Available outfits include the Moncler Classic Set in “Andre” and “Renee,” which can be accessorized with the Umbra-Tube Back Bling, Umbra-Axe Pickaxe and Para-Pluie Glider. Players can choose between dark and light styles, or opt for the reactive version, which changes colors as they reach higher altitudes within the game. The collaboration also features “The Summit” Loading Screen.
“It’s been very interesting working with the team at Epic and Moncler to bring the 6 MONCLER 1017 ALYX 9SM collection to life inside a vibrant digital space like Fortnite,” Williams shares in a press release. “The new 6 MONCLER 1017 ALYX 9SM collection celebrates when light meets the dark, the collaboration with Fortnite explores this concept in completely new ways. Digital materials do not follow the rules of the physical world, allowing us to be more creative with these new in-game reactive outfits, they transition from light to dark depending on the altitude of the player inside the game.”
Fortnite players can head to the in-game Item Shop to get their hands on the virtual collection from November 20 at 7 p.m. CET (1 p.m. ET).
A 26-foot-tall statue ofMarilyn Monroepatting down her wind-blown skirt is the center of controversy in Palm Springs, California. The monument portrays the legendary actress from the iconic scene in the 1955 movieThe Seven Year Itchwhere a gust of wind from a subway grate blows up her white dress. The city already gave its approval for it to be installed outside the Palm Springs Art Museum, but the institution’s director, Louis Grachos, is against the public display.
“You come out of the museum and the first thing you’re going to see is a 26-foot-tall Marilyn Monroe with her entire backside and underwear exposed,” said Grachos in a city council meeting last week as per Artnet. “We serve over 100,000 school-age children that come to our museum every single year. What message does that send to our young people, our visitors, and community to present a statue that objectifies women, is sexually charged and disrespectful?”
Many locals shared Grachos’ opinion, having sent letters to local newspapers voicing their concerns regarding the state of Monroe as being degrading to women. The debate has panned out for weeks in the California community and is now trickling into the art world as well. Steven Maloney, the chair of the facility’s board of directors, said displaying it near the front of the building implies that the organization had given its approval to place it there — when it had not. He said the towering sculpture suggests “an unhealthy encouragement of risqué behavior of women.”
Critics also pointed out that Monroe despised the scene and it had a detrimental effect on her life and career. As The Guardian reported back in 2014 for the 60th anniversary of the film, it led Monroe’s husband at the time, Joe DiMaggio, to leave the set in anger. The actress then filed for divorce after the pair got into a violent fight at their hotel after the scene was shot, the report stated.
“Can you imagine when #MeToo gets a hold of this?” Grachos asked the council. “It’s not just going to hurt the museum, but it’s going to hurt our whole community.”
20 bidders fought to acquire a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. 3, finally settling on $156K USD, breaking the record for the most ever paid for a video game. According to Heritage Auctions, the value of this particular copy comes primarily from its rare packaging. The most common cover art of the title shows Mario gliding with a raccoon cap, complemented by the game’s title placed above him. This copy, however, is an earlier version, which is a little different — the word “Bros.” shows up on the left side of the box and slightly covers Mario’s glove. Wata Games, a vintage video game grading company, gave this a score of 9.2 A+, a score that suggests the game is almost in perfect condition. This sale overtook the previous record-holder — a sealed Super Mario Bros. that sold for $114K USD.
Casio G-SHOCK taps into the themes of resilience and perseverance for their new campaign, GAME CHANGER. The campaign shares the unique stories of Singapore individuals including; beatboxer Dharni Ng, artist Jahan Loh, footballer Christopher van Huizen and fashion designer Valerie Wang, all who have defeated seemingly unconquerable challenges to excel in their professions and become the trailblazers that they are today. Honouring the latest range of their Game Changing Carbon watches, the narrative will come to life in five short films.
In an effort to pay tribute to overcoming the fights in their lives, G-SHOCK is encouraging the public to share their experiences to score exclusive invites to The Underground Fight Club, a by-invitation only event happening on August 23. The initiative will take fans on a journey of perseverance with G-SHOCK, delving into material evolution of the iconic watch in addition to an MMA exhibition.
The Underground Fight Club will also be the launchpad for G-SHOCK’s new GA-2100, showcasing the highly desirable, specially curated limited-edition watches and performances from local artistes.
Find out more information about G-SHOCK Carbon series and The Underground Fight Club here.
IWC Schaffhausen has had a long history with the aviation world, and its latest Silver Spitfire project “The Longest Flight” continues that relationship. The expedition will see the restored iconic British aircraft circumnavigate the globe, taking off from Goodwood Aerodrome. The journey will mark the longest flight ever made by any Spitfire, and will be conducted by two British pilots Boultbee Brooks and Matt Jones, flying 43,000 km across 30 countries. In support of their mission, IWC has crafted the Pilot’s Watch Timezoner Spitfire Edition “The Longest Flight” to accompany the two pilots as they venture through different time zones.
The 46 mm stainless steel watch houses an IWC-manufactured automatic self-winding movement — the 82760 Calibre — with a power reserve of 60 hours. Coming with the timepiece is an IWC-patented timezoner function, a 24-hour display for a world timer function, a date display, a convex sapphire glass with an anti-reflective coating on both sides, with the glass secured against displacement due to a drop in air pressure. Finally, tying together the Pilot’s Watch is a 22 mm military green textile strap.
The IWC Schaffhausen Pilot’s Watch Timezoner Spitfire Edition “The Longest Flight” is now available at select retailers for £11,290 GBP, or roughly $13,754 USD, limited to only 250 units. To learn more about “The Longest Flight,” head over to IWC Schaffhausen’s website now.
Celebrating the two companies’ long-standing partnership, Japanese luxury watchmaker Grand Seiko has collaborated with Texas-based timepiece store Timeless Luxury Watches to create a 250-unit limited-edition using the former brand’s unique Spring Drive movement.
The design of the watch was inspired by a blizzard in Shirojiri, Japan, where Grand Seiko’s Shinshu Studio is located, with a deep blue GMT hands cast against a contrasting white blizzard dial reminiscent of the “beauty of heavy snow.” Assembled and adjusted by hand, the timepiece boasts a 41 mm stainless-steel case housing Grand Seiko’s signature Spring-Drive 30-jewel Caliber 9R66, holding a power reserve of 72 hours with an exceptional accuracy of +/-10 seconds per month. The watch is water resistant to 10 bar, and features both a dual-curved sapphire crystal with an anti-reflective coating on the top, and a sapphire see-through caseback on the bottom, revealing the brand’s Lion emblem with a blue metallic finish.
For watch aficionados interested in the Timeless Luxury Watches x Grand Seiko Limited Edition SBGE249, the watch will be released late August to early September, and will retail for $5,900 USD. Timeless Luxury Watches is now taking pre-orders over at its online store. Only 250 will be made, so act fast.
2018 was a curious year for the video game world, full of anomalies, juxtapositions, and contradictions. Once-sacred cows have been toppled by their own greed. Some industry workers unionized to demand better labor conditions, while others bragged about their company’s 100-hour work weeks. And Fortnite, the buzziest game of the year, didn’t even come out in 2018, so don’t expect to find it on this list. (But, even if it had, I still wouldn’t have included it, because the gameplay is “good” at best, and I’m a misanthrope who derives no joy from having to compete with children who can easily trounce me.) But amidst all the chaos and growing pains, the increasingly hyper-lucrative industry managed to managed to pop out a few beauts. Check ‘em out if you have a sec.
10. Florence (Android, iOS)
Mobile games are rarely good and, more often than not, they’re cynical money-siphons that ration out just enough dopamine hits to keep the player hooked, and then cut off the supply of fun, forcing their freshly-groomed addict to fork over real-world dollars to stay in the game. Thankfully, rising above this sea of garbage are the mobile gaming efforts of Annapurna Interactive, who’ve spent the past few years spotting and nurturing talent in the indie gaming world just as they have been in the movie biz. Florence is more interactive novel about love filled with WarioWare-style minigames than a capital V Video Game. But it pushes the medium forward, especially in a market bereft of substance and, with a breezy 30-minute playtime, you really don’t have an excuse to not give it a whirl. Don’t make my mistake of playing it right after a breakup, though.
9. Hitman 2 (Xbox ONE, Playstation 4, PC)
There have been a few flat notes over the course of the Hitman series, now seven games deep and almost two decades old. But Agent 47 remains the most versatile murderous cipher in all of vidya, and Hitman 2 showcases some of his finest bloodwork to date. Expanding and improving upon everything that worked so well in the enjoyable 2016 reboot, Hitman 2 sends 47 around the globe, yet again, to dispatch targets peppered throughout beautiful, intricate sandboxes, each teeming with life and myriad ways to creatively extinguish it. Best of all, the series seems to finally be taking itself a bit less seriously! The storyline has always been a bit too Tom Clancy’s Days of Our Lives to warrant the prior installments’ humorlessness, so it’s nice that IO Interactive has finally just accepted they on some dumb shit.
8. Return of the Obra Dinn (PC)
Imagine, if you will, a game in which you play as an insurance adjuster and your only goal is figuring out the series of events that led to an 1807 shipwreck. This slowly unfolding mystery by the creator of Papers, Please will have you doing high-octane tasks like reading cargo manifests and studying maps as you trundle around the ship with your magic, time-bending pocket watch, piecing together clues in order to figure out how each of the titular Obra Dinn’s 60 crew members met their demise. Frankly, it’s the best detective game since LA Noire.
7. Spyro Reignited Trilogy (Playstation 4, Xbox ONE)
The original PS1 Spyros were likely the gateway drugs that molded me into the achievement-chasing, collectible-hunting, 100% completionist sort of gamer I am today, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive them for that. But if, like me, you’ve learned to accept your sickness, you’ll love this gorgeously remastered and infinitely less-buggy-than-the-originals trilogy. Whether it’s your first time taking flight with the purple dragon or a walk down nostalgia lane, the simple-yet-challenging platforming and quirky quests scattered around each level are a relaxing and wholesome way to kick back and game after a long day.
6. Dead Cells (Xbox ONE, Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC)
Metroidvania-style games grow like weeds out of the indie scene, so it take something special for one to stick out from the crowd. Rather than reinventing the wheel outright, Dead Cells plucks all the best gameplay concepts from the past decade in adventure platforming and mashes them into one close-to-perfect experience. The combat is fluid and brutal, the maps are clever and rewarding, and the leveling system is so insidiously addictive that you might as well make your peace now with being underslept at work the day after you install this one.
5. Marvel’s Spider-Man (Playstation 4)
Sony was wise to secure the exclusive rights to this sumptuous console-seller. Let’s be clear, by no means is this Spider-Man a perfect game. It’s pretty short, includes some dumb stealth missions where you take control of normie, non-superpowered characters, and the combat feels tediously repetitive by the second hour. But all of that can be forgiven, because the entire experience hinges upon how well you can web-swing around NYC, and this is the best game to empower the player with Peter Parker’s acrobatic grace to date.
4. Celeste (Xbox ONE, Playstation 4, PC)
Whereas other hellishly difficult wall-slidey platformers like Super Meat Boy relished in torturing the player as they clawed their way through stages, Celeste take the opposite approach, and soothes the player away from rage-quit levels of frustration. Loading screens remind the player that the collectable strawberries scattered about offer no benefits so no need to go crazy trying to get them unless you feel like it. It also reassures the player that their hundreds of spikey wall deaths are actually a good thing as they’re indicative of trial and error learning and accomplishment. This overarching theme of anti-anxiety permeates the game’s narrative as well. We control mountain climber Madeline as she treks to the peak of Celeste Mountain battling her own self-doubts as often as she does precipitous cliffs.
3. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo Switch)
The godfather of all living room kickback brawlers is back and better than ever, with a staggering lineup of fighters from across space, time, and platforms that leaves the selection screen looking like the Sgt. Pepper’s cover. I don’t know if it is humanly possible to fully explore or unlock all of the modes, spirits, and secrets Nintendo has jam-packed into this omnibus of arcade brawling, but my friends and I will probably be spending years passively trying to as we merc each other with Wii Fit trainers.
2. God of War (Playstation 4)
Having already taken out everyone in the Roman Pantheon, Kratos has returned to knuck if you buck with the deities of Norse mythology. With his boi in tow, the Spartan warrior traverses across five sprawling and breathtaking mythical realms, decimating baddies with an exquisitely robust combat system. The top-notch writing and VO work deserve as much credit as anything here, and as the mature exploration of fatherhood unfolds alongside the narrative, you’ll find your heartstrings have been tugged almost as often as your bowstring.
1. Red Dead Redemption 2 (Xbox ONE, Playstation 4)
With RDR2, Rockstar has delivered a once in a generation—if not once in a lifetime—work of art to the world. Every detail of their 1899 Wild West continent has been obsessively labored over in an effort to bring the player into the most alive-feeling video game world yet. You play as Arthur Morgan, an outlaw perpetually on the run with his cohort of other bandits, con artists, and ne’er-do-wells, but RDR2 is so much more than Arthur’s captivating trials and tribulations.
You could easily spend over 100 hours mucking about the behemoth map meeting oddball NPC, robbing homesteads or trains, hunting and fishing hundreds of species, petting dogs, gambling away your money, reading eugenics pamphlets, or crafting yourself some cute fur hats. And that could all happen before you’ve even made it to chapter three in the story. But when you finally do return from your dalliances and settle in for the meat of the game, you’ll be treated to a touching narrative so dripping with pathos and... well, redemption, that you’ll wonder how the rest of the industry will ever be able to create anything that could escape the shadow of this monumental achievement.
Moncler has joined forces with Epic Games to make its 6 MONCLER 1017 ALYX collectionavailable on Fortnite. Designed by Matthew Williams, the fashion and gaming crossover arrives as part of the French brand’s Genius line.
