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Avalanche Studios unveils nostalgic '80s robot shooter 'Generation Zero'
If you've caught the '80s nostalgia bug after Stranger Things, this could be the game for you. It's 1989. Machines have taken over rural Sweden, and it's unclear how or why. And it's up to a group of young adults to stop them. That's the gist of Generation Zero, an open-world shooter announced by Just Cause and Mad Max developer Avalanche Studios just a few days before E3 kicks off.
How Netflix keeps ‘Stranger Things’ lo-fi in a high-tech world
Netflix is still surprised that Stranger Things, a science-fiction series starring five young kids, became a worldwide sensation immediately after it was released. Unlike some of its biggest hits, like House of Cards (which is based on a British series), Stranger Things was an unknown property when it premiered in July of 2016. But it quickly captivated audiences, thanks to its '80s nostalgia and the perfectly executed homages to Hollywood classics from the likes of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg.
Korg adds '80s arcade game sounds to its iOS synth app
Korg's Gadget app for iOS has been providing access to and arsenal of synthesizer and drum machine sounds since 2014. With the latest update though, the company has added a new instrument that cranks up the nostalgia machine. Korg worked with Bandai Namco for the Kamata: an '80s-inspired synth that's based on those chiptune noises you remember from the likes of Pac-Man and Galaga. The Kamata virtual instrument even comes with an '80s look to the UI to complete the experience.
ICYMI: Electric surfboard, '80s video app and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-143496{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-143496, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-143496{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-143496").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Today on In Case You Missed It: If Jaws has kept you out of the ocean, there's another way to experience surfing. Just pay $4,000 for the Onean Electric Surfboard and cruise lakes and rivers instead. And you can re-live the glory days of Saved by the Bell and Zumba pants with an iOS app that turns captured videos into vintage gems. And an art installation lets you sing to it and vibrates back with its own song.
'80s game designers had to cheat their way to color graphics
We take powerful computer graphics for granted nowadays, to the point where we complain when 4K games won't play at 60fps. But YouTube's iBookGuy showed how tough designers had it back in the 80s just to make color graphics work, period, on 16K machines of the day. They had to use a variety of workarounds just to get 16 colors on a 320 x 200 screen, as that would normally eat up your entire 16K of RAM right there. Developers for machines like the NES and Commodore 64 resorted to dividing the screen into "cells" that could each hold only two colors, a trick that used up just 9K of memory.
Crossing Souls: 80s RPG about friendship, death and adventure
Call 2014 the Year of the Souls: Titan Souls, Wayward Souls, Dark Souls 2 and now coming from Devolver Digital and Fourattic, Crossing Souls, an action-adventure RPG with hints of neon and 1980s nostalgia. Crossing Souls stars five friends who discover an ancient relic that allows them to interact with the world of the dead, calling forth people and things from the past while they accidentally embark on a truly epic quest. Watch to the end of the trailer to see just how epic this thing may get. The cutscenes in Crossing Souls are done up in the trailer's retro cartoon style, while gameplay is pixelated and action-packed. The Fourattic team wants to reignite the magical feeling of 80s entertainment found in Teen Wolf, Weird Science, Back to the Future and ET. "With Crossing Souls the team want to revive those childhood feelings," Fourattic writes. "Those adventures that could happen to anyone. We want to develop a funny and profound game, with a great plot that can make the player remember those times with a bit of nostalgia: more than one has used a towel as a cape, a broomstick as a sword or have had a hidden cabin." Fourattic has launched a Kickstarter for Crossing Souls, seeking $45,000 to finish the game for PC, Mac and Linux by 2015. The game will be available on Steam, Humble and GOG.
What happened to all of the women coders in 1984
In 1984, women stopped pursuing Computer Science majors at American universities. From 1970 onward, women had composed an increasing percentage of Computer Science majors, but something happened in 1984 and that number began to drastically fall, an occurrence at odds with other tech fields. This trend has continued into the 2000s, and today women make up roughly 20 percent of Computer Science majors, as opposed to the 1984 high of about 37 percent. NPR's Planet Money team of Caitlin Kenney and Steve Henn dove into the data to uncover what went down in the mid-80s to drive women out of the field. "There was no grand conspiracy in computer science that we uncovered," Henn said. "No big decision by computer science programs to put a quota on women. There was no sign on a door that said, 'Girls, keep out.' But something strange was going on in this field."
PAX Prime 2014: Upsilon Circuit debuts to the public
I'll echo what Eliot wrote back at PAX East earlier this year: Upsilon Circuit is almost certainly one of the strangest and most intriguing video game concepts I've ever seen. Part Diablo clone, part Smash TV, part Hunger Games, and part Max Headroom, it's a virtual game show there eight contestants fight to stay alive while the larger player audience helps or hurts the contestants as they wish. This is all overseen by a Ronald Reagan-ish game show host who will snark and deadpan the proceedings. The Robot Loves Kitty dev team said at this year's PAX Prime that the genesis for Upsilon Circuit came from seeing the surge of popularity for folks who watched other people livestream games. Why not take that voyeurism and make it more interactive? Thus, Upsilon Circuit was born.
Lost Andy Warhol artworks discovered on Amiga floppies from the '80s
Rediscovered artwork like a napkin Picasso or unearthed Matisse can be identified on sight, but pieces crafted in the digital age by pop-artist extraordinaire Andy Warhol and encoded in an outdated format are far more difficult to ascertain. In fact, it took the retro know-how of Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Club and a team of artists, archivists and curators to wrangle some of Warhol's lost pixels into the physical world.
The Sims 3 DLC packs some bellbottoms
The Sims 3 "70s, 80s and 90s" DLC pack says it has "all-new outfits, crazy hairstyles, and facial hair," but considering each of these "new" looks comes from a decade long since past, that description is a bit of a stretch. The 70s, 80s and 90s pack is available now on Steam for $20.The 70s portion includes bellbottoms, halter top catsuits and platform shoes, along with minimalist furniture and a disco ball. The 80s bring legwarmers, leotards, headbands and shoulder pads, and the decor portion includes arcade machines and an entertainment system. The 90s remind us why "grunge" generally isn't a complimentary term, with tattered jeans, layered tops, asymmetrical handkerchief hemline skirts, and furniture in distressed and industrial metal styles. Each decade comes with the related hairstyles and facial hair.Remember, in 20 years we'll all look back on the 2010s with just as much revulsion, but with more photographic evidence of our absurd tastes.
Netflix signs multi-year deal with Hasbro -- and knowing is half the battle
Hasbro, the toy-maker behind pervasive long-form ads shows for kids like Transformers, GI Joe and My Little Pony, is bringing its back catalogue to Netflix. While the '80s hits will arrive some time in 2012, both Transformer Prime and the more recent Pony-based adventures are already available to stream now. Get a full list of the Hasbro heritage being readied for streaming in Netflix's proud press release below.
Animal House, Blues Brothers, Dazed & Confused and Fast Times at Ridgemont High coming to Blu-ray
Universal is bringing some of the funniest flicks of the 70s and 80s out on Blu-ray this summer when it delivers Animal House, Blues Brothers, Dazed & Confused and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. They're getting a pretty good treatment as well, with some HD extras, u-control and other bonus tie ins. Only only real question is what took so long? Animal House and Blues Brothers arrive July 26th, while Dazed & Confused and Fast Times at Ridgemont High are scheduled for August 9th - details and specs follow after the break.
Beverly Hills Cop comes to Blu-ray May 17th
While we wait for the LOTR EE Blu-rays to get a release date we can mark down a specific one for Axel Foley, since Paramount has announced it will be releasing Beverly Hills Cop on Blu-ray May 17th. It's coming home a week after another 80s classic, Top Gun is rereleased in 25th anniversary form, and promises "nearly an hour" of special features. Besides the 5.1 DTS-HD MA soundtrack, the extras include a look into both the casting and the music of the movie. Check out the details in the press release after the break although we should warn you, there's no info about Beverly Hills Cop II on Blu-ray in there -- we looked.
Second season of Xbox Live's 1 vs. 100 starts Nov. 19
If you've been missing your trivia fix on Xbox Live, you should be happy to learn that Microsoft has dated the second season of its Xbox Live quiz-'em-up, 1 vs. 100. Expect the game to return on November 19 at 5:00 PDT, where it'll dish out another 14 weeks' worth of questions -- and this time around, your chance to be The One or a part of The Mob will be determined by one thing: score. Multiple-choice maniacs will be able to play the new season of 1 vs. 100 on a daily basis through themed Extended Play sessions every night, including "Finish the Lyrics," "80's" night and -- yes, we're totally serious -- "Vampires." Finally, a theme night your 12-year-old sister can get behind!
GameStop adds '80s-themed level to Tony Hawk Ride pre-orders
If you're looking to add a dash of '80s flair to your Tony Hawk Ride experience, you can either glue the skateboard peripheral onto one of those longboards, or you could just pre-order the game at GameStop. Those who choose the latter will gain access to the 80s Quicksilver Level, which is said to include a "Vert Ramp challenge sandwiched between two 747's on the runway of the Frankfurt Airport decked out in Quiksilver 80's theme including Tony Hawk himself." We guess Germany loves two things, then: David Hasselhoff and '80s-themed skateboard challenges. [Via Go Nintendo] [image credit]
Oh, the '80s: Alec Baldwin's hard nights ended with ... Galaga
Before he was a thorn in Tina Fey's side as the Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming at GE, Alec Baldwin was something of a sot, spending much of the '80s in a haze of "sex, drugs, booze." And when it came to sobering up, it wasn't coffee that was his drug of choice. It was Galaga, though we imagine blurred vision kept him from ever putting in his initials.Baldwin writes in the book "Moments of Clarity" that evenings of debauchery would often end in a warehouse with him playing the arcade classic into the morning. "This was the only way I could go 'beta' and go into that state I needed to be, where I could calm down and take my mind off everything," recalled the actor, who confessed that God got him sober. And while the 30 Rock star oddly describes the deity as a "65-year-old retired postal worker named Lenny," we still like to think that the Galagans played their part. See how classic arcade games, like Galaga, have been updated for the modern audience:
Liquavista launches ColorBright display technology sans coolness
When Liquavista announced its electrowetting segment-driven display technology way back when, we thought it sounded like just about the best thing ever. We definitely wanted PMP, cellphone, and watch displays with rapid response time, exceptional contrast, and a high volume of color. Fast forward two years: word is this stuff is finally ready to hit the market and designers can now order custom-made equipment for their devices. There's an animation on Liquavista's website that promises some radically hip stuff, and we're looking forward to that, but so far we feel a bit let down by these images of mostly-static watches whose main claim to fame is colors. Get crackin', designers: we want to see those sunlight-viewable video displays and hip-hoppin' PMP visualizers in the non-cartoon world ASAP.[Via core77]Read - Press releaseRead - Official website with demo animation
Contra movie coming to alternate-universe theaters in 1988
If you haven't clicked the Play button on the video yet, go ahead and take care of that -- whatever we've written underneath the embedded movie cannot even begin to match its excellence. Team Awesome, the same group that put together the fictitious Punch-Out!! trailer for Nintendo's Short Cuts Showcase contest, created this ultra-macho masterpiece as an homage to Contra. The production parodies not only the original NES game, but 80s action films like Predator, Aliens, Rambo: First Blood, and other indisputable classics. Pretty much, if it was rad and from the 80s, then it's somewhere in this trailer.
Game-related record sleeve art hurts our brains
Video game soundtracks might be a big deal nowadays, but back in the '80s the video-game-related albums at the record store tended to be a little different. AZ Nighbuzz has assembled a collection of some of the wonderfully weird game-related album art from the golden age of the arcades.While various international versions of Pac-Man Fever clog up the list, the selections include everything from spoken word strategy to a Breakout backstory and even a Super Mario Land remix that was pressed onto vinyl as late as 1992. Our favorite, though, has to be the inexplicably weird cover for Scientist Encounters Pac-Man, in which a metal, piranha-toothed monstrosity devours a dark-skinned man (presumably the Scientist?) in futuristic skin-tight garb. They just don't make album art like that any more. Thank goodness.
Guitar Hero '80s edition in June -- maybe July
A Guitar Hero: '80s Edition for PlayStation 2 was unofficially announced back in January by EGM. Although the game still hasn't been officially announced -- like some other games that kept popping up without official confirmation -- sites are starting to show release dates for GH: '80s.Gamespot says GH: '80s is being released June 4, 2007. However, Gamefly and Amazon Canada (but not US) have the title slated for a July 31 release. Gamefly has been a pretty reliable source for a title being legitimate, but the release date is up for debate. What we do know is that the ESRB has not rated the game yet. So rockin' to the '80s is in the cards for the near future, but we hope to get a solid date real soon for this still officially unannounced game.[Thanks, Brian]