You’ll soon be able to open Pokémon card packs on your phone. Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is set to release on October 30 on Android and iOS, and you can preregister for it now.
Pocket is a collaboration with Creatures Inc. that was announced in February during The Pokémon Company’s Pokémon Presents presentation alongside a teaser for Pokémon Legends: Z-A. The app gives you two booster packs every day to open with a swipe of your finger. A lot of effort was put into this animation to give you the feeling that you’re actually opening a pack and scanning your cards. Many of the cards are also “immersive cards” that take the art’s background and expand them into more 3D spaces. You’ll be able to collect some beloved cards, as well as ones exclusive to the app. And you can display them all in a virtual binder or a display board.
Pocket is set to have in-app purchases, which we assume are more boosters, but we haven’t seen what those will look like or how much they’ll cost.
The Pokémon Company has attempted to bring the card game to mobile devices before. Pokémon Trading Card Game Live was a rebrand of Pokémon TCG Online, the long-running digital version of the card game. Like with Pocket, TCG Live lets you collect card packs, but it also features more intense battle mechanics. Pocket is a simplified, streamlined experience that’s more for people who want to collect cards and maybe engage in some casual play by themself or with others.
Pocket is the app for people who liked to open the packs and slot the cards into binders instead of learning how to play the game.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.