Not only is there now an unofficial SNES version of Super Mario Bros. but the hacker behind it has built a way to edit levels in the game, a la Super Mario Maker.
As reported by Time Extension, Infidelity, a ROM hacker who’s been behind other NES to SNES ports, including one of the original Metroid, released the beta for both projects over the weekend on the Internet Archive. Super Mario Bros. Maker works on top of Infidelity’s SNES project, and is super easy to access. All you have to do is press X when you start a game, and then select one of the blocks that appear at the top of the screen. You can scroll through the options with your controller or an SNES mouse. Once you have the block you want selected, you can place it directly into the level. You can even save the changes or just reload the original level.
Say you want to add another question mark block to a part of a level where you could use a boost. The demonstration video that comes with Super Mario Bros. Maker shows the user adding it to the beginning of World 1-1, which can come in handy.
The project still needs some work. Infidelity noted in a follow-up post on Monday that it doesn’t work on many software emulators just yet, and MiSTer users are also out of luck. You also can’t do anything with enemies or sprites just yet, although that’s coming in a future beta release. There are also a lot of ways to get stuck or break the game, so check out the readme file in the download folder for all the current issues.
The readme also features some fun trivia about how the project came about. Infidelity wrote that he got the idea for it in 2019 or 2020 and originally thought of it as a hack for the NES, but didn’t really dig into the idea until this past July. “I was having success with the idea, was able to edit stages, but started to lose confidence in it since this was all theoretical, and this wouldn’t be universal on all hardware/software for the NES,” Infidelity writes.
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.