A dedicated group of Star Wars fans banded together to produce XWVM, a collaborative Unity project that aims to port LucasArts’ 1993 space combat sim X-Wing to modern PC platforms.
Mod creator David Esparza Guerrero gives a glimpse at the current version of XWVM in the teaser video above, showcasing his team’s last two years of development efforts.
While the original X-Wing was a technical marvel in the early ’90s, its presentation is outclassed in later 3D games, including its own sequels TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance. The original PC version of X-Wing is also tied to the MS-DOS platform, requiring later reissues to be bundled with emulation software such as DOSBox.
Guerrero’s forthcoming remake will address these issues, rendering the game at higher resolutions while ensuring compatibility with modern PCs.
“After trying to find the perfect X-Wing edition and realizing that the closest one to perfection is virtually lost to us (the 1996 Mac PowerPC edition cannot be run at a decent speed on modern x86_64 machines), I started looking for the best way to improve X-Wing to get the best of all the editions,” Guerrero explains.
While Star Wars fans have previously ported X-Wing‘s missions to later series entries like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Guerrero finds that the results lack contextual storyline elements from the original game and the gameplay “doesn’t work very well without extensive modding.”
By producing a Unity version, Guerrero hopes to add support for “modern resolutions, [additional] input methods, and even usability improvements that were later added to TIE Fighter and [X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter].” The latest version of XWVM represents a significant leap forward from earlier betas and features improvements in combat AI, ship modeling, and mission logic.
A public release date for XWVM is not yet known.
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.