The Pokémon Company will publish Pokémon Co-Master, a figurine-powered board game for smartphones in Japan this Spring, the company announced Thursday.
Made in collaboration with Japanese AI-maker Heroz, which specializes in digital versions of board games such as Shoji and Go, C0-Master will be a free-to-play online board game where players use Pokémon-themed tokens: According to Kotaku, the game will feature some form of Pokémon’s core RPG elements, including training and battling. The name, “Co-Master,” refers to the fact that both players will receive strategic aid from the game’s AI, though it isn’t exactly clear how they will work together.
The game will not be published by Nintendo directly — The Pokémon Company is a co-owned subsidiary of Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures — and will not be a part of the company’s slate of smartphone games. Nintendo announced in 2015 that it planned to release five smartphone apps by April 1, 2017. The first of them, the Miiverse-style chat app Miitomo is on track to launch in Japan March 17. Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima told investors its second smartphone app will “not be a communications device” and would feature an IP “very well known to everyone” during an earnings report in February, 2016.
Pokémon Co-Master is the latest in a seemingly ever-growing list of games set to come out during the Pokémon series’ 20th anniversary year. Last month, Nintendo re-released Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in North America, and announced a pair of fully fledged sequels, Pokémon Sun and Moon, will hit stores worldwide this holiday season. Nintendo and Tekken publisher Namco Bandai will also release their Pokémon-centric fighting game, Pokkén Tournament, March 18.
Pokémon Co-Master will come to iOS and Android in Japan in Spring, 2016. There are currently no announced plans for an international release.
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.