The new Riven remake is even better than Myst

Enlarge / The same gorgeous vistas return in the Riven remake. (credit: Samuel Axon)

A remake of Riven: The Sequel to Myst launched this week, made by the original game's developers. It strikes a fascinating balance between re-creation and reinvention, and based on a couple of hours of playing it, it's a resounding success.

Myst was the classic most people remembered fondly from the early CD-ROM era, but for me, its sequel, Riven, was the highlight. After that, the sequels declined in quality. The sophomore effort was the apex.

It was certainly more ambitious than Myst. Instead of a handful of tightly packed theme park worlds, it offered a singular, cohesive one that felt lived in and steeped in history in a way that Myst couldn't quite match.

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Patent document showcases the cloud-only streaming Xbox console that never was

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  The streaming-only Xbox would have looked like a smaller, squarer relative of the Series S. [credit: Microsoft ]

 

Microsoft's mid-generation plans for the Xbox Series S and X consoles looked a whole lot different a couple of years ago than it does now. A leaked slide deck from the FTC v. Microsoft case last year outlined detailed plans for a spruced up Series S, an overhauled Series X, and even a redesigned controller. Another part of that roadmap included a streaming-only version of the Xbox, codenamed Keystone, that was designed to connect to Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming servers rather than rendering games locally.

Microsoft has talked openly about this version of the Xbox before. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer told The Verge that the Keystone console was designed and fully functional, but that it wasn't launched because Microsoft had a hard time getting the price down low enough that it made sense next to the $299 Series S (which already occasionally goes on sale in the $200 to $250 range).

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Apple rejects PC emulators on the iOS App Store

Enlarge / Don't get your hopes up—this iOS version of Doom was ported from open source code, not run via a classic PC emulator. (credit: Tom Kidd)

Earlier this year, Apple started officially allowing "retro game emulators" on the iOS App Store without the need for cumbersome jailbreaking or sideloading. But if you want to emulate retro PC games on your iOS device, you are apparently still out of luck.

In a recent blog update, iDOS developer Chaoji Li said that the latest version of the DOSBox-based MS-DOS emulator was finally rejected from the iOS App Store this month after a lengthy, two-month review process:

They have decided that iDOS is not a retro game console, so the new rule is not applicable. They suggested I make changes and resubmit for review, but when I asked what changes I should make to be compliant, they had no idea, nor when I asked what a retro game console is. It's still the same old unreasonable answer along the line of "we know it when we see it."

The developer of iOS Virtual Machine app UTM told a similar tale of App Store rejection on social media. The reported two-month review process for the UTM app ended with "the App Store review board determin[ing] that 'PC is not a console' regardless of the fact that there are retro Windows/DOS games fo[r] the PC that UTM SE can be useful in running," the developer said.

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The math on unplayed Steam “shame” is way off—and no cause for guilt

Enlarge / Blast away all the guilt you want in PowerWash Simulator, but there's no need to feel dirty in the real world about your backlog. (credit: Getty Images)

Gaming news site PCGamesN has a web tool, SteamIDFinder, that can do a neat trick. If you buy PC games on Steam and have your user profile set to make your gaming details public, you can enter your numeric user ID into it and see a bunch of stats. One set of stats is dedicated to the total value of the games listed as unplayed; you can share this page as an image linking to your "Pile of Shame," which includes the total "Value" of your Steam collection and unplayed games.

Example findings from SteamIDFinder, from someone who likely has hundreds of games from Humble Bundles and other deals in their library. (credit: SteamIDFinder)

Using data from what it claims are the roughly 10 percent of 73 million Steam accounts in its database set to Public, PCGamesN extrapolates $1.9 billion in unplayed games, multiplies it by 10, and casually suggests that there are $19 billion in unplayed games hanging around. That is "more than the gross national product of Nicaragua, Niger, Chad, or Mauritius," the site notes.

That is a very loose “$19 billion”

"Multiply by 10" is already a pretty soft science, but the numbers are worth digging into further. For starters, SteamIDFinder is using the current sale price of every game in your unplayed library, as confirmed by looking at a half-dozen "Pile of Shame" profiles. An informal poll of Ars Technica co-workers and friends with notable Steam libraries suggests that games purchased at full price make up a tiny fraction of the games in our backlogs. Games acquired through package deals, like the Humble Bundle, or during one of Steam's annual or one-time sales, are a big part of most people's Steam catalogs, I'd reckon.

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In first person: John Romero reflects on over three decades as the “Doom guy”

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Id | GDC)

John Romero remembers the moment he realized what the future of gaming would look like.

In late 1991, Romero and his colleagues at id Software had just released Catacomb 3-D, a crude-looking, EGA-colored first-person shooter that was nonetheless revolutionary compared to other first-person games of the time. "When we started making our 3D games, the only 3D games out there were nothing like ours," Romero told Ars in a recent interview. "They were lockstep, going through a maze, do a 90-degree turn, that kind of thing."

Despite Catacomb 3-D's technological advances in first-person perspective, though, Romero remembers the team at id followed its release by going to work on the next entry in the long-running Commander Keen series of 2D platform games. But as that process moved forward, Romero told Ars that something didn't feel right

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Apple Intelligence and other features won’t launch in the EU this year

Enlarge / Features like Image Playground won't arrive in Europe at the same time as other regions. (credit: Apple)

Three major features in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia will not be available to European users this fall, Apple says. They include iPhone screen mirroring on the Mac, SharePlay screen sharing, and the entire Apple Intelligence suite of generative AI features.

In a statement sent to Financial Times, The Verge, and others, Apple says this decision is related to the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). Here's the full statement, which was attributed to Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz:

Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly motivated to make these technologies accessible to all users. However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.

Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security. We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.

It is unclear from Apple's statement precisely which aspects of the DMA may have led to this decision. It could be that Apple is concerned that it would be required to give competitors like Microsoft or Google access to user data collected for Apple Intelligence features and beyond, but we're not sure.

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Why Interplay’s original “Fallout 3” was canceled 20+ years ago

Enlarge / What could have been. (credit: No Mutants Allowed)

PC gamers of a certain vintage will remember tales of Project Van Buren, a title that early '00s Interplay intended as the sequel to 1998's hit Fallout 2. Now, original Fallout producer Timothy Cain is sharing some behind-the-scenes details about how he contributed to the project's cancellation during a particularly difficult time for publisher Interplay.

Cain famously left Interplay during Fallout 2's development in the late '90s to help form short-lived RPG house Troika Games. After his departure, though, he was still in touch with some people from his former employer, including an unnamed Interplay vice president looking for some outside opinions on the troubled Van Buren project.

"Would you mind coming over and playing one of my game prototypes?" Cain recalls this vice president asking him sometime in mid-2003. "We're making a Fallout game and I'm going to have to cancel it. I don't think they can get it done... but if you could come over and look at it and give me an estimate, that's a chance I wouldn't cancel it."

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From Infocom to 80 Days: An oral history of text games and interactive fiction

Enlarge / Zork running on an Amiga at the Computerspielemuseum in Berlin, Germany. (credit: Marcin Wichary (CC by 2.0 Deed))

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.

That simple sentence first appeared on a PDP-10 mainframe in the 1970s, and the words marked the beginning of what we now know as interactive fiction.

From the bare-bones text adventures of the 1980s to the heartfelt hypertext works of Twine creators, interactive fiction is an art form that continues to inspire a loyal audience. The community for interactive fiction, or IF, attracts readers and players alongside developers and creators. It champions an open source ethos and a punk-like individuality.

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Shadow of the Erdtree has ground me into dust, which is why I recommend it

Enlarge (credit: Bandai)

Elden Ring was my first leap into FromSoftware titles (and Dark-Souls-like games generally), and I fell in deep. Over more than 200 hours, I ate up the cryptic lore, learned lots of timings, and came to appreciate the feeling of achievement through perseverance.

Months ago, in preparation for Elden Ring's expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree (also on PlayStation and Xbox, arriving June 21), I ditched the save file with which I had beaten the game and started over. I wanted to try out big swords and magic casting. I wanted to try a few new side quests. And I wanted to have a fresh experience with the game before Shadow arrived.

I have had a very fresh experience, in that this DLC has made me feel like I'm still in the first hour of my first game. Reader, this expansion is mopping the floor with me. It looked at my resume, which has "Elden Lord" as its most recent job title, and has tossed it into the slush pile. If you're wondering whether Shadow would, like Elden Ring, provide a different kind of challenge and offer, like the base game, easier paths for Souls newcomers: No, not really. At least not until you're already far along. This DLC is for people who beat Elden Ring, or all but beat it, and want capital-M More.

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Star Citizen still hasn’t launched, but it’s already banning cheaters

Enlarge / For an unreleased game, Star Citizen still has some really pretty ships... (credit: RSI)

At this point in Star Citizen's drawn-out, 11-plus-year development cycle, we're usually reminded of the game when it hits some crowdfunding microtransaction milestone or updates its increasingly convoluted alpha development roadmap. So last week's announcement that developer Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) has banned over 600 cheaters from its servers is a notable reminder that some people are actually enjoying—and exploiting—the unpolished alpha version of the game.

Shortly after the May release of Star Citizen's Alpha 2.23.1 update, players started noticing that they could easily make extra money by storing a freight ship, selling their cargo, and then returning to the ship to find the cargo ready to be sold a second time. As knowledge of this "money doubling" exploit spread, players reported that the price of basic in-game resources saw significant inflation in a matter of days.

Now, Cloud Imperium Games Senior Director of Player Relations Will Leverett has written that the developer has investigated "multiple exploits within Star Citizen that compromised stability and negatively impacted the in-game economy." In doing so, CIG says it "identified and suspended over 600 accounts involved in exploitative behaviors while also removing the illicitly gained aUEC [in-game currency] from the Star Citizen ecosystem."

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Are Diablo fans getting too old for the old-school item grind?

Enlarge / Do you have a few hundred hours to hear the good news about our lord and savior, Diablo? (credit: Blizzard)

Longtime fans of Diablo II are deeply familiar with the extreme timesink that is the late-game grind for the very best loot. But when the creators of Diablo IV tried to re-create that style of grinding for the latest game in the series, they found that their players' tastes had changed quite a bit in the intervening years.

In a wide-ranging interview with Windows Central, Blizzard's general manager of Diablo, Rod Fergusson, said that they launched Diablo IV under "the assumption that D4 was meant to be more D2-like." That meant, in part, increasing the length of time required to discover the game's most valuable items after post-Auction-House Diablo 3 made rare item drops much more common.

"One of the assumptions was that people were going to be okay with the long grind for the Unique or an Uber Unique in particular, because in Diablo II, it can go years," Fergusson said. "You can go three years before you find the Uber you're looking for... and so we were like, okay, this is what people love about the progression of D2, that idea of that very long chase."

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Gaming historians preserve what’s likely Nintendo’s first US commercial

Enlarge / "So slim you can play it anywhere." (credit: VGHF)

Gamers of a certain age may remember Nintendo's Game & Watch line, which predated the cartridge-based Game Boy by offering simple, single-serving LCD games that can fetch a pretty penny at auction today. But even most ancient gamers probably don't remember Mego's "Time Out" line, which took the internal of Nintendo's early Game & Watch titles and rebranded them for an American audience that hadn't yet heard of the Japanese game maker.

Now, the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) has helped preserve the original film of an early Mego Time Out commercial, marking the recovered, digitized video as "what we believe is the first commercial for a Nintendo product in the United States." The 30-second TV spot—which is now available in a high-quality digital transfer for the first time—provides a fascinating glimpse into how marketers positioned some of Nintendo's earliest games to a public that still needed to be sold on the very idea of portable gaming.

Imagine an “electronic sport”

A 1980 Mego catalog sells Nintendo's Game & Watch games under the toy company's "Time Out" branding. (credit: Mego Museum)

Founded in the 1950s, Mego made a name for itself in the 1970s with licensed movie action figures and early robotic toys like the 2-XL (a childhood favorite of your humble author). In 1980, though, Mego branched out to partner with a brand-new, pre-Donkey Kong Nintendo of America to release rebranded versions of four early Game & Watch titles: Ball (which became Mego's "Toss-Up"), Vermin ("Exterminator"), Fire ("Fireman Fireman"), and Flagman ("Flag Man").

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Microsoft Gaming CEO: “I think we should have a handheld, too”

Enlarge / The "Xbox Series V" was a social media hoax, but the idea of a portable Xbox seems to still have legs inside Microsoft. (credit: Reddit)

The extremely long-standing rumors regarding Microsoft making a portable game console got a strong shot in the arm over the weekend from none other than Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. Speaking on stage as part of an IGN Live interview, Spencer said directly that "I think we should have a handheld, too."

The comment stops just short of an official announcement that Microsoft is actively working on portable gaming hardware for the first time. But if anyone is in a position to make an "I think we should..." into an operational reality, it's Spencer.

"The future for us in hardware is pretty awesome," Spencer continued during the IGN presentation. "And the work that the team is doing around different form factors, different ways to play, I'm incredibly excited about it."

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Microsoft reveals first disc-less Xbox Series X

Enlarge / Looking more like a refrigerator than ever before. (credit: Microsoft)

A new version of Microsoft's top-end Xbox Series X will launch without a disc drive for the first time this holiday season.

The new "Digital Edition" console option—which sports 1 TB of storage and an Xbox Series S-like "Robot White" color scheme—will be available "in select markets" for an estimated retail price of $449 (or €499.99). That price is just $50 less than the MSRP for the current, disc-drive-equipped Xbox Series X, which is currently on sale for $449 from the Microsoft Store.

Word of Microsoft's plans for a disc-drive free Xbox Series X first leaked last September, as part of the FTC's case against the Microsoft/Activision merger. But the new disc-free Series X bears little resemblance to the cylindrical "Brooklin" refresh shown in those leaked promo materials, which also touted redesigned internals and improved power usage. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said at the time that "so much has changed" from the "old emails and documents" in those leaks.

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Marvel’s Midnight Suns is free right now, and you should grab it (even on Epic)

Enlarge / All these goons are targeting Captain America, as shown in icons above their heads. Good. That's just how he likes it. (No, really, he's a tank, that's his thing.) (credit: 2K/Firaxis)

I fully understand why people don't want multiple game launchers on their PC. Steam is the default and good enough for (seemingly) most people. It's not your job to compel competition in the market. You want to launch and play games you enjoy, as do most of us.

So when I tell you that Marvel's Midnight Suns is a game worth the hassle of registering, installing, and using the Epic Games Launcher, I am carefully picking my shot. For the price of giving Epic your email (or a proxy/relay version, like Duck), or just logging in again, you can play a fun, novel, engaging turn-based strategy game, with deckbuilding and positioning tactics, for zero dollars. Even if you feel entirely sapped by Marvel at this point, like most of us, I assure you that this slice of Marvel feels more like the comic books and less like the overexposed current films. Just ask the guy who made it.

Tactical deckbuilding is fun

The game was very well-regarded by most critics but was not a financial success upon release in December 2022, or was at least "underwhelming." Why any game hits or doesn't is a combination of many factors, but one of them was likely that the game was trying something new. It wasn't just X-COM with Doctor Strange. It had some Fire Emblem relationship-building and base exploration, but it also had cards. The cards blend into the turn-based, positional, chain-building strategy, but some people apparently saw cards and turned away.

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