Super Smash Bros. Melee has had a dedicated following since it launched on the Nintendo GameCube back in 2001, and fans continue to find new ways to appreciate the game.
Case in point: YouTube channel UberGubr found that playing jazz along competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee matches works very well.
This composition comes from Caleb Goss, a mathematics and music theory/composition major at St. Olaf College’s Music Department. He told Digital Trends that this concept came to him while he was watching Melee instead of working on his assignment. “The assignment was to write a piece that didn’t feature any pitched instruments,” said Goss. This meant that strings and horns were off limits. His first video depicted a performer playing his composition along with a competitive match on drums alone. “There is this concept within the Smash community that the gameplay is improvisational to some extent, and top level gameplay is certainly rhythmic,” he said. “I figured I could kill two birds with one stone: watch smash and write music.”
Because Melee is such a flashy game, its “gameplay mechanics and animations are perfect for sound accompaniment,” said Goss. To make his compositions, Goss took an interesting approach: “I would turn the volume down and just watch the gameplay.”
Considering Goss’ first video was recieved very well by the internet, with over 800,000 views in little over a month, he definitely intends on creating more content. “Over the summer I plan to continue making Melee videos in order to establish a subscriber base.” There are plans to compose over other fighting games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, but Goss has his sights set on something bigger. He plans for a “large scale project” that would “score a boss fight from Dark Souls III.” It may not be as rhythmic as Super Smash Bros., but “it is definitely cinematic,” said Goss, and “it would basically be like film scoring.”
It would be interesting to see how Goss’ compositions vary between the various Smash games. Maybe we’ll get that video someday.
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.