Nearly 16 years after its launch, all of the DLC for the zany platformer Floigan Bros, is now available for Sega Dreamcast owners, thanks to a few of the game’s original developers: Tim Meekins, Nick Jones, and John Elliot.
Buy Now was unveiled early in the Sega Dreamcast’s lifecycle, but it didn’t launch until July 2001, four months after Sega’s final console ceased production worldwide. To be fair, the Dreamcast subsisted on North American shelves for less than two years, because of yet another round of underwhelming sales for a piece of Sega hardware that signaled the company’s continued difficulties in a post-Genesis world.
Many today, however, believe that the Sega Dreamcast was ahead of its time with a built-in modem and its status as the first console to feature online multiplayer.
Floigan Bros. benefited from the Dreamcast’s online features as it became one of the first console games to receive what is now commonly known as DLC. All of the content in the planned 12-month DLC cycle was actually stored on the disc, but was set to unlock gradually as time passed. Likely because of the discontinuation of the Dreamcast, only the January 2002 DLC, Knitted Hat, ever unlocked for Floigan Bros. players before now.
The other eleven pieces of DLC were unearthed by Dreamcast Live with help from the aforementioned members of the Visual Concepts development team at the time. Since the files were physically stored on the game disc via the Dreamcast’s Visual Memory Unit, the dedicated group worked with the sole piece of available DLC to gain access to the remaining lot. It wasn’t as simple as just tinkering with the time stamps, as security restraints installed by Sega and Visual Concepts to prevent this exact type of behavior needed to be bypassed.
The full DLC schedule can be downloaded directly in the console’s web browser by clicking on the VMI files over at Dreamcast Live. The files can also be downloaded on PC and transferred to Dreamcast.
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.