For gamers of a certain age, the name “3D Realms” conjures up some fond memories. It’s the studio behind some of the classic first-person shooters that pioneered many of the conventions of 3D gaming that are still in use today, publishing games like Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior.
Duke himself has long since moved on to greener (and bloodier) pastures with Gearbox Software, but the company itself, now owned by Danish investors, is making a true throwback game called Ion Maiden, powered by the 20-year-old Build engine.
In another bit of retro nostalgia, the game is also being released on a floppy disk — kind of. The Ion Maiden storage requirements are relatively modest at 100MB, but that’s still much more than a 1.44MB disk from the ‘90s could hold.
We’re releasing Ion Maiden on floppies with a twist! :) pic.twitter.com/CxRpNYzDLB
— 3D Realms (@3DRealms) April 13, 2018
In an unveiling video on its Twitter feed, the studio reveals how it accomplished this feat. By moving the shutter on the top of the disk, you can see it conceals a hidden flash drive.
There’s no word on when this special version will be available or how much it will cost, but it’s a clever bit of marketing for old-school gamers who remember switching to the B: drive to install MS-DOS games. The game will actually run on a 486 computer with four megabytes of memory.
In the game itself, you play as a Global Defense Force soldier named Shelly “Bombshell” Harrison, battling a cybernetic army. “Ion Maiden is a throwback to classic shooters, a spiritual successor to Duke Nukem 3D,” Frederik Schreiber of 3D Realms told GamesBeat. “It doesn’t impersonate a ’90s game. It is a ’90s game.”
There’s lots of blood and gore and an arsenal of weapons, including Shelly’s signature revolver “Loverboy.” The pixelated artwork is hand-drawn, and the game featured hundreds of Easter eggs and references to past generations of games.
“We wanted to make it as authentic as possible, but we didn’t want to limit it to the 1990s,” Schreiber explained. “[3D Realms founder] Scott Miller told us that this game should feel like it was built in Texas in the 1990s. It will have a classically illustrated cover.”
Ion Maiden is actually a sequel to a 2015 top-down shooter called Bombshell. That game was originally envisioned as a true Duke Nukem reboot until Gearbox reminded them with a lawsuit that they no longer owned the rights to Duke as a result of the Duke Nukem Forever fiasco.
Ion Maiden is already available in Early Access on Steam, and the initial reviews are very positive. The retail version of the game (including, perhaps, the floppy disk itself) will be out in fall of 2018.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.