The battle against Ganondorf at the top of his castle in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time is one of the greatest moments in the history of video games, with its music and stained glass windows giving players a sense of atmosphere we had never experienced before. It felt like we were actually there … but what if we could be?
YouTube user and developer Aklar_45 asked himself that question, which led to him creating the climactic fight in virtual reality for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Designed in Unreal Engine 4, the battle looks exactly like it’s supposed to, with fairy Navi hovering above your head and the floor under your feet divided into several blocks.
Once the action, starts, you can almost let muscle memory take over from playing the old Nintendo 64 or 3DS versions. Ganondorf sends a ball of energy at your head, and you must smack it back at him like you’re playing Hyrule’s most dangerous tennis match. Once Ganondorf slips up, you shoot him with an arrow before leaping across the gap in the floor and slicing him several times.
The demonstration ends at the conclusion of this section of the fight, but if you want to see the true ending to Ocarina of time, he has also created the beast-form Ganon fight in virtual reality. In high-definition, the monster is quite a bit more terrifying than his cube-like form on older systems, and the ring of fire surrounding the battlefield looks fantastic — you can even see Zelda standing behind it, waiting for her chance to assist Link and seal away Ganon forever. It’s like we’re in 1998 all over again.
Aklar_45 has done a number of other Zelda boss battles in Unreal Engine 4, including VR battles and traditional third-person fights. They’re all just as impressive as the Ganondorf fight, and it has us excited for what Nintendo might do if it opts to make a more traditional Zelda title instead of a direct Breath of the Wild follow-up. If you want to try the Ganondorf fight out for yourself, you can grab it through Google Drive here.
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.