The Legend of Bum-bo, one of the upcoming games from the mind of The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen, looks like it may be bound for the Nintendo Switch. McMillen was taking questions from fans on Twitter when one fan asked if the mysterious Bum-bo would find its way to the Switch. “I think so, yeah,” McMillen replied.
While McMillen’s admission bodes well for the many people who have become enamored with Nintendo’s latest console, we still don’t have a clear picture of what The Legend of Bum-bo is exactly. Bum-bo was originally announced in March 2016, but few details have been revealed since.
“The Legend of Bum-bo is a turn-based, puzzle RPG-type thingy that’s randomly generated,” McMillen wrote. While that doesn’t provide much clarity, the fact that McMillen released the teaser on The Binding of Isaac blog has led to the assumption that Bum-bo is a spinoff of McMillen’s incredibly popular, rogue-like game that has evolved drastically since its initial release in 2011.
The Legend of Bum-bo is being developed by people who have worked with McMillen in the past. James Id, who created ads for Isaac and McMillen’s other extremely popular indie, Super Meat Boy, is signed on to program and create the 3D art, and the two-man team known as Ridiculon, which also worked on Isaac, will produce audio for Bum-bo.
There’s also some precedent for Bum-bo to land on Switch. The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ launched on Switch in March, and McMillen’s next release, The End is Nigh, is scheduled to release on Switch following its launch on PC next month.
The End is Nigh tasks players with navigating through a post-apocalyptic world as Ash, one of the few remaining entities to have survived. All Ash wants is a friend, and throughout the platforming adventure that’s in the same vein as Super Meat Boy, Ash will gather pieces and parts to assemble a new buddy. The End is Nigh promises to have more than 600 sections and 20 mini games to unlock over the course of the adventure.
The End is Nigh launches on Steam on July 12, with a Switch version arriving at a later date.
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.