Nintendo has floated the first of two summer updates for Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The first update will launch on July 3 with the ability for players to swim and dive to find underwater creatures and meet new characters, Nintendo said in a statement on Thursday, June 25. When players dive into the sea around their islands, they’ll be able to “scoop up sea creatures” and add them to their museums. Blathers will also share some “fun facts” about the characters after they’re donated.
Pascal the otter will feature into the Animal Crossing: New Horizons update with a love for scallops. When players grab one from the sea, they can give the scallop to Pascal, who will then “share some of his mermaid-themed DIY recipes.”
Every now and then, an unidentified “familiar face” will come to shore in different articles of “pirate-like clothing,” Nintendo said. When players help the character, they’ll receive an award. The company also promised a host of new items in the game, including mermaid-themed furniture.
The announcement comes as a variety of fish and insects prepare to leave the game at the end of the month. Players who haven’t yet collected everything from the Peacock butterfly to the Cherry Salmon fish will need to do so before they’re kicked from the game in July. Nintendo didn’t provide a full list of new creatures that will replace them when the summer update launches.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched on the Nintendo Switch in March. The game has become a massive hit with players around the globe and created a new economy for people to buy and sell virtual goods, including villagers. Earlier this month, Nintendo said it was banning offline sales of virtual goods because they violated its terms of service. The move also eliminated Nintendo from receiving a cut on each sale.
The Animal Crossing: New Horizons update will be available for free next week. It’ll be the first of two summer updates, with the second launching in early August. Nintendo said that it will share additional details about its “wave two” summer update before its launch.
Updated on June 25, 2020: Added information from Nintendo’s statement.
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.