gaming

epic-games-store-and-fortnite-arrive-on-eu-iphones

Epic Games Store and Fortnite arrive on EU iPhones

Apple, dma, epic games, epic games store, EU, fortnite, gaming, iOS, IPhone, Tech / /

It’s still a mess —

Epic also launched its store on Android.

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Artist's conception of Epic dodging harm from Apple's decisions (and perhaps its own).

Enlarge / Artist’s conception of Epic dodging harm from Apple’s decisions (and perhaps its own).

It’s been four years since Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games, was pulled from the Apple App Store in a blaze of controversy and finger-pointing. Today, it’s returning to the iPhone—but only in the European Union.

Today marks the launch of the Epic Games Store on Android and iOS—iOS just in Europe, Android worldwide. Right now, it just has three games: Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe, and Fall Guys. And you’ll have to be in Europe to access it on your iPhone.

The Epic Games Store is run by Epic Games, the same company that develops and publishes Fortnite. Most folks who have been paying attention to either Epic or Apple in recent years knows the story at this point, but here’s the quick summary and analysis.

Opinion: Users are still the losers after four years

At the direction of CEO Tim Sweeney, Epic knowingly made changes to Fortnite related to digital payments that violated Apple’s terms for developers on the platform. Apple removed Fortnite accordingly, and a long, ugly PR and legal battle ensued between the two companies in multiple countries and regions.

In the US, a judge’s decision granted some small wins to Epic and other developers seeking to loosen Apple’s grip on the platform, but it kept the status quo for the most part.

Things went a little differently in Europe. EU legislators and regulators enacted the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which had far-reaching implications for how Apple and Google run their app stores. Among other things, the new law required Apple to allow third-party, alternative app stores (basically, sideloading) on the iPhone.

Apple’s compliance was far from enthusiastic (the company cited security and privacy concerns for users, which is valid, but the elephant in the room is, of course, its confident grip on app revenues on its platforms), and it was criticized for trying to put up barriers. Additionally, Apple rejected Epic’s attempts to launch its app store multiple times for a few arcane reasons amid a flurry of almost comically over-the-top tweets from Sweeney criticizing the company.

Despite Apple’s foot-dragging, Epic has finally reached the point where it could launch its app store. Epic had already launched a relatively successful App Store on PC, where Valve’s Steam holds a strong grip on users. The new iPhone app store doesn’t offer nearly as many options or perks as the PC version, but Epic says it’s working on wrangling developers onto its store.

It also says it will release its games on other alternative app stores on iOS and Android, such as AltStore PAL.

It’s been a long, winding, angry path to get to this point. In the battle between Epic and Apple, there remains some debate about who really has won up to this point. But there isn’t much dispute that, whether you want to blame Apple or Epic or both, users sure haven’t been the winners.

Epic Games Store and Fortnite arrive on EU iPhones Read More »

the-crimson-diamond-is-a-wonderful-ega-like-graphic-adventure-game-for-2024

The Crimson Diamond is a wonderful EGA-like graphic adventure game for 2024

adventure games, gaming, graphic adventure games, Sierra Games, sierra online, text parser, text parsing, the crimson diamond / /

But don’t get it wrong—you can definitely die —

The parser works much better than you’d think, and the mystery is pitch-perfect.

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Cover art for The Crimson Diamond

In my mind, this image is slowly drawing into place, with the text arriving last.

Julia Minamata

A text parser? Typing in “Open drawer,” then “Look in drawer,” then “Take brochures,” in the year 2024, on a computer that can generate a 4K 3D model of the Acropolis if I ask it to? Is that really what The Crimson Diamond asks of us?

Yes, it is, and solo developer/writer/producer Julia Minamata is right to ask it. If you have text-prompt adventures from the likes of Sierra in your mental library (like, say, The Colonel’s Bequest), or if you’re willing to meet the parser halfway, it will work. The Crimson Diamond’s parser is fairly agile, accepting a range of nouns and verbs in most circumstances. You can still use arrow keys and a mouse to move and click a few useful shortcuts. And the parser has shortcuts, like typing “n” to look at your quest-tracking notebook or “o d” or “o c” for the very common actions of opening a door or cabinet.

There are a lot of cabinets and drawers in this game because it’s set in northern Ontario, Canada, in 1914. You are Nancy Maple, a junior geologist eager for some field work, sent by your museum to the mining town of Crimson to investigate a diamond that fell out of a river fish’s guts. Everything goes wrong with your trip, and you’re on your own to investigate this town, its odd inhabitants and visitors, and, eventually, a crime that may or may not have to do with potential diamonds.

  • The tutorial room does a great job introducing you to the control scheme: arrow keys or mouse cursor for movement and selecting, but typing for actual action.

    Julia Minamata

  • You spend a fair deal of time in the lodge, talking and looking and picking up little things you know you’ll use later.

    Julia Minamata

  • Cutscenes give the artist new angles from which to demonstrate their remarkable EGA prowess.

    Julia Minamata

  • The characters in this game are richer than you might remember from more memory-limited days, usually having more than one note to them.

    Julia Minamata

A few disclosures must be made. For one, Minamata crafted the EGA-style social avatar for Ars Senior AI Reporter Benj Edwards, who tipped me to this game’s existence. Another is that this is a game that costs $15 on Steam or Itch.io (and 10 percent off on Steam in this first week after release), was made by a solo Canadian developer, with music by notably cool keyboard person Dan Policar, and it evokes some of my earliest, pre-Maniac-Mansion adventure game memories. I also have not played the game to completion. I will not be taking a critical gem loupe to it; I just think more people need to know about it.

Release trailer for The Crimson Diamond

Nostalgia and underdog-cheering sentiments aside, The Crimson Diamond looks and sounds great. The creative constraints of an EGA-like color palette and pixel block size delivered some scenes that are just wonderful to look at. The soundtrack loops about in pleasant and occasionally ear-catching fashion. Alice Bell at Rock Paper Shotgun played much further into this (about six hours and near or at completion), and her major complaint is almost a throwback: a few puzzles with obscure solutions, entirely too easy to miss with text parsing and EGA graphics.

I’m eager to see where Nancy Maple’s journey takes her, even if I have to sometimes wrack my brain for the right text to do the obvious thing. The game so far has felt like spending time inside one of those non-violent mysteries you see on PBS (or CBC), just inside a familiar and evocative game form.

Listing image by Julia Minamata

The Crimson Diamond is a wonderful EGA-like graphic adventure game for 2024 Read More »

saudi-man-earns-world-record-for-444-game-consoles-hooked-to-one-tv

Saudi man earns world record for 444 game consoles hooked to one TV

gaming / /

Still nothing good to play —

Ibrahim Al-Nasser said he got tired of juggling plugs just to play his collection.

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Those of us who collect classic game consoles and computers (here’s looking at you, AI reporter Benj Edwards) know the difficulty of keeping all that hardware not just working but instantly accessible with a simple press of a power button. Too often, large hardware collections end up languishing, boxed up on shelves, or sitting loose and unconnected to a display for long periods.

Saudi Arabia’s Ibrahim Al-Nasser grew tired of having that problem with his massive gaming collection, so he decided to hook 444 different gaming devices up to a single TV, earning a Guinness World Record in the process.

“After a while, I noticed that I had a big stack of gaming consoles that I couldn’t play,” Al-Nasser said in a video filmed by Guinness. “The TV ports are limited, and if I want to play, I either unplug the existing consoles or I’ll keep everything and add more switchers and of course more converters as well. By adding more switchers, the idea came to my mind to connect all of the gaming consoles I have to the TV, then contact Guinness World Records because this project is unique.”

Guinness says Al-Nasser makes use of “more than 12” HDMI switchers (so… 13?) to keep his collection connected, as well as “over 30” RCA switchers for pre-HD consoles (though some older consoles, like an N64 used in the video, apparently make use of converters for an HD connection). While the HD consoles seem to automatically switch to the correct input when turned on, Al-Nasser uses a massive spreadsheet to keep track of which button to push on which RCA switcher to connect the right cables.

Wait, there are 444 consoles?

A Nintendo-heavy section of Al-Nasser's collection.

Enlarge / A Nintendo-heavy section of Al-Nasser’s collection.

Al-Nasser’s collection seems quite extensive, including both common modern consoles and relative rarities like the Asia-exclusive Super A’Can. To get to a record-setting count of 444, though, Al-Nasser had to include a lot of non-traditional “game consoles,” including cheap plug-and-play devices, mini-console re-releases, gaming computers, Android-based HDMI sticks, “consolized arcades,” and more.

That’s all good enough to count for Guinness, which has faced controversy for letting would-be record holders pay for a chance at glory. In the gaming world, it famously removed and then reinstated Billy Mitchell’s scoring records amid a lawsuit threat.

Even if the hardware count feels a bit inflated, Al-Nasser definitely deserves credit for keeping so many pieces of gaming hardware clean and well-organized without any of the sloppy cable clutter you might expect. “I use all the tools available in the market… to organize the cables,” he said. “It’s like a museum, that’s why it took too much time for me [to organize].”

Saudi man earns world record for 444 game consoles hooked to one TV Read More »

behold,-diablo-is-fully-playable-in-your-browser

Behold, Diablo is fully playable in your browser

Blizzard, Diablo, gaming, GitHub / /

Stay a while and compile —

It controls and looks great, though the game was outshined by its sequels.

–

A browser window shows an old PC game

Enlarge / Diablo running in Firefox on macOS.

Samuel Axon

You can now play the original Diablo (and its expansion, Hellfire) in virtually any web browser on any computer with generally excellent performance and operating-as-expected controls. It’s all thanks to an open source project published on GitHub called Diabloweb that’s now being circulated by game developers on X.

In the README file in the project’s GitHub repository, the project’s developer (d07RiV) notes that it is based on DevilutionX, another open source project that did a lot of legwork to make Diablo run well on modern operating systems.

“I’ve modified the code to remove all dependencies and exposed the minimal required interface with JS, allowing the game to be compiled into WebAssembly,” writes d07RiV. “Event handling (especially in the menus) had to be modified significantly to fit the JS model.”

It’s pretty easy to set up; you just visit the website, upload a file, and get going.

You have to upload a file because the project doesn’t include the Diablo game files—you’ll have to provide those in the form of the DIABDAT.MPQ file in the Diablo install directory.

There are three above-board ways to source this MPQ file. First, you can, of course, own a physical copy of the original game. Alternatively, you can purchase the game on GOG and install it, then pull the file from the installation directory.

There’s also a shareware release of Diablo, and you can pull the SPAWN.MPQ file from that, and it works just fine. That’s not the full game, though, so that’s more for if you just want to try it.

  • This is the Diabloweb site, which offers brief instructions and prompts on how to get started.

    Samuel Axon

  • I downloaded the Diablo installer from GOG and ran it in a Windows VM on my Mac…

  • Here’s the file we’re looking for.

  • It was just a click on the website to upload that file and behold, Diablo in a browser.

    Samuel Axon

I played the game for about half an hour using the MPQ from the GOG version without any issues on Firefox on a Mac. (There’s no Mac version of the GOG installer, though, so I had to run the installer in a virtual Windows machine to get at the file.) The game is obviously primitive compared to more recent entries in the series (or even Diablo II), but it is an addictive blast to play regardless.

Behold, Diablo is fully playable in your browser Read More »

mysterious-“black-mesa”-website-says-it’s-“not-secretly-working-on-half-life-3”

Mysterious “Black Mesa” website says it’s “not secretly working on Half Life 3”

Black Mesa, gaming, Half-Life 3, Valve Software / /

That’s what they want you to think —

It’s “actually a real company in the Boston area”—or is that just a cover?!

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Kind of a weird image to post if you're trying to convince people you're not involved in a <em>Half-Life</em> ARG…” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/blackmesa-800×449.jpg”></img><figcaption> <p><a data-height=Enlarge / Kind of a weird image to post if you’re trying to convince people you’re not involved in a Half-Life ARG…

Here at Ars, we’re always on the lookout for hints and actions that suggest the long, long wait for Half-Life 3 may eventually come to an end. So when users across the Internet started making note of the mysterious and intriguingly named BlackMesa.com recently, our ears perked up for signs of a new promotional alternate reality game (ARG).

Alas, this seems like yet another false alarm. BlackMesa.com is simply the website for Black Mesa, which confirmed in a public statement that it is “actually a real company in the Boston area… working hard to assure and secure vaccine and other biological manufacturing production.”

HALF LIFE 3 MIGHT BE GETTING ANNOUNCED ON SEPTEMBER 30THhttps://t.co/hSytiq2GoR Just went live and it has a countdown at the bottom of the page, that ends on September 30th. When it finishes it will display a white text saying “That’s it.” pic.twitter.com/MK3QveRc6R

— PеQu (@ImPeQu) August 9, 2024

The BlackMesa.com domain name dates back to at least 2006, when the address was filled with search engine optimization ads by an outfit called MDNH, Inc. But in 2022, a page advertising the domain’s availability for purchase was suddenly replaced by a mysterious logo that bears a striking resemblance to the fictional Black Mesa logo in the games. And then there’s the hard-to-read cipher at the bottom, the kind of thing that an ARG might use to hide important information in plain sight.

The site stayed like that, to little wider notice or suspicion, until August 8, when Valve fans on social media began to “[wake] up to a Black Mesa website” that had suddenly been updated with a new header declaring, “Science requires process. Our insight defends it.” Others on social media were quick to note the old cipher text as a well as a new, obfuscated JavaScript countdown function with the internal name “Lambda Incident”. That countdown seemed to be pointing toward something happening on September 30, which seems like as good a time as any to announce Half-Life 3, right?

Truth is less interesting than fiction

The old Black Mesa web site, as it appeared for roughly two years, until last week. Note the cipher text on the bottom.

Enlarge / The old Black Mesa web site, as it appeared for roughly two years, until last week. Note the cipher text on the bottom.

The Valve faithful hoping this was a new version of the old Portal 2 Potato ARG had their hopes quickly dashed, though. Internet sleuths soon found a digital paper trail for Charles Fracchia, a research scientist who is listed on LinkedIn and elsewhere as the founder of “Black Mesa, a stealth company developing technologies that create provable assurance for advanced manufacturing workflows” since back in 2022. And by last Friday, the Black Mesa team put up a blog post quashing any game-related rumors that might be circulating.

“As much as we would be honored to be part of any Valve game—we do not work in this sector at all,” the blog post reads. “We are not secretly working on Half-Life 3, Project White Sands (whatever that is/may be) or any other Valve title—we’re just nerds working to secure the global bioeconomy.”

The team went on to thank the Half-Life community that had sent in “a ton of messages of support and curiosity” about the company, as well as “thousands of fake inquiries” that “made us laugh.” As for that old ciphertext? Turns out solving it simply unlocked a recruitment message seeking “engineers, cybersecurity professionals, and biologists” for the company. “KingPotatoVII please reach out, we’ve been trying to send you some swag for cracking the cipher a while back,” the Black Mesa team wrote with a smiley face emoji.

Any excuse to repost this video is a good one.

Despite the revelation of the real Black Mesa corporation, some hangers-on haven’t quite given up hope that this is all still just an extremely subtle bit of stealth marketing. “What if [actual scientist Charles Fraschia] is such a huge fan of Half-Life, like us, and decided to use his image/likeness to do this ARG for the game?” one Reddit user wrote last week. “Maybe he reached out and absolutely went full madlad with Valve to make this a magnum opus of an ARG. … Could be simply someone is heavy trolling us, and to be honest I’m not even mad because this is fun af!”

Keep hope alive, Valve faithful! Half-Life 3 is obviously just around the corner, no matter what anyone says! The truth is out there for those with eyes to see it!

Mysterious “Black Mesa” website says it’s “not secretly working on Half Life 3” Read More »

classic-pc-game-emulation-is-back-on-the-iphone-with-idos-3-release

Classic PC game emulation is back on the iPhone with iDOS 3 release

App Store, Apple, DOS games, emulator, gaming, iDOS, iDOS 3, MS-DOS, Tech / /

Emulation —

Apple amended its App Store rules to allow PC emulators, not just console ones.

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An MS-DOS command line prompt showing the C drive

Enlarge / The start of any journey in MS-DOS.

Samuel Axon

After a 14-year journey of various states of availability and usefulness amid the shifting policies of Apple’s App Store approval process, MS-DOS game emulator iDOS is back on the iPhone and iPad. It’s hopefully here to stay this time.

iDOS allows you to run applications made for MS-DOS via DOSBox, with a nice retro-styled interface. Its main use case is definitely playing DOS games, but it has seen a rocky road to get to this point. Initially released over a decade ago, it existed quietly for its niche audience, though it saw some changes that made it more or less useful in the developer’s quest to avoid removal from the App Store after it violated Apple’s rules. That culminated in it being removed altogether in 2021 after some tweets and articles brought attention to it.

But earlier this year, Apple made big changes to its App Store rules, officially allowing “retro game emulators” for the first time. That cleared the way for a wave of working console game emulators like Delta and RetroArch, which mostly work as you might expect them to on any other platform now. But when iDOS developer Chaoji Li and other purveyors of classic PC emulator software attempted to do the same for old PC games for MS-DOS and other non-console computing platforms, they were stymied. Apple told them that it didn’t consider their apps to be retro game console emulators and that they violated rules intended to prevent people from circumventing the App Store by running applications from other sources.

PC emulator UTM released a version of its software that worked around Apple’s rules, but it was a subpar experience. But on August 2, Apple amended its App Store rules to explicitly allow emulators of classic PC games. That opened the door for iDOS, which has made its triumphant return and works quite well.

Developer Chaoji Li’s announcement of iDOS 3’s availability didn’t have a tone of triumph to it, though—more like exhaustion, given the app’s struggles over the years:

It has been a long wait for common sense to prevail within Apple. As much as I want to celebrate, I still can’t help being a little bit cautious about the future. Are we good from now on?

Get iDOS3 on AppStore

I hope iDOS can now enjoy its turn to stay and grow.

P.S. Even though words feel inadequate at times, I would like to say thank you to the supporters of iDOS. In many ways, you keep iDOS alive.

Given that Apple’s policy changes were driven by regulatory concerns, it seems likely it’ll stick this time, but after everything that’s happened, you can’t blame Li for putting a question mark on this.

In any case, if you’re among the dozens (or maybe several hundred) of people looking to play Commander Keen, Might and Magic: The World of Xeen, Wolfenstein 3D, or Jill of the Jungle on your iPhone, today is your day.

Classic PC game emulation is back on the iPhone with iDOS 3 release Read More »

doom-+-doom-ii-is-a-great-excuse-to-jump-back-into-hell,-for-free-or-for-$10

Doom + Doom II is a great excuse to jump back into Hell, for free or for $10

gaming / /

My critical opinion is that this absolutely whips —

Just how you remember it, but through a 4K, 120 fps accessible lens.

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Some kind of huge gun, laying waste to a bunch of demons in a brown-ish Doom level from Legacy of Rust

Enlarge / I don’t know what this flame crossbow (?) is from the Legacy of Rust campaign, but I am going to keep running and gunning until I get it.

Bethesda Softworks

I have only one criticism of the “definitive, newly enhanced versions” of Doom and Doom II you can now pick up in a $10 package or as a free upgrade if you already owned one of those two games. My gripe is that it is entirely your own fault when you get hit by enemies.

On a PC, Xbox X or S, or PlayStation 5, you can play Doom at 120 fps at 4K. You are moving so ridiculously fast, speed-skating across those Marine bases and/or hellscapes, that the imps tossing fireballs at you feel like they’re a parent gently coaxing their kid to catch a softball. Even the enemies with instant-hitting guns feel like they’re winding up a tree sap cannon. The one time I died inside the first three levels of classic Doom was when I jet-walked right off a circular path and into an inescapable poison moat.

Does a flame thrower work against creatures that literally live in Hell? Only one way to find out.

Does a flame thrower work against creatures that literally live in Hell? Only one way to find out.

Bethesda Game Studios

It’s easy to recommend this newly packed-up and enhanced edition of these two first-person icons, released Thursday as part of QuakeCon. For one thing, it’s being offered by Nightdive Studios, which has been turning out fan-favorite (and generally Ars-approved) remasters of games like Dark Forces, System Shock, Quake, and Quake II. For another, it’s a real bundle, with both games, a huge number of classic add-on maps (including John Romero’s Sigil), and an entirely new episode, Legacy of Rust, made by folks from Nightdive, id Software, and Wolfenstein auteurs MachineGames.

And then there’s how playing these levels feels, which to me is as close as I can get to the caffeine-pulsing, speed-metal-blasting flow state I remember from much younger days. I’ve installed Doom and played a few levels now and then, but this is the first time I’ve made plans to keep going after the first session. After sprinting through a well-trod Hell, I’ll be eager to keep going in Legacy of Rust, where I saw quite a few cool design tricks in just a couple levels. Further along, new weapons await me, and I am eager to pick them up.

Doom + Doom II release trailer.

Wonderful, optional options

It helps that this version incorporates the rearranged, real-instruments “IDKFA” soundtrack from Andrew Hulshult, first made available in 2016 and now officially putting some heavy crunch into the classic tunes, along with some new Doom II tracks. It deserves its place in this official package, because it rips. As with almost everything else, the upgrade is optional—you can stick with MIDI if you like.

There are lots of accessibility options now—high-contrast text, text-to-speech in chat, and more—along with quality-of-life stuff. I was wary of having the crosshairs light up when an enemy (or barrel) would be hit, but given the sometimes unfair 2.5-D nature of the level design, and the spread of some of the bullet weapons, I’m keeping it on.

Cacodemons, chain guns, high-school-notebook Satanism—but in 4K, at 120Hz, and incredibly loud, if you like.

Cacodemons, chain guns, high-school-notebook Satanism—but in 4K, at 120Hz, and incredibly loud, if you like.

Bethesda Game Studios

If all that wasn’t enough for you, there’s 16-player co-op and deathmatch, with cross-platform play across Steam, Windows, Epic, and GOG on PC, and on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch consoles, using room codes to connect everybody (and, it must be noted, a Bethesda account). There’s even split-screen multiplayer, with up to eight people on a (very big) PC screen. Nightdive’s port of the code to its KEX engine should make it easier for mods to be brought forward to this edition.

A caveat here that while the author is broadly aware of the many, many upgrades, mods, and other good things made possible by the open-source code and ports of Doom games (including ZDoom), he can’t say exactly how they compare to this bundle. While Bethesda and Nightdive seem to have created a space for uploading mods and levels, and keeping the basic DOS version available, it remains to be seen how they work out over the long run. If open-source Doom was always good enough for you, or you don’t like the idea of rebundling stuff that started out in the open, by all means, save yourself the $10 here. For many, though, this is just a far easier way to get at all the good stuff now possible in demon-shooting land.

If you haven’t checked out Doom in a while, whether sitting in your library or just $10 away now, this is too easy an excuse to check in on it again. Do it soon. Hell devours the indolent, you know.

This post was updated at 8: 40 a.m. to note the potential tension of Bethesda’s rebundling of Doom against its open-source community.

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legendary-rom-hacking-site-shutting-down-after-almost-20-years

Legendary ROM hacking site shutting down after almost 20 years

gaming, gideon zhi, nightcrawler, retro games, rom hacking, romhacking.net / /

RomHacking.net —

Disputes about how to keep the site going led founder to archive and close it.

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Super Mario Land 2 in full color, with Mario jumping over spiky balls.

Enlarge / A thing that exists through ROM hacking, and ROMHacking.net: Super Mario Land 2, in color.

Nintendo/Toruzz

If there was something wrong with an old game, or you wanted to make a different version of it, and you wanted people to help you fix that, you typically did that on RomHacking.net. After this week, you’ll have to go elsewhere.

For nearly 20 years, the site has been home to some remarkable remakes, translations, fix-ups, and experiments. Star Fox running at 60 fps, Super Mario Land 2 in color, a fix for Super Mario 64‘s bad smoke, even a Pac-Man “demake” that Namco spiffed up and resold—and that’s not even counting the stuff that was pulled down by corporate cease-and-desist actions. It’s a remarkable collection, one that encompasses both very obscure and mainstream games and well worth preserving.

Preserved it will be, but it seems that the RomHacking site will not go on further. The site’s founder posted a sign-off statement to the site Thursday night, one that in turn praised the community, decried certain members of it, and looked forward to what will happen with “the next generation.”

To condense the statement by founder Nightcrawler: the site had come a long way, he missed the early small-group days, there are more options now, and then, last year, he attempted to hand control over to a small internal group. That is when, Nightcrawler writes, he “discovered a most dishonest and hate filled group,” one that targeted him for cutting out of the site and harassment.

The site’s database, minus accounts and profiles, has been handed off to the Internet Archive. RomHacking will have news posts and forums, but everything else is read-only, and the official Twitter and Discord “affiliations” are ended.

“I thank all of the many staff and community members whom kept the wheels turning and the lights on over the years. I am proud of our many accomplishments here together. I will carry forward remembering the good times, laughing about the bad times, and knowing she was right for the time, but time has a way of moving on,” Nightcrawler wrote.

Not the whole story

Gideon Zhi, proprietor of Time Capsule Games and member of RomHacking for more than 20 years, took issue with Nightcrawler’s monologued coda. In a thread on X (formerly Twitter), Zhi acknowledged the site’s technical debt, monetary cost, and the burnout in being its administrator. “But he existed as a single point of failure for the site and exerted iron-fisted control over community-created content, and categorically refused basically all offers of help over the last decade,” Zhi wrote.

Zhi details a near abandonment of the site last year, followed by attempts by interested members, gathered on the site’s Discord chat server, to transition the site’s back-end to modern storage and file serving, such as Amazon Web Services S3, and last-minute refusal by Nightcrawler to enact the changes. He also denied that the volunteers on the attempted transition threatened or doxxed Nightcrawler.

An administrator on the now “unofficial” Discord for the site confirmed a “rocky” relationship between the founder and the would-be administrators, as reported by PC Gamer. The Discord admin also denied threats or harassment toward Nightcrawler.

While ROM hacking, translation, demakes, and other game-altering work will certainly continue elsewhere, the gaming world has lost a kind of central depot for the most notable fixes, one with a community full of very experienced hackers.

Legendary ROM hacking site shutting down after almost 20 years Read More »

nzxt-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-$169/month-to-rent-a-gaming-pc

NZXT wants you to pay up to $169/month to rent a gaming PC

Desktops, gaming, gaming PC, subscriptions, Tech / /

Why own when you can… rent? —

NZXT Flex subscription has “new or like-new” PCs, one-time $50 shipping fee.

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NZXT gaming PC

Enlarge / NZXT’s subscription program charges $169/month for this build.

NZXT, which sells gaming PCs, components, and peripherals, has a subscription program that charges a monthly fee to rent one of its gaming desktops. Subscribers don’t own the computers and receive an upgraded rental system every two years.

NZXT’s Flex program subscription prices range from $49 to $169 per month, depending on the specs of the system, as you can see below:

The footnote is:

Enlarge / The footnote is: “Specs of PCs subject to change based on availability.”

NZXT

There’s also a one-time setup and shipping fee for the rentals that totals $50. NZXT says it will “likely” charge subscribers a separate fee if they return the rental without the original box and packaging (NZXT hasn’t disclosed how much).

The systems received, per NZXT’s website, will be “new or like-new.” Users may get refurbished systems and should check their rental for any defects, per subscription agreement terms from Fragile, which helps manage the subscription service.

NZXT says subscribers get 24/7 customer support with their subscription. The Irvine, California-headquartered company also says that there are no cancellation fees, and subscribers get a prepaid return label with their rental system. As noted by The Verge, NZXT started promoting Flex as early as February; it’s unclear how much interest it has garnered.

Per the subscription agreement, users can be charged the full retail value of the system if it’s returned damaged or altered (self-upgrades/repairs have limits) and monthly interest rates of 8 percent if they stop paying the monthly fee for over 60 days.

Who’s this for?

In an announcement Wednesday, NZXT looked to frame Flex as a way to make PC gaming more accessible and highlighted use cases where it thinks rental PCs make sense.

In a shared statement, the CEO of esports team FlyQuest suggested there’s a place for rental PCs in esports, which often relies on expensive gear delivered through sponsorships. In a statement, Brian Anderson said: “New hardware is being released frequently, and having access to industry-leading products is vital to staying competitive. NZXT Flex provides us with the confidence that we’ll always have access to the top-of-the-line builds so that we can create content and play at our highest level for our fans.”

The announcement also highlights a supposed customer who said the program let them immediately get a gaming PC that they can’t afford. The program also targets people who only need a high-end PC for a short period or who want easy biennial upgrades.

But for most, rental PCs don’t make much fiscal sense long-term, as monthly fees add up over time. For example, the cheapest plan would cost $758 the first year (including the setup/shipping fee), which is more than various prebuilt gaming PCs and DIY builds.

Subscribers also don’t own the computer. They can get an upgraded system after two years, but in that time, they will have spent $1,466 to $4,106 for hardware that they don’t own. Meanwhile, $1,466 to $4,106 could fetch a quality PC that you could own and continue getting value from beyond two years.

Flex also competes with PC rental programs from companies like Rent-A-Center and Aaron’s that let people rent to own. A few months ago, an NZXT representative confirmed via Reddit that Flex isn’t a rent-to-own program. The rep said that computer buyouts could be allowed but that only a portion of rental payments would apply to the purchase.

Those seeking immediate PC gaming gratification with limited funds also have options in payment plans/financing, used systems, and cloud gaming—all of which have drawbacks but let you compute and play games with hardware that you own.

Recently, more tech brands have been showing interest in trying to draw subscription dollars from consumer gadgets that typically only net a one-time profit. HP, for example, has a printer rental program where you pay to use a printer that you don’t own and that HP tracks. Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber also recently discussed interest in selling a “forever mouse” that people would own but requires a subscription to receive ongoing software updates.

NZXT wants you to pay up to $169/month to rent a gaming PC Read More »

metropolis-1998-lets-you-design-every-building-in-an-isometric,-pixel-art-city

Metropolis 1998 lets you design every building in an isometric, pixel-art city

cities skylines, dwarf fortress, gaming, metropolis 1998, rollercoaster tycoon, SimCity / /

Have you ever really thought about living rooms? —

Devs cite Rollercoaster Tycoon, Dwarf Fortress, and, yes, SimCity as inspiration.

–

Designing the pieces of a house in Metropolis 1998, with a series of bookshelves and couches open in the menu picker on-screen.

Enlarge / There is something so wonderfully obscene about having a town with hundreds of people living their lives, running into conflict, hoping for better, and your omnipotent self is stuck on which bookcase best fits this living room corner.

YesBox

Naming a game must be incredibly hard. How many more Dark Fallen Journeys and Noun: Verb of the Noun games can fit into the market? And yet certain games just appear with a near-perfect, properly descriptive label.

Metropolis 1998 is just such a game, telling you what you’ll be doing, how it will look and feel, and what era it harkens back to. You can verify this with its “pre-alpha” demo on Steam and Itch.io. There’s plenty more to come, but what is already in place is impressive. And it’s simply pleasant to play, especially if you’re the type who wants to make something entirely yours. Not just “put the park inside the commercial district,” but The Sims-style “choose which wood color for the dining room table in a living room you framed up yourself.”

You start out in a big field with no features (yet) and the sounds of birds chirping. Once you lay down a road, you can add things at a few different levels. You can, SimCity-style, simply plot out colored zones and let the people figure it out themselves. You can add pre-made buildings individually. Or you can really get in there, spacing out individual rooms, choosing the doors and windows and objects inside, and realizing how hard it is to shape multi-floor houses so the roof doesn’t look grotesque. You can save the filled-out house for later reuse or just hold on to its core aspects as a blueprint.

  • The author is quite proud of his first real home build, though he now realizes that living rooms have a big empty space, and it’s up to us to figure out just how empty it should remain.

    Kevin Purdy

  • It takes a bit to get used to it, but the detailed building designer is full of wonderful little pieces, like this classic speaker cabinet with the black and red wire clips visible on the back.

The game is still early in development, so its mechanics are not introduced in tutorials, and the interface requires a lot of clicking, reading, and wondering. I got a reasonable feel for it after about 30 minutes of tentative placing and bulldoze-deletion. You can save your game and come back to it, though the developers note that your saves may not transfer to future versions. You’re putting your time in now, so you’ll be ready to start fresh when the game releases into early access (“ETA sometime between Q4 2024 and Q2 2025”). If you’re into this kind of fine-toothed builder, a fresh start is a gift, anyway.

Developer video describing how the Metropolis 1998 algorithm scales to track hundreds of thousands of working objects.

Bank robberies and zombie scenarios ahead (maybe)

What will the game look like when it’s finished? Developer YesBox has a detailed roadmap and a blog detailing how it’s going. The very small team, seemingly a solo developer with art help from two others, started off in December 2021 and has achieved quite a lot, including an algorithm seemingly ready to handle big populations. A key promise of the game is that you won’t just lay down zones and wait for people and problems to show up. You will lay down specific buildings, like hospitals and police stations, and manage the usual concerns of traffic, zone demand, and the like. The “Post-1.0 Aspirations” hint at the game’s direction: “Visible Crime (e.g., watch a bank robbery),” “Zombie Mode (your police vs. your zombie population),” and “Live in your own city” in a “Sims-like mode” imply more of a toybox mentality than a “Highly realistic ports and infrastructure” ambition.

  • There’s a top-down mode in the game, useful for when you’re looking more into data than design.

    YesBox

  • With enough time and object rotation, streets look like they can get mighty pretty.

    YesBox

  • Screenshots suggest cities more complex than suburban plots are possible in Metropolis 1998.

    YesBox

  • Letting your imagination go wild with the building designer can yield all kinds of city designs

    YesBox

  • Check, check, check, check, this list of game inspirations works out, yep.

    YesBox

Metropolis 1998 is not alone in seeking out city-builder fans living in the long wake of any proper SimCity release. But unlike games like Cities: Skylines 2, it’s not seeking the kind of mechanical complexity that would see it, say, figuring out eerily familiar housing cost crises. Building this kind of game is still fiendishly complex, of course. But how that complexity is presented to the player is something else.

The most interesting line in the roadmap is “player starts with land purchased from successful business exit.” I can’t help but think of Stardew Valley, which can also sprawl to ridiculous levels but has at its core the arc of a person who got tired of the rat race and inherited a farm. I’m looking forward to this invitingly retro and human-scale city-builder, with patience and respect for what seems like a massive developer undertaking.

Metropolis 1998 lets you design every building in an isometric, pixel-art city Read More »

is-palworld-a-“dead-game”?-who-cares,-says-the-game’s-developer

Is Palworld a “dead game”? Who cares, says the game’s developer

gaming, palworld / /

Reliable revenue as a service —

Maybe, just maybe, players want more new ideas rather than live services.

–

A Palworld player aiming an assault rifle at a seemingly innocent pink creature

Enlarge / If you enjoyed taking out adorable, if dangerous, widdle cweatures with an assault rifle after a while, Palworld‘s team wants you to know that’s normal and cool.

Pocketpair

Palworld‘s head of community has a radical idea: Stop caring about how many people are playing a game at the same time as you. It’s pitched mostly at developers and games media, but John Buckley also wants players to let go of the “dead game” mentality.

“Who cares if there’s only five people playing it? Just enjoy yourself. Just enjoy games. I don’t think it needs to be any more complex than that,” Buckley said in an interview on the Going Indie YouTube channel.

The people at Palworld developer Pocketpair, in particular, would have reason for panic, if they subscribed to the mentality that active online players are the key benchmark for modern gaming. The game launched into Early Access in January 2024 at rocket speed, selling 5 million copies and reaching 1.3 million concurrent Steam players, surpassing Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3. By February 1, the game had sold 19 million between Xbox and Steam, and was the biggest third-party game launch yet on Xbox’s Game Pass service.

Given that the creature-catching/survival game with a notably chill approach to intellectual property has so far managed to avoid being sued into oblivion by Pokémon, most would consider it a success. And yet, gaming sites and streaming personalities made sure to note that Palworld suffered “Steam’s biggest-ever two-week drop” by mid-February or was “looking like a dead game,” as streamer Asmongold said into the microphone around that same time.

Palworld community boss John Buckley, interviewed by Going Indie.

“It is fine to take breaks from games”

As far back as February 20, Buckley (or “Bucky”) has been pushing back against metrics as the thing that matters. “This emerging “Palworld has lost X% of its player base” discourse is lazy,” Buckley wrote on X, “but it’s probably also a good time to step in and reassure those of you capable of reading past a headline that it is fine to take breaks from games.” Lots of what Buckley wrote then, and said in the recent interview, is some combination of common sense and remarkable candor: Stop when you’re done, play other games, try different genres, support indies, in particular, and don’t worry about Palworld, which will put out more content, but not constantly.

As noted by Going Indie’s host, a “dead game” can earn that label through many vectors: concurrent players, developer support, or competitive environment, to name a few. Every game in existence will be “dead,” eventually, and that used to be a normal, good thing. Developers started new projects, and players looked forward to new experiences.

But the advent of “live service” games, meant to pull in more money over time through subscriptions and microtransactions, has made a game something that publishers, especially the large kind, never want to see die. They create consistent revenue, rather than the spikes of traditional game publishing, and there are North Stars to look to, like GTA Online. (Or, until recently, Destiny and Destiny 2).

“I don’t think it really serves anyone to push gamers to just play the same game day in, day out,” Buckley tells Going Indie. While some games, like League of Legends or an MMO, are built to avoid burnout, “Whereas what we’re seeing now is a trend of—I won’t necessarily say who’s trying to push it, but a lot more people are trying to push gamers to play games that aren’t really designed to be played for months on end.”

“Updates, updates, for the good of our economy, there must be more updates.”

Pocketpair

Palworld suggests people like new things

While Palworld allows for online play, its huge concurrent player numbers were not the result of its developer carefully cultivating a fear of missing out (FOMO) among players. As Ars’ Andrew Cunningham wrote at the peak of Palworld’s success, it was more about the devs giving something new to a community that had been habitually starved for something truly new:

Sure, many people are here to see a machine-gun-toting Pikachu mow down other Pikachu. But a ton of people are also there to voice some kind of discontent with the Pokémon franchise as it currently stands, expressing a desire for a deeper and more communal game. … I think we can look at the combination of reviews, sales, and active users and see that there is clearly an audience hankering for more radical change.

In other words: Moving on to the next ideas rather than competing to keep the same limited pool of constantly online gamers engaged with shareholder-friendly continuity.

“I don’t think you need to be kinda pushing yourself to play the same game all the time,” Buckley says in the interview. “It’s not healthy for us, it’s not healthy for developers, it’s not healthy for gamers, it’s not healthy for gaming media, and it’s just not healthy for our industry. Because the more we push this kind of narrative, the more very large companies are going to say, ‘Gamers want more live service,’ and we’re just going to get more of these really soulless live service games that come out and then get shut down nine months later, 12 months later, because they’re not making enough money.”

Is Palworld a “dead game”? Who cares, says the game’s developer Read More »

xbox-console-sales-continue-to-crater-with-massive-42%-revenue-drop

Xbox console sales continue to crater with massive 42% revenue drop

gaming / /

Dropping like a lead box —

Xbox Series X/S sales seem to have peaked early in 2022.

–

The tumbling continues.

Enlarge / The tumbling continues.

Microsoft’s revenue from Xbox console sales was down a whopping 42 percent on a year-over-year basis for the quarter ending in June, the company announced in its latest earnings report.

The massive drop continues a long, pronounced slide for sales of Microsoft’s gaming hardware—the Xbox line has now shown year-over-year declines in hardware sales revenue in six of the last seven calendar quarters (and seven of the last nine). And Microsoft CFO Amy Hood told investors in a follow-up call (as reported by GamesIndustry.biz) to expect hardware sales to decline yet again in the coming fiscal quarter, which ends in September.

The 42 percent drop for quarterly hardware revenue—by far the largest such drop since the introduction of the Xbox Series X/S in 2020—follows an 11 percent year-over-year decline in the second calendar quarter of 2023.

Peaking too early?

Microsoft no longer shares raw console shipment numbers like its competitors, so we don’t know how many Xbox consoles are selling on an absolute basis. But industry analyst Daniel Ahmad estimates that Microsoft sold less than 900,000 Xbox units for the quarter ending in March, compared to 4.5 million PS5 units shipped in the same period.

Overall, the reported revenue numbers suggest that sales of the Xbox Series X/S line peaked sometime in 2022, during the console’s second full year on store shelves. That’s extremely rare for a market where sales for successful console hardware usually see a peak in the fourth or fifth year on the market before a slow decline in the run-up to a successor.

Even before this quarter's 42 percent revenue drop (which would be quarter 14 on this graph), Xbox has shown an uncharacteristic early revenue decline.

Enlarge / Even before this quarter’s 42 percent revenue drop (which would be quarter 14 on this graph), Xbox has shown an uncharacteristic early revenue decline.

Kyle Orland

The older Nintendo Switch, which launched in 2017, is now firmly in that sales decline period of its life cycle. Yet worldwide unit sales for the console declined only 36 percent year-over-year—to 1.96 million units shipped—for the first calendar quarter of the year. That’s a less precipitous relative drop than Microsoft is now facing with the much younger Xbox Series X/S.

Annual sales of Sony’s PlayStation 5 have continued to rise in recent years, peaking at 20.8 million units for the fiscal year ending in March. But PS5 sales did decline over 28.5 percent year-over-year for the January-through-March quarter, just the third such quarterly decline the console has posted on a year-over-year basis (Sony has yet to post sales numbers for the April-through-June quarter).

A subscription bright spot?

Aside from hardware sales, Microsoft’s gaming content and services revenue was up a healthy-sounding 61 percent year-over-year for the latest reported quarter. But a full 58 percent of that increase was the “net impact from the Activision acquisition,” which you may remember cost the company $68.7 billion dollars.

Given the cratering Xbox hardware revenues, it’s not all that surprising that Microsoft is focusing on its (now more expensive) Game Pass subscription side to buoy the Xbox business as a whole.

Xbox Game Pass continues to be a bright spot for Microsoft's gaming business.

Enlarge / Xbox Game Pass continues to be a bright spot for Microsoft’s gaming business.

“I do think the real goal here is to be able to take a broad set of content to more users in more places and really build what looks like more to us the software annuity and subscription business,” Hood said during the investor call. “I think we’re really encouraged by some of the progress and how we’re making progress with Game Pass.”

That kind of talk suggests the Xbox brand will continue to thrive via Xbox Game Pass, and possibly through Xbox Game Studios games for other platforms. But if these sales trends continue, we may be facing a near future where physical console hardware is no longer a core part of the Xbox brand.

Xbox console sales continue to crater with massive 42% revenue drop Read More »