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Gaming
Releases, platforms, and the people making the games.
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The Movement Physics of Super Mario Bros – Behind the Code
It is hard to describe just how different Super Mario Bros. feels compared to other games of its time. I mean this was nineteen-eighty-freakin-five. Mario can walk and run, but more than that… he accelerates. When you start from a stop or press B to go faster, it takes a bit of time for you […]
The Mortuary Assistant dev on laying his cancelled Paranormal Activity game to rest, resurrecting it as a Halloween freebie, and a potential return to his biggest game
Halloween feels like an especially appropriate time for Playable Archive's arrival. It's a genuinely spooky found-footage affair for one - a cleverly orchestrated 30-or-so minutes of scares from the developer of horror hit The Mortuary Assistant, released this week as a Halloween freebie . But more than that, the unusual tale of its creation is also one of death and resurrection. As its slightly cheeky title implies, Playable Archive (a riff on the legendary Playable Teaser created for Hideo Kojima 's cancelled Silent Hill game) is a small slice of developer Brian Clarke's much larger cancelled Paranormal Activity game , making it a fascinating window into 'what could have been'. When I heard the news of its release, my curiosity was piqued, so I spoke with Clarke about this unexpected turn of events, of laying his project to rest, and how its legacy might live on - perhaps even as a new Mortuary Assistant game. Read more
Anthropic updates Claude to 'steer it away' from letting users clone games following weeks of Steam being inundated with AI slop
Anthropic updates Claude to 'steer it away' from letting users clone other games.
With GTA 6, Rockstar couldn't "just trot out something" fans would already expect
Big expectations, meet big game
Final Fantasy 14 reveals Evercold’s second new job and February release date, with pre-orders opening next week
Final Fantasy 14 's next expansion, Evercold, will launch on 23rd February 2027, and its second new job is zephyr, a physical ranged DPS that fights with a crossbow and a bird. Read more
Nintendo Drops Surprise 'Pikmin Day' Direct
Yes, Pikmin Day. Surprise! Nintendo had shadow dropped a Nintendo Direct presentation for Pikmin Day. Yes, that’s right, Pikmin day. As of this year, Nintendo is officially referring to 1st November as ‘Pikmin Day’ - three ones like three Pikmin, get it? We don’t, really, but yay! Pikmin! Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Red Barrels' co-founder is just as confused as we are as to why no one's tried to replicate Outlast's success: 'Honestly, I don't know'
You'd think someone else would've successfully taken gore to the next level.
"There is no game preservation with DRM": Why GOG has spent 18 years fighting for classic games
For this week's Saturday Read, the people behind GOG explain what it takes to build a business around game preservation
Corpse-Party Rebuilt+ Is a Updated Fan-Remaster of the Cheerful PC-9801 Adventure
School's Out Forever. One of the original entities of the highly dubious "Kids Get Killed" gaming genre, Corpse-Party , has received a newly enhanced remaster in the form of Corpse-Party Rebuilt+ , offering frightened freshmen and sadistic sophomores a new way to experience the ghastly goings-on of the contest-winning PC-9801 release. Released in 1996 and developed in RPGMaker, Corpse-Party tells the story of a group of students who find themselves whisked off to a nightmarish alternate reality, where they each succumb to a hideous fate at the hands of a malevolent (and male violent ) force. While the original game was somewhat unassuming in form, the Corpse Party series would expand into a huge multimedia franchise - spawning increasingly brutal sequels and remakes, as well as a manga series, numerous anime OVAs , and even a 2015 live-action movie. Read the full article on timeextension.com
Silent Hill: Townfall adds new Hard difficulty in latest update
Silent Hill: Townfall has added a new Hard difficulty mode and rebalanced every existing setting to make room for it. Read more
Fan-made Oblivion remake Skyblivion runs into legal trouble with a former volunteer
"A 'take your ball and go home' approach like this fundamentally contradicts the collaborative, open spirit of the modding community"
A former volunteer is threatening legal action against fan-made game project Skyblivion
A former volunteer is threatening legal action against Skyblivion, the long-running fan remake of Oblivion built in Skyrim's engine, over code they contributed to the project. Read more
Fightbox R10 Pro Full Review: Spinner, Trackball, 0.7ms Arcade Stick
Here’s a full review of my new favorite arcade stick: The R10 Pro from Fightbox that includes a trackball and spinner. It averages less than 1 millisecond of lag via one USB output and is compatible with basically everything. Here’s all the links you’ll need, with some more MiSTer-related tips below: R10 Pro: https://retrorgb.link/r10pro All […]
8-Bit NES CDROM Expansion Concept
Tito from Macho Nacho Productions recently posted a video showcasing the NESCD project that (as the name suggests) adds CDROM support to the original NES. The project is essentially a custom board with an RP2350B, that connects to an IDE CDROM drive, as well as an Everdrive’s “USB developer’s port”. Then you can run patched […]
I'm 100% here for a more grounded, realistic GTA 6, one I believe won't come at the expense of its usual haphazard chaos
I hope Rockstar makes us work a little harder to wreak our usual mayhem.
Final Fantasy 14 Evercold's second job is the ranged Zephyr DPS that comes with a deadly pet bird
Coming alongside the Bastion tank
The Arduview is the world’s first fully transparent handheld, including the screen
The small credit card-sized handheld has hit its goal on Kickstarter
Final Fantasy 14 Evercold gets a four week delay - the MMO expansion now arrives in a busy February
Pre-orders open on World of Warcraft: Forever's release date
Feature: The Haunting History Of Capcom's Ghosts 'n Goblins Series
From ghosts to glory, and all that's inbetween. Capcom is keen to keep its classic properties in the limelight, as evidenced by regular compilations of popular titles like Street Fighter and Mega Man . Along with the release of Capcom Arcade Stadium and its sequel , the company also resurrected one of its oldest properties with a new entry in the long-running Ghosts ‘n Goblins series, which is known as Makaimura ("Demon World Village") in Japan. The original arcade game , released way back in 1985, was designed by Tokuro Fujiwara, previously of Konami’s Pooyan and Capcom’s Higemaru , and later of other seminal Capcom titles like Bionic Commando and Sweet Home . While the Ghosts ‘n Goblins franchise will be familiar to anyone who grew up during the '80s and '90s, its fame has waned in recent years – which is why we thought a refresher might be in order. Early side-scrolling platforms like Namco’s Pac-Land (1984) and Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. (1985) were light and cutesy, but Ghosts ‘n Goblins has a markedly darker tone. The hero is a knight named Arthur, whose girlfriend Princess Prin-Prin is kidnapped by the forces of the underworld, led by the demon lord Astaroth. By default, Arthur is equipped with throwing spears, though treasure chests will regularly pop out of the ground, giving Arthur different weapons like daggers, torches, axes and crosses (or shields in the overseas version). He begins wearing a suit of armour, but a single hit will cause it to shatter, reducing him to his boxer shorts. Another hit will turn him into a pile of bones, sending him back to an earlier checkpoint. Read the full article on timeextension.com
Horror-steeped card game Forbidden Solitaire shows how a strong theme can elevate even decade-old mechanics
Like a tag team of oiled snakes that have entered a wrestling contest, theme is a difficult quality to pin down. A game can be well designed, but if it lacks a coherence between those mechanics and its appearance, narrative, and its framing, there is a dissonance that can be hard to ignore. I realise I've just stepped into an old argument by using the word 'dissonance' , but Hocking was right, games that don't cohere can be jarring. A developer may desire that sensation of discomfort, but often it is accidental and unwanted. (Much like opening an article with a simile about wrestling snakes when there is nothing connecting that image to a game about solitaire. It might be a good line, but it doesn't smoothly connect with the rest of the article to elevate its argument.) Anyway, what does this all have to do with Forbidden Solitaire , a game in which you're delving deeper into a dungeon filled with horrors, progressing by clearing screens of cards? Well, it's an excellent example of how well-handled theming can raise a game into something more than its parts. Read more
Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (31st October)
The spooky weekend is upon us. What's that? You thought the deluge of October news would slow down in its final week? Think again, my friends! As if the upcoming release of Ocarina of Time wasn't pressing enough, Nintendo dropped an Indie World Showcase this week, packed with even more titles to add to the backlog. One that won't be making the cut this year, however, is The Duskbloods , which was pushed to 2027 . The swanky new special edition Zelda Switch 2 hit store shelves, a new batch of Game Boy games landed on NSO, The Pokémon Company announced Unite 's impending closure , and 'Switch 2 Lite' speculation kicked off. Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Happy Halloween! Who Do You Think Are Gaming's Scariest and Most Memorable Monsters?
(In before 'Electronic Arts'). What's the scariest game of all time? No. It's 3D Monster Maze . There's nothin g in gaming all of history more frightening than being silently informed that Rex is "beside you." Take yo big-ass head back to your crib, Resident Evil Village Baby. Video games have been delivering armies of horrific, nightmare-inducing monstrosities ever since their inception. I know somebody who was scared as a child when coming face-to-face with Taito's Space Invaders cabinet, terrified by its spiky, void-like creatures lurching toward her. Hell, I knew a kid who was scared of this Commodore Format poster for Chuck Rock . Read the full article on timeextension.com
Silver Pines is a great survival horror throwback with an unexpected Metroidvania twist, but it makes me glad the genre's moved on
It's those bloody typewriters all over again. Developer Wych Elm Games' Silver Pines is fantastic in a whole bunch of ways, from its woozy small-town ambience to its mix of taut survival horror and exploratory Metroidvania. But from the very first moment I saw its save system, its please-insert-coin phone box demands, I knew our relationship was going to be a fractious one. Read more
What we've been playing - "I've been intrigued by horrible images of live-action sequences for weeks"
Happy Halloween! Are you scared? I am: I'm in a theatre play that opens next week and we're not ready yet. I'm also off to a ghost stories evening at the theatre tonight; I've had a few people there tell me, with faces as straight as a ruler, of their eerie encounters. Actually, one encounter involved me. Read more