Nuclear Monster

  • Daniel Perez hasn’t given a final verdict yet, but has a review in-progress of the new Xbox One S that is out today:

    When the original Xbox One was revealed, there was quite the uproar as to its size and design. Microsoft didn’t change the overall shape of the Xbox One S, but what it did change makes it look less like my grandmother’s VCR. It’s smaller, white, and offers an interesting use of textures to various parts of its body. While the holes located at the front of the console appear to be for aesthetics, the holes surrounding its perimeter are obviously for venting purposes as I can spot smaller vents that aim directly into them.

    It also finally did away with the infamous Xbox power brick as its power supply has been squeezed into the new console’s body. Without a power brick to weigh it down, the Xbox One S feels more portable than ever when combined with its reduction in size and weight. It also has done away with a dedicated Kinect port, which we’re sure won’t surprise many considering how Microsoft has been slowly steering away from motion-based gaming.

    It also displays 4K UHD Blu-ray discs as well as upscaling games and other videos to 4K if you have the appropriate display. It sounds like a good upgrade, until you realize that the other new Xbox, codenamed Scorpio, will be out next year with a healthier tech upgrade that actually has more powerful guts than this Xbox One S.

  • New Retro Arcade: Neon

    The virtual arcade of the 80’s and 90’s, New Retro Arcade: Neon, has been released to Windows via Steam for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive HMDs as well as regular displays. New Retro Arcade is a 3D arcade that lets you hook ROMs into virtual arcade cabinets as well as virtual consoles. It also has other attractions built-in like skeeball (invented in Philadelphia!), basketball machines, air hockey, and more. The game supports multiplayer, but ROMs won’t be shared to other players so you’re limited to the attractions. You can also modify the arcade to swap out cabinet artwork that matches the games you install along with changing the other in-game art and music.

    I played New Retro Arcade back when it was a tech demo, and there is a free demo available on Steam if you didn’t get the chance. Virtual spaces have always been interesting to me since back in the day my friends worked on an avatar chat system called OpenVerse.

  • cannon brawlin

    Cannon Brawl was released way back in 2014 for Windows, Mac, and Linux on Steam. I loved the castle-destroying action and now Cannon Brawl game has come to Playstation 4 today, and will be out on Xbox One this Friday. If you haven’t tried it, you should not miss Cannon Brawl.

  • Patrick Klepek:

    It is with a heavy heart that I begin to say my goodbyes, readers. It’s been an honor to be part of Team Kotaku for the last two years.

    Today is my last day at Kotaku. Tomorrow, a new journey begins. Though I can’t talk about where I’m headed yet, if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know soon. I’m staying in journalism, building on my work over the past decade, but my byline will appear elsewhere. It wasn’t an easy decision, a sign I’d made a good decision to start writing for Kotaku in the first place. You were part of that, too.

    I’ve been lucky enough to work at some truly memorable places over the years, but my time at the last two stops, Giant Bomb and Kotaku, have been the most gratifying yet. In various forms, from reporting to podcasts, I’ve done my best work because I’ve been surrounded by people who pushed me to do better.

    Can’t wait to see what Patrick does next. It has been entertaining to watch his career go from a new guy at 1UP to an extremely well-regarded writer for Giant Bomb and Kotaku.

  • Bash on Ubuntu on Windows

    Windows 10 has been out for a year as a free upgrade from Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. Excepting some hacky workarounds the upgrade is no-longer available for free to users. Brett Howse has an article with the major changes that are available today in the Windows 10 anniversary update.

    The biggest feature for me is the awkwardly named Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. Microsoft has a long history of picking poor names for their UNIX subsystems including the awkwardly named Services for Unix. Services for Unix was Microsoft’s hedge of interoperability to please third-party businesses, but it was always hindered by Microsoft’s desire to compete with Linux. The options to install and update applications were limited to what you could compile because SFU didn’t include any kind of package management system. The only choices left were either shelling out to a Linux machine, cygwin (which is a huge pain in the ass), dual-booting, or installing Linux in a virtual machine.

    Bash on Ubuntu on Windows been available in a preview form to beta testers (Windows Insiders) for a while, it’s a more complete version of command-line utilities and an environment you would commonly get on a Linux desktop or server developed with Ubuntu‘s owner, Canonical. Though you still have to jump through some hoops to install it, it’s very promising that BoUoW includes Ubuntu’s package management system and  native Linux command-line utilities that haven’t been recompiled for Windows.

    I hope this extends to GUI applications some day, but the focus for Microsoft this time is on attracting developers.