The bi-annual video game speedrunning charity drive has done it again, raising a boat load of money for a great cause. Summer Games Done Quick, the sunnier variant to the Games Done Quick charity drive, has raised a whopping $1,298,544 in donations for Doctors Without Borders.
Twice every year, Games Done Quick comes together to stream speedrunners playing video games really fast for charity on Twitch. The stream goes on for eight days, with many of the top speedrunners in their respective games showing up in solidarity.
There, commentators along with the speedrunners themselves, discuss the glitches and game-breaking techniques that can be used to completely dominate video games in mere minutes. For the longer late-night sessions, there are also 100-percent runs in which the game, in all its entirety, must be completed. It’s also an opportunity for the audience to send donations and have their messages read live on air.
Stephen Colbert has also helped with the promotion, bringing Super Mario Bros. 3 speedrunner Mitch Fowler onto his show. In the clip, Fowler had to compete in a three-way race. He went up against Colbert himself, who was racing to heat up a hot pocket and eat it as fast as he could, and Columbia University’s men’s 4 x 400 relay team, who were to run a mile.
Last year Summer Games Done Quick raised $1,233,135 for Doctors Without Borders. That means this year the team maintained a blistering pace to beat last year’s goal by a solid $65,000.
Even the folks at Humble Bundle got in on the action. For $15 gamers could get VVVVVV, Super Meat Boy, Freedom Planet, Escape Goat 2, Dustforce DX, Guacamelee! Gold Edition, Serious Sam Double D XXL, and Serious Sam: The Random Encounter. All proceeds went to charity.
For those that missed the stream, one of the most mind-boggling demonstrations was Tetris: The Grand Master. It showed off an insane Japan-only version of Tetris being played at crazy speeds.
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.