Snake
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Your Google Stadia controller won’t be a paperweight after the service shuts down
Now that Stadia is shutting down, Google is unlocking Bluetooth support on the service's controller.
Relive 'Snake' as an ever-growing bus in 'Snakeybus'
Most modern incarnations Snake involve only slight twists on the original formula, but you can't accuse Stovetop of playing it safe. The indie developer has released Snakeybus, a title that has you winding through cities with a bus (what else?) that grows longer with every passenger. Do well enough and your own bus quickly becomes the biggest threat -- but that's where the game's unique mechanics come into play.
Google Maps adds a city-themed 'Snake' game
Google has a habit of introducing goodies on April Fools that last long after the gags are over, and that isn't changing for 2019. The company has added a Snake game to Google Maps that lets you play the classic title themed around major cities. You'll play as an ever-growing double decker bus snapping up passengers in London, for example, while you'll play as a cable car in San Francisco or a commuter train in Tokyo. You can also choose a "world" map if you'd rather gobble things up on a planetary scale.
Robot makes 'Snakes and Ladders' horrifyingly literal
Robots can't yet think for themselves, but if they ever do, you'll have nowhere to hide. Researchers from Kyoto University and the University of Electro-Communications unveiled a snake-like robot that can climb up a ladder in a terrifying version of the children's board game. It's not the first robot snake we've ever seen, but this latest model, unveiled at the 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, looks like the most agile one yet.
Snake hidden in hard drive fails to board Miami plane
Transport Security Administration (TSA) officials have intercepted a traveler at Miami International Airport who planned to illegally smuggle a snake en route to Barbados. The female passenger was prevented from boarding the flight after security agents discovered a Ball python was concealed within an external hard drive in her possession. To make matters even more bizarre, the snake was dressed in a nylon stocking.
Google unwraps 19 past Doodle games for its 19th birthday
Google is no stranger to celebrations. In the past, the festivities have brought new features for Google Photos, and Google Earth, and a montage (with a Rickrolling twist) for YouTube's tenth anniversary. Today, the party is coming to its Doodle. To mark 19 years of company history, the latest Google Doodle packs 19 surprises from the past. You'll be able to play a bunch of games, including tic-tac-toe, piñata, and cricket. And access awesome interactive Doodles from the archives, including the lauded DJ and music composition tools launched earlier this year. There's even a Snake easter egg lurking in the mix, which offers a colorful take on the mobile gaming classic that's every bit as addictive. Simply spin the wheel to start playing. And, if you don't like the result, spin again.
Watch a robotic snake swim eerily like the real thing
Don't be shocked if you see a mechanical snake swimming around undersea equipment in the near future... it (probably) isn't there to kill you. Eelume, Kongsberg Maritime and Statoil are building a robotic snake worker that will inspect (and occasionally fix) underwater gear. Robot snakes are nothing new, but this serpent is both production-ready and almost uncanny in how it moves. By itself, it slithers as if it's stalking prey. Throw in thrusters, however, and it's something else -- it can quickly twist around pipes as if they were only minor obstacles.
'Snake Rewind' modernizes the Nokia game for touchscreen devices
Snake -- that addictive, reflex-testing mobile game on old Nokia brick phones -- is attempting a comeback. A version for modern smartphones and tablets called Snake Rewind will be released on May 14th by game developer Rumilus Design and Taneli Armanto. The latter's the Nokia engineer who preloaded it on the 6110 back in 1997 and the one you can blame for all those wasted hours and bouts of Snake-induced rage. For the young'uns who have no idea what it's about: the game gives you control of a slithering serpent during feeding time. You'd have to get its mouth in the same line as its pixel food, often by twisting and contorting its continuously elongating body using the keyboard. It might sound lame described like that, but over a decade ago, it occupied the throne Candy Crush is sitting on.
The Elder Scrolls Online pushes players to Upper Craglorn in Update 4
You've been to Craglorn? Pff, that's boring now. Upper Craglorn is where the real action is these days. And by complete coincidence, Upper Craglorn is now open on The Elder Scrolls Online's servers, as the game's fourth major update has just dropped. The zone will wrap up the Celestial storyline as your character takes on the Scaled Court. That also ties into the new trial, Sanctum Ophidia, which is a direct strike against the heart of the Court; players will take on the minions and end up fighting the Celestial Serpent. The new Dragonstar Arena also debuts with this patch, asking players to fight against waves of oncoming enemies. Plus there's a new crafting trait available, improved grouping mechanics, various bugfixes, the usual assortment. So if you can't wait to go knife up a really important snake and check out the places that all the hip new kids are heading for, go check out the update.
David Hayter: Hearing someone else as Snake 'makes me a little ill'
David Hayter, the voice of Snake since 1998's Metal Gear Solid, won't reprise his role in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain – and that sucks, Hayter writes in an elongated Twitter post."If it were my choice, I would do this role forever," Hayter says. "To hear anyone else's voice coming from Snake's battered throat, makes me a little ill, to be honest. But the truth is – it's not my choice. Any and all casting decisions are the sole purview of Hideo Kojima, and Konami itself. And that's fair."Konami never approached Hayter for the role, Hayter writes. He found out the production team "wouldn't be needing" him in December, when the recording sessions for Phantom Pain began in Los Angeles."No reason, or explanation was given beyond that. And that was it," Hayter says. He was "bummed" by the news. Konami head Hideo Kojima wants Phantom Pain to represent a "new Metal Gear game" and hasn't revealed who the new voice actor will be."To be clear, I love being a part of the world of Metal Gear," Hayter writes. "I admire its technological innovations, the gameplay, the political message of it all. But primarily, I love the fans of these games. Two grown men burst into tears upon meeting me at the Vancouver Fan Expo last year. Now that ... Is a rare and excellent role. You know you're making an impact. And I love doing it."Read Hayter's full description of events here. Yes, it's elongated by Twitter standards, but it's by no means a long read; it's simply concise and quietly sad.
Hands on with NimbleBit's next title, Nimble Quest
I am a huge fan, as you may already know, of the two brothers behind NimbleBit and all of their work, from the earlier titles like Scoops and DizzyPad to the much larger freemium hits they've had like Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes. The last time I talked to either of the Marsh brothers in person, I was told that the company was hoping to shrink in scope a little bit, and make more, smaller games, rather than huge freemium titles full of content. I was also told that they were going to return to Textropolis, an early title of theirs, and maybe expand it into something with a little more accessibility. But it turns out neither of those plans were true. The company is currently working on a game called Nimble Quest, which is both not a word game, and seems pretty full of content to me. As previously described, it's a sort of arcade RPG, where you guide a line of adventurers through a series of stages, earning currency you can use to level them up. When the guys at NimbleBit sent me a preview beta build this week, I eagerly jumped to play it, and I think I can describe the game (in its current working state, at least) in just one word. That word is "Snake." Yes, the classic video game has a long tradition of appearing on mobile platforms, and it is a very clear influence to the NimbleBit team here -- the game even brings up a picture of an old black-and-white device playing the game to describe to a new player just how Nimble Quest works. In each game, you start out as one hero, and then you move that hero around a field, swiping in various directions to steer your little guy around. And that's it, basically. Attacking is all done automatically -- if an enemy is in range and your adventurer is facing the right direction, you'll attack. Killing enemies drops a number of different bonuses and powerups: You can collect coins (which are your main currency, used to upgrade both your individual heroes and all of the powerups), extra abilities (like a coin magnet, similar to Temple Run, or an extra shield or bit of attack power for your hero), or heroes, which then are added to your line (just as you'd grow a longer snake in the traditional Snake game). Ian Marsh has been tweeting videos of the game in action, so you can see what it's all like by checking those out. The trickiest part of the game is that your enemies also have their own routes, speed and ranges, so while soldiers will just slash the space in front of them, spiders will toss ranged webs to slow you down, and skeletons will throw bones at you no matter which direction you happen to be in. In fact, the current beta build is fairly tough: If you crash into the wall or another enemy, you die, and that has happened to me a lot. Having one of the characters following you die isn't a big deal, but having your lead hero die ends the game, at which point you're given a Temple Run-style epitaph ("Ulrich got stomped on by a spider"), and the chance to continue by spending another bit of currency (strangely not Nimble Bux -- they're round and white, so I've been calling them "pearls"). Outside of the core game, you can use the gems you've earned to upgrade each of the heroes, which are unlocked over time, and so far tend towards the main fantasy tropes: There's a tough soldier, a ranged archer, a mage and so on. The characters get more esoteric as you unlock them, so later on there's a ninja to play with, some sort of demon guy and a few fun references to other games and properties. Characters can be unlocked either by finding them in the game, or by outright buying them with IAP, though that feature isn't hooked up just yet. In addition to upgrading the heroes you do have unlocked, you can also use gems to buy one-time buffs, if you so choose. Not that I'd need to buy any extra gems -- like all of NimbleBit's other games, Nimble Quest seems nice and generous with its currency, and there's a lot of fun to be had just questing through the game's levels, earning as many gems as you can and setting high scores as you figure it all out. At some point, an Arena mode also unlocks, which I presume is an endless mode to quest away in -- but I haven't opened it up yet myself. The game does seem a little less complicated than Pocket Planes, which is not a bad thing at all -- this is a more of a grindy, progression-based arcade game than a freemium management title, which will likely appeal to a nice, wide swath of the App Store. But even though the gameplay is slightly simpler, there's no shortage of content here to unlock and find, so NimbleBit's claims of trying to make smaller, more compact games were probably overtaken by the Marsh brothers' interest in creating a lot of fun RPG-style rewards for Nimble Quest. Considering that the game is currently in beta, a release has to be somewhat close, but NimbleBit has stayed mum on exactly when Nimble Quest might be done. Given the state of what I've played already, and a few comments the team has made on Twitter, I'd say we'll look out for it on the App Store within another month or so. I'm scheduled to speak with NimbleBit for sure next month at GDC, so if we don't see Nimble Quest available by then, I'll be sure to ask them why.
Massively exclusive: Newest Vindictus boss can swallow you whole
New content is hitting Vindictus later this month in the form of a serpent boss with a few tricks up its sleeve -- if snakes had sleeves, that is. Lakoria is described as the "grand-daddy of all serpents," complete with purple venom, shedding skin, and the ability to swallow your character in one big gulp. In this special exclusive reveal, we've teamed up with Nexon to bring you new screenshots of the boss and a brief developer diary with more details. You can check it all out right after the cut below.
Kojima: 'we will see' about Deus Ex-style social interactions in Metal Gear Solid 5
Metal Gear Solid 5 is definitely a thing and is set to use Kojima Productions' new Fox Engine, Hideo Kojima told French games magazine IG, CVG reports. Kojima sneaked in a few gameplay and story details as well:"About Metal Gear Solid 5, I can tell you two things," Kojima said. "There will be much question of infiltration, espionage, and convincing people to give you 'a favor' like in the last Metal Gear Solid."I liked the idea of social interactions in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but we will see. And if I say more, the female ninja public relations officer, who is behind the door, I will be carved up into pieces."Kojima also cleared up any remaining confusion (not related to grammar) about Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and its place in the Solid franchise: "Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance never claimed to be a Metal Gear Solid," he said. "This is not a game about our beloved Solid Snake. It is a spinoff that tries something different. We have not yet finished with Solid Snake, despite the fact that I wanted to let him die at the end of Guns of the Patriots."Now that's tough love.
Gaming classic Snake gets charmed by geeks with flutes and Arduino (video)
Nerds. Where would we be without their idle tinkering? Still pushing stones, we gather. But were it not for those breakthroughs, both high and low, us common folk would never know the charm of seeing the classic game Snake played with the use of ordinary recorders. No, not a tape or video recorder -- we're talking flutes here and, naturally, Arduino. With the aid of a hacked-to-bits Nokia 6110i, mobile engineering collective Kitchen Budapest was able to program directional controls for the retro title in Max/MSP (music software) via pitch detection, paving the way for one-note recreational fun. Eager for a peek of this flautastic feat in action? Then jump past the break to gaze at a slickly produced video tour of this novel, nostalgic hack.
Daily Mac App: Screen Snake
Remember the old cellphone game Snake? It's been around longer than I've been alive, but became a hit once it became standard on Nokia cellphones. I have fond memories of standing in cold registration lines in college and playing the game as I waited to sign up for classes. Screen Snake is a free version of that game that's been ported to the Mac. It's as easy to play as the cellphone version and launching the game automatically starts the snake crawling across your Mac's screen. There's a few options for changing the snake size, but there's no ability to pause the game at this time or keeping score on the free version. The paid version (US$1.99) adds more levels and scores. It's a good time-waster, and if you're looking for a splash of nostalgia, this is a good game to keep around.
Carnegie Mellon's robot snakes converge into creepy hand-like wargadget
President Eisenhower, in his famous farewell speech in 1961, warned against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the "military industrial complex." If he had given those remarks some sixty years later, he might have worked academia into the phrase -- especially if he knew about the snakes! Certainly one of the more viscerally unnerving wargadgets we've encountered over the last few years, the creepy-crawly automatons of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute are a big hit at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, where three of 'em have been arrayed onto a circular base to form the Robotic Tentacle Manipulator, a hand that could be used for opening doors or handling IEDs, possibly while mounted on the iRobot Warrior. The "opening a door" problem, as it is called, has perplexed the field of robotics for quite some time now -- and it might one day be solved using technology like this. Until then, it looks like doorknobs are still the terrorist's best friend.
YouTube easter egg lets you play Snake while clips load (video)
No, not Metal Gear Solid's Snake. We're talking about the Snake that was popular before the smartphone was a twinkle in the industry's eye. Google has imbued YouTube videos with an engaging new easter egg that lets you play the apple-chasing game while your video stream buffers -- simply mash your keyboard's up and down arrow keys during most any clip to increase YouTube's time-wasting potential tenfold. What's that you say -- your internet connection is so ludicrously fast that videos play instantly? Ah, my lucky friend, let us introduce you to YouTube's 4K mode. Or, for a special treat, hijack the footage we've provided after the break to get your meta-giggles going. [Thanks, Alan]
Top Terminal easter eggs
Yeah, the headline makes it sound like the eggs are on their deathbed. But no, easter eggs (in software jargon) are little presents or surprises that developers have slipped into an application or operating system. One excellent place to find easter eggs in Mac OS X is in the Terminal. Now technically, these easter eggs aren't part of Mac OS X. The Terminal app is a portal into the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X. You can find the Terminal app in the Applications > Utilities folder. Here are four of my favorites: 1. Important dates in history -- Lord of the Rings style At the Terminal prompt paste the following: cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history and press return. You'll get a list of famous dates throughout the centuries -- including some that take place in Middle Earth. 2. Snake Game At the Terminal prompt type in emacs, then press enter. You'll see a bunch of text come up. Once it does hold down the ESC key and press X. If you timed your presses right, you'll notice the cursor has moved to the bottom of the page next to the letters M-x. Now type in snake and enjoy! 3. Tetris Follow the same steps as for the Snake game. At the Terminal prompt type in emacs, then press enter. You'll see a bunch of text come up. Once it does hold down the ESC key and press X. If you timed your presses right, you'll notice the cursor has moved to the bottom of the page next to the letters M-x. This time, type in tetris. Use the arrow keys to move and rotate the blocks, and press the space to make the blocks fall. 4. Emacs psychoanalysis Like the previous two, this last easter egg is an extension of the emacs UNIX command. At the Terminal prompt type in emacs, then press enter. You'll see a bunch of text come up. Once it does hold down the ESC key and press X. If you timed your presses right, you'll notice the cursor has moved to the bottom of the page next to the letters M-x. This time, type in psychoanalyze-pinhead. You'll get a speedy conversation between two doctors. Press Ctrl-G to stop the conversation and then read the transcript. All these easter egg tips were taken from The Easter Egg Archive which lists Easter eggs found in movies, TV, books, art, music, and software. Check out the site for many more Mac easter eggs and please post any that you know of in the comments! [Binary egg photo by Rakka]
Roomba saves child from deadly Viper, challenges Tango to a fight
We've always known that the Roomba was something of a bad-ass -- iRobot, after all, has quite a reputation within the defense industry -- so we weren't surprised when one of the autonomous vacuum cleaners took down a certain Vipera palaestinae (a venomous snake found in the Middle East). Considered a leading cause of snakebites within its geographic range, the snake was found mangled 'round one of the robot's rotating brushes when Eli and Efi Frida returned to their home in Galilee, which they share with their two children, aged four and seven (as well as several cats and dogs). "We were very lucky," said Eli, "If the snake would have hid in the house and bitten one of the children it could have ended badly."
