If you’re a gamer (and especially if you’re a Nintendo fan), then the NES Classic should need little introduction. This officially licensed down-sized version of the original Nintendo Entertainment System was a smash hit, though unfortunately the Japanese company seems to have underestimated demand and wasn’t prepared to keep these in stock for very long.
The NES Classic quickly sold out everywhere, which in turn became a fiasco when scalpers started buying them up and reselling them for hundreds on eBay. For various reasons, Nintendo was slow to catch up to the demand for these mini consoles, but the company reassured hungry gamers that it would ramp up production and get them back on the shelves in 2018. Nintendo has lived up to that promise, and if you’ve been waiting for one, then you’ve finally got another chance — just in time for the holidays.
It’s not hard to see why the tiny console became such a huge success: Despite the ready availability of emulators and Raspberry Pi-based homemade emulation machines, the NES Classic is a bona fide Nintendo product, boasting all of the build quality that the brand is known for. The fact that it comes with an old-school NES controller is just icing on the cake.
The small unit bears the shape and design of the original “toaster” console, although with pre-installed games, you no longer have to blow into cartridges to get the stupid pin connectors to work. The NES Classic comes loaded with 30 of the best titles from the 8-bit era, including icons like Super Mario Bros. 3, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Kirby’s Adventure, Castlevania, Mega Man 2, and Final Fantasy, to name only a handful of our own favorites.
The NES Classic is back in stock at multiple outlets at its original launch price of $60. Retailers offering it online are Walmart, GameStop, Target, and Best Buy — and thankfully, most are limiting orders to one per customer to discourage scalpers. Amazon is also reporting that it will have it Buy Now , but you may need to take advantage of two-day shipping (which is free if you’re a Prime member) to get it by Christmas.
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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.