Nintendo’s Classic Mini costs £50 in the UK
As if Pokémon Go wasn’t playing havoc with our nostalgia receptors already, Nintendo yesterday announced the Classic Mini: A palm-sized Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) clone complete with 30 preinstalled 8-bit titles. We know this future Christmas hit launches November 11th, but UK pricing wasn’t immediately available. Several retailers have now opened up preorders, however, pegging the price at £50 (with savings of a few pence to be had here and there).
The likes of Amazon, GAME, Zavvi and a few lesser-known retailers are offering presales of the retro reboot, with a note on Nintendo’s official store saying preorders will open there soon. An additional pad will set you back £8 at GAME or Zavvi — you get one in the box — though you can also use a Wii Classic Controller or Classic Controller Pro if you’ve got one lying around. Unfortunately, Nintendo didn’t create the lil’ NES with future software sales in mind, so 30 games is all you’re gonna get. With so many classics on board, though, you’ll probably find enough to enjoy to consider it money well spent.
The Growing Popularity of Multi-Player Gaming
If you are over a certain age you’ll remember the fun of playing against your friend on your favourite game. The problem with this of course is that it restricted the amount of people who could play to two, or in special cases maybe four. Looking at games now, the times have changed with some games offering a huge amount of players to play at the same time.
With console gaming and the growth of the internet we’ve seen multi-player games become easier to play. These games on the latest consoles can have eight players or more playing at the same time. The PC of course is the king of multi-player allowing a huge number of people to play.
The number of people you play against depends on the game. If you go with no deposit bingo for an example, then there won’t be that many people playing at the same time. You’ll be able to play with your friends though and enjoy the experience just like a more traditional version of the game.
If you want to play an online game where you are in an open world, like World of Warcraft or The Division then the number of players grows based on the limitations of the game. These numbers can be huge though, as the name massively multi-player online game (MMO) suggests.
One of the most popular style of multiplayer of course is the first-person shooter which normally have teams up to sixteen players. Overwatch is an example of these type of games where it is a four vs. four battle structure and focuses on team work.
With games like this, it could be easy to forget the single-player games, but there will always be the need for this type of game. We don’t always want to play against other people, sometimes it is nice to play alone. Even when we play solo though the internet allows us to challenge other people in various ways.
Multi-player games will get stronger the more processing power we get and the faster the Internet gets. With no sign of the evolution of either of these technologies slowing down anytime soon, multi-player games will get better and better.
Sega Saturn copy protection gets cracked two decades later
Sega Saturn fans have a problem: while the console has long supported unofficial code on CDs thanks to mod chips, that’s no good if you want to use software in any other format. How will you play anything if your decades-old CD drive dies? You can rest easy after today. After years of work, enthusiast Dr. Abrasive has found a way to crack the Saturn’s copy protection system and let it run software from a card with USB support. This was no mean feat, as it turns out — the Saturn has a notoriously difficult-to-read anti-copying system that isolates itself from many cracking methods.
Dr. Abrasive ultimately had to fool the relevant chip into spilling its read-only memory, reverse-engineer its operating system and insert a custom board into the console’s Video CD card slot to feed the desired code. The result not only plays games faithfully, but does things the Saturn was never meant to do. It can write files to the USB stick, for example.
The project may be most helpful for archival, since it’d help you play the likes of Nights into Dreams or Panzer Dragoon on native hardware well after the CD drive kicks the bucket. However, it should also help tinkerers. Emulator developers could better understand how the Saturn works, homebrew game developers could easily load their content and non-gaming tasks (like playing chiptune music) would be that much easier. Dr. Abrasive is hoping to make a polished device that anyone can use, so there might soon be a day where you just have to pop in a card to relive classics you haven’t touched in years.
Source: Assembler Games, Debuglive (YouTube)
Play ‘Guacamelee’ and ‘Severed’ in one bundle on your PS Vita
If you scored a good deal on a PlayStation Vita and aren’t sure how to get started on game shopping, Drinkbox might have the answer. The developer is launching a bundle, the simply-titled Drinkbox Vita Collection, that includes all three of its Vita games (Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack, Guacamelee and Severed) plus Guacamelee’s DLC add-ons. You may not be all that familiar with Mutant Blobs unless you tried it during the Vita’s early days, but this is otherwise a great introduction to some classic handheld gaming — it’s hard to top Guacamelee’s lucha libre-inspired 2D action, and Severed puts a very surreal twist on the concept of a first-person dungeon crawler. Drinkbox hasn’t yet said how much its bundle will cost, but it’ll likely be modest when it shows up on July 13th.
Source: PlayStation Blog
G2A makes it harder for scammers to sell shady game codes
G2A is still determined to show that it can do right by developers worried about shady game key sellers. The online marketplace has introduced a new verification process that should make it harder to commit fraud. New sellers will have to provide a legitimate phone number and social networking account to get their foot in the door. Also, they’ll be limited to selling 10 products before they have to deliver more proof. This is just the start, G2A adds, as “further measures” are planned that will check addresses, credit cards and PayPal accounts.
The new screening measures might go a long way toward preventing some of the tactics that have hurt developers in the past, such as fraudsters who buy game keys using stolen credit cards and resell them at cut-rate prices. However, it raises a big question: why weren’t these anti-fraud measures in place before? It’s no secret that online marketplaces are rife with abuse (just ask anyone who has fought with a dodgy Amazon reseller), and digital goods make it that much easier to cheat both companies and customers.
Source: G2A (PR Newswire)
Twitch introduces a PlayStation Vita app
Twitch has released streaming video apps for just about every modern game system under the Sun, but the PlayStation Vita has remained the odd one out… until today. The livestream provider has rolled out a Vita app that, much like the PS3 version, lets you tune into live and pre-recorded gaming sessions as well as follow the channels you can’t stop watching. You can’t stream anything yourself, alas — you won’t be broadcasting OlliOlli or Severed sessions any time soon. Even so, this could be helpful for those moments when you aren’t near your phone, or for kids whose Vita might be their only handheld viewer.
Source: Twitch (Medium)
Blizzard sues an ‘Overwatch’ cheat developer
Blizzard has about as much interest in stamping out cheaters as you do, and it’s willing to go to court to keep things clean. The company has filed a US lawsuit against Bossland, a German developer whose Watchover Tyrant app is designed solely to help unscrupulous Overwatch players. The software allegedly violates copyright law, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention measures. More importantly, Blizzard claims that Watchover hurts both legitimate players and the bottom line. The developer may be losing “tens of millions of dollars” in sales to gamers put off by the thought that cheaters are running rampant.
Whether or not the software did that much financial damage, there’s no question that Bossland is aware of what it’s doing: in response to an earlier Blizzard crackdown, it swore that it would make Watchover harder to detect. You don’t do that unless you know your product is “unlawful,” Blizzard argues.
The real debate may be over jurisdiction. Bossland insists that the US has no authority over a company that supposedly has no connection to the country, and that Blizzard could easily have sued 5 years ago over previous cheat software. Blizzard would likely beg to differ, though — Watchover is directly affecting an American game producer, and it’s not clear that Bossland is doing anything to stop US sales.
Via: Destructoid
Source: TorrentFreak
Microsoft’s Play Anywhere reaches PC and Xbox on September 13th
You won’t have to wait too long to see how well Xbox Play Anywhere works in practice. Microsoft has confirmed to Polygon that the cross-purchase, cross-play feature will go live on both Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 PCs on September 13th. You’ll still need games that support it, of course, but you can count on at least strong first-party support. Microsoft informs MCV that all the games it publishes from now onward will use Play Anywhere — in theory, that means the next Halo will be a PC title. The real unknown is whether or not many third-party games will follow suit.
Source: Polygon, MCV
‘Skullgirls’ is coming to mobile with a role-playing twist
Lab Zero’s hyper-stylized fighting game Skullgirls has been available on almost every modern platform at some point in its history, but you couldn’t play it on your smartphone… until now. Hidden Variable (best known for producing versions of Threes) has revealed that it’s developing a Skullgirls game for Android and iOS that shakes up its formula. Rather than making a straightforward brawler, the studio is adding role-playing elements — you collect, equip and upgrade characters as they progress through the story. There’s even a Fight Assist option that lets you focus more on the bigger picture and less on the moment-to-moment action.
The title is only slated to arrive sometime before the end of the year, but you can apply to get into the closed beta right now. You’ll probably want a fairly high-end device, though, as Skullgirls mobile reportedly needs a “little extra moxie” to run smoothly. The big question: how much will it cost to play? Here’s hoping the collectible element doesn’t mean a heavy dependence on in-app purchases. While Skullgirls has built up a good reputation over the years, it won’t be so much fun if you have to pay extra (or grind for hours) to unlock fan favorite characters like Parasoul or Valentine.
Via: Kotaku
Source: Hidden Variable
Watch Stephen Colbert challenge a ‘Super Mario’ speedrunner
You’ve probably seen video game speed runs before, but on a major TV channel? Not likely… until now. In what appears to be a first for nationwide US TV, The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert ran a segment that pitted a speedrunner (Super Mario Bros. 3 expert Mitch Fowler) against Colbert and the Columbia University men’s relay team to see who could complete their respective goals the fastest. We won’t spoil the results here, but it’s surreal to see talk of warp whistles on a show that normally revolves around celebrity chats and musical guests. And while the challenge was ultimately a promo for Summer Games Done Quick’s 2016 launch on July 3rd, we won’t knock it — it’s pretty rare for TV to introduce a longstanding game subculture to such a wide audience.
Source: The Late Show (YouTube)
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