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‘Sky: Children of the Light’ is finally available on iOS
Thatgamecompany's Sky: Children of the Light is finally available on iOS. The title, from the creators of Journey, was announced years ago and has lived in beta limbo for a long time. Last month, Thatgamecompany said Sky would arrive on July 11th, and while it's a week late, it's finally ready.
'StarCraft' gets the cartoon makeover nobody asked for
When you think of kid-friendly video games, StarCraft might not top the list. But that could change. A new version, StarCraft: Cartooned, reimagines every unit, structure, map, menu and mission with art by CarBot Animations. The usually dark game is swapping its Warhammer-like visual style for a complete makeover with cute cartoon graphics.
Amazon is co-developing a 'Lord of the Rings' game
Lord of the Rings fans have been patiently waiting for the long-promised Amazon series. While we still don't know when the show will debut or who will star in it, Amazon has more Lord of the Rings news. Today, Amazon Game Studios announced that it's working on a Lord of the Rings massively multiplayer online game.
'Fortnite's' latest weapon lets you summon air strikes with a grenade
Epic Games has added Air Strikes to the Fortnite arsenal. With the weapon, you can launch a canister of colored smoke into an area and summon a hail storm of fire from above. You'll find the canisters in floor loot, chests, supply drops, vending machines and llamas. Once a canister is launched and comes to rest, 20 missiles will appear about 120 meters above the smoke. Each missile has an explosion radius of 3.5 meters, and each missile deals damage to players and structures.
Westwood’s 1997 ‘Blade Runner’ is playable again on PC
For years it seemed Westwood's Blade Runner might be lost for good. The 1997 adventure game that meticulously recreated the film's universe has becoming increasingly difficult to play on modern PCs. In 2003, the game's source code was lost, and it seemed like Blade Runner would never get the face lift that other retro-games have received. Now, it appears Blade Runner's fate might be changing.
Elon Musk: 'The Simulation, The Simulation, The Simulation'
A young woman wanted to know how much she needed to beg to take a selfie with him. A young man wanted to know if he could get his CyberPunk 2077 hat autographed. These are the kind of questions people were asking Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, during a panel at E3 2019. Musk, who was joined by legendary video game designer Todd Howard (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fallout 4), spent most of the conversation talking about how gaming has influenced his life, his vision for the industry and, of course, "The Simulation." Almost every response from him ignited cheers from the crowd at E3, who were the latest people to witness the Church of Elon Musk at a technology conference.
Google's Area 120 made a free, drag-and-drop 3D game builder
Google's in-house incubator, Area 120, has produced things like an app that teaches coding and tools to boost literacy. Now it wants to help gamers create their own 3D games, no experience necessary. Today, it launched Game Builder, a free platform that aims to "make building a game feel like playing a game."
A remastered 'Ghostbusters' game is coming to PS4 this year
Ten years ago the original Ghostbusters: The Video Game debuted. Now, the game is being remastered for PS4, and according to the trailer released today, it should be available sometime this year.
Play 'Doctor Who: The Edge of Time' in VR this September
While you can't warp time to see the twelfth season of Doctor Who any sooner, this September, you'll be able to dive into the show in a new way. BBC Studios is bringing the series to life as a VR video game, Doctor Who: The Edge of Time. This is the second recent VR interpretation of the classic -- earlier this month BBC released The Runaway, a short animated VR film. And it could be yet another consolation for fans who are eagerly awaiting the next season, set to air in early 2020.
Where on Google Earth is Carmen Sandiego?
If you're an '80s or '90s kid, you might remember searching the globe for the evil villainess Carmen Sandiego and her fleet of henchmen. You'd follow clues (from what was likely your first PC) based on foreign currencies, flags, languages and landmarks to track the international menace -- all without leaving your family's "computer room." Now, Google Earth is reviving the search with a series of Carmen Sandiego games.
A Google-backed startup wants to change VR as we know it
What do you do when a good idea fails? You invest in a better version of it. We've known about Google's huge bet on startup Magic Leap for months, but a recent patent application explains why Mountain View has thrown over $540 million at an unknown entity. We don't know exactly what Magic Leap will offer, but by piecing together various patent applications we can surmise it relates to a wearable display system that will supposedly enable a super-realistic type of VR it calls "cinematic reality".
The world's largest video game collection sold for $750,250
Remember the story of Michael Thomasson, who was forced to sell his collection of video games? The Guinness world record-holding haul was eventually snapped up for a whopping $750,250. The unnamed bidder, now short three quarters of a million dollars, will take ownership of one of the largest video game libraries in private ownership, including some more avant-garde pieces of hardware including NUON and the Tapwave Zodiac. Assuming that you weren't the lucky bidder, it's probably time to start hunting through the bins at the back of Gamestop to start your own from scratch. [Image credit: Techspot]
The world's largest video game collection just went up for auction
Meet Michael Thomasson. He's a 41-year-old video game historian who holds the Guinness World Record for the largest video game archive. Now he wants someone else to have it. Thomasson admits that he'd rather not sell his 11,000+ game collection, which includes full catalogues for platforms including Dreamcast, Saturn, Virtual Boy and Lynx, but due to family commitments he's decided to offer it up to the highest bidder. It went up on auction site Game Gavel a couple of days ago with a starting bid of $1, and it's already reached $50,000 ahead of the June 15th deadline. If you're dying to become a world record holder and have the necessary space to store it all, the collection is said to be worth somewhere between $700,000 and $800,000. We wonder if he'll accept installments.
A look at MMOs from the marketing perspective
Gamers don't tend to think about MMOs from a marketing perspective; that's not what we're most interested in. So it's informative to take a look at a recent piece from [a]list daily about the state of MMORPGs in terms of profits, business models, and future developments. The piece looks at the history of the genre as well as World of Warcraft's apex, considering the likely future path as well as the emerging markets not yet tapped. Unlike many such analyses, this piece sees a bright potential future for The Elder Scrolls Online, explaining that even a small percentage of Skyrim customers buying the game will make back the game's production budget. It also examines the emerging tablet and mobile market, arguing that this is the most obvious sector for substantial growth over the next few years. For a more detailed look, take a read through the full article.
86,000 square miles of Great Britain meticulously recreated in Minecraft
There are those with free time, and then there's Joseph Braybrook. This fine bloke managed to recreate some 86,000 square miles of Great Britain within the Minecraft universe, and moreover, it took but a fortnight to concoct. Further justifying his work as more than goofing off, he used Ordnance Survey terrain data in the world's construction, leading Graham Dunlop, OS Innovation Lab Manager, to proclaim the following: "We think we may have created the largest Minecraft world ever built based on real-world data." The new universe contains over 22 billion Minecraft blocks, and once players have downloaded the 3.6GB file, they're free to build at will. Just don't go planting any US flags -- that's just downright rude.
Bird poop and Big Screens: Attempting a multiplayer world record
There's no category in the Guinness World Records for the most players in a single-screen multiplayer game. However, that's likely to change soon thanks to a group of New York University graduate students who created SPLAT, a multiplayer game designed for the 120-foot video wall installed in the lobby of the IAC building on the west side of Manhattan. The screen is a Prysm laser phosphor display and sports a whopping resolution of 11,520 x 1,080 pixels. The game was debuted at a packed showcase event last Friday night, along with the work of other students from an NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program class appropriately called Big Screens.
Feel the Force: Angry Birds Star Wars coming November 8th to iOS, Android, WP, Kindle Fire and computers
Rovio teased a certain film-inspired Angry Birds picture a long, long last week, and as expected, it's another new game -- Angry Birds Star Wars. Our furious feathered friends are assuming the likenesses of characters from the epic saga, with the trusty Red Bird taking on Luke Skywalker's role. It wouldn't be the Rebel Alliance without a dark side to fight, which is where the Pigs fit into the storyline; even the music and levels for gravity-based play will hark back to the film franchise. In addition to the software, details of related merchandise have also been uncovered, including table games, toys and costumes. The game is out on November 8th for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Kindle Fire and computers, and if it follows the original storyline, we wonder how Red Bird's going to feel about his porcine family history.
Rovio hints at Angry Birds tie-in with Star Wars on October 8th, Red Bird Five standing by
The green pigs have had their moment in the sun: it's time for the Angry Birds to come back. Rovio Mobile has posted a teaser of a collaboration between its frustrated avians and Star Wars that will get a grand reveal on October 8th at Toys R Us' Times Square location in New York City. No clear giveaways exist as to what's coming, although Rovio is promising animations, comics and other material in the weeks ahead -- we imagine it means more than a toy line, as unique as that can be. But does it mean an Angry Birds Space add-on that goes well beyond the Martian landscape, an entirely new game or something else altogether? We've asked the company for more details and will let you know if we're given more information. In the meantime, get ready for what's likely to be a geek culture explosion. [Thanks, Jaakko]
Microsoft announces new entertainment and game studio focused on Windows 8 tablet development
Windows 8 slates are riding a wave of 40 Xbox titles into an October launch, and now Microsoft has laid the foundation to deliver more games with a brand new studio focused on tablet development. The currently unnamed, London-based outfit will be headed by former Rare Production Director Lee Schuneman, who has shepherded Kinect Sports titles, the Xbox 360 Avatars, Fable: The Journey and the Xbox's Sky TV app to completion. Slabs running Redmond's latest OS won't see a project from the team for a while, however, as the studio is still looking for new hires and won't open its doors until November.
Atari 2600s get PC innards, 22,857 times more processing power
Atari games redesigned in HTML 5 may bring back a flood of nostalgia, but they leave out a key part of the gaming experience: the classic hardware. Hard Drives Northwest filled that void by gutting a limited number of authentic Atari 2600s and stuffing them with modern PC components. Packing a Core i7 3.4GHz processor, the retro console now boasts 22,857 times more processing power than it did in its heyday, according to Microsoft's calculations -- more than enough oomph to handle the recent remakes. Other internals include 8GB of RAM, a 120GB SSD and a Radeon HD 6570 graphics card with 1GB of video memory. With support for USB 3.0 and 2.0, eSATA, DisplayPort, DVI and HDMI, the system is well stocked on the connectivity front. Finally, the signature of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell acts as the cherry atop the faux wood grain-toting package. While the souped-up machines aren't up for sale, a pair of them are slated for a giveaway. Glamour shots and the full set of specs await you at the source.
