An adorable Galarian Ponyta has been revealed, and it’s exclusive to Pokémon Shield. Discovered in a new video that popped up on The Official Pokémon YouTube Channel on Wednesday, October 9, the cotton-candy colored pony was shown in action playing around, trotting along, and firing off some moves in battle.
A new page that surfaced on the official Pokémon website reveals the new Galarian Ponyta is a psychic-type with the abilities Run Away and Pastel Veil. While those familiar with Nintendo’s pocket monster series have likely seen the Run Away ability in action, allowing Pokémon and their trainers to flee from battle using teleportation, the Pastel Veil ability is new. When Galarian Ponyta uses Pastel Veil, it puts up a shield of sorts that keeps it and its allies from being poisoned and can cure the poisoned status effect.
While exclusive to Pokémon Shield, Galarian Ponyta can only be found in a particular forest in the Galar region. This may make encounters with it a bit of a rarer occasion than it is with your average Pokémon. That’s understandable, since it’s quite the mystical beast according to the description on the site, being called a Unique Horn Pokémon and having a mane that can “absorb the life energy” of its surroundings and release a shimmering glow.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this mythical creature. Earlier this week, a 24-hour Twitch stream took place where thousands of viewers waited for a chance to see a new Pokémon. Two Ponyta were spotted during the long broadcast, one with fluffy glowing hair and the other missing a tail. This might indicate that the beautiful creature is hunted for its magical locks, but we’ll probably have to wait to hear more about that once Pokémon Sword and Shield arrives on November 15.
As usual, players are conflicted about which upcoming Pokémon title to pick up. A variety of factors play into this, with exclusive and legendary Pokémon often being the deciding factor. Zacian, the sword-wielding wolf is the legendary you can find gracing the cover of Pokémon Sword and Zamazenta is the wolf-like Pokémon with shield-shaped fur you can find on Pokémon Shield. Last month, players were introduced to Sirfetch’d which is exclusive to Pokémon Sword. With the reveal of the exclusive Galarian Ponyta, this makes deciding which game to pick up an even more difficult choice to make.
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.