Have you ever wished that TV cartoons looked like old video games? If so, you should check out Vancouver-based video game animator Joel Furtado’s upcoming web series, X-Men: Danger Room Chronicles. It’s an unofficial collection of animated shorts designed in the style of an old X-Men video game.
In the X-Men universe, the Danger Room is the X-Men’s training facility, which combines robotic obstacles and virtual reality to simulate real world… Well, dangers. Danger Room Chronicles uses the premise to set up a series of one-off adventures using different pairs of heroes. The first episode, for example, will feature Jean Grey and Wolverine getting trapped in a simulation and fighting off enemies until they figure out how to escape.
Watching the opening credits above, fans might recognize some artistic flourishes from the X-Men video games from the 1990’s, specifically the Sega Genesis and Game Gear games called X-Men. Those touches, from casting to animation, combined with the pseudo 16-bit art, give off the distinct impression that you’re watching a cutscene from another dimension where the Sega Genesis could actually handle such a thing.
Unfortunately, Furtado may have chosen a bad time to release an unlicensed X-Men story. In addition to the upcoming film X-Men: Apocalypse, two live-action series set in the X-Men universe have been recently announced. Though the series title sequence includes a disclaimer stating Furtado has no affiliation with Marvel or Fox, which owns the film and television rights to the X-Men universe, these upcoming, licensed projects give them more reason than usual to enforce their trademarks and shut the series down.
That should not, however, prevent you from checking out the series. If you like the sound of it, Furtado has asked fans to support his work by donating to his Patreon campaign. The first episode of X-Men: Danger Room Chronicles hits YouTube January 19.
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.