Retro video game fans have a rich history worth commemorating, but finding media that fully captures that era in an artful manner has proven to be difficult — that is, until now.
A new Kickstarter has launched for the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom a visual compendium, and it quickly broke through its original goal $36,733.
This visual compendium comes from Bitmap Books, a company that has plenty of experience making high quality coffee-table books celebrating gaming. Founder and graphic designer Sam Dyer and his team have already released compendiums for the Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Now they plan to take on what is probably the most influential video game console ever.
This isn’t Dyer’s first foray into the world of Kickstarter. “We’re really lucky to have built up a nice following over the last few years so getting funded quickly isn’t unusual” Dyer told Digital Trends, “but this campaign has definitely been the fastest.”
It’s easy to see why. The NES has sold over 60 million units, it brought the video game industry back from collapse, and it ensured games were high quality by introducing the “Nintendo Seal of Quality.”
Dyer’s team includes some notable video-game journalists who are overseeing the project to ensure a high quality final product. These individuals include Steve Jarrett from Total!, Edge, and Official Nintendo Magazine and Damien McFarren of Nintendo Life. Because this book is an unofficial tribute, for Dyer the “downside of this is that I will not have any access to current Nintendo employees.” To ensure a breadth of content, Dyer and his team “will be using text from existing interviews,” giving credit where credit is due. Dyer will also try to get as many ex-employees from the U.S./U.K. involved as possible. Hopefully this will come to the attention of some Japanese developers so they too can jump on board.
The book has been in development for the past six months, and as of now 30 full spreads have been created. The team is now dedicating all its resources to getting the book out by January 2017.
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.