Author: Kyle Orland

Since a prototype of the fabled, unreleased SNES-CD (aka the "Nintendo PlayStation") was first found and disassembled last year, we've learned enough about this one-of-a-kind piece of hardware to actually emulate homebrew games as if they were running on its CD-ROM drive. The prototype console itself, though, has never been fully functional—it couldn't generate sound, the CD-ROM drive wouldn't spin up, and, after a recent trip to Hong Kong, it actually stopped generating a picture.

That's when the prototype's owners, Terry and Dan Diebold, went to famed gaming hardware hacker Ben Heck. They want this piece of gaming history up and running again. Heck documented his efforts in a fascinating two-part YouTube series that reveals a lot about the system and what makes it tick.

Terry Diebold starts off talking about how he first discovered the prototype SNES while boxing up an estate sale, where it was sold in a lot alongside CDs, cups, saucers, and other knickknacks. After paying $75 for the entire lot, Diebold recalls, "if you break it down to everything I did buy, I probably paid a nickel for it."

(credit: Aurich x Getty)

Back in March, Microsoft announced that it would allow generic cross-platform play on its Xbox Live network. The move was essentially a public challenge for Sony to similarly open up the PlayStation Network, allowing for multiplayer matches involving more than one type of console for what would essentially be the first time.

Now, some major game developers are stressing that any technical hurdles to this cross-platform play have been overcome. Sony's walled-garden policy is the final obstacle to allowing play between Xbox and PlayStation systems, they say. "Right now, we're literally at the point where all we need is the go-ahead on the Sony side and we can, in less than a business day, turn [cross-platform play] on and have it up and working, no problem," Jeremy Dunham, vice president of Rocket League developer Psyonix told IGN in a recent interview. "It'd literally take a few hours to propagate throughout the whole world, so really we're just waiting on the permission to do so... It could be tomorrow, it could be longer than that. We just don't know—we're anxiously awaiting that, just like the rest of our fans."

Rocket League was one of the first games that announced cross-platform play between the Xbox One and Windows 10 (well before Microsoft's recent Play Anywhere initiative), so it's not that surprising that the title is ready to link in with the PS4 as well. But The Witcher maker CD Projekt says it's also simply awaiting Sony's go-ahead for a cross-platform version of the upcoming Gwent card game.

Two men who were arrested last year for making online threats and bringing guns and ammunition to a Boston Pokémon card game tournament have been sentenced to two years each in prison and two years of probation afterward. The Boston Globe reports that James Stumbo and Kevin Norton pled guilty to unlawful possession of the guns and nearly 300 rounds of ammunition found in their car outside the Hynes Convention Center event last August.

Stumbo and Norton, both well-known members of the high-level Pokémon card playing community, were arrested after driving from Iowa to Boston for the event as well as posting messages on Facebook showing off the guns and threatening to "kill the competition." Another message stated that "my AR-15 says that you lose." Event security was warned about the postings and notified the police before informing attendees of the issue.

Miller's attorney, Robert LeRoy, tried to downplay the pair's online postings as "adolescent stuff" that "wasn’t threatening in any capacity." He also defended their actions by contrasting Iowa's relatively lax gun laws with the stricter regulations in Massachusetts. “They basically always drive around with loaded guns in the trunk in Iowa,” he said, according to the Globe report.

For a while now, a certain subset of authenticity-obsessed nostalgic NES player has been disappointed with noticeable color-matching issues and blurriness evident in Nintendo's official Virtual Console NES re-releases on the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS. That problem led many to worry that the recently announced NES Classic Edition mini-console would suffer from the same issues.

Today, though, Nintendo released an online trailer for the $60 plug-and-play system. Amid a lot of '80s style marketing glitz, the video briefly showed some NES Classic Edition games in action, displaying what seems to be much crisper and more accurate HD emulation of the NES cartridges you remember.

You can see the improvements directly in the above gallery, with the NES Classic version on the left and the Wii U Virtual Console version on the right (images were sourced from official Nintendo trailers whenever possible to avoid issues with capture fidelity). As you can see, the NES Classic Edition versions are altogether brighter and crisper, with solid colors and well defined corners on the square pixels. It's the kind of high-fidelity ROM recreation that players on PC-based emulators are already used to, but Virtual Console players may be surprised by it (especially if they last played these games through the low-definition output of the Wii).

Is there a patent on the formula that helped generate this beautiful scene?

With No Man's Sky's highly anticipated release just weeks away, a Dutch company is objecting to the game's alleged use of a patented "superformula" to generate landscapes and terrain.

The brewing conflict, first reported earlier this week by Dutch newspaper Telegraaf (Google translation), centers on a geometric transformation formula developed by University of Antwerp professor Johan Gielis in the early 2000s.

The formula's penchant for creating naturalistic shapes with gentle curves using just a few parameters led some to nickname it a "superformula." Gielis received a patent on the superformula in the European Union in 2002 and a US patent was granted in 2009 (in addition to a few other related patents). He then founded Genicap to monetize the formula by "develop[ing] innovative technologies and products for today’s and tomorrow’s world," according to its corporate webpage.

Hackers have made it relatively simple to see what monsters are lurking nearby in Pokémon Go. (credit: Github / PokemonGoMap)

One of Pokémon Go's defining characteristics is that you never quite know the precise location of nearby Pokémon, since the game only gives an imprecise "radar" with general distances. A group of hackers has set out to change that situation, exploiting Pokémon Go's server responses to create an easy-to-use map that reveals those hidden Pokémon in your immediate area.

The hack is the result of efforts by the PokemonGoDev subreddit, which is working to reverse engineer an API using the data sent and received by the Pokémon Go servers. So far, the group has managed to parse the basic server responses sent by the game, which can be acquired through an SSL tunnel and deciphered using relatively basic protocol buffers.

From there, a little bit of Python scripting work can convert the usually hidden data on nearby Pokémon locations into an easy-to-use Google Maps picture of your augmented reality surroundings. There are step-by-step installation instructions for anyone with even a basic understanding of a command line, as well as recent attempts at a self-contained desktop app and Web-based app for those who want a one-step Poké-mapping solution.

OK Pikachu, get in the ball. Just get in the ball. GET IN THE DAMN BALL YOU FREAKING ELECTRIC RAT!

At the early levels, it's relatively easy to advance in Pokémon Go without spending any money. Provided you're not in a Pokémon-light rural area (or, er, a black neighborhood), it's pretty simple to just keep farming Pidgeys and nearby Pokéstops and gyms for the resources you need to watch your in-game numbers go up.

Now that the game has been out for more than a week in many regions, though, some of the first players to hit the game's higher levels are running into a wall that's halting that easy advancement. In a detailed Reddit thread discussing his "late game" progress in Pokémon Go, user Riggnaros discusses a few ways the game grinds progress to a halt once players hit level 25 or so.

For instance, Riggnaros says, once you reach a level in the "mid 20s," low-powered Pokémon you encounter in the game start to "have an abnormally high chance to evade capture." That means players will need to start wasting a lot more Pokéballs to capture the most abundant monsters, which are key to gaining the experience points needed for that next level. Getting enough Pokéballs to keep up with all those escaping Pokémon means spending real money or spending inordinate amounts of time farming free Pokéballs from those slowly refilling Pokéstops.

After leaking and then confirming news of the slim, white, Xbox One redesign just over a month ago, Microsoft today announced that its Xbox One S console hardware refresh will hit retailers on August 2. A 2TB system will cost $399 and will be available in "limited quantities" in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Europe on that day. Versions with 1TB and 500GB hard drives will be available for $349 and $299, respectively, at a later date.

Besides being 40 percent smaller than the original Xbox One (and sporting an internal power supply rather than that unsightly power brick), the new redesign adds support for 4K Blu-rays and streaming videos, as well as high-dynamic range (HDR) color support in certain upcoming games. The new system also comes with a slightly redesigned controller, featuring a textured rear grip and bluetooth support.

The Xbox One S shouldn't be confused with Microsoft's upcoming Scorpio update, also announced last month and promised for a holiday 2017 release. That system will be capable of true 4K gaming, as well as VR support, while being fully compatible with all existing previous Xbox One games, Microsoft says.

The fabled SNES-CD peripheral may have never actually made it to market in the mid-'90s as planned. But that hasn't stopped homebrew developers from utilizing the magic of emulation to make software designed to run on the near-mythical "Nintendo PlayStation."

It's been a long and weird road to get to this surprising point in emulation history. After a seemingly one-of-a-kind "SFX-100" prototype of the SNES-CD was found and disassembled last year, an apparent working version of the system's BIOS found its way to the Internet in March.

Armed with that BIOS file (and some additional sleuthing on components, memory, and IO mapping for the CD-ROM add-on), the latest version of low-level SNES emulator no$sns is actually able to simulate how games would have run on the SNES-CD prototype.

If you're thinking about buying Sony's PlayStation VR when it launches this October, you should know that you don't absolutely need a pair of hand-tracking PlayStation Move controllers to go with the headset. Sony recently confirmed to Eurogamer that "all PlayStation VR titles will support DualShock 4 controllers. However, some game experiences will be enhanced with the use of peripherals such as Move or the recently announced Aim controller."

On the one hand, this makes PlayStation VR that much more accessible to the existing PlayStation 4 audience, which is already guaranteed to have a DualShock 4 controller to use with the $399 headset. VR users will still need to add a $50 PlayStation Camera accessory to enable positional head-tracking (provided they don't already own one), but they won't have to invest in the full $500 bundle that includes two Move controllers.

On the other hand, the DualShock support requirement means PSVR games like Job Simulator and Fantastic Contraption, which were originally designed for the HTC Vive's hand-tracking controllers, will likely have to be redesigned to support a standard handheld controller as well. That could lead to some awkward, button-and-joystick control schemes being grafted on to games that were made with true hand-tracking in mind.