in most aspects of Lost Words' development. That's the advantage, she says, of working on a smaller, independent team as opposed to being hired on as a narrative writer for a huge AAA project. You lose the bigger budget and the resources that may bring, sure, but you have a direct line to everyone on the team and can more closely marry gameplay and writing. "I like being in a team where I can get my voice across; otherwise, what's the point?" she says. "I'm not a story robot. I'm not there to just generate words. I'm there to bring my views and my vision and my thoughts as well. "If you're engaged in a game early on, there's a lot that writers can bring to it. It often used to be this way and it still is to a certain extent now that the industry [thought that] writers did the word bits. They'd leave some space for the writer to do the word bits because they just do the word bits and the word bits come as late in the game as possible. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=A%20lot%20of%20what%20writers%20do%20is%20invisible%20work.%20It's%20a%20lot%20of%20behind-the-scenes%20stuff."] "Whereas actually a lot of what writers do is invisible work. It's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, coming up with the lore of the world and tone and working out how things go in this world, how the character relationships go, a whole load of background stuff that the player won't necessarily see. I call it building the body of the iceberg. We all know that the body of the iceberg is much bigger under the surface...So that the tip that the players actually see in the game is much more truthful and much more thought-out, much more well-realized, because you spent all this time building up the body of it. And if you're lucky, you get time to be able to do that." Pratchett is delighted to see Lost Words get another chance to catch audiences' eyes now that it's releasing on platforms other than Stadia, and she hopes people considering picking it up will not be put off by the fact that it's a story about grief. In fact, she says, it's actually quite positive. "It is sad," she says. "But it's also joyful, as well. It's about love. And it's about grief being the price for love. It's about losing someone but keeping hold of them at the same time. And it's taken from the perspective of someone that's going through it for the first time. So it's all kind of fresh and new, and difficult and painful as you just try to get your head around it. But in the end it is hopeful, it is positive, it is full of love. And so I hope people get that out of it." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Rhianna Pratchett, whose narrative mind has shaped stories in games like Mirror's Edge, Tomb Raider, and many others, first met the creator of Lost Words: Beyond the Page at a game jam. At the time, Lost Words was about divorce. But that changed quickly once Pratchett signed on as the narrative lead. "Of course, being a Pratchett, I said, 'Well, what about death?'" Pratchett is referring to her late father, Discworld author, Terry Pratchett -- whose books frequently explore death and grief through their fantasy setting. Speaking to IGN, she says this shift was born out of her own personal experience with the death of loved ones, which ultimately heavily shaped Lost Words as well. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/03/09/lost-words-beyond-the-page-release-date-trailer"] Lost Words is a narrative-focused platformer game that's been out for over a year already, but one that many may have missed the first time around, as it was a Google Stadia-exclusive until recently, and it's finally coming to Xbox One, PS4, Steam, and Nintendo Switch on April 6. Its story follows a young girl, Izzy, who aspires to be a writer. When she loses someone close to her, she works through her grief by writing a fantasy story in her journal. Play switches between journal segments with glimpses into Izzy's personal life, and the fantasy story she's writing, where she explores the feelings and ideas she's struggling with in reality through her fantasy protagonist. Pratchett, both through her family and in her own extensive work, is a firm proponent of exactly that -- exploring difficult topics through fantasy stories. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=It's%20a%20very%20unique%20time%20in%20your%20life%20when%20you%20experience%20loss%20for%20the%20first%20time%2C%20and%20you%20suddenly%20realize%20that%20the%20world%20is%20not%20perfect."] "A lot of people think that fantasy is hugely removed escapism; it's not really," she says. "It's how we deal with our own world, how we come to understand our world, and how we come to understand other people. "...I thought that it's a very unique time in your life when you experience loss for the first time, and you suddenly realize that the world is not perfect, and bad things happen. And sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. "I have a very tiny family now because I have no relatives left apart from a mother and uncle and a cousin that I've grown up with, but I've lost several sets of grandparents and step-grandparents, and my dad. So I felt I had a lot to say about loss and grief and the intersection of loss of memory, grief, and memory and how we keep people alive by our memories and how we keep a part of them inside us." Pratchett is excited about Lost Words' focus on storytelling, not just as a narrative device, but as part of the development process. Having written for games for nearly two decades, and as a journalist before that, Pratchett has been able to watch the trajectory of games writing and narrative change from something many studios tended to brush off or throw in messily at the end of a game's development, to something developers and audiences care deeply about. And she's proud to have been a part of that. But she still feels that games have a long, long way to go to respect what good writing can do for a game, and refine what good games writing really means. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=Writers%20don't%20get%20very%20much%20power%2C%20especially%20in%20the%20big%20games%2C%20and%20you%20don't%20always%20get%20much%20space%20to%20necessarily%20get%20your%20voice%20or%20vision%20across."] "Writers don't get very much power, especially in the big games, and you don't always get much space to necessarily get your voice or vision across," she says. "And everyone thinks they can write because most people can write words, and they think writing words is the same as writing a story. And because they've usually never tried, in their heads, they're sort of unproven geniuses. "In the past, narrative wasn't necessarily done by a writer. People didn't particularly value it enough to push professionals in that field. It created the impression that anyone could write because anyone had been writing. So now, it feels like you have to deal with a lot of feedback, a lot of opinions all the time, usually from people that aren't particularly story-literate...But they often have more power than writers. So if you're trying to balance, you become very flexible, you have to learn to work with other people's ideas...As people start to understand how stories work in games, it is getting better, but I did deal with a lot of people who thought they knew how to write telling me how to write." Which brings her back to Lost Words, where she was not just the game's writer, but was closely involved in most aspects of Lost Words' development. That's the advantage, she says, of working on a smaller, independent team as opposed to being hired on as a narrative writer for a huge AAA project. You lose the bigger budget and the resources that may bring, sure, but you have a direct line to everyone on the team and can more closely marry gameplay and writing. "I like being in a team where I can get my voice across; otherwise, what's the point?" she says. "I'm not a story robot. I'm not there to just generate words. I'm there to bring my views and my vision and my thoughts as well. "If you're engaged in a game early on, there's a lot that writers can bring to it. It often used to be this way and it still is to a certain extent now that the industry [thought that] writers did the word bits. They'd leave some space for the writer to do the word bits because they just do the word bits and the word bits come as late in the game as possible. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=A%20lot%20of%20what%20writers%20do%20is%20invisible%20work.%20It's%20a%20lot%20of%20behind-the-scenes%20stuff."] "Whereas actually a lot of what writers do is invisible work. It's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, coming up with the lore of the world and tone and working out how things go in this world, how the character relationships go, a whole load of background stuff that the player won't necessarily see. I call it building the body of the iceberg. We all know that the body of the iceberg is much bigger under the surface...So that the tip that the players actually see in the game is much more truthful and much more thought-out, much more well-realized, because you spent all this time building up the body of it. And if you're lucky, you get time to be able to do that." Pratchett is delighted to see Lost Words get another chance to catch audiences' eyes now that it's releasing on platforms other than Stadia, and she hopes people considering picking it up will not be put off by the fact that it's a story about grief. In fact, she says, it's actually quite positive. "It is sad," she says. "But it's also joyful, as well. It's about love. And it's about grief being the price for love. It's about losing someone but keeping hold of them at the same time. And it's taken from the perspective of someone that's going through it for the first time. So it's all kind of fresh and new, and difficult and painful as you just try to get your head around it. But in the end it is hopeful, it is positive, it is full of love. And so I hope people get that out of it." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

An incredibly rare plastic-sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES has sold at auction for a world record-breaking $660,000. That hefty price tag makes it the most expensive price ever paid for a video game collectible.

The copy of Super Mario Bros., sold this week by Heritage Auctions, is a copy from the game’s fourth printing run. This means that it did not have the “Game-Pak NES-GP” code and is missing the “™” trademark symbol normally seen to the right of “Nintendo Entertainment System,” which was officially added to all black boxes in early 1987.

[caption id="attachment_2495661" align="alignnone" width="419"] Credit: Heritage Auctions[/caption]

“For Nintendo, it was just stuff they had to do internally, but collectors are using this information now,” Chris Kohler, editorial director at Digital Eclipse, tells IGN. “It’s not like a collector cares if there’s a “™” on their box or not, but it’s the ability to use that information to figure out what the earliest printings are.”

The copy of Super Mario Bros. ranks at a 9.6 on the WATA scale, a rubric commonly used to rate comic book value.

“So if you’re an expert in comics, you know a 9.6 is very hard to get on the WATA scale, especially for black box NES games because those are so old,” Kohler said. “They really narrowed it down to when was this copy on sale, when did Nintendo start tweaking parts of the box?”

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2014/03/18/13-awesomely-rare-nintendo-artifacts"]

Kohler notes that many of the players who grew up with classic video game franchises like Super Mario, Zelda, or Punch-Out are now comfortably in their 40s and 50s, and likely possess much more disposable income they can spend on collector’s items.

“The constraint of video game collection 20 or 30 years ago was that there just wasn’t a lot of money being thrown around. Stadium event copies would sell for $30,000 but because there would only be a small number who could pay that much. The fact that this [copy of Super Mario Bros.] sold for $660,000 means that there’s at least two people who would have paid over half a million dollars for it, probably more.”

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/02/15/nintendo-playstation-prototype-will-be-the-most-expensive-video-game-item-ever"]

Kohler added that this particular copy of Super Mario Bros. sold so high is in part because sealed copies have proven incredibly difficult to find.

“The fact that you just can't find nice sealed copies of this kind of indicates that when something like this does come up you should probably jump on it,” Kohler said, noting that there are currently no known sealed copies of Super Mario Bros.’ first printing. “So I think there's people who are jumping on it now thinking that it may go up and it probably will go up in the future and also just that they may never have an opportunity to buy one.”

The previous record price for a video game collectible was $360,000 for the unreleased Nintendo PlayStation prototype, which sold in February 2020. The highest price for a single copy of a game was $156,000 for a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 in late 2020. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/auctioneer for IGN.

An incredibly rare plastic-sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES has sold at auction for a world record-breaking $660,000. That hefty price tag makes it the most expensive price ever paid for a video game collectible.

The copy of Super Mario Bros., sold this week by Heritage Auctions, is a copy from the game’s fourth printing run. This means that it did not have the “Game-Pak NES-GP” code and is missing the “™” trademark symbol normally seen to the right of “Nintendo Entertainment System,” which was officially added to all black boxes in early 1987.

[caption id="attachment_2495661" align="alignnone" width="419"] Credit: Heritage Auctions[/caption]

“For Nintendo, it was just stuff they had to do internally, but collectors are using this information now,” Chris Kohler, editorial director at Digital Eclipse, tells IGN. “It’s not like a collector cares if there’s a “™” on their box or not, but it’s the ability to use that information to figure out what the earliest printings are.”

The copy of Super Mario Bros. ranks at a 9.6 on the WATA scale, a rubric commonly used to rate comic book value.

“So if you’re an expert in comics, you know a 9.6 is very hard to get on the WATA scale, especially for black box NES games because those are so old,” Kohler said. “They really narrowed it down to when was this copy on sale, when did Nintendo start tweaking parts of the box?”

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2014/03/18/13-awesomely-rare-nintendo-artifacts"]

Kohler notes that many of the players who grew up with classic video game franchises like Super Mario, Zelda, or Punch-Out are now comfortably in their 40s and 50s, and likely possess much more disposable income they can spend on collector’s items.

“The constraint of video game collection 20 or 30 years ago was that there just wasn’t a lot of money being thrown around. Stadium event copies would sell for $30,000 but because there would only be a small number who could pay that much. The fact that this [copy of Super Mario Bros.] sold for $660,000 means that there’s at least two people who would have paid over half a million dollars for it, probably more.”

[ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/02/15/nintendo-playstation-prototype-will-be-the-most-expensive-video-game-item-ever"]

Kohler added that this particular copy of Super Mario Bros. sold so high is in part because sealed copies have proven incredibly difficult to find.

“The fact that you just can't find nice sealed copies of this kind of indicates that when something like this does come up you should probably jump on it,” Kohler said, noting that there are currently no known sealed copies of Super Mario Bros.’ first printing. “So I think there's people who are jumping on it now thinking that it may go up and it probably will go up in the future and also just that they may never have an opportunity to buy one.”

The previous record price for a video game collectible was $360,000 for the unreleased Nintendo PlayStation prototype, which sold in February 2020. The highest price for a single copy of a game was $156,000 for a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 in late 2020. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/auctioneer for IGN.

Zack Snyder continues to provide audiences with the bizarre things they demand to see online, having shared an alternate version of a scene from his cut of Justice League, in which Jared Leto (as Joker) finally gets to say "We live in a society." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/02/zack-snyders-justice-league-justice-is-grey-we-live-in-a-society-extended-deleted-scene"] Okay, the exact line is "We live in a society...where honor is a distant memory." He's responding to Bruce Wayne's promise to honor Harley Quinn's dying request that he kill The Joker slowly, which takes place in a dream sequence at the end of the film. There's a bit more to the scene that follows that also differs from their encounter in the actual Snyder Cut, too. If you're not sure why this is a thing, it's because the line "We live in a society" has been used as a part of Joker memes online for the last few years, evolving from goofy absurdist humor into either a phrase taken way too seriously, or used to mock people who took it way too seriously. Until now, The Joker had never actually said any variation of this line, though the line as it's said in the above cut was included in a trailer for Justice League from back in February. This alternate scene was posted today to Zack Snyder's Twitter account and did not appear in his original four-hour long cut of the film, though Snyder shared it today to promote the just-released Justice is Gray version on HBO Max, which puts the entire film in black and white. Zack Snyder's Justice League, whether in black and white or in color, includes a number of differences from the original 2017 Justice League, and earned an 8/10 in our review. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine. A previous version of this article erroneously indicated that this scene was viewable in the Justice is Gray version. This has been amended above.

Zack Snyder continues to provide audiences with the bizarre things they demand to see online, having shared an alternate version of a scene from his cut of Justice League, in which Jared Leto (as Joker) finally gets to say "We live in a society." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2021/04/02/zack-snyders-justice-league-justice-is-grey-we-live-in-a-society-extended-deleted-scene"] Okay, the exact line is "We live in a society...where honor is a distant memory." He's responding to Bruce Wayne's promise to honor Harley Quinn's dying request that he kill The Joker slowly, which takes place in a dream sequence at the end of the film. There's a bit more to the scene that follows that also differs from their encounter in the actual Snyder Cut, too. If you're not sure why this is a thing, it's because the line "We live in a society" has been used as a part of Joker memes online for the last few years, evolving from goofy absurdist humor into either a phrase taken way too seriously, or used to mock people who took it way too seriously. Until now, The Joker had never actually said any variation of this line, though the line as it's said in the above cut was included in a trailer for Justice League from back in February. This alternate scene was posted today to Zack Snyder's Twitter account and did not appear in his original four-hour long cut of the film, though Snyder shared it today to promote the just-released Justice is Gray version on HBO Max, which puts the entire film in black and white. Zack Snyder's Justice League, whether in black and white or in color, includes a number of differences from the original 2017 Justice League, and earned an 8/10 in our review. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine. A previous version of this article erroneously indicated that this scene was viewable in the Justice is Gray version. This has been amended above.

Bridgerton's Rege-Jean Page will not be returning for the Netflix series' second season. Bridgerton's Twitter shared the news in a letter from Lady Whisteldown, who is bidding adieu to Page's Simon Basset. "Dearest Readers, While all eyes turn to Lord Anthony Bridgerton's quest to find a Viscountess, we bid adieu to Rege-Jean Page, who so triumphantly played the Duke of Hastings. We'll miss Simon's presence onscreen, but he will always be a part of the Bridgerton family. Daphne will remain a devoted wife and sister, helping her brother navigate the upcoming social season and what it has to offer - more intrigue and romance than my readers may be able to bear. Yours Truly, Lady Whistedown." The Twitter account wrote. THR's sources have reported that Page only "had a one-season deal and completed his contractual obligation to the Shonda Rhimes-produced drama." This deal is said to be in line with how the producers, including Netflix, have always envisioned the show, with each new season focusing on a different one of Julia Quinn's novels. The second season of Bridgerton will focus on Jonathan Bailey's Anthony Bridgerton and, despite Page's departure, will see Pheobe Deynevor continuing on in the role of Daphne Bridgerton. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=netflixs-bridgerton-season-1-official-photos&captions=true"] For more on Bridgerton, check out our review of the first season and why we think the show should be Hollywood's next cinematic universe inspiration. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Bridgerton's Rege-Jean Page will not be returning for the Netflix series' second season. Bridgerton's Twitter shared the news in a letter from Lady Whisteldown, who is bidding adieu to Page's Simon Basset. "Dearest Readers, While all eyes turn to Lord Anthony Bridgerton's quest to find a Viscountess, we bid adieu to Rege-Jean Page, who so triumphantly played the Duke of Hastings. We'll miss Simon's presence onscreen, but he will always be a part of the Bridgerton family. Daphne will remain a devoted wife and sister, helping her brother navigate the upcoming social season and what it has to offer - more intrigue and romance than my readers may be able to bear. Yours Truly, Lady Whistedown." The Twitter account wrote. THR's sources have reported that Page only "had a one-season deal and completed his contractual obligation to the Shonda Rhimes-produced drama." This deal is said to be in line with how the producers, including Netflix, have always envisioned the show, with each new season focusing on a different one of Julia Quinn's novels. The second season of Bridgerton will focus on Jonathan Bailey's Anthony Bridgerton and, despite Page's departure, will see Pheobe Deynevor continuing on in the role of Daphne Bridgerton. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=netflixs-bridgerton-season-1-official-photos&captions=true"] For more on Bridgerton, check out our review of the first season and why we think the show should be Hollywood's next cinematic universe inspiration. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.