Month: December 2020

A man seeking revenge for the death of his father attempts a risky museum heist in Lupin, a new series premiering on Netflix in January starring French actor and comedian Omar Sy. The series is a contemporary reimagining of a classic character in French detective fiction, Arsène Lupin, a gentleman thief and master of disguise who was essentially the French equivalent of Sherlock Holmes.

Suave, stylish, and sophisticated, Lupin is the creation of Maurice Leblanc, who based the character partly on a French burglar/anarchist. Leblanc was also familiar with the gentleman thief featured in the work of Octave Mirbeau as well as E.W. Hornung's famed gentleman thief, A.J. Raffles, and he also knew about Rocambole, a character whose adventures were recounted in a series of stories published between 1857 and 1870 by Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail.

Relentlessly pursued by a detective named Ganimard, Lupin is captured stealing a woman's jewels on board a ship. Although he is imprisoned, he ultimately escapes before standing trial and goes on to pull off many other colorful heists. In a June 1906 story, "Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late," Lupin meets the aging detective, although for legal reasons—Arthur Conan Doyle objected—the name was changed to "Herlock Sholmes" when the story was included in the first book of collected stories. The Sholmes character appeared in a few more stories later on. All told, Leblanc wrote 17 novels and 39 novellas featuring Lupin.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a new deal on Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service, as new users can currently purchase a three-month subscription for $1. Microsoft has traditionally offered the first month of its game subscription service for $1, though subsequent months typically cost $15 each. Note that "new subscribers" means completely new in this case, as anyone who has subscribed to Game Pass in the past is not eligible for the discount. Microsoft said in a blog post on Monday that the deal would be available for a "limited time."

For the unfamiliar, Game Pass Ultimate includes both the console and PC versions of Microsoft's Game Pass service—which packages a few hundred downloadable games in a Netflix-like bundle for one monthly fee—alongside its Xbox Live Gold service, which is still required to access the online features of most Xbox console games. Recently, the company has also added the ability to stream Xbox games through the cloud on Android phones, as well as a subscription to EA's Play service.

Generally speaking, the consensus is that Game Pass has become one of the better values in gaming. This is largely because Microsoft has been more aggressive than competitors like Sony's PlayStation Now about including high-profile games in the service: all of the recent games the company itself has published are included—covering big franchises like Halo, Forza, Minecraft, and Gears, among others—as are a growing number of worthwhile games from outside developers. The latter group ranges from "triple-A" titles like Destiny 2, Control, and The Outer Worlds to buzzy smaller-scale games like Celeste, Outer Wilds, and Spiritfarer. Future titles from the recently purchased Elder Scrolls- and Fallout-makers Bethesda will be there, too, though existing games like Doom Eternal are already onboard.