Author: Sam Machkovech

Hello, Xbox Design Lab box!

Back in the day, if you wanted a specially colored game controller, too bad. Gamers were stuck with the system default (unless you bought a cruddy third-party pad, of course). The N64 was the first system to buck that trend, launching 20 years ago with six default controller colors. This many years (and consoles) later, the novelty has worn off.

Or, has it? At this year's E3, Microsoft announced that players could head to Xbox Design Lab to really customize their Xbox One controllers by letting them pick seven discrete color options spread across its body and buttons. We had a chance to see a few sample pads during the conference, and now we've gone and gotten ourselves a pair of fully customized pads.

As a result, we've observed exactly how Xbox Design Lab's $80-$90 controllers look from Web-store interface to couch-combat reality—but we've also gotten to see their biggest Bluetooth-related shortcoming for now.

Vizio and LeEco's chairmen shake hands to confirm their deal on Tuesday. (credit: Vizio)

At a Los Angeles press conference, TV and sound bar manufacturer Vizio announced that it will be acquired by Chinese electronics firm LeEco for $2 billion. The Tuesday event included a lengthy statement from company founder and CEO William Wang, who recalled the Irvine, California, TV manufacturer's ten-year history before ironically calling the company's success story "an American dream."

"I have mixed feelings," Wang admitted before handing the microphone back to Vizio's new owners. "As the owner and father of Vizio, I'm really reluctant to let it go. But as a CEO and chairman, I know this is the right decision to make for my hardworking employees and loyal shareholders."

Wang will still be connected to Vizio, however, by becoming chairman and CEO of Inscape, a separate business that will carry Vizio's controversial torch of mining TV viewers' data for advertising and other data-driven services. Wang will be a 51-percent stakeholder in Inscape, with LeEco owning the other 49 percent and licensing Inscape's offerings for Vizio products for 10 years. The deal is still pending regulatory approval, LeEco notes, and the Chinese company may pay an additional $250 million to Vizio and its shareholders based on sales performance in the years to come.

SEATTLE—Terry and Dan Diebold's rise to nerd fame hinges on a single piece of hardware, but when the kit is this good, that's all you need. The father and son are proud owners of the only known Nintendo PlayStation console, a hybrid Super Famicom and disc-drive system that was co-developed by Nintendo and Sony in 1991.

Thanks to Internet posts, we've seen the system's original, warehouse-related discovery, and we've seen a mighty impressive teardown thanks to hacker extraordinaire Ben Heck. But nothing compares to seeing the "SNES-CD" hardware up close, which Ars got to do at the latest installment of the Seattle Retro Gaming Expo.

Father and son Diebold said this was the latest stop in their nationwide tour of various nerd events to show off their drool-worthy discovery. They're plenty aware of public interest in the system, and to prove that, they also had a laptop running an emulated version of Super Boss Gaiden. That homebrew game was very recently designed with hopes of it one day running on the Nintendo PlayStation (meaning, it's designed for the weird system's specs). Still, to clarify: the game was not running on the Nintendo PlayStation.

Something wrong, captain?

The newest Star Trek film—if you're counting, it's the 13th in the series and third in the reboot timeline—opens with a modern take on the '60s TV series' Tribbles. A tribunal of CGI creatures, which look like a cross between Muppets and the Murloc specimens from World of Warcraft, surround James T. Kirk and argue over his latest diplomatic gesture. It's classic Trek. Kirk wheels and deals, making sense of a newly discovered world, and he clearly keeps one eye out for plan B. He's a modern conquistador, flashing a smile and proving likable when the weird scene doesn't pan out his way.

It's a good start for Star Trek Beyond. But if you find yourself hating the film by its end, you can blame this opening—a cute, energetic, and personality-loaded scene when isolated—for getting your hopes up about Justin "Fast & Furious" Lin's first directorial take on Trek. More so than the other reboot films, Star Trek Beyond does the series a great disservice by focusing on the known and thus leaving discovery, personality, and stakes in the dust.

Live long and plot-less

After the opening sequence plays out, Kirk narrates in his captain's log about feeling bored with the day-to-day Enterprise grind. It's his 966th day on a five-year, deep-space mission, and he says it's "a challenge to feel grounded in zero gravity." (He also complains about life feeling "episodic," the first of the film's many on-the-nose quips.)

"The counter-gamblers win." (For now.) (credit: Photo: Steam)

Valve Software, the maker of the Steam online gaming service, sent cease-and-desist notices to 23 online gambling sites on Tuesday in a move to quell complaints about the service's "marketplace" system.

"Your commercial use of Steam accounts is unlicensed and in violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement," Valve general counsel Karl Quackenbush wrote in the letter. "You should immediately cease and desist further use of your Steam accounts for any commercial purpose." Quackenbush then advised the recipients that they had 10 days to comply, after which the company will pursue "all available remedies"—including account termination.

The letter began spreading on social media after it was sent to all 23 sites in question, which included CSGO Lotto and CSGO Lounge, and Valve has confirmed the letter's authenticity to Ars. These sites have racked up headlines as of late by gaming Steam's "marketplace" functionality—and turning some popular in-game items, like cosmetic "skins" for characters and weapons, into veritable casino chips. While Steam itself does not contain direct gambling mechanisms, third-party gambling sites have found simple ways to exploit how Steam works so that players can dump skins into a depository, engage in various games, and then collect more skins (which often have material value by way of eBay reselling) or so that players can trade their accumulated skins outright at these sites for direct payouts of money.

While Nintendo's Pokémon Company subsidiary has enjoyed most of the company's good-news headlines in the past two weeks, the company at large has more changes in the horizon, and another "real-world" initiative—teased back in May—is now coming to fruition: an official Nintendo restaurant.

Say hello to the Kirby Café. The Japan-only (for now) restaurant chain was teased last month, but its existence received a full, formal unveiling Wednesday morning in its home country, all revolving around the company's 26-year-old puffball character. The café's first location will open in Osaka on August 5, with another location to follow in Tokyo "soon."

Fans will be able to purchase pastries, drinks, and a mix of noodle and teriyaki menu items. Some of those merely have a character from the game stuck onto the plate as a sticker, while others are shaped to resemble characters and other game content, including Kirby-shaped custard cakes, a cup of soup that looks just like the Maxim Tomato item, and the Whispy Woods tree's face apparently being made out of bread, meat, and beans.

WWE wrestler Chavo Guerrero, Jr (right) is among the 53 plaintiffs in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in Connecticut on Monday. (credit: Getty Images / Ethan Miller )

Dozens of former professional wrestlers have filed a proposed class-action civil suit against World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), alleging that the organization should be held accountable for "long-term neurological injuries" that the performers suffered while body-slamming and pile-driving each other throughout the decades.

The 214-page suit, filed in United States District Court in Connecticut on Monday, includes among its 53 plaintiffs the famous-wrestler likes of Chavo Guerrero Jr, Joseph "Road Warrior Animal" Laurinaitis, James "Kamala" Harris, Paul "Mr Wonderful" Orndorff, and Jimmy "Supafly" Snuka. The lengthy suit attempts to hold the WWE responsible for its performers' issues with concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the brain-ravaging disease that figured largely in recent class-action suits filed by players' associations for the NFL and NHL American sports leagues.

CTE, a degenerative disease linked to repeated concussions that leads to memory loss, dementia, and suicidality, has been connected to injuries in many professional sports leagues, and the WWE is no exception. Among the more notorious examples is that of former WWE wrestler Chris Benoit, whose issues with CTE were confirmed after his murder-suicide case in 2007.

Lucasarts

Doesn't look good, R2.

3 more images in gallery

The nascent world of virtual reality already has its fair share of satisfying sword-fighting games, but let's not kid ourselves: our ideal VR sword would glow and make a cool "whoosh, whoosh" sound with every swing. That's why we're stoked about today's biggest HTC Vive release: Trials on Tatooine, the first official Star Wars VR experience.

Even better, it's free—which will make its admittedly tiny amount of content a little bit easier to swallow.

If this VR experience sounds familiar, that's because Lucasarts demoed SW:ToT behind closed doors at March's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. There, both Kyle Orland and I got to fake like we had warped to Tatooine to help original-trilogy-era Han Solo in a pinch. During the five-minute demo, we stood right beneath the Millennium Falcon's landing zone—which, wow, there are few words to capture that feeling of nerdy presence—and then helped Solo by patching together parts of a circuit board with our hands.

Killer C-C-C-Cuts! (credit: iam8bit)

You'd be forgiven for scoffing at limited-edition vinyl album releases, whether because you mock them as the stuff of snooty hipsters or because you take issue with their supposed sound-reproduction superiority. But I will defend to the death anybody who lovingly manufactures gatefold-sleeve albums—or, at least, the ones that are dedicated to retro video game soundtracks.

This new niche genre of gaming product actually didn't kick off until late last year, when British company Data Discs began publishing remastered vinyl soundtracks of classic Sega games. Gaming-merch company iam8bit has also gotten in on the fun with its own line of albums. Ars doesn't typically write about album launches, but we're making an exception for Killer Cuts: the Killer Instinct soundtrack.

Why? Because the soundtrack for the original 1995 arcade game was a veritable soup of genres and sound samples, which makes it one of the most interesting candidates for iam8bit's remastering process. The soundtrack won't start shipping in its vinyl edition until October, but preorders kicked off Friday as a promotion linked to this weekend's hugely popular EVO fighting game tournament. The vinyl will come in one of three covers, each with the record colored to match the character on its front. This weekend only, interested fighting-music fans can score KI's green-vinyl Fulgore edition with metallic paper. Also, pre-order customers are automatically entered to win a pretty cool-looking Fulgore figurine.

Chex Quest HD is a real thing. Get ready to shoot lasers at booger-shaped aliens in crisp 1080p before long. (credit: Charles Jacobi)

Even if you're not an avid video gamer, you've probably noticed a significant uptick in "HD remakes" of older, popular video games. Everyone's doing them, and the remaster pool includes everything from redrawn, cartoony games like Capcom's DuckTales to gritty war simulations like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

You might argue that some of these aren't necessary, whether because they're "remasters" of games that are only a few years old or because the source material isn't a cultural cornerstone. And you may be tempted to lump Chex Quest, a 1996 CD-ROM game packed into boxes of cereal in which players must save a race of square-shaped "Chex people" from booger-shaped monsters, into the latter category.

But even that game's coming in HD—and apparently, some people really want it. Chex Quest has enjoyed quite the cult following since its unique mid-'90s launch, perhaps because it was a free, kid-friendly re-skin of Doom and was therefore many kids' first taste of the first-person shooter phenomenon. As such, gaming site Zam reached out to one of the game's co-creators, lead artist Charles Jacobi, to talk about the weird game's genesis and development in light of its 20th anniversary this year—and in the interview, the artist let slip that he's currently working on an HD remaster of the original.