It's official: Nintendo is releasing a 'reborn' version of The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (OOT) for the Switch 2.

Often considered the greatest, and certainly the most generously reviewed game of all time, Nintendo have long been rumoured to be reimagining the game for the 3rd time, now almost 30 years after its original release. Speculation is rife as to whether the new Ocarina of Time will release on, or close to, its original US release date of 21st November 1998, a date which this year aligns almost precisely with the release of the most expensive entertainment product ever created: Rockstar's GTA VI. As the game industry clears its calendars to make way for Rockstar's entertainment Goliath, perhaps only Nintendo is brave (or stupid) enough to adopt the roll of the plucky David.

After unbearable levels of speculation and leaks, Japanese gaming giant Nintendo finally announced the Switch 2 today, surprising nobody. Most of the leaked features were verified by the trailer, but in traditional Nintendo fashion the mysterious 'C' button was rendered blank. What could this little anonymous square be for?

So, we all love the latest Zelda game (Tears of the Kingdom - TOTK), and so do the critics. But now that we and the game journalists all have hundreds of hours of playtime under our belts, have any thoughtful, well written critical takes on Nintendo's latest masterpiece been written? I know at the beginning there were a few knee jerk reviews that tried to stand out. I am looking for well written, thoughtful, but ultimately critical takes on TOTK. People who have more to say than just gushing about Ultrahand. People who have perhaps done a thoughtful comparison with BOTW at a design level, and come out with some negative feedback on the game overall.

This is not because I don't like the game - far from it - but I would love to read some balanced analysis before I venture my own (potentially critical) takes on the game.

Thanks

I was 10 when Super Mario Galaxy came out, and I’m 22 now on its rerelease. There was all sorts of confusion before it came out, about what really was the situation surrounding motion controls, which were described as both mandatory and optional by various outlets.

du-ding!

In which I string together a series of videos, links and text that use Mario as a base for Science. First is Mario and the Many World Interpretation of Quantum Physics

…So what’s this about quantum physics? Oh, right. Well, I kind of identify the branching-paths effect in the video with the Everett-Wheeler “Many Worlds Interpretation” of quantum physics. Quantum physics does this weird thing where instead of things being in one knowable place or one knowable state, something that is quantum (like, say, an electron) exists in sort of this cloud of potentials, where there’s this mathematical object called a wavefunction that describes the probabilities of the places the electron might be at a given moment. Quantum physics is really all about the way this wavefunction behaves. There’s this thing that happens though where when a quantum thing interacts with something else, the wavefunction “collapses” to a single state vector and the (say) electron suddenly goes from being this potential

The future of video gaming comes now.

Press Continue with "Tales of the Polyverse"...

http://vimeo.com/10394887

Then learn a little something about police and crime with FunnyMovieInternet's latest release RAZORBACK AND PAISLEY...

http://razorbackandpaisley.com/

Emulators for playing older games are immensely popular online, with regular arguments breaking out over which emulator is best for which game. Today we present another point of view from a gentleman who has created the Super Nintendo emulator bsnes. He wants to share his thoughts on the most important part of the emulation experience: accuracy.

It doesn't take much raw power to play Nintendo or SNES games on a modern PC; emulators could do it in the 1990s with a mere 25MHz of processing power. But emulating those old consoles accurately—well, that's another challenge entirely; accurate emulators may need up to 3GHz of power to faithfully recreate aging tech. In this piece we'll take a look at why accuracy is so important for emulators and why it's so hard to achieve.

Put simply, accuracy is the measure of how well emulation software mimics the original hardware. Apparent compatibility is the most obvious measure of accuracy—will an old game run on my new emulator?

With its latest entries having just appeared online, the Famicase exhibition -- curated by Tokyo game culture shop Meteor -- once again proves why it's a yearly art/game highlight. The premise? A collective of Japanese designers and artists imagine cartridges for their favorite Famicom (8-bit Nintendo) games that never were.

While this year's crop has strayed away from anything as blatantly/lightly controversial as last year's Bush Jr cart, it takes no less a sardonic swipe at Western culture with Burp'n'Shoot! above. The game, the artists say, is a "fun lazy redneck experience" that involves "sitting on the backyard couch drinking Budweiser and shooting at empty cans, watermelons and a broken TV" while avoiding the errant basket- and baseballs of the neighbor kids (Note: "Budweiser and gun controls required").