The NES Classic Edition has become virtually impossible to find, with stock drying up less than a minute after going on sale on Amazon a few days ago, but retail giant Walmart is attempting to ease the situation with controlled sales all this week.
From today until Friday, November 18, Walmart will be offering “limited quantities” of the NES Classic Edition on its website at 5 p.m. ET each day. This means that quantities will be even more limited than if Walmart offered them all at once, but if you happen to not be near a computer one particular day, you’ll still have a chance to snag a console the next day.
NES Classic Edition systems are currently in such hot demand that resellers are listing them for $240 — a 400-percent markup — and they’re currently completely out of stock from Best Buy, GameStop, Toys R Us, and Target. Even the controllers, with cords so short that a typical gaming setup would require users to sit directly in front of their television, are unavailable. Fortunately, third-party manufacturers were quick to jump in and solve this problem with their own lines of accessories, including a Nyko-made wireless conroller with 30 feet of range, an extension cord, and the longer-wired My Arcade “GamePad Retro.”
While we had our problems with the controller’s short cord length and a few technical hiccups, we were very impressed with the NES Classic Edition overall. It comes bundled with 30 of the best games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, is remarkably affordable (when you can find it), and its “suspend” function enables you to keep your progress on games like Super Mario Bros., which was released before the advent of cartridge batteries that could create save states in titles like The Legend of Zelda.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.