A year has passed since the founders of the National Videogame Museum leased a section of the Frisco Discovery Center in Texas, reports Dallas News. Joe Santulli, John Hardie and Sean Kelly have been laboring over the layout of the 10,000 square foot space. What should be included, and what can be left out? This upcoming December the results of their hard work will be unveiled to the gaming public.
NVM lists their mission statement on their website: “The goal of the National Videogame Museum is to document, FIRST HAND, as much information about the creation and evolution of the videogame industry as possible and preserve as many physical artifacts as possible for generations to come.”
Many of the museum’s displays come from the founders’ personal collections. They came together and formed a traveling museum that toured gaming conventions before deciding to set up at a more permanent location. They are joined by their mascot, BLIP!, a character made of various gaming peripherals, such as joysticks, arcade buttons and cables.
The exhibit features 50 game consoles, going back to the first ones ever released. Visitors can learn the history of each one through a physical timeline. Those who want a more hands-on experience can visit Pixel Dreams, a retro arcade, where they are given five free NVM tokens. More can be purchased if you’d like to relive the experience of losing time and money in greasy, neon-lit rooms. The collection includes Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Space Invaders, Mortal Kombat, Punch-Out!! Centipede, Asteroids Deluxe, and Donkey Kong Jr.
Children and adults can also take advantage of NVM’s classes, which focus on the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
The museum’s collection includes a rare example of an Atari Mindlink, an unreleased controller for the 2600. On a more mainstream front, you can play Pong on a giant screen. Among our favorite items is a rare Earthbound air freshener, which is worth hundreds of dollars.
The museum is located at the Frisco Discovery Center near the Dallas North Tollway and Cotton Gin Road.
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.