How refreshing it must be to make over your computer setup and, while you’re at it, gut and refresh your whole home office. That’s what Michael De Jong did recently. And he shared his transition with Cult of Mac.
First, he tinkered with the setup, going with dual displays and adding a soundbar and a slick gaming chair. Later he gutted the whole office and added a whole raft of upgrades. Take a look at his photos and gear, new and old, below.
Emerging from the dark and noisy arcades of the 1980s is a updated version of a classic. Atari’s Missile Command: Recharged for iPhone and iPad is nearly identical to the original with only a few tweaks for a new generation.
And to double down on the nostalgia, an augmented reality mode projects your gameplay onto a virtual arcade cabinet.
An updated version of the arcade classic Missile Command is headed for phones and tablets.. Kids of the 1980s grew up defending cities from incoming nuclear missiles, and soon they’ll be able to relive the action in a new release from Atari.
For real nostalgia, an augmented reality mode will project your gameplay to a virtual arcade cabinet.
A video game co-created by Apple founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs is at the center of a lawsuit between Atari and confectionary company Nestlé, concerning an ad which screened in the U.K.
The 30-second advert was intended to promote Kit Kat, a chocolate bar made by Nestlé in the United Kingdom (in the U.S. it is manufactured by the Hershey Company). It showed a modified, unlicensed version of the 1975 Atari game Breakout — only with chocolate instead of bricks.
And Atari’s none too happy about it!
Atari founder and Steve Jobs’ first employer Nolan Bushnell has announced that he is teaming up with Amsterdam developers Spil Games to create a series of original mobile games.
As part of the deal, Bushnell will develop three new games, with the first set for release in 2017. During his time at Atari, the entrepreneur oversaw the development of such classic games as Pong, Adventure and Breakout — the latter of which also happened to be the first collaboration between Jobs and fellow Apple founder Steve Wozniak.
OpenEmu, the ultimate old-school game emulator for OS X, just got even better. A beefy update brings an improved user interface, real-time game rewinding and — best of all! — support for an additional 16 game consoles, including the Nintendo 64, PlayStation 1 and PlayStation Portable.
Want to pretend you're an Apple employee from the dark days before Steve Jobs made his return? These styrofoam and fiberglass signs hung from the east-facing side of Infinite Loop’s Building 3 between 1993 and 1997. They went under the hammer at British auction house Bonhams earlier this year, ultimately fetching $35,000.
Photo: Bonhams
Oh, that Baldur, always leaving his Gate open for demons to walk through and attack the world. Silly Baldur.
Developer Beamdog, along with Atari and Overhaul Games, announced pre-purchasing for the upcoming Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, coming to Mac and PC November 15, 2013, and iOS and Android “soon.” The sequel to last year’s successful Baldur’s Gate will run you $24.95 for the full HD resolution and remastered art from the original game, which released in September of 2000, quickly becoming “the most celebrated Dungeon’s & Dragons … game of its time,” currently sitting at a Metacritic score of 95.
There’s a new gameplay trailer, as well, which you can see below.
Last year, the classic PC Dungeons & Dragons RPG Baldur’s Gate finally made its way to the Mac in an enhanced port put together by Beamdog Entertainment, and from there, the iPad. We were excited about it at the time, but only because it paved the way for Baldur’s Gate II, which to this day might be the finest PC RPG game ever made. Baldur’s Gate is pretty good, but it hasn’t aged well. Baldur’s Gate II and its expansion, Throne of Bhaal, still hold up.
Time to get psyched, then. Beamdog is bringing Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition to the Mac on November 15. And if history is anything to judge by, an iPad version should follow a few months later.
It’s hard to believe that the man behind the glass-eyed animatronic freak show of Chuck E. Cheese is the same person who founded Atari, and that both these men are the same person who discovered that diamond-in-the-rough, Steve Jobs. But it’s true: Nolan Bushnell incarnates all of his men. And in his most recent book, Finding The Next Steve Jobs, Bushnell talks about his experience finding Steve.
Remember Lodsys, the patent troll that began suing a bunch of indie iOS developers back in 2011 over their use of in-app purchases? Well, it’s back to do more trolling. The company has targeted another ten mobile game makers in its latest complaints, which it has been quietly filing in an East Texas court throughout 2013.
The studios named include Gameloft, Walt Disney, BackFlip Studios, and Gamevil.
Gorgeous. Etsy shop owner Peter Morris has rejuvenated an old Atari 2600 by turning it into an iPhone speaker dock, replete with 6 equalizer settings, an FM radio and a 3.5mm input jack. It’s one of a kind, but if you get in quick, you can buy it for the pricy-but-still-tempting sum of about $230.
Kicking off this week’s list of must-have iOS games is Dreamcast classic Jet Set Radio, a terrific skating game in which you rollerblade around a fictional city and tag buildings, rival gang members, and more with spray paint. It’s accompanied by Pong World, the first official Pong game for iOS; a massive update to FIFA 13, and more.
It’s been 40 years since Atari released the first Pong game, and to celebrate the milestone, the company just released the first official Pong game for iOS. Called Pong World, the title delivers a new way to play the classic arcade game, in addition to a colorful new look and a whole host of new features.
Atari’s released a remake of its 1978 home console classic, Outlaw, which actually saw first life as a light gun game in arcades as early as 1976. Well, Flying Wisdom Studios has developed a new version for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad that looks a whole lot better than the original.
Released just last week, the new iOS version of Outlaw eschews the “pong-with-cowboys” style of gaming for a new art style that actually looks like, well, art. It’s still a 2D affair, with various denizens of the wild west sliding across the screen in a virtual shooting gallery.
In a laughable post over at LawPundit, Andis Kaulins makes an argument that Apple’s landmark $1 billion win against Samsung for patent infringement is at least partially bogus.
Why? Because Apple’s patent for bounce-back scrolling isn’t an original idea, but was, in fact, stolen from Pong, a game first released back in 1972. There are just a few problems with this idea…
Video games were about 50 times better when I was a kid than they are now. Maybe it was because we had to fill in the 8-bit graphics of Contra with our imaginations, rather than having all the gory beauty envisioned for us like in Modern Warfare 3. We’re big fans of iCade and their efforts to resurrect retro gaming, so when news hit today that they’re coming out with this cute little iOS controller called the iCade 8-Bitty, our news room collectively swooned over the contraption’s ambrosial charm.
You don’t hear all that much about Apple’s third founder, Ronald Wayne, and for good reason: he sold his stake in Apple just twelve days after the company was founded. It’d be worth $35 billion today. You might wonder how was apple founded. Wayne would like to tell you in his new autobiography, and… surprise… he doesn’t think he made a mistake at all!
Lodsys has gained plenty of fame (even infamy) in recent months for its continued pursuit of a number iOS and Android developers for their alleged infringement on patents that cover in-app purchases and upgrade links. Dissatisfied with its results so far, it now takes aim at some of the big names in gaming… but has Lodsys now bitten off more than it can chew?
The iCade by ThinkGeek is an iPad accessory that turns your device into the ultimate retro games machine. It looks just like a tabletop arcade cabinet straight out of the 80s, and boasts a joystick with an 8-button control pad.
The iCade began as an April Fools’ Day spoof back in 2010 that became an incredibly popular story. ThinkGeek obviously saw how successful the device could be thanks to all the hype, and got to work on making the dream a reality. Now the iCade is available to pre-order.
They have worked closely with Atari to make the iCade fully compatible with Atari’s Greatest Hits – the recently released iOS app that features a library of classic arcade titles such as Asteroids, Missile Command and Pong. The control API will also be released soon, and will allow other developers to create games that are compatible with the iCade accessory.
You can pre-order the iCade from ThinkGeek now for $99.99, with shipping due to start on May 20th. Unfortunately it’s only available to residents of the U.S.
[via AppAdvice]
Retro gamers can now enjoy 100 classic Atari titles on their iOS devices thanks to the launch of Atari’s Greatest Hits. The application is a free download that comes bundled with Pong, and through in-app purchases users can download additional game packs at $0.99 each, or the entire collection of 100 games for $14.99.
The collection of classic hits includes 18 Atari arcade games and 92 Atari 2600 games. But the fun doesn’t stop there; the app also boasts head-to-head multiplayer over Bluetooth and original cabinet and box art.
Check out the entire list of games available – and those that support Bluetooth multiplayer – after the break.