2026

It’s funny when I wrote this article, those games weren’t able to be played and at the time, I hadn’t been able to play them in years. In the years since, almost all of them were added to Xbox at some point. Yes, even The Adventures of Willy Beamish is playable in Retro Classics.

The only one that didn’t hit the console is Sam and Max Hit the Road. Sam and Max Hit the Road is about a pair of private detectives and have to solve a mystery of finding Bruno, a formerly frozen bigfoot at the carnival. He was freed by his girlfriend, Trixie Giraffe-Necked Girl. There have been 4 more games released since this was written.

Sonic and Knuckles eventually came to the 360 with Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection. It was also made available for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S with Sonic Origins.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time came to Xbox 360 with a remake of the game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection included the original version of the game.

In 2010, X-Men Arcade Game was released on XBox Live Arcade. It was also available in the Marvel Maximum Collection, along with other Marvel games I loved growing up, like Maximum Carnage.

The Simpsons Arcade Game was released on Xbox Live Arcade in February 2012. For unknown reasons, the game was removed from the service in December of 2013. With Disney and Xbox’s partnership with games like Blade, it would be great to see them work out a deal to bring this game back for purchase.

Toejam and Earl released the game and its sequel, Back in the Groove in November of 2012. There was even a sequel that felt more like a remake that was released in March of 2019. The third entry in the series, ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth, has not been made available on the 360 or any other Xbox generations.

There’s now a whole bunch of other games that I would love to be able to experience again. With Xbox’s new head making positive changes for the brand, maybe she will make it a point to bring some of these games to modern consoles.

The Last of Us on HBO and Fallout on Amazon Prime proved that video game adaptations can be genuinely great television. Both shows found audiences far beyond their gaming fanbases and both received critical acclaim that most shows would be happy to get. The question is no longer whether games can work as TV. The question is which games deserve to be next. Not all of them. Some games, like Tetris, Minecraft, etc. work as games and nothing else. But some have stories, worlds, and characters that feel like they were built for a prestige drama format that gives them room to breathe. These are the ones that I think should be next.

Best Games to Adapt into TV Series

• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Mass Effect
• Gears of War
• BioShock
• The Elder Scrolls
• Hades
• Metal Gear Solid
• Control
• Death Stranding

Red Dead Redemption 2

This is the obvious answer and the fact that it has not happened yet is genuinely puzzling. Arthur Morgan is one of the best-written characters in gaming, a morally complex outlaw wrestling with loyalty, mortality, and the fading of the old west. The world of Red Dead Redemption 2 is enormous and full of characters and storylines that a TV series could explore without ever repeating itself. The tone is already cinematic. Rockstar essentially made a prestige drama and attached a game to it. A series following Arthur and the Van der Linde gang in the years before the events of the game, or adapting the main story directly, would be appointment television. Think Yellowstone meets Deadwood with better writing than either. Plus who wouldn’t love a potential Sadie Adler spinoff show?

Mass Effect

The Mass Effect trilogy is a space opera on the scale of Star Wars with better character writing. Commander Shepard leading a diverse crew of alien and human companions against an ancient machine threat across three games worth of relationship building, political intrigue, and galaxy-scale consequence has everything a multi-season prestige drama needs. The challenge is committing to a version of Shepard, male or female, paragon or renegade, but that creative choice is exactly what an adaptation should make. The sprawling space opera series would make a great multi-season TV show. Amazon is already producing a God of War series. Mass Effect is a bigger universe with arguably more interesting characters. It should be next.

Gears of War

The emotional core of the Gears of War trilogy is Dom Santiago’s search for his wife and what it costs him. That story, set against a war of extermination on an alien planet, is the kind of thing that turns a military action franchise into something that actually affects people. A Gears TV series that committed to the relationship between Marcus and Dom the way the games do, treating the war as the backdrop rather than the point, could be extraordinary. The scale of the Locust War across Sera is also exactly the kind of world-building that works better in a ten-episode season than in a two-hour film. With Gears of War: E-Day coming soon, the timing has never been better.

BioShock

Rapture is one of the most fully realized fictional worlds ever built in a game. An underwater city built on Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy, corrupted by its own ideals and torn apart by civil war, with a cast of characters communicating through audio diaries found scattered through flooded corridors. A great setting with the underwater city of Rapture, a twist-heavy story, and those Big Daddies are just a few of the reasons that make a strong case for an adaptation.  Netflix has a BioShock film in development with Francis Lawrence directing and Michael Green writing. That is the right approach on paper, but a multi-season television series would serve Rapture better than any single film. There is too much world to compress.

The Elder Scrolls

Fallout worked as TV because Amazon committed to building an original story within the game’s world rather than adapting any specific game’s plot. The Elder Scrolls offers the same opportunity at a fantasy scale that would rival Game of Thrones. Tamriel is a continent with thousands of years of history, dozens of factions, and a mythology deep enough to sustain decades of storytelling. Like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls games are relatively light on plot and incredibly long on context, so a TV show could follow in Fallout’s footsteps and mix together the best parts of various games to tell an original-ish story.  With The Elder Scrolls VI still years away, a TV series would be the perfect way to keep the universe in people’s minds.

Hades

Hades is already written like a television show. Zagreus fighting his way out of the underworld across hundreds of runs while the relationships between him, his father Hades, his mother Persephone, and the assembled gods of Olympus develop through dialogue that changes with each attempt. The voice performances are outstanding. The character work is exceptional. The games have a ton of well-drawn characters who play out a variety of tightly scripted dramas, so a lot of the work would already be done for whoever adapts this story for TV. An animated series in the style of Arcane, with the same commitment to character and the same visual ambition, would be one of the best things on television.

Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear Solid has been discussed as a film for decades and nothing has ever materialized, largely because condensing Hideo Kojima’s famously dense lore into two hours is essentially impossible. Television solves that problem. Making Metal Gear Solid a TV show would give the story the space to spread out.  The original Metal Gear Solid, following Solid Snake infiltrating Shadow Moses to stop a nuclear threat while uncovering the conspiracy behind his own existence, has the bones of a great prestige thriller. The codec conversations alone could sustain an entire show’s worth of character development. Give it the budget it deserves and the season count to breathe and Metal Gear Solid becomes the spy thriller television has been missing since The Americans ended.

Control

Remedy Entertainment’s Control is set in a brutalist government building in New York City that is larger on the inside than the outside and full of paranormal phenomena that the Federal Bureau of Control has been quietly managing for decades. Jesse Faden arrives looking for answers about her past and ends up becoming the Bureau’s director in the middle of a crisis. The show practically writes itself as a Twin Peaks meets The X-Files workplace drama with supernatural horror and a genuinely strange protagonist who talks to herself constantly and wields telekinetic powers. The world has enough depth for multiple seasons. The tone is distinctive enough to stand out in a crowded streaming landscape. We already know Remedy can make compelling live action, as their last game, Quantum Break, had live action segments in it. Remedy is already developing film and television adaptations of their properties through Annapurna Pictures. Control should be first.

Death Stranding

Death Stranding is the hardest sell on this list and also potentially the most interesting. Hideo Kojima’s post-apocalyptic delivery game about a fractured America connected only by a courier named Sam Porter Bridges sounds almost deliberately unfilmable. A man walking across an empty landscape delivering packages while invisible creatures hunt him and ghosts of the dead pull him underwater. And yet the themes underneath all of it, loneliness, connection, the fragility of society, and what it costs to rebuild something that has been destroyed, are exactly the kind of thing that great prestige television is built on. The cast of the game already reads like a prestige drama lineup. Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Lea Seydoux, Lindsay Wagner, and Guillermo del Toro all appear in the game, with del Toro as a character rather than just a cameo. A television adaptation would need to commit fully to the strangeness of the world rather than trying to make it more conventional, the same risk Amazon took with Fallout and the same bet HBO made with The Last of Us. Both paid off. Death Stranding deserves the same chance. A slow, atmospheric prestige drama about rebuilding human connection across a broken America is exactly what television needs more of, and Kojima already did most of the creative heavy lifting.

The Games That Are Already Happening

Several of the most obvious choices are already on the way. Ghost of Tsushima is set to be directed by John Wick filmmaker Chad Stahelski, and fans can also look forward to an anime series based on the game’s Legends mode. Amazon is moving ahead with a Life is Strange TV show starring Maisy Stell as Max, and its God of War adaptation with Ryan Hurst as Kratos is also in production. Tomb Raider is getting a live?action series written and produced by Phoebe Waller?Bridge, with Sophie Turner stepping into the role of Lara Croft.

The pipeline is full. The real question is which franchises get the call next — and based on what television has proven it can do with the right source material, these are the video games that should be TV shows.

For years I have used an Ender 3 to print. For years I have had to relevel the bed, deal with random stringing of prints, filament snapping, and plenty of other issues. I thought this was just how 3d printing was, so I dealt with it. I know how to fix the issues, I was just tired of dealing with them. Kris got us the Bambu Lab P2S and let me just tell you, it’s been a game changer. I have had it for a few weeks now and haven’t had a failed print at all. I have been printing basically everyday since setting it up.

It feels like a completely different hobby. I have printed complex things with different color filament. I used to have to choose a color and then paint it, now I can print it in the colors I want it to be. It’s not perfect, but for a lot of things, it doesn’t need to be. The most complicated thing I printed with my Ender 3 was probably a shotgun, but with the P2S, I have printed a drawer, a Minecraft lantern, and a lot of other things.

I have put in a lot of upgrades, from the extruder, to the hot end. I added a new motherboard and upgraded the firmware. I even added OctoPi and a BL Touch. Everything I added to the Ender 3 comes standard in my new printer, but even after the upgrades, the quality still doesn’t come close to that of the Bambu Labs one. Admittedly some of my issues probably weren’t with the printer itself.

The Software problem

For almost the entire time I was using the Ender 3 exclusively, I was using Cura. At some point I lost the ability to have tree supports. Sometimes it would just fail with no warning, then I’d need to change something to fix it. It’d be one thing if the change was significant, but sometimes even just moving it slightly on the build plate made it work. Toward the end I did start using Bambu Studio though. Bambu Studio is much different than Cura, so there is a learning curve and I am still getting used to it. Bambu Studio vs Cura is like a professional software vs an open source alternative that does the same things, just not as good.

At some point I might put up an actual review of the P2S, there’s a lot of features that I haven’t fully explored yet. I have only been using PLA, it’s all I have ever used. I want to try different filaments as well as recording timelapses before I can fully commit to writing a full on review. I will say that if you are on the fence and going back and forth between an Ender 3 and a Bambu Lab printer, I would say it’s like cars. Some people like fixing cars, some people like driving cars, and some people like both. Ender 3 is for those that like fixing and working on them, but to just start printing, Bambu Lab seems like that’s the way to go.

2026 is the 25th anniversary of Xbox. In honor of their 25th year, Xbox and Microsoft are doing big things. The biggest thing they’ve done so far is replace the CEO, Phil Spencer, with a new one, Asha Sharma. In the short time that she’s been CEO, they have announced a new console, overhauled Achievements, and had a partner preview, showing upcoming games from their partners. Their next showcase was thought to be their annual June one, but that may not be the case. In a new rumor from Nate The Hate, there may be another showcase this Thursday, April 16th. It’s rumored to be showing off a new Metro game, the long rumored Metro 2039. Metro is a post-apocalyptic franchise that spans across video games and novels.

What Happens in June?

If this does happen and it’s not just an announcement, this would be Xbox’s third showcase of the year, including one last month and one in January. With it being their 25th anniversary, it makes sense why they are pushing out so much, but that makes me question what will they show in June? June is usually their biggest showcase of the year, so if they are showing off all the new stuff now, what do they have planned for June? Could they be showing off more of Project Helix? Will their be longer game trailers with less games? Will they focus more on services than they have in the past few years? One thing is clear, Xbox is determined to make a big comeback.

After years of mixed messaging, losing exclusives, and bad ad campaigns, Xbox is trying to steer the ship. Asha Sharma may be new to the games industry, but from the outside, it looks like she is listening to fans and trying to give them what they’ve been asking for. Will there be more exclusives, like many have been asking for? We will have to wait and see. It’s very possible that they will have timed exclusives like they did with Indiana Jones. It’s also possible, since Project Helix will play PC games, they won’t need first party exclusives. There have been thousands if not millions of games released exclusively on PC. Project Helix could make those games playable, for the first time, on a console.

Either way, we will need to wait and see what happens, both on Thursday and on June 7th when they have their annual showcase.

I finished up my playthrough of the Prototype games today and it has me curious about why they are not on Game Pass. Even though they were released initially on the Xbox 360, they were remastered for the Xbox One. The 360 versions are not currently backward compatible though and maybe that is one reason why they aren’t. That probably will change soon though. At GDC 2026, Xbox confirmed that its Xbox Backwards Compatibility program is going to return this year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Xbox. It would strange if they didn’t add their own games to play on their newer systems.

There’s a rumor that says they are working on a remake for Prototype. It would be strange to have all 3 be added to Game Pass at the same time, but anything’s possible right now, with Xbox’s CEO recently changing. Asha Sharma, the new CEO of Xbox, appears to be making some changes at Xbox after prioritizing fan feedback. So far she has overhauled the Achievement system and ended the “This is an Xbox” campaign.

No matter what they do with Prototype, there is a good possibility that we will be hearing about it on June 7th when they do their annual June showcase. 2026 is the 25th anniversary of Xbox, so showcasing their long list of IPs and bringing back some dead ones could be a priority for them. They’ve had a rough few years with declining hardware sales and fans being mad at them for putting their games on Playstation. Having plans for older IPs could get a strong positive reaction from gamers.

So far we know of plans for two of their most popular IPs. Halo has a remake of Combat Evolved called Campaign Evolved coming this summer. Gears of War on the other hand has E-Day coming this year. They are going to be doing a deep dive on June 7th after their showcase. Their June showcases started as being part of E3. Now that that’s no longer a thing, they’re part of Summer Game Fest, which has a few showcases planned during the month.

Would you play a Prototype remake? Did you play the originals? What did you think of them?

Imagine being at home, trying to play your favorite game online or stream a movie on Netflix on Wi-Fi and it’s laggy and buffering. You would probably load up your favorite speed test website or run a test right through your router to see if your speeds are too low. Now imagine you check and everything looks fast, so you figure that it must be on their end, not yours. The problem is, most speed tests don’t give you the whole picture. Yes it will give you a ping and it will tell you how fast your speed is, but that isn’t everything. What most of these sites won’t give you is the jitter. When you have the jitter information, you can figure out if your issue is your router placement, interference, overloaded Wi-Fi channels, etc.

What Jitter Is

What is jitter though? Jitter is the amount of variation in the delay between successive packets. What does that mean exactly? Well imagine if you are waiting for someone to hand you blocks one at a time. They’re supposed to hand them to you in a nice steady rhythm, but they don’t. Sometimes they come quickly, sometimes they wait too long. Sometimes, they hand you two at the same time. You don’t know when the next one is coming and that makes the unpredictability even harder. So which speed test will actually give you the jitter information that you are probably dying to know right now? Cloudflare will.

Why Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers an advanced speed test that exposes the parts of your connection that basic tests hide. Their test shows raw network behavior that internet service providers(ISP) rarely highlight because it reveals issues beyond simple download/upload speeds.
The most important metric it surfaces is jitter—the variation in latency from one moment to the next. High jitter is a major cause of:

• video call stuttering
• gaming lag
• inconsistent streaming
• random slowdowns even when your top speed looks fine

Cloudflare’s test also measures other low-level details that help you understand whether the problem is your router, your Wi-Fi environment, your ISP, or something else entirely. Cloudflare’s tool goes beyond the “headline numbers” and gives you:

• Latency stability instead of just ping
• Jitter, which reveals how smooth or chaotic your connection is
• Packet behavior (like packet loss, delay, and responsiveness), which shows whether your network is dropping or delaying data
• Real-world responsiveness, not just raw throughput

This makes it far better for diagnosing the kinds of issues that make a fast connection feel slow. If your internet feels unreliable or slow, even though your speed test looks great, the problem is usually not bandwidth, it’s instability. Cloudflare’s test helps pinpoint that instability so you can figure out what the culprit is. ISPs will tell you how fast their network is under ideal conditions, unfortunately we don’t live in an ideal condition kind of world, so we need to run tests and figure out what is causing the issue and see if we can fix it.

So the next time your game lags or your movie keeps buffering, don’t trust the basic speed test, run Cloudflare’s speed test instead. The issue might not be your internet speed at all, but your jitter.

I spent hours in arcades growing up. My favorite games to play were side scrollers, like Simpsons and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. A common couple that I would play are the X-Men arcade game, which was an ultra wide machine because it could handle 6 players and not the standard 4 that a lot of them could. I haven’t been able to play the X-Men game since playing it on a big arcade cabinet. That will soon change, as it is included with Marvel MaXimum Collection this week. The game is 15 previously released Marvel games. The games included are:

• X-Men: The Arcade Game
• Captain America and The Avengers
• Spider-Man/Venom: Maximum Carnage
• Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety
• Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge
• Silver Surfer

A lot of these include multiple variants, including arcade and console versions of the game. I have played most of these, so getting to replay them again years later has me extra excited. I have played most of the Marvel games, so anytime a rerelease or remaster is announced I am usually excited. Now if only they would remaster the Sega X-Men games and the Activision Spider-Man games, that would have me really excited.

Marvel MaXimum Collection isn’t just going to be including the games, but some great features as well. It will have built in rewind and save states for the games. X-Men: The Arcade Game will include online multiplayer for up to 5 other players. The game will also have cheats, a music player, and display options so you can choose to play it in a modern visual mode, or a CRT mode. The game will probably be a day 1 buy and it’s set to be released this year, so hopefully I will be playing it sooner rather than later. I will more than likely be playing on Xbox, unless it’s on Xbox PC at the same time, otherwise I will be playing there. So far it’s been announced for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, XBox Series X/S, and Windows.

Unfortunately I missed out on the remasters of Marvel Ultimate Alliance, so getting them available again and X-Men Legends would be nice as well. I was hoping they would have been added to backwards compatibility, but since they never were, my only hope would be to get a hold of an Xbox 360.

Phil Spencer has been at Xbox since 1988. In March 2014, he became head of Xbox. Under his leadership Xbox One stopped the requirement to use Kinect, Play Anywhere, where you buy a game on Xbox and it’s available on PC, he oversaw numerous acquisitions of publishers and developers, and much more. On Friday, after 38 years at the company, Phil Spencer retired. Last year there was a rumor that Spencer would be retiring after the launch of their next generation Xbox is released. The rumor stated that Spencer was preparing Sarah Bond, the President of Xbox as his replacement. Microsoft released a statement that he would not be retiring anytime soon.

As of Friday, Phil Spencer has retired. Sarah Bond will not be replacing him and instead has left as well. Asha Sharma, formerly of Microsoft’s CoreAI products division, is the new CEO of Xbox. We probably won’t know what changes she will be making to Xbox for a few months at least, but as of right now, she has promised three things: great games, return of Xbox, and the future of play.

Sharma’s promotion marks a new era for Xbox. It’s a fitting time as well, with 2026 being Xbox’s 25th anniversary. We already know that the 25th anniversary will see a remake of the original Halo. In June Xbox usually has a press conference that shows off new games and other things. It’s where Xbox announced their backward compatibility program, the Asus Rog X, as well as hundreds of games over the years. It’s possible that the next Xbox will be shown this year, though when the Xbox Series X was announced, it was at the Game Awards. With the next Xbox rumored to be released in 2027, June might be a little early for it to be shown. June shouldn’t be too early to see even an inkling of how Xbox is going to change under the new CEO.

I am excited about this next chapter. Phil Spencer came on board and changed the game so to speak. Xbox went from a console to an ecosystem that includes Game Pass and apps. Some people hate this and want it to go back to just being a console. It’s clear that up until this point, that wasn’t going to happen. Now though, with a new CEO? Personally I doubt it, but it is possible that with the new leadership some things revert to how they once were.

What do you think, are you excited for the change in leadership? Do you think this will change anything significantly?

Is a new Chucky movie or a new season of Chucky coming sooner than we think? Signs seem to be pointing to that. In 2024 Chucky creator Don Mancini stated that a new Chucky movie would be released in 2025. Obviously now that we are in 2026, we know that a Chucky movie did not happen in 2025. Mancini is the creator and writer of the franchise since the very first movie.

A few days ago, ET reported that Jennifer Tilly was quoted saying “The television series just ended, but I know for a fact there is more Chucky and Tiffany in the works”. While it’s unclear when the interview was recorded, seeing as how the last season of the show aired in 2024, it’s possible that the interview is a few years old. It’s also possible that it is much more recent.

The most recent evidence pointing to this is something that Fiona Dourif posted on X (formerly Twitter). In her post she said

“I’m sorry to say we must pull out of Days of the Dead, Atlanta. I was looking forward to hanging out with both my dad & you guys!

This is not a decision I take lightly and my sincere apologies to anyone who bought tickets. I got a job I can’t turn down & they never give notice.”

Along with the post was the following photo, which shows her father, Brad Dourif, also pulled out of the convention.

Fiona Dourif plays numerous characters in the franchise, including Nica Pierce as well as a younger version of Charles Lee Ray, AKA Chucky in his human form. Brad Dourif pulling out is also notable because he has been the voice of Chucky as well as the human form of Charles Lee Ray since the first installment of the franchise back in the 1980s.

Obviously this is all speculation and any one of these could be a stretch, however when it is all put together, it sure does sound like something Chucky is coming. It could be a new show, a new season of the Chucky show, a new movie, or something different. In 2025, Angry Orchard teamed up with Horror Inc to bring the first Friday the 13th content in years with a vignette called Sweet Revenge.

What do you think, is the timing of all this just coincidence or do you think there is something more to it and there could be some news coming soon?

Originally published February 13th, 2026, updated May 5, 2026: Stellar Blade is a Playstation console exclusive that later came to PC. It’s a third person action game developed by Shift Up. You play as Eve, a soldier trying to reclaim a post apocalyptic Earth from alien creatures called Naytibas. The combat draws comparisons to Sekiro and NieR: Automata, and it sold over a million copies in its first two months on PS5 alone. A PC version followed in June 2025 and moved another 2.4 million copies on Steam by early 2026. For a new IP from a studio most people hadn’t heard of, those are some big numbers.

Shift Up is hinting that it may not be exclusive to Sony’s console much longer. According to a Shift Up Investor post, the studio claimed “we are reviewing platform expansion beyond PS5 and PC to broaden audience reach”. The post does not explicitly say Xbox, but other console exclusives have been coming to the Xbox Series X/S lately. Final Fantasy 7, Death Stranding, Black Myth: Wukong, and Silent Hill 2 have all come to Xbox after being exclusive to Playstation. Of course Xbox isn’t the only console there is. Nintendo Switch 2 was released last year and has a growing library. It’s also possible that the game could come to mobile devices.

Shift Up sees Stellar Blade as a long term IP and already has a sequel in development. They could follow in Death Stranding’s footsteps and release the game on Xbox before the next game in the series comes out. Both games were published by Sony Interactive Entertainment when they released. Kojima Productions purchased the Death Stranding IP before releasing the game on Xbox, however Helldivers 2 and MLB the Show are both published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Bungie, which is owned by Sony will also be publishing the upcoming Marathon to Xbox. Either way it’s a possibility.

The sequel angle matters more than people are giving it credit for. When a studio has a follow up in development, getting the first game in front of as many players as possible before that sequel launches is just smart business. Why would someone want to buy a sequel to a game that they didn’t/couldn’t play? More people who have played Stellar Blade means more people who will buy Stellar Blade 2 on day one, regardless of what platform they’re on. Shift Up knows this, which is probably why the platform expansion language showed up in an investor report in the first place. They’re telling shareholders the audience is going to grow.

Xbox has been making a lot of interesting moves lately. Between lowering the price of Game Pass and giving players features that they have been asking for, it would make sense for studios like Shift Up to take notice. With Xbox’s momentum on the rise, it could be the perfect time to announce an Xbox port during their June showcase.

So what happens next? Will Sony publish Stellar Blade on Xbox? Will Stellar Blade skip Xbox all together and possibly go to the Switch or mobile? Only time will tell, but if Stellar Blade does land on Xbox, will you be jumping in?

A few years ago, after years since the announcement, Overwatch 2 launched. The sequel promised updated visuals, a 5v5 experience, and an ongoing player vs everyone (PVE) experience. Years later, they have dropped the PVE entirely. Now they are making another big change, they are removing the 2. That’s right, Overwatch 2 is now just going to be Overwatch again. With this change, comes 5 new characters and 5 more set to launch in the next 5 seasons.  The 5 characters announced so far are Domina, Emre, Anran, Mizuki, and Jetpack Cat. That last one is exactly how it sounds, it’s literally a cat that flies around on a jetpack. I haven’t played Overwatch in a while, but personally I’d never want to kill that cute feline.

Along with these new characters comes new sub-roles and passives. Each character, both new and existing, will have a main class, tank, damage, or healer, then a secondary sub-class. Tanks will have bruiser, initiator, and stalwart. Damage will have sharpshooter, flanker, specialist, and recon. Healers will have tactician, medic, and survivor.

Tank

Bruiser: Reduces critical damage received. While at critical health, gain movement speed

• Roadhog, Zarya, Orisa, Mauga

Initiator: Staying airborne lightly heals you

• D.Va, Winston, Doomfist, Wrecking Ball

Stalwart: Reduces knockbacks and slows received

• Reinhardt, Sigma, Ramattra, Junker Queen, Hazard, Domina

Damage

Sharpshooter: Critical hits reduce ability cooldowns

• Hanzo, Widowmaker, Cassidy, Ashe, Sojourn

Flanker: Health packs restore more health

• Tracer, Reaper, Genji, Vendetta, Venture, Anran

Specialist: Eliminating an enemy briefly increases reload speed

• Bastion, Junkrat, Mei, Soldier 76, Symmetra, Torbjorn, Emre

Recon: Detect enemies below half health through walls after damaging them

• Pharah, Sombra, Echo, Freja

Support

Tactician: Gain excess ultimate charge that carries over after using your ultimate

• Lucio, Zenyatta, Ana, Baptiste, Jetpack Cat

Medic: Healing allies with your weapon also heals you

• Mercy, Moira, Kiriko, Lifeweaver

Survivor: Using a movement ability activates passive health regeneration

• Brigitte, Illari, Juno, Wuyang, Mizuki

Gaming is bigger than ever in 2026, but it wouldn’t be that way without the games that got us here. 2026 is a huge anniversary for a lot of games, so before we enjoy the new ones coming this year, let’s appreciate those that came before.

• Overwatch (10th)
• Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (10th)
• Dark Souls III (10th)
• DOOM (10th)
• Final Fantasy XV (10th)
• The Last Guardian (10th)
• Inside (10th)
• Stardew Valley (10th)
• Pokémon Sun and Moon (10th)
• Firewatch (10th)
• Dishonored 2 (10th)
• Titanfall 2 (10th)
• Battlefield 1 (10th)
• The Witness (10th)
• No Man’s Sky (10th)
• Gears of War 4 (10th)
• Ratchet & Clank (10th)
• Street Fighter V (10th)
• Quantum Break (10th)
• Halo: Combat Evolved (25th)
• Grand Theft Auto III (25th)
• Super Smash Bros. Melee (25th)
• Final Fantasy X (25th)
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (25th)
• Luigi’s Mansion (25th)
• Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (25th)
• Animal Crossing (25th)
• Pikmin (25th)
• Max Payne (25th)
• Pokémon Red & Green (30th)
• Resident Evil (30th)
• Super Mario 64 (30th)
• Crash Bandicoot (30th)
• Quake (30th)
• Tomb Raider (30th)
• Diablo (30th)
• Wave Race 64 (30th)
• The Legend of Zelda (40th)\
• Metroid (40th)
• Dragon Quest (40th)
• Castlevania (40th)
• OutRun (40th)
• Kid Icarus (40th)
• Breakout (50th)
• Heavyweight Champ (50th)
• Night Driver (50th)
• Colossal Cave Adventure (50th)

Some of the games listed, like Halo, will be getting a remake or remaster for their anniversary. Nothing beats the first time sitting down with an original game though, especially ones that were so ground breaking like Halo or Tomb Raider. Hopefully the remakes will feel just like we remember them when we first played them oh so long ago.