There are plenty of ways to play classic NES games on the go, from 3DS eShop downloads to emulators on your phone, but none look this cool.
The modders over at Kei Studio in Japan have figured out a way to cram the newly released, and hotly sought after, NES Classic inside a Game Boy shell. They even gave it a Famicom red-and-gold paint job and are calling it the Famicom Pocket.
In a video the studio uploaded, it shows how they were able to get the mod to work, down to every minor detail. Most interesting was the ability to hook up a second NES Classic Game Boy to allow for two-player gameplay on the go. All it took was a major battery upgrade.
The team also had to modify the Game Boy shell itself to get all the components to fit. Because the screen on the original Game Boy was so small, they had to use a Dremel to cut off some plastic to make room for the larger LCD screen. They also had to cut out the area where the D-pad and buttons go to make the area look like a tiny Famicom controller.
This is not the first mod by Kei Studio. In November, it was able to condense an entire PlayStation 2 into a handheld. And by handheld, it was more the size of a textbook — but still portable, nonetheless.
Because Kei Studio opts to use the original hardware, and not to emulate it on a Raspberry Pi for example, they have to work with the constraints and size of the original hardware. If Nintendo, and hopefully Sony, continue to make miniaturized versions of its classic systems, then it is likely that Kei Studio will try to cram it into a smaller shell.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.