Games Archive

No matter how its console business is doing, Nintendo has always been able to lean on healthy portable system sales to prop up its finances. With the Wii U continuing to severely underperform sales expectations, though, it looks like the Nintendo 3DS is failing to pick up the slack as its predecessors once did.

It's the middle of Steam's big winter sale, which means a huge number of people are browsing, buying, and playing games right now on the platform. Some of them, however, seem to have tripped into a major security hole. A variety of users on Twitter, NeoGAF, and Reddit have noted that they can see other users' account information - including addresses and credit card data - instead of their own details.

Recently I started playing Minecraft, again. I find vanilla Minecraft somewhat boring, so I always look out for modpacks. After searching for new modpacks, I stumpled upon FTB Horizons: Daybreaker. Looking at the included mods list, OpenComputers caught my eye.

As the name suggests, OpenComputers adds computers to Minecraft. Real computers! They are highly modular too. You can add peripherals, from monitors to keyboards and expansion cards that add capabilities such as graphics and network. They can also be programmed in Lua, in-game. Another type of card also exists, the Internet card which, as you can imagine, can communicate with the real-life Internet. Awesome.

The NES was the most popular game console of its time, and rightfully so. From the minds of Nintendo engineers, programmers and audio experts came some of the best video games ever made. Unfortunately, some of these great games cannot be played on your Raspberry Pi favorite emulator due to the incompatibility of the Zapper gun and modern digital monitors. None of us can forget the fun that Duckhunt brought. The game came as standard issue with all NES systems, so we've all played it. But its nostalgia is currently entombed by a technological quirk that has yet to be solved.

From one hacker to another - this can no longer be tolerated. First, we're going to learn how the Zapper works and why it doesn't work with digital displays. Then we're going to fix it.

Every coaching position she's held has come with abuse. There's the European rival who thinks it's funny to goad her with extravagant compliments about her appearance. There's the South American player who promises to kiss her when they meet at a live event. There's the Israeli player who said he didn't want her advice because she's a woman. And there's the countless spectators who spew insults at her through social media and streaming feeds.

But there are also those who recognize her abilities, including her players, other top coaches, senior people at Smite publisher Hi-Rez Studios and commentators who recognize the stamp of her tactics and her influence on improving teams.

Sjokz had her own fair share of cherished moments throughout the weekend, particularly when a video feature about her life in Belgium and her work at Riot aired in the 17,000-seat arena. "It was very emotional!" she says. "I hadn't thought through that I would be on stage listening to myself! I felt kind of embarrassed, because I thought, 'Oh, these people have to sit through it,' but all the people were quiet. They were actually listening and watching and it was an extremely heartwarming moment for me."

The feature touched on some less savoury aspects of being a successful, high-profile woman in a male-dominated industry, particularly sexism and a lack of respect for Sjokz's work, but since it aired she has received a huge influx of support. Even from people who have been less than pleasant in the past. "Some of them wrote to me and they said, 'Hey, I'm actually very sorry. I didn't realise what I was doing. I really respect your work.'"

Valve Software's Steam platform has become the go-to source for gamers focused on the PC. With a huge catalog, constant sales and a consumer-first attitude, the digital store for games has exploded. As of the beginning of 2014, it had topped 75 million users.

But can that success translate into the living room and hardware, two arenas Valve has yet to conquer?

Valve's first round of officially branded Steam Machines will roll out from several manufacturers beginning on Nov. 10. Before that happens, Polygon was able to go hands-on with Alienware's version of the Steam Machine, which comes packed with a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, a custom-built Nvidia GeForce GTX card and 8 GB of RAM. We also got to test out Steam's unique new controller.

The fact that VQ has undergone three tech revisions over two years probably seems a bit ridiculous, and maybe it is. Something like this would normally kill a game. That said, the point here is not just to make a game (plenty of people are doing that already), but to make a unique engine, and that could not happen in a vacuum. All I know is that I am finally happy with where the engine is at in terms of performance and flexibility, and I couldn't have gotten here without knowing everything I've learned since the start.

So the most common question I get, of course, is how does this stuff work? It is actually simpler than it might seem.

Ladies and gents, meet Smart Boy, the Game Boy-inspired smartphone. Designed by Pierre Cerveau, it has everything a Nintendo lover could dream of giving a phone, from power-saving 8-bit mode to a 'Game Bat' controller that basically turns the thing into a DS. I might actually cry because this beautiful phone will probably never be made.

Later this year, Ultima Online will turn 18 years old. In the genre of MMOs, that makes the game positively ancient - and it's even more remarkable when you consider that it's still funded via a subscription model.

I've never played an Ultima game, much less one that's nearly my age. I wanted to find out what the game is like to play today as a newcomer, and to ask people why they’ve continued visiting Britannia for nearly two decades.

Who would spend more than the cost of a PS4 on a video game console that only plays NES games? Well, who would spend thousands of dollars on a digital camera that can’t autofocus? Leica shooters, of course, and people of similar persuasion might just be interested in the Analogue Nt for their gaming needs. The Nt is a modern Nintendo Entertainment System hewn from a solid block of aluminum, and retails for $499 (plus an extra $79 if you want HDMI output and hardware upscaling.)

The first wave of Steam Machines, console-like computers designed to run Valve's Steam software and its thousands of PC games, will be in some pre-order customers' hands on Oct. 16 and in stores on Nov. 10, Valve announced today. The Steam Controller and Steam Link will also hit on Nov. 10.

You see the problem. When white gamers are forced to play people not of their race, it's "forced politics;" when I'm forced into the same scenario, it's business as usual. When you complain, you're making a fuss and being political. The argument is a bit scary when you break it down: The only way games can avoid politics in this situation is to pretend that people of color don't exist.

We should raise concerns about race, but it needs to be consistent. Race shouldn't only be an issue for gamers when some white gamers express concerns.

A God In Ruins is a novel by the author Kate Atkinson, following on from a previous novel by the same author entitled Life After Life.

The book is 24 cm high and 16.2 cm wide. Across the main surface appears a predominantly brown background, depicting wooden boards. Upon them lies or hangs a rabbit, that is possibly dead, but could also be alive.

The team quickly came to the conclusion that in order to keep Dolphin relevant in an ever-changing environment, it would need to be relicensed under GPLv2+. This would give Dolphin some much needed freedom to breathe within the open source landscape. As such, relicensing formally began in September of 2014.