Good morning! I hope this Tuesday goes well for you. I think we all deserve a nice Tuesday. But even if today sucks, at least we have Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku’s daily roundup of video game news and other stuff you might care about. Today, we have a wild Sega ad, an actor from MindsEye dealing with the negative reviews, more Game Pass games, and someone on a soap opera mentioning Xenoblade.
Sega Goes Full ’90s And Attacks Nintendo In New Ad
Sonic Racing Crossworlds is out next week, and ahead of the kart racer’s launch, Sega has put out a new advertisement that feels like it fell out of 1995. In the short video ad, Sega obviously–but for legal reasons, not directly–calls out Mario Kart World and compares it to its upcoming racing game. It suggests the open world of Nintendo’s latest kart racer is boring and tells fans to instead play its upcoming Sonic racing game instead. It even shows pixelated footage of what looks like Mario Kart World and dunks on the game for not being multiplatform. Here’s the ad:
Damn, Sega. Of course, I don’t think Nintendo will care much, considering how well Mario Kart World has already sold and will continue to sell for the next decade. But it’s nice to go back to a time when the console wars were mostly a silly thing and not the rantings of weird techno-cults we have online now.
MindsEye’s Lead Actor Was Worried He Might Never Get Another Role
In a recent interview with FRVR, actor Alex Hernandez talked about what it’s like to be the lead character in a video game that flops as badly as MindsEye did earlier this year. As you might expect, it seems like a horrible experience!
“It’s a difficult thing to spend two-and-a-half years on a project that you’re really proud of and you’re proud of your contribution to it,” said the actor who plays the lead character in the game. “And I only had positive experiences working on it. The people I was working with, I was proud for them, of them, I wanted it to be a success for them just as much for myself.”
The actor told the outlet in a podcast that he was worried about his future in the industry after his face was plastered on what many consider the worst game of 2025.
“Just the response… I was like, ‘I might never work in a game again.’ Because one of the caveats of being the face on the box is that people, rightly or wrongly, will associate all of their opinions and, more importantly, their emotions, about this game with my face,” said Hernandez. “After about two days of allowing myself to wallow, and my wife being very supportive…You move on. Because for me to sit in that wallowing, it doesn’t allow me to learn.”
Xbox Adds Hades, Modern Warfare 3, And 12 More Titles To Game Pass This Month
A whole smorgasbord of games is coming to Xbox’s various Game Pass tiers throughout the rest of the month. Starting today, Game Pass Ultimate and Standard subscribers can download and play RoadCraft. Then, on September 17, a bunch of games hop onto Game Pass Standard, including Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. Then on the very next day, Hades returns to Game Pass to celebrate its five-year anniversary. Later in the month, Visions of Mana, a Peppa Pig game, and Lara Croft: Guardian of Light all arrive on Game Pass, too. So many games to play, so little time. Try to squeeze as many in as you can before October robs us all of our free time.
Palworld Leaving Early Access Next Year With ‘Massive’ 1.0 Update
In a new video posted on Palworld’s official YouTube channel, the game’s communications director and publishing manager, John “Bucky” Buckley, explained that developer PocketPair had reached a “crossroads” after shipping multiple big updates since launching in 2024. While the team has a “lot of ideas” for what to do next, the devs are also thinking about getting Palworld out of early access. But that will take a lot of “clean up.”
“It’s not [a] secret that Palworld has a lot of quirks and jank, and we want to take the time to properly address those before releasing the game,” explained Buck. “With that in mind, we plan to start clean-up this year. Our goal is to ultimately release Palworld next year, in 2026, and we think taking the time now to fix those problems will ultimately lead to a better game.”
This clean-up process means that the game’s upcoming winter update won’t be as big as previous content updates, but the goal is to ship a massive update in 2026 that will push the game into 1.0 status and out of early access.
“Palworld 1.0 will be a major milestone for us,” said Buck. “And we have a truly massive amount of content planned for the 1.0 update. Rather than rushing it, we believe that laying the foundation now will lead to a better game in the end.”
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