Nintendo announced its developing a new pair of Pokémon sequels, Pokémon Sun and Moon, during a Nintendo direct livestream Friday. Sun and Moon, the first proper sequels in the series since 2013’s Pokémon X and Y, will come to the Nintendo 3DS worldwide this holiday season.
The announcement came at the tail end of a video celebrating the series’ 20th anniversary: The original Pokémon was released on February 27, 1996. The new games are the latest and largest in a series of promotions related to the anniversaries, including re-releases of Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow coming to the Nintendo 3DS eShop Saturday, and a special ‘edition New 3DS.
Though Nintendo was light on details in the announcement, it said that players would be able to transfer their Pokémon from the upcoming ports to Pokémon Sun and Moon using Nintendo’s Pokémon Bank, a series-specific cloud storage app for the 3DS. Players can also transfer their Pokémon from the most recent Pokémon games, including Pokémon Omega Ruby, Pokémon Alpha Sapphire, Pokémon X, and Pokémon Y. As Kotaku pointed out, the concept art in the trailer included an image of a Blastoise riding on the back of a fire truck.
The announcements follow reports yesterday that Nintendo filed trademarks for the names and logos for Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon in the European Union. A parody account impersonating Nintendo of America accurately predicted the games would be released in 2016. Rumors that Nintendo had a proper sequel in development shifted into high-gear earlier this month when Nintendo unveiled a new Pokémon in Japanese magazine Coro Coro, though many speculated the game would be called “Pokémon Z,” following the pattern established by X and Y.
Pokémon Sun and Moon will be available in late 2016. Until then, The Pokémon Company has plenty of ideas for how you can celebrate the series’ 20th anniversary.
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.