Games Archive
The new version brings a ton of new enhancements and fixes to all 3 supported platforms, with Steam running not only on Arm64, but also on RiSC-V and on Loongarch! And this is the Linux version of Steam, not the Windows one (but the Windows one works too if you really prefer that one). While Box32 (used to run Steam) is still experimental and unstable, stability did improve. Still, expect some crashes when downloading things with steam. And it’s not all, Battle.net is also getting stable, and some games are working too. Not all unfortunately, and your success might depend on your geographical region, as program versions might differ. At least, you can try it on ARM64 & Loongarch. It’s still to be tested on RiSC-V. ↫ Box64 0.4.0 release announcement These are some major improvements to Box64, and impressive ones at that.
The CHESSmate was demonstrated at the January 1978 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as a prototype in order to assess customer interest in the product. It was available for order at the June 1978 CES in Chicago and the first units, manufactured in Hong Kong, shipped later that year. It was a big seller in Germany from the beginning. ↫ Peter R. Jennings There’s no way I can summarise this story.
Valve announced a few new devices yesterday. There’s a new Steam console, which is essentially just a tiny PC with SteamOS installed – think of it as a Steam Deck without a display. Second, Valve finally released a new Steam Controller to go with the Steam console, which has taken them long enough. Lastly, there’s a brand new Steam VR headset, the Steam Frame. Other websites with actual access to these new devices will do a better job of covering them than I ever could, but I do want to highlight something crucially important about the Steam Frame: it contains a Snapdragon ARM processor, but can still run Steam and all of its games. How does this work? Well, after developing Proton to allow Windows games to run on Linux, Valve “introduced” FEX, which will allow you to run x86 Windows games on ARM Linux. I put the quotation marks there because FEX was an existing project Valve invested heavily into in recent times, and it’s now at the point where Valve seems confident enough it will be capable of running enough x86 games on ARM Linux. As such, the Steam Frame runs full SteamOS with KDE Plasma, you can run x86 Steam games, and as an additional bonus, you can install Android APKs as well. I’ve yet to even try VR, because I’m not particularly interested in buying into any locked-down platform. The Steam Frame may be the first VR device I’ll buy – depending on price, of course – and the Steam console definitely looks like a great addition to the living room, too. My wife and I have little to no interesting in buying an Xbox or PS5, but having easy, no-hassle access to our massive Steam libraries on our TV will be awesome.
Gaming isn’t something we talk about very often here on OSNews, but I think this piece of news is actually a rare piece of good, welcome news from this industry. Mojang, the Microsoft-owned company behind Minecraft, has announced it’s going to stop obfuscating the code behind the Java edition of Minecraft. A refresher: the Java edition of Minecraft is the original version of the game, which exists alongside the Bedrock Edition, which is written in C++. Both variants are kept more or less in sync with each other. The Java edition has historically been far more moddable, and comes with far fewer restrictions than the Bedrock Edition, which Microsoft maintains far tighter control over. Still, the modding scene around the Java Edition sprung up in spite of Mojang and Microsoft, not because of them, but over the years the modding scene has been embraced more and more by these two companies. The final step in this embrace comes today as Mojang will no longer obfuscate the code behind th Java Edition. Minecraft: Java Edition has been obfuscated since its release. This obfuscation meant that people couldn’t see our source code. Instead, everything was scrambled – and those who wanted to mod Java Edition had to try and piece together what every class and function in the code did. But we encourage people to get creative both in Minecraft and with Minecraft – so in 2019 we tried to make this tedious process a little easier by releasing “obfuscation mappings”. These mappings were essentially a long list that allowed people to match the obfuscated terms to un-obfuscated terms. This alleviated the issue a little, as modders didn’t need to puzzle out what everything did, or what it should be called anymore. But why stop there? ↫ Minecraft website This is excellent news for the game, the wider modding community, and players. Minecraft is still a massively popular game, and making modding easier is very welcome, as for a lot of people, mods are what make Minecraft actually interesting. It’s also rare to see a massive force in gaming making a positive step like this, so they deserve the few kudos.
Scams are so common. From fraud to identity theft to spam websites, so many of us will experience a scam in our lifetime. Statistics from Exploding Topics show more than 1/3 of US adults have experienced a scam or fallen victim to financial fraud in the last 12 months. Global estimates state roughly 608 million people fall victim to a scam annually, with scammers stealing more than a staggering $1 trillion in 2024. Interestingly, 67% of US scams happen to women, but men lose more money on average. Scams are a big issue that only seems to be getting worse as new technology becomes an enabler for more sophisticated gaming scams. But what defines a gaming scam? Read on to find out. What Defines a Game as Being a ‘Scam’? A “scam” game is essentially one that intentionally deceives players. Malicious games or platforms can trick users, for example, by making false promises or hiding important information, to steal money, virtual goods, or personal data. The legal definition of an online game scam is “Online gambling fraud refers to any illicit or deceptive activity conducted within the realm of online betting and gaming platforms” (Comply Advantage). Common scam signs include: For example, scam casino-style games may conceal their lack of a valid license or fairness audits. Players never win the advertised odds. Regulators warn that illegal gambling sites, known as grey-market casinos, operate outside any oversight and make no guarantees of fairness or payouts. What Are The Most Common Gaming Scams? More commonly, scammers use social engineering scams (befriending players in chat, manipulation, gaining false trust, etc.) to eventually extort money. They may also flood game forums or Discord with offers of free gift cards or game money that require you to log in. It’s the quickest way to hijack your account. Who You Can Report a Gaming Scam to and How to Do It Always report a scam through multiple channels if you think you’ve fallen victim to a gaming scam or have noticed one. To do that, you can: Game or platform support Report the issue to the game’s publisher or platform. Every legitimate platform should have an official support or contact us page on the game’s website. Or, they’ll have an in-app reporting tool on the game platform. Law enforcement and regulators In the US, you can file a complaint with federal agencies. The FTC’s complaint portal, ReportFraud.ftc, manages all types of online fraud, including gaming scams. There’s also the option of reporting to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). If the scam involves gambling, report unlicensed operators to your state’s gaming commission. Note: offshore sites often fall outside US jurisdiction. Consumer-protection organizations The Better Business Bureau has a free BBB Scam Tracker. Using that, anyone can report suspected scams and see other people’s reports. Interestingly, BBB data states consumers avoided an estimated $43 million in scam losses in 2024 by using their Scam Tracker. App store and platform abuse Report the app if the scam came from a mobile or desktop app. If the app is on Google Play, you can open the Google App Store, press “More,” and select “Flag as inappropriate.” For Apple, report suspicious apps or purchases at reportaproblem.apple.com. Financial institutions Immediately notify your bank or payment service if you entered credit card or bank information. Banks can often reverse charges or freeze accounts if you report fraud quickly. How to Find Reputable Gaming Websites There are so many reputable online gambling and gaming websites. You can always check out the blacklist before trying an online casino, so you know you’re having a safe experience. Your other options include: Don’t be the next victim of a gaming or gambling scam. There are so many legitimate and great platforms and games following all the required rules and regulations. Whilst it’s true that online attacks and fraud are becoming more common, gaming should be a safe space for everyone.
This post is a combination of looks at several oddities among my pile of NES and Famicom cartridges. Why, for example, do I have a copy of Gyromite when I don’t have a R.O.B.? Did I miss something interesting in my MMC blog post? And while it is the Japanese release of Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, is my Kaiketsu Yanchamaru being a little too radical? Who put the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong? Some of these questions will be answered! ↫ Nicole Branagan at Nicole Express A well-written post with tons of weird NES nerdery. Branagan delivers, every time.
People notice speed more than they realize. Whether they’re ordering food online, watching a video, or checking out of an e-commerce store, that near-instant response gives a quiet kind of reassurance. It tells them, without saying a word, that the system behind the screen is working properly. When everything moves smoothly, people tend to believe the platform knows what it’s doing. Speed becomes less about impatience and more about reliability; it’s how a website or app earns a user’s confidence without ever asking for it outright. When things slow down, even slightly, the feeling changes. A spinning wheel or delayed confirmation sends a small jolt of uncertainty through the user’s mind. It’s subtle, but it’s enough. People start wondering if the system is secure or if something’s gone wrong in the background. Most companies understand this reaction now, which is why they spend so much time and money making sure their sites load quickly and transactions go through smoothly. Fast performance doesn’t just please customers; it convinces them they can trust the process. Online casinos show this relationship between speed and trust especially well. Players want games that run without lag, deposits that clear quickly, and withdrawals that arrive when promised. The platforms that do this consistently don’t just look professional. They build lasting reputations. That’s one reason many players pick trusted sites with the best payouts, where the speed of payments matches the fairness of the games themselves. These casinos often have their systems tested by independent reviewers to confirm both payout accuracy and security, showing that real credibility comes from proof, not promises. There’s also something psychological about how we respond to quick actions. When things happen instantly, it gives people a sense of control. A fast confirmation email or immediate transaction approval makes them feel safe, like the system is responsive and alive. Think about how quickly we lose patience when a message doesn’t send right away. That hesitation we feel isn’t really about time. It’s about trust. Slow responses leave room for worry, and in the digital space, worry spreads faster than anything else. The speed of a platform often mirrors how transparent it feels. A site that runs smoothly gives off the impression that its systems are well managed. Even users who know little about technology pick up on that. Industries that handle sensitive data (finance, entertainment, healthcare) depend heavily on this perception. When transactions lag or screens freeze, people begin to question what’s happening underneath. So speed becomes more than a technical achievement; it’s an emotional one that reassures users everything is in working order. Fast payments are one of the clearest examples of this idea. Digital wallets and cryptocurrency platforms, for instance, have won users over because transfers happen almost in real time. That pace builds comfort. People like knowing their money moves when they move. The influence of speed stretches far beyond finance. Social networks depend on it to keep people connected. When messages appear instantly and feeds refresh without effort, users feel present and engaged. But when those same tools slow down, even slightly, people lose interest or suspect something’s broken. We’ve grown accustomed to instant feedback, and that expectation has quietly become the baseline for trust online. Still, being fast isn’t enough by itself. A website that rushes through interactions but delivers half-finished results won’t hold anyone’s confidence for long. Reliability takes consistency, not just quickness. The companies that succeed online tend to combine performance with honesty. They respond quickly, yes, but they also follow through, fix problems, and keep communication open. Those qualities, together, make speed meaningful. If there’s one lesson that stands out, it’s that quick service reflects genuine respect for people’s time. Every second saved tells the user that their experience matters. From confirming a payment to collecting winnings, that seamless, responsive flow builds a kind of trust no marketing campaign can replace. This efficiency becomes the quiet proof of reliability in a world where attention is short and expectations are high.
All good things come to an end eventually, and that includes support for 32bit Windows in Steam. As of January 1 2026, Steam will stop supporting systems running 32-bit versions of Windows. Windows 10 32-bit is the only 32-bit version that is currently supported by Steam and is only in use on 0.01% of systems reported through the Steam Hardware Survey. Windows 10 64-bit will still be supported and 32-bit games will still run. ↫ Steam support article While existing installations will continue to work, they will no longer receive any Steam updates or support. Valve obviously advises the small sliver of users still using 32bit Windows – unbeknownst to them, I’m sure – to upgrade to a 64bit release. Upcoming versions of Steam will only work on 64bit systems.
Blocky Planet is a tech demo I created in the Unity game engine that attempts to map Minecraft’s cubic voxels onto a spherical planet. The planet is procedurally generated and fully destructible, allowing players to place or remove more than 20 different block types. While much of the implementation relies on common techniques you’d expect from your average Kirkland brand Minecraft clone, the spherical structure introduces a number of unique design considerations. This post will focus on these more novel challenges. ↫ Bowerbyte What a great read. Turning a ‘flat earth’ game like Minecraft into something taking place on a spherical world seems impossible at first, but it seems Bowerbyte managed to do it. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to play a Minecraft-like game on an actual sphere, this is it.
I have a slight problem wherein every time I start up a game of NetHack, I completely lose touch with my surroundings for hours on end. Thankfully The DevTeam Thinks Of Everything and there’s a solution that allows communication with the outside world without breaking immersion: the mail daemon! If compiled with -DMAIL and OPTIONS=mail is set in your runtime configuration (the default on Linux), NetHack will periodically check a user specified mbox file (MAIL) for new mail, and upon receiving an email a mail daemon will spawn in and deliver a scroll of mail to the player. Upon reading this scroll a mail program (MAILREADER) will be executed, which hopefully allows you to read your mail. ↫ George Huebner I love everything about this.
Apparently, Donkey Kong Country 2 has runs into a bug in the old SNES emulator ZSNES, where one of the barrels that you’re supposed to be able to precisely control the spinning direction of ends up spinning forever. This bug is caused by ZSNES not emulating open bus behavior. I believe this was originally discovered by Anomie roughly two decades ago, who subsequently fixed the same bug in Snes9x. This original fix hardcoded the specific addresses to return the values that the game depends on rather than properly emulating open bus, but it fixed DKC2 and probably didn’t break anything else. The bug was never fixed in ZSNES, which is now a long abandoned project (last release in 2007). Purely out of curiosity, I wanted to dig into this a little more to figure out what exactly in the game code causes these barrels to spin forever in an emulator that doesn’t emulate open bus behavior. ↫ jsgroth Just in case you’ve always wanted to know.
I genuinely believe making games without a big “do everything” engine can be easier, more fun, and often less overhead. I am not making a “do everything” game and I do not need 90% of the features these engines provide. I am very particular about how my games feel and look, and how I interact with my tools. I often find the default feature implementations in large engines like Unity so lacking I end up writing my own anyway. Eventually, my projects end up being mostly my own tools and systems, and the engine becomes just a vehicle for a nice UI and some rendering… At which point, why am I using this engine? What is it providing me? Why am I letting a tool potentially destroy my ability to work when they suddenly make unethical and terrible business decisions? Or push out an update that they require to run my game on consoles, that also happens to break an entire system in my game, forcing me to rewrite it? Why am I fighting this thing daily for what essentially becomes a glorified asset loader and editor UI framework, by the time I’m done working around their default systems? ↫ Noel Berry Interesting and definitely unique perspective, as I feel most game developers just pick one of the existing big engines and work from there. I’m not saying either option is wrong, but I do feel like the dependence on the popular engines can potentially harm the game industry as a whole, as it reduced diversity, drains valuable knowledge and expertise, and leaves developers – especially smaller ones – at the mercy of a few big players. Perhaps not every game needs to be made in Unity or Unreal.
The Wii homebrew community has been dealt a pretty serious blow, as developers of The Homebrew Channel for the Wii have discovered that not only does an important library most Wii homebrew software rely on use code stolen straight from Nintendo, that same library also uses code taken from an open source real-time operating system without giving proper attribution. Most Wii homebrew software is built atop a library called libogc. This library apparently contains code stolen from Nintendo’s SDK as well as from games using this SDK, decompiled and cleaned. This has been known for a while, but it was believed that large, important parts of libogc were at least original, but that, too, turns out to be untrue. Recently it has been discovered that libogc’s threading/OS implementation has been stolen from RTEMS, an open source real-time operating system. The developers of libogc have indicated that they do not care, intend to do nothing about it, and deleted any issues reporting the stolen code. What’s wild about the code stolen from RTEMS is that it’s an open source operating system with a nice, permissive license; there was no need to steal the code at all, and all it would take to address it is proper attribution. As such, the fail0verflow group, which develops The Homebrew Channel for the Wii, has ceased all development on The Homebrew Channel, and archived the code repository. The Wii homebrew community was all built on top of a pile of lies and copyright infringement, and it’s all thanks to shagkur (who did the stealing) and the rest of the team (who enabled it and did nothing when it was discovered). Together, the developers deceived everyone into believing their work was original. Please demand that the leaders and major contributors to console or other proprietary device SDKs and toolkits that you use and work with do things legally, and do not tolerate this kind of behavior. ↫ The Homebrew Channel GitHub page Considering Nintendo is on a crusade to shutdown emulators, stuff like this is really not helping anyone trying to argue that consoles should be open devices, that emulators play an important role in preservation, and that people have a right to play the games they own on a device other than the console it’s intended for. I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ll hear about this development.
The Steam store and desktop client will soon be able to help players find games that feature accessibility support. If your game has accessibility features, you can now enter that information in the Steamworks ‘edit store’ section for your app. ↫ Steam announcements page I have a lot of criticism for the Steam client application – it’s a overly complex, unattractive, buggy, slow, top-heavy Chrome engine wrapped in an ugly user interface – but this is a great change and very welcome addition to Steam. Basically, with this, game developers can indicate which accessibility features their game has, allowing users to specifically search for those features, create filters, make sure they can play the game before buying, and so on. The client-side part of the feature is not yet available – it seems Valve is giving developers some time to fill in the necessary information – but once it is, you’ll be able to tell at a glance what accessibility a game has. Such information on the store page of games tends to be a great marketing tool, with reviews quickly pointing out if certain expected features are not present. Any game that lacks support for the Steam Deck or Proton, for instance, will often have a few reviews at the top mentioning as such, and games with invasive DRM can’t get away with that either without reviews on Steam pointing it out. I wouldn’t be surprised if these accessibility feature listings well quickly become another thing users will simply expect to be there. Regardless, this is great news for people who rely on such features, but even if you don’t specifically – accessibility features are often just useful features, period.
The headline sets the stage, and the article delivers. This was the most interesting bug I’ve encountered for a while. I initially had a hard time believing that a bug like this would directly tie to a specific OS release, but I was proven completely wrong. At the end of the day, it was a simple bug in San Andreas and this function should have never worked right, and yet, at least on PC it hid itself for two decades. This is an interesting lesson in compatibility: even changes to the stack layout of the internal implementations can have compatibility implications if an application is bugged and unintentionally relies on a specific behavior. This is also not the first time I encountered issues like this: regular visitors might remember Bully: Scholarship Edition which famously broke on Windows 10, for very similar reasons. Just like in this case, Bully should have never worked properly to begin with, but instead, it got away with making incorrect assumptions for years, before changes in Windows 10 finally made it run out of luck. ↫ Adrian Zdanowicz Incredible story.
How much faster is fastDOOM than regular Doom on a decked-out 486 from 1993? 30% faster without cutting any features! On a demanding map like doom2’s demo1, the gain is even higher, from 16.8 fps to 24.9 fps. That is 48% faster! I did not suspect that DOOM had left that much on the table. Obviously shipping within one year left little time to optimize. I had to understand how this magic trick happened. ↫ Fabien Sanglard What follows is an incredibly detailed exploration of why, exactly, fastDOOM is so much faster, by building and benchmarking every version, and even going git commit by git commit to really understand how fastDOOM’s developer, Victor “Viti95” Nieto, achieved these impressive results.
The goal of this project is to emulate an Intel 8086 processor and supporting PC hardware well enough to run the Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset (ELKS), including a shell and utilities. It should be possible to run other x86 software as long as it doesn’t require more than a simple serial terminal. ↫ NES86 GitHub page Is this useful in any meaningful sense? No. Will this change the word? No. Does it have any other purpose than just being fun and cool? Nope. None of that matters.
Long-time readers will know that my first video game love was the text-mode video game slash creation studio ZZT. One feature of this game is the ability to play simple music through the PC speaker, and back in the day, I remember that the format “ZZM” existed, so you could enjoy the square wave tunes outside of the games. But imagine my surprise in 2025 to find that, while the Museum of ZZT does have a ZZM Audio section, it recommends that nobody use the format anymore; because nobody’s made a player that doesn’t require MS-DOS. Let’s fix that by making a player with way higher system requirements, using everyone’s favorite coding environment: Javascript. ↫ Nicole Branagan ZZM’s history and Branagan’s journey to make this work without having to rely on DOS took a lot more work than I expected, and is quite interesting, too. Very niche, for sure, but that’s kind of what we’re here for.
Two years ago, Twitch streamer albrot discovered a bug in the code for crossing rivers. One of the options is to “wait to see if conditions improve”; waiting a day will consume food but not recalculate any health conditions, granting your party immortality. From this conceit the Oregon Trail Time Machine was born; a multiday livestream of the game as the party waits for conditions to improve at the final Snake River crossing until the year 10000, to see if the withered travellers can make it to the ruins of ancient Oregon. The first attempt ended in tragedy; no matter what albrot tried, the party would succumb to disease and die almost immediately. A couple of days before New Years Eve 2025, albrot reached out and asked if I knew anything about Apple II hacking. ↫ Scott Percival It may have required some reverse engineering and hackery, but yes, you can reach the ruins of Oregon in the year 16120.
NESFab is a new programming language for creating NES games. Designed with 8-bit limitations in mind, the language is more ergonomic to use than C, while also producing faster assembly code. It’s easy to get started with, and has a useful set of libraries for making your first — or hundredth — NES game. ↫ NESFab website NESFab has some smart features developers of NES games will certainly appreciate, most notably automatic bank switching. Instead of doing this manually, but NESFab will automatically carve your code and data up into banks to be switched in and out of memory when needed. There’s also an optional map editor, which makes it very easy to create additional levels for your game. All in all, a very cool project I hadn’t heard of, which also claims to perform better than other compilers. If you’ve ever considered making an NES game, NESFab might be a tool to consider.
