Everyone loves Stranger Things, right? Well, in case you’re tired of binge watching the first season over and over while waiting for season two, Netflix has a little surprise for you. First unveiled during the Netflix Hack Day on January 30, a Stranger Things-themed retro-browser game from creator Joey Cato is now available.
The game allows players to revisit scenes from Stranger Things and play Atari-style versions of Frogger and Pac-Man that have been revamped to feature characters from the popular Netflix series. For instance, you can dodge vans as Eleven, or try to rescue kids from the Upside Down without being caught by the Demogorgon.
Because you play the games on TV screens placed in screen grabs from the show itself, it’s a bit of a rough experience. Some screens are awkwardly placed, and make for a very difficult playing experience. Still, it’s worth checking out, particularly if you have a couple minutes on hand and you want to experience a period-accurate game based on one of the hottest shows of 2016.
The Netflix Hack Day also featured another Stranger Things-themed project, a lighting system built into a Christmas sweater. The sweater imitates the famous Christmas-light alphabet wall from the series that was used as a way to communicate with the displaced Will Byers.
Similarly, the hack day featured other Netflix-inspired projects like a mind-controlled interface, and a picture-in-picture prototype that allows you to see which friends are watching the same shows. Another project shown off at the hack day was a plugin that would allow you to donate to relevant causes after watching a socially conscious movie, like a documentary film, or TV series.
Stranger Things made a splash in early 2016, capitalizing on ’80s nostalgia by sending up and subverting some popular film tropes from that era. Rather than simply imitate sci-fi and kids-in-peril films, Stranger Things creators, the Duffer Brothers, created a modern story using familiar components that felt fresh and familiar all at once.
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.