Gaming

The TAC-2 (totally accurate controller) first launched 43 years ago for Atari and Commodore personal computers. It’s still in demand today among retro enthusiasts, so the creators of the C64 Ultimate are bringing it back starting at $49.99 with a stronger steel joystick shaft and a bunch of new color options.

The $180 Razer Naga V3 Pro MMO mouse has mouse buttons under three fingers instead of two. The entire ring finger rest is a button. The rest has been polarizing for years — the original Naga even let you remove it — but the new button is optional. You can lock it with a switch.

The update adds 190 new cards, some new deaths, and even a new secret ending to Nerial and Devolver Digital’s Tinder-like adventure game.

No extra download needed, though there will be a day one patch, Eurogamer reports. Still, it’s good news in light of Sony’s recent announcement that it will stop making physical discs for new games starting in 2028.

It’s been nearly six years since Nintendo stopped making the 3DS but that hasn’t preevnted the console from learning new tricks. If you’ve got a 3DS that can run homebrew apps you can turn the clamshell into a wireless remote for controlling Spotify using files and instructions you’ll find on GitHub.

After acquiring the artist portfolio site ArtStation and Sketchfab in 2021, Epic announced that they will be taken over by Kitbash, which sells 3D assets for games. The changes are happing as Epic “continues to prioritize building Unreal Engine 6, Fortnite, the developer ecosystem, and the Epic Games Store,” according to the company.

Hello Games founder Sean Murray wrote articles for Xbox Wire and the PlayStation Blog to mark the anniversary milestone. In the PlayStation blog post, he notes that players have explored “less than 1% of the planets” in the game and says that the studio is “busy cooking” on its next title, Light No Fire.

Brazilian speedrunner LeKukie recently grabbed the Super Mario Bros. world record, and players are now 0.1 seconds away from a “perfect” run, according to a fascinating video reported on by Polygon.

Public Eye is a hidden object detective game that presents you with AI-generated visuals across a 10-episode story. It comes from Wolf Games, the same AI games studio behind the Law & Order: Clue Hunter title Peacock added to its app earlier this year.

The big sales are well deserved; House House and Panic’s excellent co-op multiplayer title, which was released last Tuesday, is my favorite game of the year so far.

Xbox and PC gamers in Australia are reportedly being notified that they’ll soon need to verify their age before purchasing 18+ rated apps and games on both the Xbox Store and Microsoft Store. Existing purchases and downloads won’t be affected. Microsoft has a September 9th deadline to comply with Australian online safety rules, or risk facing an almost AUS$50 million fine (about $34.9 million in US monies).

It’s rare that a video alone can make me motion sick, but yikes. This mod from RaYRoD TV puts you in the driver’s seat and is free to download. RaYRod has already put together similar mods for Star Fox 64, Sonic Robo Blast 2, and more. But something tells me this is the one most likely to make you lose your lunch.

“I can say that the level of pre-orders is unprecedented and astonishing, and we’re very grateful for that,” Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said on Friday’s earnings call, according to Variety. An “extended look” at GTA VI will stream on August 27th.

Quake: Dawn of the Machine includes 19 “all-new maps across a cohesive campaign” as well as “a brand-new soundtrack, hidden secrets, a dedicated episode hub, and an all-new deathmatch map.” It’s available now.

That’s Toby Fox writing about the fandom around Deltarune. He says he doesn’t follow theories because “I already know what my game is.” But he also recognizes that theorizing is part of the fun: “It’s not an exaggeration to say that thinking about this game can be just as much of the experience as playing it is. Anyone who keeps thinking about it, like I have, gets my highest blessing.“

Unlike many retro handhelds that require access to ROM files, Hyperkin’s SupaBoy plays original Super Nintendo and Super Famicom cartridges from all regions on its 4.3-inch display. After 14 years the console is finally coming to Europe alongside two new color options: bright red crimson and transparent prime.

Yes, it’s bigger than the 3.8-liter Steam Machine and the 4.5-liter Framework Desktop, but nicnic’s DIY desktop oozes style — and fits Valve’s open-source “Inkterface” e-paper status screen. If you don’t care for slime green, why not print your own in any color you like? The files are free.

The game launches on Switch 2 on October 27th. Microsoft says there will be a “digital upgrade path” for players who own the game on the original Switch, though it’s planning to share more details on that later.

VILE: Exhumed had been banned last year following pressures from payment processors affecting Valve and other platforms, though the game was made free to download from its website. From the website, you can now sign up to be notified about an upcoming CD-ROM release, as reported by Polygon. It will cost $9.99 plus taxes and shipping when it’s available.

And it’s got its own little kickstand to prop it up separately?? WANT. Check out more photos of NefariousnessWhole25’s prototype (and a few other cool Steam Machine faceplates from Reddit) in our gallery below.

The new Pokémon book Pokécology has lots of fun details about various pocket monsters, but as Bulbapedia notes, some of the math might be off. I don’t know enough to check the numbers in the thread myself, but I know enough about Pokémon to say that maybe Spheal is just being a goofy guy.

Xbox Insiders will be able to choose if they want game chat and party chat audio in their captures, according to a blog post. Players can individually control if their voice is included in a capture.

Big Walk came out this week, and it seems like a hoot if you have friends or family to play with. It’s $14.99 (down from $19.99) on Steam. Peak, which popularized the “friendslop” subgenre of co-op games, is even cheaper at Fanatical. You can grab the game for $3.75 (usually $8) today.

Lenovo hasn’t replied to us yet, but we can see Lenovo’s BIOS page no longer shows the “N3CN42WW” version, only the earlier “N3CN40WW.” Earlier this week, PC Gamer reported that “N3CN42WW” was leaving some users’ devices stuck on a black screen.

The newly privatized company is now saddled with $18 billion of debt, with annual interest payments of about $1.8 billion. Big changes are coming to justify the deal.

It’s launching a new B550 X series “engineered to be the most powerful refresh of the AM4 platform,” which is now 10 years old, as PC Gamer reports. The new motherboards were designed around the Ryzen 7 8500X3D that AMD recently relaunched as component shortages continue to drive up prices.

The humble drawing app has gotten several useful upgrades over the past few years, but Mark Russinovich, the Microsoft Azure CTO, has found a way for Paint to play Doom… kind of. Instead of actually running the game, DoomPaint loads rendered frames into the app from the Windows clipboard at a very playable 35fps.

The company has been on a pretty solid run, and it looks like that could continue with the next Fire Emblem. Nintendo just showed off 20 minutes of Fortune’s Weave, getting into both the continent-spanning story and the nitty gritty of the strategy combat. It hits the Switch 2 on September 17th.