A brand new fighting game for the 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System is set to launch later this year, decades after the console’s final commercially released cartridges left retail store shelves.
Hong Kong technology manufacturer Blazepro is seeking a full production run for its 2D fighter Unholy Night, and has turned to Kickstarter in the hopes of making its dreams a reality.
The Super NES remains a favorite among many retrogaming fans, and the console produced ports of several landmark arcade fighting games during its initial production run, including Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, and Killer Instinct. The platform also hosted console-exclusive fighters like Weaponlord, ClayFighter, and Tuff E Nuff, giving fighting game fans a wide variety of options in terms of style, characters, and mechanics.
Assembling a team of Japanese developers who previously worked at such studios as SNK and Foxbat, Unholy Night aims to recapture the thrill of console fighting games with a roster of six characters and a chain-based combo system. According to publisher Blazepro, Unholy Night‘s developers previously worked on titles like Samurai Shodown, Chaos Breaker, and SNK’s The King of Fighters series.
Publisher SNK released many ports of its Neo Geo fighting games for the SNES throughout the ’90s, making the console an ideal fit for a new project from its former staff. Many SNES owners worldwide spent their formative years playing ports of fighters like Art of Fighting, World Heroes, and Fatal Fury Special, among several others.
Backers who pledge at least $35 toward Unholy Night‘s crowdfunding campaign will receive a transparent, smoke-colored SNES cartridge playable on original Super Nintendo Entertainment System hardware. Fans who support the project at the $70 tier will instead get a gold-plated cartridge exclusively available to Kickstarter backers.
Blazepro seeks a total of $52,000 in backer pledges in order to fund a production run of 1,500 cartridges. Unholy Night cartridges are planned to begin shipping to Kickstarter backers in April.
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.