Awards shows are, among other things, a chance to pay tribute to the fallen pillars of the communities they seek to elevate. At The Game Awards 2015, members of the video games industry paid tribute to longtime Nintendo CEO and president Satoru Iwata, who died this past July.
Iwata rose from a position at Nintendo developer HAL Laboratories to the top spot in the company in 2002. As a developer, he contributed to games such as Kirby’s Dream Land for Game Boy and Earthbound for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. As president, he shepherded two of the company’s most successful products, the Nintendo DS and Wii. In recent years, Iwata became a more visible face of the company as the host of the company’s “Nintendo Direct” streaming events.
Game Awards host Geoff Keighley introduced a video tribute to Iwata with memories of their last meeting,
“Although he was much thinner than I thought he would be,”Keighley said, “he was still so joyful. He was smiling and laughing, and those are my final memories of meeting with him. He said goodbye to me with a big smile on his face. He wished me well on my E3 preparations. I can’t imagine what was going on in his head right then, what he was dealing with, but he never let it show. He was such an incredible man.”
Iwata died at age 55 due complications caused by a bile duct growth, according to a statement released by Nintendo shortly after his death. His failing health drew the public’s attention in June, when he did not attend E3 on his doctor’s recommendation. In September, Nintendo announced Mr. Iwata’s replacement, Tatsumi Kimishima.
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime also reflected on Iwata’s contribution to Nintendo as a business and to world of gaming as an art:
“For Mr. Iwata,” Fils-Aime said, “it was not enough to repeat the words of Nintendo’s mission, ‘to surprise and delight with the unexpected.’ He lived those words. He was unique.”
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.