What Are We Playing This Week?
I made more progress on Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition for the Switch and jumped into Outcast: Second Contact for the PC again although I only got to spend about 20 minutes there.
How about you?
We’ve got a TON of news coming along this week as E3 starts next Sunday. As always, I’ll do what I can to cover everything possible but if it feels overwhelming, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Gaming Headlines
Hot E3 Rumors Begin With A Supposed List Of Nintendo Announcements - Take it with a grain of salt, these pop up every year and are wrong more than they are right
Although You Can Be Sure That This E3 Will Be Pretty Good For The Switch
Details On Microsoft’s E3 Plans & Broadcasts
Limited Run Games To Hold Their Own E3 Press Conference
I’m Sure This Will Surprise You, A New Assassin’s Creed Will Be Shown At E3
Gog.com Launches Their Summer Sale With 1000+ Games 90% Off
Q&A For New Pokémon Games Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee
Two Former Human Head Designers Talk About The Never Released Version Of Prey 2
Sega Confirms House Of The Dead Scarlet Dawn For A Western Release (Arcade)
Some Details On The Upcoming SoulCalibur VI Translated From A Japanese Article
The Arcade History Tour By Game Designer Brian Colin Might Be Headed To A Convention Near You
Originally released in 2005, Killer 7 Is Finally Making The Jump To PC
PUBG Corp. Files A Lawsuit Against EPIC Games - Grab the popcorn
Star Citizen, The Game For The Super Rich - And this is one reason why I haven’t really been interested in this
World War 3 Throws Down The Gauntlet Against Battlefield SJW…I Mean V
Nintendo & Panasonic Have Canned The Mysterious “Quality Of Life” Project
Magic Leap Finally Revealing Their Long Vaunted AR Glasses - I’ve been told it’s like a ‘hallucination’ but will believe it when I see it
Interview With Space Invaders Designer Tomohiro Nishikado (Link archived from The Guardian)
One YouTuber Will No Longer Cover Bioware Games Because Of Their Treatment Of TotalBiscuit
Sega Releasing Altered Beast Funko Pops
G.Rev’s Strania EX Opens Pre-orders & Gets A Trailer - Exclusive to arcades
Ever wondered what a complete Nintendo Wii collection looks like?@NintendoTwizer doesn't need to! pic.twitter.com/OVjFuzqfDM
— Lord Arse! ?️ #PlayExpoLONDON (@Lord_Arse) June 1, 2018
GAMING
Capcom Reveals Mega Man 11 - I know that fans of Capcom’s Mega Man franchise have been clamoring for a return to the series for some time now, enough that it funded Mighty No. 9 (to their utter disappointment). After the company let it rest for a while, they are now bringing it back with Mega Man 11 this October. What do you think from this trailer?
Next In Fallout - Fallout 76: Setting it up as an “online survival RPG”, the next entry into Bethesda’s Fallout series was teased this week, getting people to talk and wonder what it would entail. Bethesda also has other “surprises” in store for E3 so if you’re a fan of their titles, you can get all hyped up for it now. Here’s said teaser:
Fallout 76 looks ?!!https://t.co/zBj7Y14bOD pic.twitter.com/yBUuxAVHFu
— IGN (@IGN) May 30, 2018
Team Sonic Racing Announced (PC/PS4/SW/XB1) - It had been teased for a while but now we have info about it. Sumo Digital is involved and it’s coming to just about everything. I expect this to be a spiritual sequel to Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing:
Race as a team, win as a team! Team Sonic Racing is coming to PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC this winter! Who would your ultimate racing team be? #TeamSonicRacing pic.twitter.com/pi3ncKXZBU
— SEGA (@SEGA) May 30, 2018
Either Blind Nostalgia Or Pure Stupidity Pushes The Atari VCS Past $2 million In Pre-Orders - I’ve been covering the Atari VCS, (initially called the Ataribox) in these threads for a long while now and after some false starts, Atari officially unveiled the Indiegogo this past week for the 2019 microconsole. Admittedly I am shocked that it has done this well but as the old saying goes, “there’s a sucker born every minute”. The Atari VCS is a case study in just how foolish nostalgia can be although I really wonder if that is what it is. The number of people speaking excitedly for one of these on Atari forums are outnumbered 100-to-1…so perhaps it’s just a bunch of dumb hipsters who get wet over what they are told is “retro”.
The specifications for this console are a joke if it were shipping today. But people are spending between $200-$300 for a console that at best won’t be shipping until Summer 2019 (if it ships at all; Atari also promised to ship out their Gameband last October but as of June 2018, it still hasn’t shipped to backers).
The CPU is an AMD A10-9700, which is a hybrid CPU/GPU from before Ryzen. While it can handle some modern games on an ok level, (here’s some benchmark comparisons), it is a far cry from a competitor to the PS4/SW/XB1. But again - $300~ is what this will retail for, the same as those more powerful, feature and game packed consoles. Here’s a video showing a variety of games running on this APU, each with tweaked settings (it cannot handle these games anywhere near max settings across the board; much less the “[email protected]” that Atari initially touted about the platform). Notice how Doom runs at 720p, medium settings and still spends most of it’s time in the 40s in frame rates…and again, the Atari VCS will be out in July of 2019…
The game line-up so far is equally pathetic. It ships with a game compilation that is available on PCs right now for $10 and Tempest 4000 is in development for it. But that will also be released for other consoles where it will certainly run better (or, if you have a PSVita, it was released as TxK). So far, there are no exclusives and the 3rd party support for it is made up of companies that most people have never heard of. None of the streaming features are revolutionary…stacked together it leaves me a little perplexed by how the Atari logo and a shell that looks like the ol’ Atari 2600 is garnering this much interest. If it really is that important to you, just buy up an original 2600, remove the motherboard and install a Raspberry Pi3 in there with an emulator. You’ll save a lot of money and you’ll have it today. Or if you still own a working Atari console of the past, finding SD or Compact Flash cartridges that hold the entire library are easy to come by and only cost $70.
All-in-all, Intellivision Entertainment has to be feeling good about this as they also announced this week that they are resurrecting the Intellivision with some sort of modern console. While this also should entail a wait-and-see approach, at the very least they have a number of industry names and experience behind this. Something that Atari can’t claim for the new VCS.
Technology Headlines
ASRock ‘Accidentally’ Unveils Four More AMD Ryzen CPU Designs
Let’s Regenerate Dental Enamel
Intel Announces New Persistent Memory That Will Reach As High As 512GB
FBI Warning About Russian Malware Affecting At Least 500,000 Routers
For Some Reason, Chinese Phone Maker Creates A ‘Fake’ Transparent Phone
Firefox To Add A Tor-Based “Super-Private Mode”
Such A Fair & Balanced Media Made Up Of Former Obama Officials
Sounds Like Tesla Is Aiming To Be More Of A Pyrotechnics Company Than An Electric Car One
The Perfect Motherboard For That Cryptominer In Your Life
https://twitter.com/politicalmath/status/1003024330588950530
TECHNOLOGY
3D Printing A Human Cornea - “3D Printing, is there anything it CAN’T do?” might be the question asked of educational films - if we still had them made like it was the 50s & 60s. Now the tech has been used to create a human cornea, which in turn can lead to an “unlimited” supply of transplants.
The Titan Trash Compactor: Making taking out the garbage fun
The Most INTENSE Ramen Noodles Ad EVAR?: It’s certainly in the running…no this isn’t ‘tech’ but I doubt that the Spartan overlords would want this to hold up a post by it’s own:
Japanese ramen adverts are now a bit…intense. pic.twitter.com/yCiKfqmdrG
— Ollie Barder (@Cacophanus) June 3, 2018
Microsoft Buying Up Github? - Just using this headline as an open rant opportunity. 😛 I’ve been wondering whatever happened to MS being labelled a monopoly 20ish years ago. It seems like it never went anywhere. I’ve been wondering this more with the most recent W10 update, where they’ve shoved their Edge browser onto the desktop (as I recall, them bundling IE with all their OS’s was one of the reasons they were supposed to be split up); now when you go into Windows they are using that to advertise their new bookstore. Granted, I doubt anyone really cares when they don’t all use these services. Still, I wonder…
Space Pr0n Of The Week: “Rain” On The Sun - This is one of those things that you have to watch as opposed to look at a still image of. Quite fascinating:
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