Category Archives: Technology

Pokémon Champions is all about the battles

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Game Freak dropped a surprise trailer at today’s Pokémon Presents livestream for something called Pokémon Champions. It’s a dedicated battle sim, recalling the glory days of Pokémon Stadium for the N64. This means that Champions distills the franchise’s formula down to just battling, with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer.

To that end, the game is cross-platform, with the developer saying that players on “Nintendo Switch and mobile” will be able to duke it out. We don’t know what kind of roster the game itself will provide, but it integrates with the cloud-storage service Pokémon Home. People should be able to pull most of their favorite Pokémon from titles like Pokémon Go and recent mainline entries like Pokémon Sword and Shield. It also works with the spin-off Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The official press release, however, does note that there will be some restrictions when it comes to availability.

The gameplay should feel instantly familiar to anyone who has ever dabbled in the franchise, as the trailer description touts tried-and-true “mechanics such as Pokémon types, abilities and moves.” The footage even shows more niche mechanics like Mega Evolution and Terastallization, indicating that players may not be tied to the base-level Pokémon rule set.

There’s no release window yet. All we know is that it’s currently in development. Speaking of release dates, today’s livestream did reveal that Pokémon Legends: Z-A will be coming out by the end of the year for the Switch.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/pokemon-champions-is-all-about-the-battles-194527252.html?src=rss

Lazarus, the new anime from the creator of Cowboy Bebop, premieres April 5

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Adult Swim announced that it would air the next anime from Shinichirō Watanabe, the creator of Cowboy Bebop, way back in 2023, and as of today, we finally have a release date. Lazarus is set to premiere on April 5 at midnight on Adult Swim, and will be available to stream on Max the day after.

Lazarus follows a task force of agents, also called Lazarus, who are hunting a mad scientist that developed a miracle drug called “Hapna.” The drug was created to be a painkiller, but was also secretly designed to kill whoever takes it, three years after it’s first taken. Lazarus are trying to find the creator of Hapna to create a vaccine that prevents the drug’s negative side effects, and save the world in the process.

Based on the trailer, the series’ sci-fi setting, jazzy music (provided by Bonobo, Floating Points and Kamasi Washington) and shaggy-haired protagonist Axel all recall Watanabe’s previous series Cowboy Bebop, but Lazarus looks like it’ll have its own charms, too. The series’ action sequences are choreographed by by John Wick director Chad Stahelski and the story takes inspiration from the opioid crisis and climate change, according to a Polygon interview with Watanabe from October 2024.

Watanabe’s last series Carole & Tuesday premiered on Netflix in the US in 2019 and Netflix’s less-than-stellar live action remake of Cowboy Bebop came and went in 2021. The world is more than ready for some original strength Shinichirō Watanabe anime, and now it won’t have to wait much longer to get it.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/lazarus-the-new-anime-from-the-creator-of-cowboy-bebop-premieres-april-5-192314801.html?src=rss

One Man’s Battle To Save the Last Phone Box in His Village

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Derek Harris, born the same year as the iconic K6 red phone box he’s fighting to save, has launched what he calls a “David and Goliath” campaign against BT in the Norfolk village of Sharrington. The phone box is among 10 in North Norfolk marked for removal, having logged fewer than 10 calls last year. Harris argues the box remains vital in an area with poor mobile coverage, high elderly population, and proximity to an accident-prone stretch of the A148.

He recounts how it once saved a driver trapped in a snowstorm when mobile networks failed. BT’s regulator, Ofcom, protects phone boxes that meet specific criteria, including emergency usage and location in signal-poor areas. Of the UK’s original 100,000 phone boxes, only 14,000 remain functional, with 3,000 being the classic red design. For Harris, the fight transcends practicality. “It would be alive, wouldn’t it? I feel an empathy for a living thing,” he told The Guardian. “The nearer you get to the end, the more you want to see things live.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The PlayStation VR2 will get a drastic price cut, but that might not be enough

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Sony’s first PlayStation VR for the PlayStation 4 hit stores at the right price at the right time and ended up being one of VR’s biggest hits. The PlayStation 5’s PlayStation VR2? Not so much, unfortunately. In either an effort to clear unsold inventory, an attempt to revitalize the platform, or both, Sony has announced it’s dropping the price of the headset significantly.

Starting in March, the main SKU of the headset will drop from $550 to $400 in the US. Europe, the UK, and Japan will also see price cuts to 550 euros, 400 pounds, and 66,980 yen, respectively, as detailed on the PlayStation Blog. Strangely, the bundle that includes the game Horizon: Call of the Mountain (originally $600) will also drop to the same exact price. That’s welcome, but it’s also a little bit difficult not to interpret that as a sign that this is an attempt to empty inventory more than anything else.

The headset launched in early 2023 but has suffered from weak software support ever since—a far cry from the first PSVR, which had one of the strongest libraries of its time. It didn’t help that unlike the regular PlayStation 5, the PSVR2 was not backward-compatible with games released for its predecessor.

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TikTok’s revamped desktop version lets you livestream games in landscape view

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As TikTok’s fate in the US sits in limbo, the ByteDance-owned company figured now’s as good a time as any to spruce up the platform’s (previously lackluster) desktop experience. New features include a repositioned navigation bar, an Explore tab, a floating player for Chrome and — in a move that should catch Twitch’s attention — live game streaming in landscape orientation.

Before Thursday’s changes, TikTok’s web app layout included a search bar and shortcuts running across the top of the screen alongside links down the left side. Now, all of them have been consolidated into the vertical navigation bar to the left. The idea is to reduce distractions for more immersive viewing as the platform moves to compete with the likes of YouTube and Twitch.

Speaking of Twitch, TikTok now supports full-screen live game streaming in portrait and landscape modes. Before today, you could only do the latter using TikTok’s Live Studio app. When you stream live in landscape, desktop users will see that view by default, while mobile users can rotate their devices to watch in widescreen (like everyone did before TikTok came along).

Meanwhile, a floating player that keeps TikTok visible above your other windows is exclusive to Chrome for desktop.

There’s also a new Collections feature (similar to YouTube’s playlists), where you can organize your favorite videos in custom categories, making it easier to return to them later. Mobile app features moving to the desktop include the For You feed, where you’ll find algorithmically chosen content based on your interests, and the Explore page, which shows trending hashtags and popular content.

The changes to the desktop browser version are now available globally.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktoks-revamped-desktop-version-lets-you-livestream-games-in-landscape-view-185638187.html?src=rss

Now the overclock-curious can buy a delidded AMD 9800X3D, with a warranty

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The integrated heat spreaders put on CPUs at the factory are not the most thermally efficient material you could have on there, but what are you going to do—rip it off at the risk of killing your $500 chip with your clumsy hands?

Yes, that is precisely what enthusiastic overclockers have been doing for years, delidding, or decapping (though the latter term is used less often in overclocking circles), chips through various DIY techniques, allowing them to replace AMD and Intel’s common denominator shells with liquid metal or other advanced thermal interface materials.

As you might imagine, it can be nerve-wracking, and things can go wrong in just one second or one degree Celsius. In one overclocking forum thread, a seasoned expert noted that Intel’s Core Ultra 200S spreader (IHS) needs to be heated above 165° C for the indium (transfer material) to loosen. But then the glue holding the IHS is also loose at this temperature, and there is only 1.5–2 millimeters of space between IHS and surface-mounted components, so it’s easy for that metal IHS to slide off and take out a vital component with it. It’s quite the Saturday afternoon hobby.

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Pokemon Boss Believes Series Can Last Another 50 To 100 Years

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The boss of The Pokemon Company believes the series can last for at least another 50 years if it continues to innovate. From a report: First launched on Nintendo’s Game Boy in 1996, the video game has expanded into films, TV and toys to become one of the world’s highest-grossing media franchise. Most recently, the trading card game based on the cute creatures at the centre of its universe has seen a surge in popularity — but it has also brought scalpers and frauds to the hobby.

[…] Pokemon has continued to bring new fans to the franchise by expanding into anime, card games, movies and toys alongside its video game titles. CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara says fans now “span several generations” and believes “the biggest reason behind their success is the fact that Pokemon became a tool of communication.” Last weekend, about 13,000 Pokemon fans headed to the European leg of the International Championships at London’s Excel Centre. It demonstrates Mr Ishihara’s point that people have found their way into the series through various means.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Pokémon Legends: Z-A trailer reveals an absolutely massive version of Lumiose City

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Game Freak held a Pokémon Presents livestream today and we finally got a good look at Pokémon Legends: Z-A. The new trailer for the follow-up to the well-received Pokémon Legends: Arceus reveals the massive Lumiose City, which first appeared in Pokémon X and Y all the way back in 2013. It’s a bustling metropolis filled with skyscrapers, and a far cry from the serene countryside of Arceus.

The trailer spotlighted the three starter Pokémon players will be able to choose from. They include the gen 2 starters Chikorita and Totodile and the gen 5 starter Tepig. We also got a better look at the gameplay elements, and they seem like something of a hybrid between the real-time capture mechanics of Arceus and the old-school turn-based gameplay of traditional Pokémon titles.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A will also bring back Mega Evolutions, which turn regular pocket monsters into superpowered monstrosities with temporary stat boosts. This mechanic, just like Z-A’s location, was first introduced in Pokémon X and Y.

We have a bit longer to wait for this one. The game doesn’t come out until the end of the year. It’s also being released for the original Switch, despite the fact that the Switch 2 will most likely be on store shelves by that point. However, long-time readers may remember that the Switch 2 is backwards compatible, so it’ll run on both machines.

Game Freak also showed off a new game called Pokémon Champions, which is a cross-platform battle sim. Today’s Pokémon Presents livestream celebrated the 29th birthday of the franchise. Happy birthday, cute pets we force to live inside of tiny balls and fight to the death!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/new-pokemon-legends-z-a-trailer-reveals-an-absolutely-massive-version-of-lumiose-city-180550052.html?src=rss

Doctors report upticks in severe brain dysfunction among kids with flu

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Doctors around the US have anecdotally reported an uptick of children critically ill with the flu developing severe, life-threatening neurological complications, which can be marked by seizures, delirium, hallucinations, decreased consciousness, lethargy, personality changes, and abnormalities in brain imaging.

It’s long been known that the seasonal flu can cause such devastating complications in some children, many with no underlying medical conditions. But doctors have begun to suspect that this year’s flu season—the most severe in over 15 years—has taken a yet darker turn for children. On February 14, for instance, health officials in Massachusetts released an advisory for clinicians to be on alert for neurological complications in pediatric flu patients after detecting a “possible increase.”

With the anecdata coming in, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed all the data it has on neurological complications from flu this year and seasons dating back to 2010. Unfortunately, existing surveillance systems for flu do not capture neurological complications in pediatric cases overall—but they do capture such detailed clinical data when a child dies of flu.

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The Reality of Long-Term Software Maintenance

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When developers boast “I could write that in a weekend,” they’re missing the painful reality that haunts software maintainers for years. In a candid blog post, Construct developer Ashley explains why maintaining large software projects is a burden most programmers fail to appreciate. “Writing the initial code for a feature is only a fraction of the work,” Ashley explains, estimating it represents just “25% of the total work” in Construct’s 750,000-line codebase. The rest? A grinding cycle of “testing, diagnosing and fixing bugs, optimizing performance, upgrading it to work with other changes, refactoring, customer support, writing documentation and similarly revising the documentation over time.”

Ashley describes how accepting code contributions feels like someone offering to build you a free extension — initially attractive until the roof starts leaking years later and the original builder is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, your tenants (users) are furious, and you’re stuck with “no good options.” The post recounts Construct’s own bruises: a community-contributed storage plugin still causing compatibility headaches a decade later, and third-party libraries that became maintenance nightmares after their creators vanished.

These experiences explain why seasoned maintainers eye large code contributions with deep suspicion rather than gratitude. “If you suggest some software project uses some code — even a small amount — will you be there in literally 10 year’s time sorting out all the issues that arise from it?” Ashley asks. “Usually the answer is no.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Portal Randomized feels like playing Portal again for the first time

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For most modern players, the worst thing about a video game classic like Portal is that you can never play it again for the first time. No matter how much time has passed since your last playthrough, those same old test chambers will feel a bit too familiar if you revisit them today.

Over the years, community mods like Portal Stories: Mel and Portal: Revolution have tried to fix this problem with extensive work on completely new levels and puzzles. Now, though, a much simpler mod is looking to recapture that “first time” feeling simply by adding random gameplay modifiers to Portal‘s familiar puzzle rooms.

The Portal Randomized demo recently posted on ModDB activates one of eight gameplay modifiers when you enter one of the game’s first two test chambers. The results, while still a little rough around the edges, show how much extra longevity can be wrung from simple tweaks to existing gameplay.

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