Today must be a day to talk about remasters. Double Fine has released Full Throttle Remastered, it’s the classic 1995 adventure from Tim Schafer and co at LucasArts available for anyone who didn’t get a chance to play it, or hasn’t seen it in 20 years.
It’s on a bunch of digital platforms for Windows (Steam, gog, Humble) as well as the Playstation 4 for $15.
Blizzard is working on a remastered version of their sci-fi RTS progenitor, Starcraft and the expansion beloved for competitive multiplayer, Brood War, but first they’ve gone and made the original versions of the games free as their patch notes for version 1.18 of the almost 20 year old game spell out. Those patch notes also contain links to download the game for Windows and macOS.
The remastered versions of Starcraft and Brood War are planned to be released this summer. When they are, they’ll support widescreen modern resolutions, cloud saves for the campaign, and other modern goodies from Blizzard’s gaming network that was once called Battle.net but is now just called Blizzard. The Starcraft website has more information on what’s coming in that remaster and screenshots of what it’ll look like.
What happens when Nintendo launches a very successful and cheap console a few months before releasing the Switch hybrid console/handheld? Jose Otero:
Nintendo will discontinue the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition and the last shipments will go out to retailers throughout this month.
I bet that Nintendo looked at the Classic as a mistake. It was too cheap and attractive to players as a $60 machine that got hacked immediately to enable playing every NES game anyone ever wanted. The Classic also served as a distraction for buyers from the Switch and its inevitable virtual console online shop selling you the same 30 games at $6 or $10 a pop instead of about $2.
Nintendo has never done a good job with serving their old games up on their new consoles, why start now?
Seriously crazy stuff going on with PSN account resellers in this article from Patrick Klepek:
A few weeks ago, Mic Fok got a weird email. The person writing it claimed they’d been playing Overwatch on a PlayStation Network account for more than six months, but the password had changed recently. But why would Fok know anything about this random dude’s account? As it turns out, they’d “purchased” Fok’s account through a website called PSN Games, one of many businesses trafficking in the selling of cheap games by sketchy means.
The individual who bought Fok’s account was an Overwatch fan named Bennett Eglinton.
“Hello I purchased overwatch from psngames.org and this email was used as the account info,” reads an email from Eglinton, sent in early March. “However the password I was given for the PlayStation Network sign in no longer works. Did you happen to change it? Can I get the new info.”
As Patrick mentions in the article, this is a great reason to use unique passwords everywhere with a password manager. I use and recommend 1Password despite them switching from standalone purchases to a subscription. You should also use the free Have I been pwned? service to check all of your email addresses for public account credential leaks.
It’s the Ken Burns effect but for millennials. Joanna Stern has a guide to Clips on the WSJ:
Hang-gliding over the Swiss Alps, or just cleaning your dryer’s lint tray? Either way, the titans of tech want you to record a snippet of it. Then they want you to slap on some emojis and text. Then they want you to share it with the world.
Snapchat started it. Instagram copied it. Facebook really copied it. Even Microsoft’s doing it. And now… Apple. Available Thursday for the iPhone and iPad, Apple’s Clips app lets you shoot, edit and share mobile-friendly mini-movies. If you have iOS 10.3 (the latest version), you can download it from the App Store.
