Marvel's Avengers draws on decades of comic book artwork, so the concept art that went into the game could come in many forms – and we've got 8 exclusive images to show you. Taken from Titan Books' Marvel's Avengers - The Art of the Game by Paul Davies, the images show a selection of heroes, locations and details from the game - some more familiar than others. Check out the full gallery below: [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=marvels-avengers-8-exclusive-concept-art-images&captions=true"] Before you put your speculation hats on, we can tell you that the image of a, well, spider-woman, is in fact in-game graffiti depicting Black Widow. The graffiti depicts The Avengers with various mutations, to reflect the game's story of Terrigen infection and the creation of Inhumans (there's also a hawk holding arrows to reflect Hawkeye, and more). Also of note is the concept art of Kamala Khan's bedroom, showing a different design for the young heroine (and antagonist George Tarleton on her laptop screen), as well as a seeming friend character who didn't make it to the final version. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/09/10/marvels-avengers-review"] We released our final review of Marvel's Avengers yesterday, awarding the game a 6/10 and saying its "campaign is fun and endearing, but the loot-based post-game meant to be the meat of this meal is unrewarding and overly repetitive." Kate Bishop will be added to the game in October as the first post-launch hero, with Clint Barton coming later, and Spider-Man arriving as a PlayStation exclusive. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

A scripted series starring Nicolas Cage as Tiger King's Joe Exotic has found a home at Amazon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the CBS Television Studios project has been greenlit and is in development for Prime Video. This adaptation will apparently focus on Joe Exotic's feuds with Carole Baskin and Jeff Lowe, made famous by the 2020 Netflix series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/22/lets-cast-the-tiger-king-movie"] According to THR, the series will "live in the lion's den with Joe, explore how he became Joe Exotic, and how he lost himself to a character of his own creation." Back in May, it was first reported that Nicolas Cage would be playing Joe Exotic, and that the adaptation would focus on the Leif Reigstad Texas Monthly article about the Tiger King, titled "Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild,” by Leif Reigstad. This is not the only Tiger King adaptation in the works, with Kate McKinnon set to play Carole Baskin in a limited series based on Wondery's "Joe Exotic" podcast. In August, the show was ordered to series by NBC Universal. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN, who notes that Cage is no stranger to an 'Adaptation.' Follow him on Twitter.

Ewan McGregor has explained that, for now, the Obi-Wan Kenobi series for Disney+ is a "standalone season", and will begin shooting in spring 2021. Speaking to ET, McGregor was asked what the ongoing plans for the Star Wars TV series were, to which he explained, "As I understand, it's a standalone season." That doesn't seem to be an absolutely final decision, however, with McGregor adding, "We'll see. Who knows?" Earlier this year, McGregor told IGN that shooting for the series had slipped to January, but that may have moved back again. "Spring next year we start,"  the actor told ET. "I'm really excited about it. It's gonna be great, I think." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/obi-wan-kenobi-the-greatest-jedi-of-all-time"] The internally planned release date for the show itself shouldn't have slipped, but that's still not been publicised. McGregor previously told us that he's "read about eighty, ninety percent of what they’ve written so far, and it’s really, really good." There's still some question as to whether the show has been reconfigured from a six-episode series to a four-episode run, but McGregor said he hadn't heard about that decision. The Obi-Wan Kenobi series, which was originally set to be a movie, is set to take place 8 years after Revenge of the Sith and will be directed by Deborah Chow, who helmed episodes of The Mandalorian. Joby Harold also recently signed on as a writer for the series. For more, find out everything we know about the series and watch the moment that the long-awaited show was revealed at the D23 Expo 2019. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

The announcer from the original Super Monkey Ball games has teased that fans can expect news about the series in September. As spotted by VGC, voice actor Brian Matt posted a picture of himself playing Super Monkey Ball on Nintendo Switch to his Instagram following, with the caption noting that "September will be amazing for what's to come." This suggests that there might be a new Super Monkey Ball game on the way this month, or at least some news about the franchise. Perhaps we'll hear some more about the series at Tokyo Game Show later this month? [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/08/08/super-monkey-ball-banana-blitz-hd-gameplay-trailer"] The most recent game in the series was 2019's remaster of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD. As well as bringing full HD visuals and revamped controls to the 2006 Nintendo Wii game, Banana Blitz HD also featured Sonic the Hedgehog as an unlockable character. You can check out our review of the 2006 original here, which we scored and 8.3, praising the game for its "satisfying level design." Following the success of Persona 4: Golden's PC port, Sega plans to "aggressively" port games to Steam and other new platforms. Could we see more classic Super Monkey Ball games launch on modern platforms as a result?   [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Black Myth: Wukong came out of nowhere with a first trailer - made up of 13 minutes of pure gameplay - that wowed people across the world. But since that trailer, we've learnt very little more about this breakout Chinese indie game. IGN China recently visited the developer, Game Science for an exclusive set of interviews, and learned a lot more about the game, and the people making it. The full interview is well worth reading, but below is a rundown of 19 new details we've learned about Black Myth: Wukong and Game Science - from how the demo can be played differently, to how Wukong is just the first in a universe of planned Black Myth games, and how the company received over 10,000 resumes after the demo went viral. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/black-myth-wukong-official-13-minutes-gameplay-trailer"]

Black Myth: Wukong - New Details

• Black Myth: Wukong has been in development for two years so far.
• The team is aiming to release the game no less than three years from now.
• Game Science is aiming for more than 15 hours of playtime.
• The team plans on including over 100 enemy types in the final game, including bosses.
• Black Myth: Wukong is designed to be a gritty take on Journey to the West, featuring a more complex, dark version of the tale of Sun Wukong the Monkey King escorting a monk with a sacred scroll.
• The trailer shows three different monkeys - players will have to wait to work out who the real Wukong is.
• The trailer area is called Black Wind Mountain, and took six months to build.
• The playtime of Black Wind Mountain is planned to be 30 to 60 minutes on normal difficulty. It will be one of the game's earlier levels.
• Four or five versions of Black Wind Mountain trailer were created before the demo we saw was deemed ready for release.
• The demo is entirely playable, and can be played using different approaches - fighting enemies instead of transforming into a Golden Cicada to avoid them, for instance.
• The player can use multiple different transformations during the Wolf boss fight - more than the one shown in the trailer.
• The game currently features a test area - nicknamed "Toilet" - that includes four other bosses not shown in the trailer.
• Black Myth: Wukong is the first of three planned Black Myth games, each one drawing on different Chinese tales. Co-founder Feng Ji wants to create a Black Myth Universe, not unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=black-myth-wukong-11-screenshots&captions=true"]

Facts About the Developer, Game Science

• 30 people are working on the game right now, with the developer's three co-founders all starting the company after working at Tencent.
• The game is being designed as a premium console game - something considered unusual and risky in the contemporary Chinese market.
• The team discussed outsourcing some of the development to companies that had worked with Naughty Dog and Sony Santa Monica, but have decided not to.
• Game Science is planning to hire 10-15 more people to allow for the company to have two separate teams working on level design simultaneously.
• After the game's trailer went viral, the company saw 10,000 resumes sent to them, with some people coming to the office itself to ask for a job.
• The company plans to go quiet "for a long time" to work on the game, and won't show any more of the game until the develoeprs believe that what they'll show is better than the first trailer.

[poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Last month, a new game trailer came from out of nowhere, much like the monkey jumping out of the stone in the tale of Journey to the West. The debut trailer for Black Myth: Wukong grabbed everyone’s attention in the gaming industry, accruing over 5 million hits on IGN’s YouTube channel alone. The next-generation graphics look stunning, with the gameplay in this 13-minute demo showing that this was not just some CGI animation. Original God of War director David Jaffe was amazed by the gameplay, and current God of War director Cory Barlog called it “awesome” on Twitter. The quality of the trailer looks like it was produced by a premium AAA gaming company, but it's actually from a Chinese indie studio, Game Science, that no one had ever heard of before, catching the industry by total surprise. IGN China was the only gaming media granted an exclusive interview after the trailer went viral and, last weekend, I walked into the Game Science studio in Hangzhou, China. My first impression of this studio was that it was very different from other gaming companies. The studio provides free lunch, dinner, drinks, and snacks, which is very unusual for a Chinese company. Their working day starts at 2pm, and there is no fixed time for when they need leave work - with workers encouraged to leave when they want to, or to work from home if they'd prefer. However, employees are used to sleeping during the day and working at night, most of them leaving work after 10pm. When I finished this interview and walked out of their office at 2am, there were still a few people working. Right now, the team is made up of about 30 people. A lot of the developers, as well as game producer Feng Ji and other co-founders, all previously worked at gaming giant Tencent. All of them worked on an MMORPG project called Asura, which is a fantasy game based on Journey to the West, with Feng acting as creative designer. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/black-myth-wukong-official-13-minutes-gameplay-trailer"] Similar to Asura, Black Myth: Wukong is a gritty take on this classic Chinese tale. Different from Journey to the West, the story talks about the Monkey King (Wukong) escorting a monk who has obtained the sacred scroll from the West, but Black Myth: Wukong is much darker and more complex. There are three monkeys shown in the trailer, and players have to wait to figure out who is the real Wukong when they play the game. The level shown in the trailer is part of the beginning of an area called Black Wind Mountain. Feng told me that it took them six months to produce this demo, and the team has been working on the game for about two years. The reason they released this video now is because the studio is trying to recruit more talent - they were not expecting it to be this popular. This is the first time the teameam has used Unreal Engine 4 to develop a game. Before Black Myth, Game Science Studio used Cocos and the Unity engine to publish two mobile games. One of the RTS games, Art of War: Red Tides was featured in the Apple App Store globally, and when Tim Cook visited China in 2017, Game Science Studio was one of his stops. Although Art of War: Red Tides has now stopped updates on Steam, over 6,000 reviews of the game are Mostly Positive. Game Science's two mobile games brought in stable revenue streams and allowed it to pursue a high quality AAA story-driven action-RPG game. The Chinese gaming market is saturated with free-to-play mobile games and online games, and it's considered a very commercially risky move to develop a premium console game. After releasing two mobile games, one of the co-founders, Art Director Yang Qi, told Feng, "It's time to do what we wanted to do from the beginning." Under his father's influence, Yang started learning traditional Chinese painting when he was 5. He was fascinated with Star Wars in high school and went to China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Now, the Wukong team is based in Hangzhou, Yang's favorite city because he lived and studied there for many years. Yang has been a graphic designer for over 15 years. His art has a dark fantasy vibe, and it’s easy to tell his work, no matter if it's characters or environment. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=shots-from-inside-the-studio-making-black-myth-wukong&captions=true"] Game Science Studio was founded in Shenzhen and part of the team moved to Hangzhou to start the Black Myth: Wukong project in 2018. In the beginning, there were only 7 people on the team, now expanded to 30 people. In the early days, the team spent lots of time getting familiar with Unreal Engine 4. They thought of outsourcing to speed up the project, but after talking to several companies who worked with Naughty Dog and Santa Monica Studio, they decided to take on the project themselves. As Art Director, Yang did a lot of design work on the special effects of the battles, but the actual project was handled by game designer Jiang Baicun. Jiang was the lead level designer for Asura, and co-founded Game Science with Feng and Yang. Jiang is maybe the only person in the company who didn't care about the feedback after the trailer was released. Feng teases him for being a defeatist, but the truth is Jiang is the type of person who has the personality that can be described by a Chinese poem, "Not overjoyed by external gains, also not saddened by personal loss." Jiang is a very calm and down-to-earth kind of person. Jiang started with the Black Wind Mountain level and picked four or five versions to make this debut trailer. He remembered when the first version of the trailer was played in the studio, the room was silent. It meant the trailer was not OK. He said when they started Game Science, their motto was to "make the game that can move you." They believed if you are not happy with it, you can't expect other players to accept it. The final version undoubtedly has everyone on the team satisfied, but fans started getting skeptical. Some questioned whether this might be a CGI animation and not actual gameplay footage, so I asked Feng to let me play the demo, and he was happy to do it. He also said that I am one of only a few people that have been able to play this outside of the company. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=I%20can't%20reveal%20too%20much%2C%20but%20I%20can%20assure%20you%20that%20the%20version%20that%20I%20played%20was%20the%20same%20as%20shown%20in%20the%20trailer."] Due to the NDA I signed, I can't reveal too much, but I can assure you that the version that I played was the same as shown in the trailer: the fights, transforming, casting spells - it had it all, and it’s a complete experience. I intentionally picked a different approach to play than the trailer. Firstly, instead of transforming to a golden cicada to evade the enemies, I decided to fight. Secondly, during the final battle with the big white wolf, I transformed into another shape to fight against him. Feng also put in a new enemy that was not in the trailer (I can't talk about its name nor look) and taught me how to defeat him to prove that this gameplay is more than just what you see in the trailer. Feng also unlocked another testing level for me. This is a level they called, “Toilet”. It features four bosses that have finished basic design, and each one can be battled. Feng said they still needed to spend more time to polish the bosses, so they didn't show up in the trailer. Feng said to complete Black Myth: Wukong, players probably need at least 15 hours of playtime. To ensure people stay excited during the gameplay and boss fights, the team plans on having over a hundred different kinds of monster enemies. However, with their current manpower, they can only have one team work on designing levels. They realized if they want to finish the game within 3 years, hiring more talent is unavoidable. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=everything-we-know-about-black-myth-wukong&captions=true"] Right now, Game Science is planning on hiring 10-15 people so they can have two teams work on the level design. But after the trailer went viral, over 10,000 resumes flooded into their recruiting inbox. Some are from AAA gaming companies, even candidates from outside of China who are willing to apply for a Chinese working visa at their own cost. These candidates just want to work on this project. The craziest thing is that the day after the trailer came out, there were people showing up at the door of the company asking for a job. This is much more than the company's HR can handle. Feng Ji was calm when he saw the massive influx of resumes. He admitted right now the game might be overhyped, and it’s not normal. Although he is very grateful, right now he feels the need to put a damper over himself and their employees so they don’t get in over their head. The day of my visit, Feng was telling everyone to be calm in the all-hands meeting. He said the popularity of the trailer is both encouraging and a pressure. Because everyone loved it, they needed to make the game even better. He wants everyone back to work like before the trailer came out. Everybody doing their job is the only way to ensure this project can be successful. But the truth is Feng has planned an even more ambitious future for his team and himself. The title Black Myth suggests a bigger myth universe. In Chinese myths, Journey to the West is just one of the many great stories. Feng and his team are hoping Black Myth: Wukong is just a beginning to build up a Chinese Black Myth Universe, similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He even told me the names of the two other Black Myths - although I am not allowed to tell you what they are, I can say it is a really ambitious plan. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=black-myth-wukong-11-screenshots&captions=true"] The attention that Black Myth: Wukong got is something that we have never seen before for a Chinese game. The trailer got over 25 million views on the largest Chinese video website, Bilibili.com. On the country's biggest social media website Weibo, it got retweeted over 100,000 times, and this is only from Game Science’s official Weibo account. In the past few days, a lot of deep dives and breakdown videos of the trailer got over hundreds of thousands views worldwide. Chinese players are celebrating the success and calling it “The Pride of China.” Some western players may know of the tale of Journey to the West and the main character Monkey King, but more know of him through the Japanese manga Dragon Ball Z and the main character, Son Goku. Feng named it Black Myth: Wukong and hoped to give the Monkey King's name back to him. He said the tale is from China, but everyone refers to him as Goku, so he wants to let the world know his name is Wukong. Feng said right now the game is still in early development and Game Science still has a long way to go. When I asked when we could see the game next, he responded, “We might go quiet for a long time, because right now we need to settle down and finish the project. It is a complete surprise that the trailer got so popular, but it’s also a challenge for our next reveal. If we can’t make something that is even better than this trailer, we won’t show it to the rest of the world.” [poilib element="accentDivider"]

Will Smith has shared two images from the upcoming Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reunion special on HBO Max, and he also revealed that he sat down with Janet Hubert, who originated the role for Aunt Viv, for the first time in 27 years. Smith revealed the images on Instagram, saying, "Today is exactly 30 YEARS since The @FreshPrince of Bel-Air debuted! So we’re doin’ something for y’all… a for real Banks Family Reunion is comin’ soon to @HBOmax! RIP James. #FreshPrince30th" James Avery, who Smith was referencing in his post, played Uncle Phil on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and passed away in 2013 at the age of 65. As for Hubert, Smith surprised the cast when he revealed he sat down with her for a "emotional reunion and a candid conversation" that will be part of this upcoming special. Hubert played Vivian Banks for 74 episodes from 1990-1993, before Daphne Maxwell Reid took over the role through the end of the series. The second photo features members of the main cast, including Tatyana Ali (Ashley Banks), Karyn Parsons (Hilary Banks), Joseph Marcell (Geoffrey Butler), Daphne Maxwell Reid (Vivian Banks), Alfonso Ribeiro (Carlton Banks), and DJ Jazzy Jeff (Jazz), who all came together for a "family reunion on the set of the Banks' home in this one-time special" that was taped today, September 10, 2020. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/05/30/hbo-max-streaming-service-review"] In addition to hearing from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's series regulars, this special will also feature guest appearances, music, and dancing. While this reunion may only be for one night, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is getting a reboot with a darker and more dramatic tone. It's is being developed by Morgan Cooper, who produced an unlicensed faux-trailer for a proposed Fresh Prince reboot, and is being co-produced by Smith's Westbrook Studios and Universal TV. [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.

GameStop announced that there will be even more store closures than previously expected, about a 100 more than previously announced.