News::Watch 'South Park' creators explain why their next game is better

Now that the long-in-development South Park: The Fractured But Whole is close at hand, Ubisoft and South Park Studios are finally opening up about its creation. To start, they've posted a behind-the-scenes video that isn't quite the usual puff piece. South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone not only why the game exists, how it was made and what's new, but how they got some of their feedback on The Stick of Truth. They apparently got plenty of helpful input by watching PewDiePie's playthrough -- after all, the YouTube star is telling you what he thinks at any given moment.

Source: Ubiblog, IGN

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News::Ben Heck's Nintendo PlayStation prototype teardown, part 1

It was originally thought to be a rumor: a games console that combined Sony and Nintendo hardware. Now Ben Heck proves it does exist. Thanks to Terry and Dan Diebold, who approached The Ben Heck Show team with the console, Ben was able to give you an exclusive teardown of the elusive Super Nintendo / Famicom and Sony PlayStation hybrid console. While taking apart the device, called the SFX-100, Ben guides us through the post-production alterations made to fix the prototype and gives us a tour of all the components on the board, including a custom audio chip and standard Sony integrated circuits. We also compare the system to similar consoles at the time, such as the PC Engine / TurboGRAFX-16 and the Sega MegaCD. The real question is, can we get it working? Let us know what you think of the teardown over at the element14 Community, where you can also interact with The Ben Heck Show team and learn more about Nintendo and Sony's history.




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News::GameCenter CX Game No Naka Children's Book Accounced

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News::Original Xbox One drops to $249

Just want an Xbox One for the lowest price possible, and aren't dead set on getting the sleeker, slightly more powerful Xbox One S? Microsoft is about to make your day. It's lowering the US price of the original, 500GB Xbox One system to $249 "for a limited time" -- no doubt to move units before the 500GB Xbox One S arrives later in the year. This includes any bundle, too. You can find the discounted console at Amazon right now, and GameStop is sweetening the deal further with a $30 gift card.

Source: Larry Hryb (Twitter), Amazon

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News::'Gears of War 4' will have plenty of PC-specific features

The history of Microsoft-backed Xbox One games coming to the PC isn't exactly stellar. When Remedy's Quantum Break reached Windows, it was saddled with limitations that were partly dictated by the Universal Windows Platform's own limits, such as frame rate issues and an overall lack of features. You shouldn't run into those problems when Gears of War 4 rolls around, though. As part of a Eurogamer interview, The Coalition has revealed that the cover-based shooter will have ample PC-specific features. You'll get much deeper video settings that include dynamic resolutions, so your ultra-wide display won't go to waste. It'll also take advantage of many-core PC processors, higher-resolution textures and UWP's recently unlocked frame rates, offering a distinct visual advantage to playing on a brawny computer.

Source: Eurogamer (1), (2)

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News::Ben Heck powers on the Nintendo PlayStation's CD drive

When we got our hands on the legendary "Nintendo PlayStation" prototype last November, the device worked fine as a Sony-branded SNES console sans audio, whereas its CD drive -- the part that eventually led to the birth of the PlayStation -- failed to be recognized by the system. The device has since been handed over to hacking maestro Ben Heck, who has just revealed that he finally got the CD drive to power up. First of all, Ben cleaned the contact pins on the Super Disc driver cartridge to get its 256KB of extension RAM talking to the console, then he removed one of the mod wires on the logic board, which got the CD drive to make a ticking noise and even pulling its tray back in.

Source: The Ben Heck Show (YouTube)

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News::'Project Sonic' is coming to Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo NX

While Sonic fans will celebrate the series' 25th anniversary with a 2D throwback game in Sonic Mania, the official Sonic Team is working on something new. Tonight Sega dropped this teaser trailer for "Project Sonic," which is due for the 2017 holiday season on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's NX. Everything in the trailer is CG, but it does indicate that we can expect both a "Modern" and "Classic" Sonic to make an appearance.

Source: Sonic the Hedgehog (YouTube)

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News::'Sonic Mania' looks like the 2D sequel fans deserve

Sonic The Hedgehog is more than just a trash-talking Twitter account. To celebrate the franchise's 25 year anniversary, Sega is taking the series back to its 2D roots. Sonic Mania looks like it'll strip away all the extraneous bloat that's barnacled itself to the core gameplay since the Blue Blur's glory days, with a focus on what always worked so well. Namely, going fast, collecting rings and moving from left to right.

Source: Sonic the Hedgehog (Twitter)

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News::Deconstructing the legendary dungeons of 'Ocarina of Time'

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of those games that practically everyone has played and regards fondly. The landmark 1998 game was incredibly influential, and when folks put together lists of "best games of all time," it's usually within the top ten. Ocarina also marked the long-running franchise's move from a top-down view to full 3D thanks to the leap in power that the Nintendo 64 provided. But how do its dungeons stack up to previous games in the series? Specifically, A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening? YouTuber Mark Brown answers just that with a smart and thoughtful examination of the game.

Source: Game Maker's Toolkit (YouTube)

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News::3D-printed 'Pokémon Go' cover aims for you, obscures screen

Catching monsters in Pokémon Go sounds deceptively simple: find a creature, and throw an imaginary ball at it by swiping up on your phone screen. The reality is a lot more frustrating -- if you don't flick your finger in a perfectly straight line, the throw will curve to the side and miss. There are two solutions to this. You could practice, or, you could 3D-print a ridiculous phone-cover that takes away all of the challenge. Jon Clever chose to do the latter.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: My Mini Factory

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News::'Pokémon Go' has most first-week downloads in App Store history

Despite only being available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand for its first week, Apple has officially confirmed that Pokémon Go had the most downloads in its first week of any in the App Store's history. Considering that the game has launched in over 26 countries since then, including opening in Japan today, it might just keep breaking records.

Source: TechCrunch

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News::TBS is giving 'Overwatch' its own $300,000 tournament

Esports are taking over mainstream broadcast networks as an Overwatch tournament is coming to TBS.

Via: VentureBeat

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News::'Splatoon' isn't dead, but it's still saying goodbye

Today at 5am ET, the final Splatfest commenced for players of Nintendo's squid-kid shooter Splatoon. Players were asked to choose one of two teams representing the in-game hosts, Callie and Marie. At the end of the festival, members of the team with the highest score will get a prize, the losing team will get slightly less, and so will end Nintendo's active promotion of the game. It was inevitable, of course, as the game came out over a year ago. But Splatfests were one of the biggest ways for the company to foster community among Splatoon players, and their discontinuation is likely to bring about a sharp decline among active users. It's been a great run, but this is the end of an era for the game.

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News::NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1060 gives you gaming power on a budget

After debuting the fastest high-end and mid-range video cards ever seen, the GTX 1080 and 1070, we expected a lot from NVIDIA's new lower-tier entry, the $249 GeForce GTX 1060. And the stakes were raised even higher after AMD launched the Radeon RX 480, a $200 GPU that's fast enough to power VR headsets (and manage some decent 1440p gaming). NVIDIA claims the GTX 1060 is even faster than the GTX 980, its premium video card from 2014. That says quite a bit about how far we've come in the GPU world: You no longer have to break the bank for a decent amount of gaming muscle.

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News::Survival in 'We Happy Few' starts next week

We Happy Few was one of my coworker Jess Conditt's favorite games from E3 this year, and for good reason: its alt-history, drug-and-paranoia fueled take on a dystopia is unlike anything we've ever seen. But how did it all begin? With a question, according to an Xbox Wire post by developer Compulsion Games' Sam Abbott. The team was trying to figure out how to make a bigger game than its first (Contrast, which made its debut with the PlayStation 4) but wanted to keep its staff size from ballooning. That's why Compulsion turned to procedural generation -- akin to No Man's Sky -- for its 1964 English city.

Source: Xbox Wire

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News::'Pokemon Go' launches in Japan under golden arches

Despite being the true home of Pocket Monsters, until today, Japanese fans weren't able to download the smartphone phenomenon that is Pokemon Go. As rumored, Niantic Labs' game launches in Pikachu's homeland with a promotional tie-in with McDonald's (it's already offering Pokemon toys with its kids' meals in anticipation) and the app maker says more sponsored locales and events are on their way.

Ingress, the location-based game that preceded Pokemon Go, ran multiple promotions with companies including McDonald's and SoftBank in Japan -- as well as Jamba Juice in the US. Expect see plenty more sponsored locations in Pokemon Go (well, gotta make some money when the app is free to download), but what exactly do the sponsored locations entail? The good news is that the tie-in doesn't seem to change much at all -- and could even be good news for some players.

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News::NVIDIA's new top-end graphics card is the $1,200 Titan X

If you recently bought a $599 NVIDIA GTX 1080 in order to have the fastest rig around, I have bad news. NVIDIA has revealed the latest Titan X, a graphics card with 12GB of GDDR5X memory and 3,584 cores running at 1.53 GHZ, yielding an absurd 11 teraflops of performance. That easily bests the 8.9 teraflops of the GTX 1080, which itself put the last-gen Titan X to shame. You probably won't feel too bad, however, when we tell you that the new card has a price tag of $1,200, double that of its now-second-best sibling.

Source: NVIDIA

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News::Try passing 'The Turing Test' August 30th on Xbox One

Given video gaming's reliance on artificial intelligence and penchant for sci-fi themes, it's surprising that only now there's a game named after Alan Turing's famous A.I. test. Here we are though, with The Turing Test hitting Xbox One on August 30th. It's also been promised for Steam next month. A post on Xbox Wire makes the game sound an awful lot like Portal, to be honest. It's a first-person puzzler set in a sterile research facility on Jupiter's moon Europa wherein you'll use a gun of sorts to control A.I.-powered machines and "solve puzzles that only a human could solve." That's in addition to other tasks designed to bend your brain.

Source: Xbox Wire

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News::Nintendo's new NES commercial will toy with your nostalgia

Between the incredible popularity of Pokémon Go, game-themed sneakers and the NES Classic Mini console, Nintendo's nostalgia bombs show no signs of stopping. The gaming juggernaut is fueling that fire with a decidedly retro-style trailer for the new-old system, replete with the familiar "now you're playing with power" tagline from the '80s. It's a fun look at the analog past in our digital future. But upon closer inspection a few things pop out. For starters, folks who've played anything reissued via Virtual Console on Wii U or otherwise can attest that the games look dingy and dull.

Via: Ars Technica

Source: Nintendo (YouTube)

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News::'Overwatch' was June's best-selling game, even with a handicap

In case you haven't noticed, Overwatch is really, really popular. Popular enough to support millions of active players, host high-stakes professional competitive gaming drama and even inspire a graphic novel adaptation. All this, and the game's barely three months old. Still not convinced? Okay, we've got one more thing: Overwatch sold better than any other game in June -- and according to NPD Group, it won that top spot with a handicap.

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