The Morning After: Monday, May 29th 2017
Portable gaming.
Hey, good morning!
Welcome to the new week. Most of you are probably enjoying a three-day weekend, but the show never stops at Engadget. We have a team of reporters settling into Taipei for Asia's biggest PC show, Computex, while we also look at the brutal realities of whether we'll ever find life beyond Earth.
You can play 'Crazy Taxi' on your smartphone for free
If you've always been intrigued by the early noughties appeal of Crazy Taxi, but didn't want to lay down cash on that curiosity, you now have no excuse. Sega has made both Android and iOS versions free to play. And if the ads drive you crazy, you can plunk down a mere two bucks. Or just delete the thing.
'Fallen London' and the secret to writing an infinite gothic game
Fallen London is a deep choose-your-own-adventure game that debuted back in 2009, with no moving pictures to guide players into new worlds. Instead, it's text-based, allowing fans to decide how they'll react to certain scenarios while they wander around a Victorian version of London that's trapped in an underground dimension. It's still available in browser form, but it's also on iOS and Android, spawning a successful spinoff mobile franchise in the process. Just this week, Failbetter Games announced it would place renewed focus on Fallen London, tying up some of its stories and systems. The lore is probably unlike any other game story you've experienced before.
The search for a habitable second Earth
Wrapping up our Tomorrow Week, Steve Dent looks into how scientists and researchers are searching for habitable planets beyond this blue and green orb. Interestingly, half the research takes place right here, as teams try to unlock the mystery of how life started on Earth in the first place.
Construction starts on the world's largest optical telescope
This is related to said search: After years of planning and no shortage of financial anxiety, construction has officially started on the Extremely Large Telescope. Contractors are now building the main structure and dome of the Chile-based observer ahead of its initial service in 2024. With a 43-yard aperture, this promises to be the world's largest optical telescope for a long time, even compared to future projects.
USB-powered Sega Nomad gives you near-endless game time
Sega's Genesis Nomad was always a compromise: It ran 16-bit console games on mid-90s handheld tech, but took six AA batteries just to get three hours of playtime. Wouldn't it be nice if you could use modern hardware to play without constant (and sometimes expensive) battery swaps? The Sega Holic (aka Catch22 on NeoGAF) thinks so. He just teased a homebrew Nomad modification that lets the portable system run on USB power.
