More than 18 years after the project was officially canned, Blizzard’s long-lost point-and-click adventure game Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans has surfaced as a downloadable PC game via unofficial channels.
Because the game was never officially released at retail, this week’s release finally gives Warcraft fans a chance to play Lord of the Clans firsthand. The downloadable version is feature complete, and dedicated players will be able to experience the quest from beginning to end.
Announced in 1997, Warcraft Adventures was a collaboration between developer Blizzard and Animation Magic, the Russian studio responsible for the animated cutscenes in Hotel Mario and Link: The Faces of Evil for the Philips CD-i.
Technical limitations and communication issues between the two companies pushed the project back to a 1998 release, at which point it appeared dated in comparison to competing LucasArts titles like The Curse of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango. Despite Warcraft Adventures being almost ready for retail, Blizzard opted to cancel the release rather than pursue planned improvements to its storyline and puzzle design.
“I think that one of the big problems with Warcraft Adventures was that we were actually creating a traditional adventure game, and what people expected from an adventure game — and very honestly what we expected from an adventure game — changed over the course of the project,” producer Bill Roper said after the game’s cancellation.
Blizzard itself addressed the project’s downfall in a 1998 press release. “The cancellation was not a business or marketing decision or even a statement about the adventure genre,” the publisher stated. “The decision centered around the level of value that we want to give our customers. In essence, it was a case of stepping up and really proving to ourselves and gamers that we will not sell out on the quality of our games.”
Though little has been revealed regarding how Warcraft Adventures was eventually discovered and leaked, distributor and Scrolls of Lore Forums member Reidor describes the free release as “my gift for all Blizzard fans, old and new.”
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.