Lucas Alven, Staff writer

DISCLOSURE: This article was written on April 21 and may not reflect the newest tariff information.

Nintendo’s newest generation  console, the Nintendo Switch 2, is set to release on June 5. However, the current situation of the global economy leaves fans worried about prices.

The console is set to release in a bundle with Mario Kart World for the price of $449.99 in the United States. This is more expensive compared to the console’s predecessor, the Nintendo Switch (or the Nintendo Switch 1), which cost $299.99 at launch.

Along with the higher prices, fans fear that costs will increase from the heightened tariffs by the Trump administration. X user @AngryJoeShow said, “[President Trump] just put 24% [tariffs] on Japan & 46% for Vietnam, 49% Cambodia respectively where Nintendo manufactures.”

There is also confusion regarding how tariffs will apply to the video game industry. According to Polygon, video games “fall under a trade classification for toys, not technology.”

These price concerns were especially prominent when pre-orders for the console were delayed because of tariffs. Many gamers took to social media to express their thoughts on the matter. When responding to an X thread about the topic, user @BlazeRN617 said, “about to see a lot more crying when they have to raise the price.”

However, on April 18 Nintendo announced that pre-orders would become available starting April 24. Additionally, the console, bundled console, Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza will remain the same price at launch. The Nintendo Switch 2’s accessories will “experience price adjustments,” said Nintendo. “Other adjustments to the price of any Nintendo product are also possible in the future depending on market conditions.”

The costs of the console could have a global impact. “Switch 2 in Japan will have 2 different versions,”according to Nintendo’s Japanese website as reported by the X user @Genki_JPN. “Japanese Language Only version at ¥49,980 ($334)” and “Multi-language system at ¥69,980 ($467).” The Japanese Language Only version is region-locked, only allowing the system to connect with Nintendo accounts set within Japan. User @NonCriticalHit responded to the post saying, “Wanna save money? Time to bust out that Duolingo!” Another user, @junderwood4649 described the console as a “Chaotic Good move by Nintendo,” explaining that it will prevent international scalpers from taking advantage of Japan’s weaker yen.

Visit Nintendo’s website for any new news regarding the Nintendo Switch 2 and any future price changes.

Nate Tramdaks, Staff Writer

There are a billion different topics you can dive into under the Grateful Dead umbrella. The sound of different eras, Jerry Garcia’s ever-changing gear, the Wall of Sound, the Acid Tests and  even deep dives into individual performances. You could write forever and still miss something; but beyond all that, you find something bigger. The Dead aren’t just a band, they’re a reflection of America itself–chaotic, realistic and imperfect. Yet, always moving forward, for the music never stops.

The makeup of the Grateful Dead is truly a masterpiece. You have a bluegrass banjo player on lead guitar. A folk guitarist playing rhythm. A classical composer picking up the bass. A blues harmonica player. An R&B drummer on one kit and a tribal-polyrhythmic percussionist on the other. All these different styles, techniques and sounds somehow coalesce into one experimental, evolving sound. That’s what feels so American about it, the beauty that comes from different genres, different backgrounds and varying voices mixing together to create something totally new.

That sense of freedom doesn’t  stop at their sound. It carries over into how they operate as a band. They have never played the same show twice. There is no script, no routine, no chasing radio hits. Every night they showed up, read the room and figured it out as they went. That level of risk isn’t normal in music, but it’s exactly what kept things alive. You could see it early on with the Acid Tests, where they’d play with no setlist, no real plan, just sound, chaos, light and whatever happened in the moment. Each member had the space to do their own thing. Phil played bass like a lead instrument. Jerry took solos that wandered for ten minutes. Weir played rhythm parts that made no sense on paper but still worked. No one was boxed in. Everyone had a voice. That’s the most American thing about the Dead: the full embrace of individualism inside something collective. It wasn’t always clean, tight or perfect, but it was honest. And that honesty is what people connect to.

And then there’s the Deadheads. The people who make the whole thing move. They aren’t just fans, they are part of the infrastructure. They follow the band around the country, not out of obsession, but because it gives them something they can’t find anywhere else. A lot of them don’t even care what songs are played. It is simply about being there. 

The parking lot before the show was its own city. People sold food, shirts, whatever they had, just to keep going. Nobody ran it, nobody really organized anything and yet it worked. That kind of loose, self-sustained community says a lot. It’s freedom, but it’s shared. There are no rules on how to be a Deadhead. You just show up and add whatever you have to the mix. That kind of openness, that ability to make something out of nothing, feels like a small version of what America always says it’s about.

Beyond the shows and the scene, the songwriting is what ties it all together. Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow aren’t just lyricists, they are storytellers who helped shape the whole identity of the band. These aren’t typical rock songs. They are pulled from folk tales, cowboy ballads, old gospel lines and weird, dreamlike images that somehow made perfect sense if you just sat with them long enough. Hunter could write something simple like “Ripple” and make it feel like a life philosophy. Barlow’s stuff is sharper, more cryptic, but just as layered. It isn’t always obvious what the songs meant, but that was part of it. You could take your own meaning from them. The lyrics had space to breathe, just like the music did. That openness, that trust in the listener to figure it out for themselves, is another reason this thing has lasted.

Even after Jerry died in 1995, the band didn’t stop. Most bands fall apart without their frontman. The Dead just splintered and kept evolving. There was The Other Ones, then Further and eventually Dead & Company, which, somehow, ended up being more than just a nostalgic act, and has just turned 10-years-old.  John Mayer joining Bob Weir sounded like a punchline at first, but he took it seriously. He respected the music, learned the language, and brought his own thing to it without trying to be Jerry. That move extended the whole lifespan again. Now they’re playing multiple runs at the Sphere, one of the craziest venues in the world, and still pulling in new fans. That’s the legacy. Not just the music, but the way it’s lasted. The Grateful Dead didn’t chase relevance, they built something that could shift and stretch over time. That kind of “staying power” feels like the most American thing of all. Reinvention, survival, movement. 60 years in and it’s still not over.

Sean Musial, Staff Writer

Making movies is a long process that takes many months or even years to complete, oftentimes becoming straining on the actors and actresses involved with the project. War on the other hand is a drawn out conflict between two nations or states that spend years on gruesome battles, political unease and near genocide so that one combatant can out beat the other. Blending the two things together is a hard task. Recreating the environment that war brings is a difficult feat that affects not only those involved, but the viewers watching because of the monstrosities of the subject matter. In the words of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from “Full Metal Jacket,” which embodies what it means to become a soldier, “Let me see your war face!”

Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” is a 1987 Vietnam War movie that blends dark comedy with the atrocities of war, from its beginnings at bootcamp to the horrors of what it means to actually be a soldier. Mathew Modine played the film’s lead, Pvt. Joker, where he later published a book called “Full Metal Jacket Diary” that describes the grueling repetitive takes, the psychological toll and Kubrick’s demanding approach of creating the warfare that went on at the time. In the book, he explained that R. Lee Ermey’s boot camp training they endured was an emotional introduction to the start of filming where he later got the part of “Gunnery Sergeant Hartman” after originally being a technical advisor. Ermey’s legendary performance was largely unscripted and based on his time as a former Marine drill instructor, bringing an authenticity to the soldiers’ time while in the first part of the film. On top of Ermey’s intense performance, Vincent D’Onofrio transforms into “Pvt. Pyle” by gaining 70 pounds for the role and embracing the madness of what his character had gone through in the earliest stages of war. 

Considered one of the most grueling and disastrous movies to make of all time, “Apocalypse Now” turns Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” into a Vietnam War epic about a United States military captain that is sent to kill a rogue colonel that sees himself as a God-like figure. Francis Ford Coppala had this jarring task of creating the Vietnam War as accurately and as realistically as he could, putting his actors and crew through the ringer. The movie lead, Martin Sheen, suffered through a patch of mental illness as the director pushed him to the breaking point by making sure he was drunk in almost every scene which led to him to suffer from a nearly fatal heart attack during the opening scene. Other actors were intoxicated off of drugs while filming to help them embody what some of the soldiers went through while they were on them. The legendary actor Dennis Hopper had a daily drug and alcohol routine that could have killed him, while Sam Bottoms was taking huge amounts of LSD and marijuana to encapsulate his own performance.  

In “Saving Private Ryan,” the most prolific scene that the movie has to offer is the opening D-Day scene that has become arguably the most accurate depiction of the Normandy landings to date. Some soldiers that were there on June 6, 1944 would have sudden outbursts of PTSD because of how accurate the sequence truly was. Tom Hanks, who played Captain Miller, saw Omaha Beach as a “holy place” after the filming finished. Compared to his other actors on set, he was one of the few to make sure everyone had finished their bootcamp training for the film, which everyone looked back on very fondly.

The filming of the World War II tank movie, “Fury,” affected all of the actors involved. All of the main actors spent the first few weeks before filming getting to know each other in a training camp that was meant to make them feel miserable, leaving Logan Lerman out because he would be the newcomer to the crew. In the words of Jon Bernthal, he became inspired by the fact that a 50-year-old Brad Pitt got even happier as the filming got tougher. Shia Lebouf on the other hand lived up to the hype as a true method actor by getting his tooth pulled and slashing his face so he can have an open wound throughout the duration of filming. The actor even went as far as to not shower in the four months of the shooting process, reportedly being moved to another hotel away from the other actors due to the smell. 

When it comes to war in film, it becomes a straining and tedious process to recreate the devastating effects that come out of the conflict. Whether it’s World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War or even the Cold War, there are a plethora of movies out there that embody those individual wars in the best ways possible. The four movies that were referenced are just a glimpse into how these movies have affected the actors involved through preparation, their way of living and the mental toll it had on most of them.

Sean Bradley, Staff Writer

2025 is a great year to be a classic animation fan because on Jan. 1, 2025, all copyrighted works from 1929 entered the public domain in the United States. In this article, we’ll look at some animated films from 1929 that recently entered the public domain.

Starting with Disney, last year we saw the first versions of Mickey and Minne Mouse from “Steamboat Willie” enter the public domain. This year, we welcome a dozen more Mickey Mouse films from 1929, including some important films, like “The Opry House” and “The Karnival Kid.” “The Opry House” marked the first time Mickey wore his iconic white gloves as well as the first time Franz Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” was used in an animated cartoon. The melody has since been a staple of animated cartoons and was notably featured in cartoons, such as the “Merrie Melodies” short “Rhapsody Rabbit,” starring Bugs Bunny, and the “Tom and Jerry” cartoon “The Cat Concerto.” “The Karnival Kid” is noteworthy for marking the first time Mickey spoke his first words “Hot dogs! Hot dogs!”

 “Mickey’s Follies” is another important film because it marked the debut of Mickey’s first theme song “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo”, which was first performed by Mickey in that short and was written and composed by Carl Stalling, who later went on to score music for the Warner Bros. cartoons in the 1940s. Not only do we now have access to more Mickey Mouse films, but we also have access to an additional 5 Disney films from the “Silly Symphony” series, which debuted in 1929, including the series’ debut film “The Skeleton Dance.” Unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts, which were character-driven, the “Silly Symphonies” were musical shorts that focused on combining music and storytelling. The idea of the series was first suggested to Walt Disney by Carl Stalling while working on the scores for the first Mickey Mouse films. Initially, Walt was uninterested in the idea. However, after hearing Stalling’s idea of a musical cartoon about dancing skeletons, Walt opened to the idea and thus the “Silly Symphonies” were born and would last for 10 years until 1939.

Also in the public domain is the pilot film that launched the Looney Tunes series. As the Disney films grew in popularity in 1929, around this time in Hollywood, two young animators, Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, were interested in creating their own cartoon star. The two had previously worked for Disney on the “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” series, but were hired away in 1928 by producer Charles Mintz to make new Oswald shorts at a new studio  when Disney lost control of the character to Universal, who owned the character’s copyright (Disney bought the rights back to Oswald from Universal in 2006). However, Universal was displeased with the new Oswald shorts and fired Mintz and formed its own in-house animation studio run by Walter Lantz, who later went on to produce the “Woody Woodpecker” cartoons. Out of jobs, Harman and Ising decided to start their own studio and produced a live-action/animated sound short titled “Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid,” starring a black minstrel character named Bosko, to sell to film distributors. After being turned down by a few distributors, the two eventually found a distributor with Warner Bros. after Leon Schlesinger, head of Pacific Title and Art Studio, took an interest in Bosko and used his connections  to get the two a distribution deal for a cartoon series. That cartoon series was Looney Tunes, which was a play on Disney’s “Silly Symphonies” and has since grown to be one of most famous cartoon series of all time, starring iconic characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

Additionally, many cartoons from animation producer Max Fleischer are now public domain too. These include the last few silent “Inkwell Imps” (formerly “Out of the Inkwell”) films starring Koko the Clown and Fitz the Dog, several sing-along films in the Screen Songs series, and most importantly, the short “Noah’s Lark,” which was the first entry in the Talkartoons series which launched the career of popular character Betty Boop. Another notable Fleischer cartoon in the public domain is an educational film titled “Finding His Voice,” which was produced for Western Electric and showed how sound was put on films and reproduced in theaters. The film stars Billy Murray and Walter Van Brunt, who were both popular singers in the 1910s and early 1920s and lent their singing voices for some of the early Screen Song cartoons from 1929. Murray also voiced the character Bimbo the Dog in some of the early Talkartoons shorts.

Other cartoons now in the public domain include a few of the misbegotten sound Felix the Cat shorts made by producer Pat Sullivan and animator Otto Messmer (Felix, once a cartoon superstar during the silent film era in the 1920s, was losing popularity with audiences due to the series’ failure to embrace the new sound technology at the time), many Krazy Kat shorts made by animators Ben Harrison and Manny Gould for Charles Mintz (including the first sound entry “Ratskin,” a play on the 1929 Paramount film “Redskin” (Note: the term “redskin” is a derogatory term for indigenous peoples of America.)  The Prohibition Era short “Farm Relief,” the Mintz “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” shorts (including the now-lost, first sound short “Hen Fruit”) as well as the first ones by Walter Lantz (including the horse race-themed short “Race Riot”), several silent and sound Aesop’s Fables cartoons starring Farmer Alfalfa from the Van Beuren Studios, and much more.

If you’re ever bored and looking for something cool to watch, next time take some time to check out some of these public domain animated cartoons.

Jack Wagner, Editor

“Arcane,” a hit animated series released by Netflix in partnership with Riot Games, is officially the most expensive animated show ever released.

According to a report by Variety, it cost approximately $250 million to produce and promote all 18 episodes of the show. This boils down to roughly $14 million per episode. The report also mentions that the series was seemingly originally budgeted for a five-season arc, but costs forced the showrunners to end it after only two seasons. Some have commented that the show was so expensive due to Riot Games’s inexperience in Hollywood.

Riot Games, which owns the game “League of Legends” that “Arcane” is based on, has had previous missteps in their foray into the entertainment industry. The Variety report also details a deal that the company had made with the Russo brothers, known for directing four Marvel movies, in 2020 to develop a film set in the “League of Legends” universe. However, due to a poorly designed agreement, Riot Games was forced to pay the Russo brothers $5 million when they split due to creative differences.

However, some at Riot Games have come out to defend the expense.

“The ‘lol @ the cost’ of Arcane arguments are silly from our perspective,” said Riot co-founder and chief product officer Marc Merrill in a Reddit post. “People have correctly pointed out the cost per minute of Arcane is about 1/3 to 1/4 of what Illumination / Pixar films cost.”

Merrill also commented that “Arcane was always meant to be two seasons. The confusion is because internally there was a budget conversation about ‘approving 5 seasons’ – which simply means we were setting aside a bunch of money for lots of development and is completely irrelevant to the Arcane creative.”

Arcane season one was a massive critical success. The show won multiple primetime Emmy awards including “Outstanding Animated Program,” “Outstanding Sound Editing For A Comedy Or Drama Series (Half-Hour) And Animation,” and several “Outstanding Individual Achievement In Animation” awards.

Season one also holds a 100% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a 96% audience score.

IGN said it was a “once-in-a-generation masterpiece that is sure to inspire both fans and storytellers alike for years to come.” TIME Magazine also said it had “transcendent animation.”

The reactions to season two so far have also been largely positive, with it also holding a 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Arcane” also seems to be serving as an effective advertisement for “League of Legends.” According to an article on thespike.gg, a website focused on competitive esports news, “League of Legends” reached an all-time player high of 14 million concurrent players and 180 million total players across League related games. 

It still remains to be seen if “Arcane” season two will reach the heights of success that season one did, or if the investment will be worth it to Riot Games. What is certain is that the show is a unique milestone in animation and Riot Games is not done with its entertainment efforts.

Lucas Alven, Staff Writer

The holiday season is in full swing! Christmas lights illuminate the winter skies while game consoles illuminate underneath entertainment centers. Here are three new video game releases that gamers and their families can play this holiday break.

Super Mario Party™ Jamboree – (Nintendo Switch)

Super Mario Party Jamboree is the newest addition to the long running Super Mario Party franchise. Like in previous titles, players dash across a board aiming to collect the most stars and be declared the winner. After each roll, there are opportunities to win coins in mini games which can be exchanged later to cause mischief among the competition in ways such as stealing stars.

Players can choose what character to play as from a roster of 22 characters from the Mario franchise, which is the largest selection in any Mario Party game. Jamboree also features six unique game boards and over 110 mini games for players to aim for the top spot in.

Tetris Forever – (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC)

Tetris Forever is the newest release in the Tetris series. This title was made to celebrate the 40-year anniversary of when the game was originally created by Alexey Pajitnov.

This title is a collection of more than 15 previous Tetris games, including some that were unavailable outside of their Japan release. Additionally, a historically accurate rendition of the original Tetris prototype for the Electronika 60 computer was developed for players to experience.

Included in Tetris Forever is a new 90-minute documentary that covers the evolution of Tetris from the game’s development at a Soviet Union computer research center to it becoming the series it is today. This game is a part of Digital Eclipse’s gold master series which the development company describes as “independently-produced projects that celebrate key designers, studios and games that changed our world.”

Metaphor: ReFantazio – (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, PC)

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a role-playing game produced by Studio Zero. The game’s development team included Katsura Hashino (director), Shigenori Soejima (character designer) and Shoji Meguro (composer) who are known to have all worked together on the recent titles of the critically acclaimed game franchise, Persona.

The story of this game takes place in the fictional land known as The United Kingdom of Euchronia, where the king’s assassination and the discovery of a previously hidden royal magic creates turmoil over who will take the throne. Despite this, your protagonist must save Euchronia by breaking a curse that was put on the prince, who people assume is dead, and winning a tournament for the throne. 
It’s worth noting that these games are only just a few of many that have recently come out. November and December are known to be a busy time for new releases within the gaming industry, so it’s easier for a title to get lost in the shuffle. So hopefully this list helped bring attention to some games you may not have known about. Happy holidays and happy gaming to you and your families!

Jessica Perez-Salinas, Writer

“I get money, I’m a star, star, star, star, star, star, star”

On Oct. 25, American rapper Megan Thee Stallion released a remix of her newest song “Mamushi” with one of South Korea’s biggest girl groups, Twice. The song appears on Megan’s album “MEGAN: ACT II” and is a remix of the song originally performed with Japanese rapper Yuki Chiba. The remix is chill, fun and you can’t even tell that there are 13 people in one song. Twice, the South Korean Girl Group, is composed of 12 members and each member has a chance to shine in this remix. This is not Megan’s first collaboration with a South Korean artist, as she released a song with BTS member “RM” titled, “Neva Play” earlier this year. Still, it might seem like this collaboration is unexpected. 

To understand the importance of these collaborations and what they represent, we must travel further back. The term Hallyu, or Korean wave, might not sound familiar to many of you, especially those outside the K-pop space. However, it has been an ongoing phenomenon since the mid 1990s. Hallyu refers to the expansion of South Korean culture in explosive ways. 

Hallyu can be intentional or a gradual effect of globalization. The Hallyu is often seen as an example of soft power diplomacy, in which a country will use culture, values and non-coercive tactics to gain allies. A good way to visualize this is to think of a company’s “brand image.”

Countries want to be perceived in a positive manner and will use soft diplomacy to drive political and economic ideas. South Korea has embraced this wave of popularity, especially as it has had a significant impact on the tourism industry and the Korean group BTS has generated $4.6 billion towards the country’s GDP. This phenomenon has also been driven by globalization, which refers to the increased global interconnectedness through political, economic and social structures. Therefore, it can be intentional or driven by the increased accessibility of foreign media nowadays.

We see this through the popularity of Korean food, music, shows and webcomics. Hallyu was coined back in the mid 1990’s to describe the boom of Korean media into China and later Japan. A decade later, another boom would occur, but this time it extended beyond Asia. Everyone remembers the global hit “Gangnam Style” by PSY, but it became more ingrained than that. In 2013, I became a fan of the groups Girl’s Generation and EXO before knowing they were under the same entertainment company. Since those days, K-pop has exploded in the West with artists selling out stadiums around the world. Charlie Puth, Bruno Mars, and Rosalia are just a couple of the major western artists that have embraced the Korean Music scene and released recent collaborations.

In fact, Megan Thee Stallion was not the first rapper to collaborate with a South Korean artist. I still remember the shock of playing my first Girl’s Generation album. I was so excited that I did not bother to check the track list. I put the CD into the player as I studied and let myself get carried away by the music. Suddenly I heard a very distinct voice, but also the last person I expected in a 2012 K-pop album:Snoop Dogg. I heard the delicate tones of all the Girl’s Generation members followed by the melodic lyrics of Snoop Dogg singing “Girls, Girls Generation.” That would be enough to stop anyone in their tracks. If you wanted to check it out, it is track 14 on the album, “The Boys,” and is truly a masterpiece.

Now we are in 2024 where we get Megan Thee Stallion and Twice. It is highly unlikely that while they were in the studio, they were considering the cultural and political implications between theU.S. and South Korea. It is a fun song that anyone can listen to and feel like a baddie. There might not be any deeper meaning to the song, but I believe it is an interesting example of how interconnected we are becoming. We can also see this occur in many different genres. Latin music and Afro beats have become more common in mainstream music, receiving love and well-deserved praise. “Mamushi” is one song, but it builds on decades of cross-cultural exchange. So, pop in an earbud and listen to Twice and Megan.