Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the most beloved characters in video games, and the success of his recent trilogy of live-action movies has only further proved that fact. As the franchise has continued, each movie has introduced more characters from Sonic's lore, with a post-credits scene in the latest movie announcing the arrival of Amy Rose. While she's silent in that scene, today, we learned actress Kristen Bell will be portraying her in the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 4, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Bell is known for her starring roles in The Good Place, Veronica Mars, and the Frozen movies, though video game fans might also remember her performance as Lucy in the first three Assassin's Creed games. She's performed alongside Sonic's voice actor, Ben Schwartz, many times, with both on the main cast for all five seasons of House of Lies.

Amy Rose in Sonic Dream Team

Amy is one of Sonic's most commonly appearing sidekicks, being featured in just about every modern iteration of the series and being playable in a few, as well. She's loud, passionate, wields a disproportionately massive hammer, and is often depicted as being absolutely in love with Sonic, though he rarely reciprocates. Personality-wise, she's got a lot in common with Miss Piggy and Harley Quinn. We recently encountered her as the Lady of the Lake in our Super Replay of Sonic and the Black Knight, but she's featured in good games too.

Given that this is the first we've heard of Bell's involvement, it will probably be a few months until we see our first trailer. In any case, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 hits theaters in March 19, 2027. Interestingly, that's just seven weeks before Nintendo's live-action Zelda movie is slated to come out – it's going to be a big spring for video game adaptations.

[Source: The Hollywood Reporter]

Denshattack appeared from nowhere in August at Gamescom to become one of the major highlights of the annual show in Germany. In the game, you play as a runaway train rampaging its way through Japan as it pulls off tricks as though it were on a Tony Hawk skateboard. It’s colorful, bombastic, weird, and undeniably enticing.

Join Marcus Stewart and me as we play through the game's demo ahead of its release to get a taste of the frankly insane game in action.

For more on Denshattack, head here. And I hear a rumor that subscribing to Game Informer magazine could lead to even more exclusive details about the game in a future issue! But unfortunately, there is no way of knowing... unless you subscribe.

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PC
Publisher: Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel
Developer: Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel
Release: February 10, 2026

Mewgenics is difficult to assess; it executes some ideas incredibly well, while others are clumsy and grating. I adore its combat, which makes for excellent roguelike gameplay and has been well worth my extensive playtime. Simultaneously, the game's humor and breeding mechanics have really brought my opinion down over time, as both elements have gotten old as my playthrough went on. Even so, the combat and breeding are two distinct parts of the game, and the former takes up so much playtime that it's easy for me to push the latter to the side. Mewgenics makes me uncomfortable often enough that I can't ignore it, but man, that combat is incredible.

An early combat encounter in the desert biome

To complete a playthrough of Mewgenics is a gargantuan task, taking anywhere from 150 to 200 hours of gameplay. Therefore, in order for Mewgenics to do something successfully, it has to remain enjoyable or entertaining for that entire time. Its features need to have a long shelf life to remain fresh for hundreds of hours. In an inspiring feat of game design, its combat achieves this.

The battles in question have players control four cats of various classes in turn-based encounters across roguelike runs. Each cat starts with random new abilities, and it's always fun to experiment with new builds and team compositions. There are so many items, moves, passive abilities, and field events that it's impossible to predict how a run will go, and no matter how it varies, it's almost always fun.

Even dozens of hours in, I was consistently surprised by new interactions between Mewgenics' varied systems, whether it was in excitement when I had a potentially game-breakingly powerful Fighter cat, or in horror as I realized a negative trait on one cat meant it accidentally permanently killed another of my party members. I facepalmed when I tried to grow grass in a blizzard, only to create a tile of icy spikes. I felt genuine relief when it began to rain in the desert, and I could fill my water bottles. As good or bad as it goes, there's always another run, and that next run is going to feel remarkably different. Even with my criticisms of the game, the thrilling and engaging combat makes up the vast majority of your playtime, for which I'm thankful.

A fight in which I somehow spawned in with 22 flies as allies

The soundtrack is also stellar, with area-specific tracks that shift dynamically based on the situation. Each song also gets lyrics when you fight the area boss, which almost always improves it. I particularly enjoyed the frenetic jazz in The Crater, and shamelessly admit I journeyed there more times than necessary just to hear the music.

On the other hand, Mewgenics' worst feature is its humor. NPCs are stale stereotypes with voice lines that had me rolling my eyes, and the game's insistence on fecal humor is particularly exhausting. I was tired of poop jokes 10 hours in, but there were still countless more hours to go. I enjoy the game's creativity and willingness to send players to bizarre locations (like the moon or the Ice Age), I like some of the meows (one has autotune), and I generally liked the pop culture references. But as the game went on for dozens of hours, the things I did enjoy faded into the background, while the things I didn't enjoy continued to stand out as annoying and gross. One recurring fight begins with a man eating a child, and even though it's quick and cartoony, it only gets more unpleasant over time.

An unpleasant encounter, where my option most likely to succeed is to eat a dead cat

There's also the subject of the game's name. Between runs, you breed various cats to combine their stats and create genetically superior warriors for the next run. The house the cats gather in is inconveniently designed because all the cats cluster on the floor and run back and forth, making them difficult to click on. I would have appreciated a menu to organize them by stats or age, but instead I have to chase them around with, ironically, my mouse to find the ones I'm interested in. You can decorate the house with furniture, but it's not a very interesting process – it's best to just buy stuff with the best stats and cram it in each room to improve breeding results. Overall, it's a clunky system that I tried not to spend too much time with.

Long-term progression happens by completing runs or donating cats to the game's various NPCs. In either case, you rarely keep any cat in your house for very long. Cats die on runs or come home and die of old age. If they live, it's best to donate them to an NPC to unlock more item storage, improve the shop's offerings, or get some other long-term upgrade.

Tink, one of the game's NPCs

Your pets are disposable, both because you can easily make more and because you're incentivized to get rid of them. Since you churn through cats so quickly, you start putting much higher value on combat viability and vilifying defects and negative quirks, of which the game has many. "Mewgenics" is obviously a pun on the word "eugenics," but I was still taken aback by how ruthless the system feels.

In a world defined by combat viability, you're not just breeding to get good stats; you're eliminating cats with disorders and bad stats. I have a room in my house exclusively filled with "star" cats, with each pet marked with a star to indicate they have the best stats. Meanwhile, circle cats have one or more negative stats, so they're pushed into a different room. Other cats are donated or left unmarked in another separate room. Mechanically, it makes perfect sense, but I'd be lying if I said my segregated house didn't make me uneasy. 

The "star" room in my in-game house

Like the excessive poop and cartoon gore, I think these breeding patterns are intended to be funny or shocking. It's another joke; the setup is "what if you had a game where you raise cartoon cats," and the punchline is "and then you segregate them based on genetic strength and breed them for combat." On paper, it's a shockingly dark reversal of what you expect from a game where you raise pets. I actually do think this is funny in isolation. It's absurd! It catches you off guard. But like most jokes, it doesn't stay funny for hours and hours and hours. After a while, it just becomes the status quo. After a while, you're just earnestly doing cat eugenics, and that gets old and uncomfortable.

Because the breeding happens in between the game's fantastic runs, it's hard for me to come to a firm consensus on how I feel about Mewgenics. Its combat mechanics truly stand out, and in isolation, might make it one of my favorite games of the year. But even though those hours and hours of combat comprise almost all of my playtime, the odd, upsetting creative decisions stick with me. Despite Mewgenics' best attempts to kill my appetite, dozens and dozens of hours in, I'm still hungry for another run.

Score: 8

About Game Informer's review system

Mewgenics is off to a roaring start. The cat-breeding strategy game launched on February 10 after spending over a decade in on-and-off development to positive reviews. Mere hours after its release, Mewgenics recouped its development cost. One week later, and it’s now officially a million seller.

The game's co-creator, Tyler Glaiel, shared a simple post on social media announcing Mewgenics has hit 1 million copies sold; an impressive milestone given it's only been on sale for seven days and is available only on Steam.

Mewgenics comes from The Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy creator Edmund McMillen and his development partner, Tyler Glaiel (The End is Nigh), and is a roguelike turn-based strategy game that sees players breed parties of cats to bring into ever-changing battles. Players and critics have embraced the beefy adventure (which can take up to 200 hours to complete), boasting a “Very Positive” user review on Steam and an 89 Metacritic score. 

We poured dozens of hours into Mewgenics for our review, which you can read right here. Game Informer subscribers can also learn more about Mewgenics’ creation and long road to release in this deep dive feature from last November. 

Love it or hate it, Wizards of the Coast has leaned hard into its Universes Beyond subset of Magic: The Gathering cards as a way to collaborate with all manner of brands and IP, including Final Fantasy, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Marvel's Spider-Man, and soon, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This TMNT-themed set is an expansive release hitting card shops on March 6, and it includes the usual gamut of play and collector boosters, a Commander deck, chase cards, and more. 

Ahead of its launch next month, I attended a virtual preview to learn from the card game makers behind this set about its narrative design, its video game-themed deck, a new multiplayer cooperative format for four players, and so much more. There's a lot here, and I have a lot of card previews to show you, so get your pen and paper ready, turn on your deckcrafting brain, and enjoy!

Wizards of the Coast senior narrative designer and TMNT narrative design lead Crystal Frasier began the preview explaining her role in designing this set, stating, "We're incredibly lucky with TMNT that a lot of our artists were already huge fans of the property, so a lot of them went above and beyond." As Magic: The Gathering fans already know, every card has just a hint of storytelling happening, even outside of the sometimes-included flavor text, and that hasn't changed with this set. 

In the Vanish Lands pictured below, you can see that these basic land cards showcase various places around New York City, the metropolis the Turtles have always called home. However, if you look closer at the scenes, you'll see remnants of the Turtles – that's because these scenes showcase parts of NYC where the Turtles were just at, disappearing into the night to be heroes, according to Frasier. In the full-art Rooftop Lands, pictured in the gallery below, you'll see the Turtles' silhouettes as they leap from rooftop to rooftop, inspired by various TMNT media. 

Vanish Lands and Rooftop Lands

 

Frasier says one of the best parts about designing this set was the breadth of TMNT iterations to draw upon for card art, and in the card below – Turtles Forever – you can see that on display as it features a different iteration of each turtle: 

She adds that Nickelodeon, which owns the Turtles IP, was "incredibly supportive" of Wizards of the Coast creating its own iteration of the Turtles, and if you see art that isn't from a previous iteration, it's Magic's own take on the mutants. Wanting to ensure every pack comes with a Turtle, Frasier says, "We gave a Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Mythic that charts the Turtle's alignment," which is why you have Raphael, Tough Turtle; Raphael, Most Attitude; Raphael, the Nightwatcher; and Raphael, Ninja Destroyer, for example, with flavor text of quotes from Master Splinter that speak to the Turtles' training. Some of them, as you'll see, are special silhouetted versions of the Turtles, too. Check them out below: 

Common, Uncommon, Rare, And Mythic Turtle Iterations

 

Every Turtle gets a Team-Up card, too, with each of their brothers. Frasier says, "The vibe is to understand them as brothers and see how important that is to their family." Donatello and Leonardo are the more serious and studious brothers, so you'll see them on a team-up card, while Raphael and Michelangelo are the troublemakers, and that's reflected in their team-up card, too. Here, Frasier shared the Turtle Van (an Artifact – Vehicle card) as well: 

Turtle Team-Ups

 

There are various villains featured in this TMNT set, but the designers wanted to highlight Krang, "an eccentric little weirdo who has all the resources to make his mad schemes everyone else's problem," according to Frasier. Senior game designer and TMNT set design lead Eric Englehard says the blue Rare Krang is meant to capture his mad scientist vibes (and in the background, you'll see various artistic iterations of his mecha-suits from the design team), while his Utrom Warlord Mythic card highlights how much of a threat Krang can be to the Turtles. 

On the vigilante side, Englehard highlighted Casey Jones, Vigilante, describing him as Raphael's BFF. Frasier adds that they have a lovely bromance occurring throughout the set, and Casey is the only person/card to make Raphael seem reasonable by comparison. On that front, the team took an effect that started with a blue card from Seekers of Kamigawa, a 2005 set, and turned it into a red card effect creature in Casey Jones, Vigilante. And finally, the team highlighted Cowabunga, a green sorcery card, here; Frasier says it emphasizes the idea that despite being heroes, these brothers are still teenagers. "They go on really cool adventures, fight aliens in space [...], but they also hang out with each other, pick on each other, share meals, and find things to do. They're just a couple of poor kids in New York City finding fun ways to hang out," she says. 

Englehard adds that, mechanically, the design team couldn't capture the teenager vibe, so it relied on Frasier and the narrative design team to emphasize that, at the end of the day, they're still teenagers. Check out all these cards in the gallery below: 

Cowabunga, Casey Jones, and Krang

 

Magic: The Gathering- TMNT Mechanics

At this point in the preview, the design team switched from highlighting the cards' storytelling elements to the mechanics associated with the set. There's a brand new mechanic in this TMNT set: Sneak. Englehard says it captures the Ninja aspect and can appear on instants, sorceries, and creatures, adding that anything can happen in combat because of this mechanic. 

Something else new to this set is Mutagen Tokens, which read as the following: "1 (Mana), Sacrifice this token: Put a +1/+1 counter on a target creature. Activate only as a sorcery." 

In terms of returning mechanics, Englehard says Alliance, which triggers when another creature enters the battlefield under your control, returns and pairs nicely with Sneak, "so you get unexpected triggers at unexpected times." Slash, Reptile Rampager, is the headliner card for Alliance. The Krang & Shredder card features the Disappear mechanic, which is an old mechanic with a new name – Revolt has become Disappear, and it triggers if something you control leaves the battlefield during your turn, which Englehard says will pair nicely with Sneak and Mutagen tokens.

Two more things: classes return, after a successful introduction in the Bloomburrow set of 2024, and I can show you the Ninja Teen class card in the gallery below. Other creatures rely on adjectives from the classic 1987 animated series theme song, so expect class cards for "Party Dude" and more. The second thing here is Casey's hockey bag, and if you read the description, it might sound like a familiar Planal card. 

 

Bundles

Below, I'll break down the various bundles you can purchase when this set launches next month. 

Turtle Power Commander Deck

Where the main cards of the TMNT set lean into the various comic, TV, and movie iterations of the Turtles, the Turtle Power Commander Deck – Partner With Allies, Buff Your Team – is based around the mutant teenagers' video game adventures. This deck features 43 new cards separate from the main set, which is quite large for a Universes Beyond Commander deck, and you'll find all sorts of video game-inspired cards, from both old and more recent adventures. See what you recognize in the gallery below: 

 

Turtle Team-Up: A New 2-4 Player Co-Op Game Mode

Turtle Team-Up is a brand-new multiplayer cooperative mode best played with four players, though it can be played solo (with some challenge). Englehard says Turtle Team-Up was "designed from the ground up as an approachable and exciting way to learn Magic," adding, "You're not competing against each other as you and your friends or your kids play together to defeat a horde of Shredder's minions and 11 of the Turtles' worst foes that live inside a boss deck." You can use the included decks to fight each other; however, after you've grasped how they work, the primary mode is the co-op adventure. 

It can be tuned to raise or lower the difficulty, and the bundle includes four player boosters in addition to four 60-card decks and a boss deck; there are 29 new-to-Magic legacy legal cards among the decks, with roughly eight new ones in each box. 

Draft Night

You know the deal here: this bundle includes everything you need for a pick-two draft night with you and up to three friends. It comes with 12 play boosters and one collector booster, 90 basic land cards, and a bunch of tokens. 

Pizza Bundle

This special edition bundle is the only part of the Magic: The Gathering – TMNT set that is not launching on March 6; it hits stores on March 27. It is a set of thematic pizza cards described by the team as a traditional bundle that comes in a themed pizza box with nine play boosters, a collector booster, and a TMNT spin-down die, alongside an entire set of Pizza Lands. You'll even find Food Chain in this bundle, a classic Magic: The Gathering card tweaked to fit the theme of this Pizza Bundle. 

 

Chase Cards, Special Editions, and More

Like every other Magic: The Gathering set, there are chase cards fans of TMNT will be hoping to find, and this time around, keep an eye out for Borderless Signature Kevin Eastman cards, Borderless Pixel Cards, Borderless Silhouette Cards, Source Material art cards, and Japanese Showcase cards. Check them out below: 

 

Magic: The Gathering- Arena

Let's wrap things up with a quick little Arena recap: there will be a new TMNT battlefield in Arena; not every card from the Commander Deck will make it to Arena, but every legendary creature of the Commander Deck will head there, and various bundles come with Mythic Turtles, special sleeves, and more. 

 

Alrighty, if you made it this far, thank you for reading! This is a new type of feature for us here at Game Informer – while many of us here on staff love and play Magic: The Gathering, we haven't really covered it much on the website (though we do post videos about Magic: The Gathering sets from time to time). We're looking to cover this card game more here, and today's preview is an example of how we might go about doing that.

With that said, please drop a comment below and let me know what you think of this preview style – Do you like it? Do you hate it? Do you like the galleries? Do you like the explanations and behind-the-scenes details?