A sequel to look forward to. That’s what I’ve been calling the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie. This was the last movie I saw in theaters and was only a short time before COVID lockdowns began. Now at a lull in the pandemic, we get the sequel. And, oh man, it looks great. The trailer looks to have a lot of faithful lifts from Sonic 2 and Sonic 3. Chaos Emeralds, Knuckles, snowboarding, red biplanes, and, of course, Miles “Tales” Prower. Luckily enough we don’t need to worry about Paramount retooling Sonic’s look this time after their disastrous Sonic look…
Tag: video games
For all the good Nintendo does for their products, the biggest bugaboo for them has been their online service. From the eShop being a complete mess to their online services lacking basic features, it’s something the company stumbles upon again and again. Five years after the Switch has released, they’ve come out with version 2.0 of their mobile app. Jon Porter at The Verge has more. For my money, the 2.0 update’s most interesting improvement is that it offers an easier way to find and share your friend code, the cumbersome 12-digit identifier that’s the primary way of adding friends…
It’s crazy to think the Nintendo Switch has been on the market for five years. Back in 2017, it was very much a gamble. Nobody could know it would be a massive success over and over. Nintendo has rebounded from the Wii U years incredibly well. I personally bought my Switch at launch and fell in love immediately. The biggest change Nintendo made this generation was making sure there was a constant release of games. That (among other reasons) was a big reason for the Wii U’s failure. Over on Endgadget, they go over some of their favorite games for…
With all the hullabaloo about the metaverse and Facebook Meta pitching it non-stop, it is a breath of fresh air to see a VR announcement that doesn’t come from Zuckerberg. Sony revealed the second iteration of their Playstation VR system that will release later this year. Kyle Orland from Ars Technica has more. As far as significant design changes, the PSVR2 will now offer a lens adjustment dial that can slide each lens side to side in order to match the player’s interpupillary distance. Getting a good match there can be key to providing a sharp focus and preventing eye strain…
It is crazy to think how information can easily spread so fast online without anyone performing any fact-checking. It’s how many “industry insiders” can pose as experts without any track record. If they nail a couple of rumors, it gets reported and that begins a flywheel of self-fulfilling credibility. Take Jon Cartwright, a video game YouTuber, who decided to see how easy it is to become an insider. Spoiler: it’s super easy. Last week Nintendo aired one of their “Directs”, which are pre-recorded presentations that announce upcoming video games and projects. Plenty of people will try to guess what’s coming.…
Sometimes a company has a monumental screwup so big that they simply want to move on. Never look back and never talk about it again. For Microsoft, that is certainly the 2007 “Red ring of death” debacle during the days of the Xbox 360. That video game console had a green ring surrounding the power button. However, if it turned red and remained that way, the console was dead. This “red ring of death” was immensely infuriating to gamers. The system would brick due to a design flaw and it would come out of nowhere. The system was basically overheating…
Console manufacturer Analogue is a well-known player in the retro-gaming scene. They make high-end gaming consoles that can play retro games. The machines emulate original hardware via fancy chips called FPGAs and they are pixel-perfect recreations of what Nintendo and Sega put out in the 80’s & 90’s. Hot on the heels of their TurboGrafx system comes the long-awaited release of their portable console, the Analogue Pocket. At a glance, the Pocket looks like production on the Game Boy never stopped and Nintendo kept revising it over the past three decades. It has basically the same form factor as the…
Earlier this past week Epic dropped a ten minute demo of the upcoming game The Matrix Awakens. This uses the latest Unreal engine to render the gameplay on Xbox Series X and PS5. I could keep talking about it, but you need to see just how incredible this game looks. Epic says, and it all looks incredibly real – there will be moments in which you won’t be able to discern whether you’re watching a real-life movie or a game. The environment in which the action is happening is an open-world city, full of AI-controlled characters and vehicles which make…
Keza MacDonald has done exquisite work bringing to light the insane grind it takes to be a streamer on Twitch. “My sleep schedule shifted into the North American time zone because most of the people who were viewing my channel at the time were there,” says 36-year-old Cassie, a founder of the Black Twitch UK network, who has been streaming for five years under the name GeekyCassie. “I would do my day at work, nap a bit, and then stream for up to eight to 12 hours at night-time. I’d be absolutely beat, and then get up and do my work again ……
If you’re a fan of the Atari 2600 and second generation console gaming, then you’re in for a treat. A company called AtariXP is gearing up to sell brand new 2600 games that will work on the original Atari hardware. Three games are up for pre-order: Yars’ Return, Saboteur, and Aquaventure. The games they plan to release are games who’s code was completed but never released or games that are rare and they believe should have more copies available in the marketplace. Each game is offered in a standard and collectable version. I had a bit of sticker shock with…
The much-awaited Grand Theft Auto compilation for Nintendo Switch is out and talk about a disappointment. After Rockstar released the game, people have been tearing it to shreds due to an awful conversation, especially on Switch. In some ways GTA runs even worse than on PS2, a console 3 generations behind the Switch. [It’s] one of the worst user-rated Switch game [on Metacritic] ever. After its release on November 11, 2021, it became the focus of much ire, mainly due to poor optimization, bugs, glitches, graphical inferiority compared to the original PlayStation 2 titles, and more. iMore I was pretty…
Nintendo’s big Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct in October announced that two big updates would happen. The first being general updates to the game would bring it to version 2.0. This is to be the final update to the game. Version 2.0 brings a LOT of things like the fan-demanded Brewster’s Roost cafe, island ordnances, a shopping plaza on Harv’s Island, and more. The full list is here on IGN. This update to bring the game to an official 2.0 version and Nintendo has added a bunch things. Nintendo stated this would be the final update to Animal Crossing: New…
Video games should always be fun (it’s my only rule when playing) but oh man, old NES games could be brutal. Weird ways to make them more difficult or lack of a good instruction manual always took a game from ‘fun’ to ‘frustrating’ quite fast. Streamer camillestreamss posted this video to Reddit last week wherein a ‘door’ is not what it seems to be. It’s a fun, short clip and one where we can all chuckle about the outcome. Camille laughs about it as well and let’s face it: we all did something like this when we played video games…
This week the National Video Game Museum (NVM) has opened an exciting virtual exhibit showcasing Animal Crossing: New Horizons islands. Many of us took refuge on a deserted island in 2020 ran by a tycoon raccoon. The NVM saw an opportunity late last year. NVM put out a call for submissions from Animal Crossing: New Horizons players in order to preserve this unique moment in history. Players sent in memories, photos, adventures, and videos reflecting how this monstrously-successful game helped through a tough year. Now, their virtual exhibit is live. While the world was on pause, the island paradises of…