The RPG Campaign That Became A Novel
P1: The Rule of Law P2: The Dark Dimension P3: The Chaos-Born Tiara P4: The Paper Victory
Once motherhood spelled the end of a sporting career. But more mums than ever are taking part in this year’s Olympics and Paralympics (the village even has a nursery for the first time). How do they do it?
Nekoda Smythe-Davis is a Commonwealth gold medal-winning judoka (judo expert) who has won silver and bronze at the World Championships and represented Great Britain at the 2016 Olympics.
Continue reading...From Barbie and Captain Marvel to bestiarius and murmillo, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 An administrative error caused which town to lose its city status in 1998?
2 Which cetacean has the largest mouth of any animal?
3 In France, where would you find trèfles, carreaux, coeurs and piques?
4 The Scottish Militia Bill, in 1708, was the last to suffer what fate?
5 Whose official residence is Bishopthorpe Palace?
6 Jon Harvey regularly contests elections under what name?
7 The Squarial was used to receive whose TV programmes?
8 Which eye condition is named from the Greek for blue-green?
What links:
9 Wilhelm Steinitz and Ding Liren?
10 Asterix; Charles Dickens; Lenin; Dolly Parton; Harry Potter?
11 Bestiarius; hoplomachus; murmillo; secutor; thraex?
12 Steven Bartlett; Nikolai Gogol; Grossmith brothers; Jeff Kinney?
13 Appalachian; Border; Cotswold; Molly; Rapper Sword; Stave?
14 Adamant; beef; cathartic; endogamy; whelk?
15 Barbie; Frozen II; Captain Marvel; Wonder Woman; Frozen?
George MacKay and Léa Seydoux star in a epoch-traversing sci-fi romance, while the latest Star Wars spin-off has a mystery-thriller twist
The Beast
Out now
Léa Seydoux (Blue Is the Warmest Colour) and George MacKay (Femme) star as the couple at the heart of this arthouse sci-fi epic, loosely based on Henry James’s 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle and spanning three time periods, from director Bertrand Bonello (House of Tolerance).
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The New York Times is fighting to take down a game called Worldle, according to a legal filing viewed by the BBC, in which The Times apparently argued that the geography-based game is "creating confusion" by using a name that's way too similar to Wordle.
Worldle is "nearly identical in appearance, sound, meaning, and imparts the same commercial impression" to Wordle, The Times claimed.
The Times bought Wordle in 2022, paying software developer Josh Wardle seven figures for the daily word-guessing puzzle game after its breakout success during the pandemic. Around the same time, Worldle was created—along with more than 100 other Wordle spinoffs offering niche alternatives to Wordle, including versions in different languages and completely different games simply using the name construction ending in "-le." The Times filed for a Wordle trademark the day after buying the game and by March 2022, it started sending takedown requests.
Interior ministry says 18-year-old Chechen suspected of planning ‘Islamist-inspired’ attack in Saint-Étienne
French security services have arrested a Chechen teenager suspected of plotting an “Islamist-inspired” attack on a football game during this summer’s Olympics, the interior ministry has said.
The domestic intelligence agency DGSI arrested an 18-year-old of Chechen origin in Saint-Étienne, in south-east France, the ministry said on Friday, calling it the “first foiled attack against the Olympic Games”.
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When my son, who is on the austim spectrum, was struggling, this classic game opened up his world. It continues to help lonely, isolated people find ways to connect and belong
A few days ago, I was tidying my home office – which more closely resembles a video game arcade recently hit by a tornado – when I found a long-lost piece of technology in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. It was an old Xbox 360, the Elite model – black, heavy, ungainly, impossibly retro. Out of curiosity, I hauled it out, found a controller and power cable and switched it on. I knew immediately what I wanted to look for, but I was also apprehensive: I didn’t know how I’d feel if Minecraft was still there – or worse, if it wasn’t. Minecraft, you see, is more than just a game for me. I thought about just putting the console back where I found it. But as this month sees the 15th anniversary of the game’s original release, I felt I had to go on.
In 2012, Microsoft held a big Xbox Games Showcase event at a cavernous venue in San Francisco. The company was showing all the biggest titles of the era – Forza, Gears of War, Halo – but in one quiet corner sat a couple of demo units showing off the as yet unreleased Xbox version of Minecraft. I already knew about the game, of course – designed by Swedish studio Mojang, it was an open-world creative adventure, allowing players to explore vast, procedurally generated worlds, collect resources and build whatever they wanted. It was already attracting millions of players on PC. But I had never really given it much time; so I sat down to have a quick go … and ended up staying for an hour. There was something in it that was holding me there, despite all the other games on offer. That something was Zac.
Continue reading...Sebastian Coe has admitted the Paris Olympics this summer will not be drug free, but his fervent hope is that they will be cleaner than previous games.
Asked at the Hay Festival on Wednesday whether he thought the Games, which begin on 26 July, will be free from drugs controversy, the World Athletics president said that “the answer to that is, sadly, no”.
Continue reading...It’s not just pommes frites. Beef bourguignon, avocado and foie gras will also be unavailable
Name: french fries.
Age: invented about 300 years ago, ironically in Belgium.
Continue reading...In this week’s newsletter: Fifa will reportedly team up with 2K games to make its rival to EA Sports FC – and it should welcome a rival
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Two years ago, the long and lucrative relationship between Electronic Arts and Fifa broke down, with EA taking its ball home and launching EA Sports FC, a new brand for its footie sim series. Fifa president Gianni Infantino made a sulky declaration that he would find a new developer and that, “the only authentic, real game that has the Fifa name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans”. This seemed like a ludicrous boast: EA had 20 years of experience making mainstream football sims – an expensive and highly sophisticated endeavour. How could Fifa hope to find a studio capable of competing?
Well, it looks as if the global football body may have found its new best friend. Gaming news sites have been reporting on a tweet by Ghanaian retailer MohPlay, claiming that a deal had been struck with 2K Games to make a new Fifa title – perhaps even for release later this year. The tweet, which has had over 200,000 views, seems to confirm an earlier rumour about a partnership between Fifa and 2K.
Continue reading...From potentially pivotal EU elections to a series of sporting extravaganzas, Europe will be the focus of the world’s attention over the next few months. A good job our coverage is stronger than ever, then
Europe’s going to be big news this summer. Big news deserves a big response and from the Guardian, it will get it.
In early June, elections for the European parliament are expected to bring a surge in support for populist, far-right and nationalist parties. The results could end up changing the face – and direction – of the EU.
Jon Henley is the Guardian’s Europe correspondent
Continue reading...The 400m hurdles Olympic champion once criticised a rival over their footwear but has changed his mind before defending his title
Karsten Warholm doesn’t hold anything back. On the track. Off the track. It’s the same. Full send. No filters. Always all in. He’s the guy who obliterated the 400m hurdles world record by nearly a second at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, fending off Rai Benjamin in a race regarded as one of the greatest in history. Minutes later, he called out Benjamin’s Nike super spikes as “bullshit’, because he believed their foam acted like a trampoline and gave his great rival an unfair advantage.
For the next two years, the 28-year-old Norwegian continued to double down by wearing spikes with “bullshit” written on them. But on a shiny day in Paris, where he will defend his Olympic title this summer, Warholm has a confession. He has changed his mind.
Continue reading...Xbox, PlayStation 4/5, PC, Nintendo Switch; Moonloop Games/Firestoke
Possess ladybirds and rollercoasters in Moonloop Games’ quirky, inventive take on the afterlife
Hauntii is a twin-stick shooter in the same way Super Mario Bros: Wonder is a game about jumping. This imaginative, breathtakingly beautiful debut from Moonloop Games about a ghost searching for understanding in the afterlife transforms the twitchiest of genres into an expansive, accessible adventure filled with puzzles, surprises, and ideas.
You play a newly departed spirit washed up on the black shores of a purgatorial hereafter, with no recollection of their identity in their previous life. As you thread along winding paths of white light, two goals emerge for you to pursue: find out more about who you were before you died, and chase down a mysterious angelic figure who continually eludes your grasp, like a certain princess absenting a certain castle.
Continue reading...In 2007, a big-screen version of the hit video game was announced, but it languished in development limbo. What happened, and what does it mean for Margot Robbie’s new adaptation?
When the news came out that Margot Robbie is set to produce a movie based on the iconic life-simulation video game, The Sims, many people’s first response was: “How the heck do you make a movie out of The Sims?” It may be one of the bestselling game series of all time but, crucially, it doesn’t really have any plot to work with. The entire point is that it’s a sandbox life sim, and players can do whatever they want.
This has all happened before. In 2007, it was announced that a movie based on The Sims was coming to the big screen, with what was then 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios) acquiring the rights. It was written by Brian Lynch, who has become the Hollywood screenwriter of choice for some of the past decade’s biggest and most critically acclaimed family animations, including Puss in Boots (2011), Minions (2015) and Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022), and The Secret Life of Pets movies.
Continue reading...From a dynasty of Ukrainian climbers, Jenya Kazbekova was displaced by war but now she is determined to reach Paris
Three years after Russia had occupied Crimea, the Ukrainian climber Jenya Kazbekova returned to her “favourite place in the world” and achieved a personal best route on its rocks. The crux of her challenge that day in 2017 lay not in scaling the peaceful, sun-drenched cliff, but far below. “I closed my eyes to what really bothered me – Russian guns, flags, currency,” she says. This summer, she aims to reach Paris and climb against the odds for Ukraine once more, after injury, illness and Covid-19 ended her Tokyo dream – and Putin’s full invasion became a living nightmare, forcing the rest of her family to flee to Britain.
Kazbekova’s connection to climbing and Crimea spans three generations. “It was as natural as walking – I don’t remember ever not climbing. It’s just part of me,” says the 27-year-old from Dnipro. On frequent family holidays to the Crimean peninsula, her father taught her how to fall safely, turning trepidation into joy: “It was a big lesson in working through fear.”
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With new chapters in the worlds of Mad Max and Planet of the Apes out now, Guardian writers have picked their favourite big screen franchises to date
When a blockbuster franchise is seven movies in (and counting), and the consensus choice for worst entry was directed by John Woo, arguably the most influential action film-maker of his time, you’re looking at an uncommonly consistent series. Though the Mission: Impossible movies have cycled through many directors – one apiece for Brian De Palma, Woo, JJ Abrams and Brad Bird, before settling on Christopher McQuarrie – the first film, particularly the astounding Langley break-in sequence, established the franchise as a showcase for impeccable crafted set pieces. The plots may be an enjoyably hokey tangle of global threats and clever unmaskings, but the series’ determination to keep topping itself, leaning on the physicality of stunt work and practical effects, has provided reliable thrills for approaching three decades. With each film, Tom Cruise continues to outrun his own mortality and another classic sequence or two is added to the inventory, from Cruise dangling from the Burj Khalifa high-rise during a sandstorm in Ghost Protocol to him zipping off a cliff on a motorcycle in Dead Reckoning Part One. It’s a high-wire act that has yet to tumble off the line. Scott Tobias
Continue reading...Sports science is challenging traditional approaches but perspective and staying in the present can make a difference
I remember friends asking me before the 2004 Athens Games if I was really digging in and putting in extra miles now the Olympics were just round the corner. I wondered what they thought I’d been doing for the previous three and a half years. I also realised it’s hard to know what goes on behind the scenes and how athletes prepare for an Olympics. There are some persistent myths to dispel and new insights into how you can become the best you can be as advances in sports science challenge more traditional approaches.
There are five key areas for our athletes to hone their physical, mental and spiritual skills to thrive on and off their field of play this summer. These themes may not always feature in Hollywood scripts, though you might find some of them in Ted Lasso. Psychological insights are increasingly challenging conventional sports orthodoxy. As a bonus, these approaches will work well for the rest of us too, regardless of the size of our ambitions.
Continue reading...It turns out that digital rights management and its consequences extend even beyond your passing when it comes to Steam. Valve has made it clear that no, you cannot will your Steam account or games to someone else when you die.
The issue of digital game inheritability gained renewed attention this week as a ResetEra poster quoted a Steam support response asking about transferring Steam account ownership via a last will and testament. “Unfortunately, Steam accounts and games are non-transferable” the response reads. “Steam Support can’t provide someone else with access to the account or merge its contents with another account. I regret to inform you that your Steam account cannot be transferred via a will.”
↫ Kyle Orland at Ars Technica
My wife and I make sure we know each other’s passwords and login credentials to the most important accounts and services in our lives, since an accident can happen at any time, and we’d like to be somewhat prepared – as much as you can be, under the circumstances – for if something happens. I never even considered merging Steam accounts, but at least granting access to the person named in your will or your legal heir seems like something a service like Steam should be legally obliged to do.
I don’t think Steam’s position here – which is probably par for the course – is tenable in the long-term. Over the coming years and decades, we’re going to see more and more people who grew up almost entirely online pass away, leaving behind various accounts, digital purchases, and related matters, and loved ones and heirs will want access to those. At some point over the coming decades, there’s going to be a few high-profile cases in the media about something like this, and it’s going to spur lawmakers into drafting up legislation to make account and digital goods transfers to heirs and loved ones not a courtesy, but a requirement.
In the meantime, if you have a designated heir, like your children, a spouse, or whatever, make sure they can somehow gain access to your accounts and digital goods, by writing stuff down on paper and putting it somewhere safe or something similar. Again – you never know when you might… Expire.
From Bleeding Gums Murphy to Maude Flanders, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 What, in West Yorkshire, is the UK’s tallest freestanding structure?
2 Which technology was popularised by Cher’s hit Believe?
3 In a wine bottle, what is the ullage?
4 In Inuit religion, Nanook is the master of which animals?
5 Which English queen grew up in Wulfhall?
6 Route Irish was a notorious journey in which city?
7 Who are the only two divorced US presidents?
8 The Synod of Whitby in AD664 decided how to calculate what?
What links:
9 Alkali; alkaline earth; transition; actinides; lanthanides?
10 Buzz; Gala; Mecca; Merkur?
11 Larry Dalrymple; Maude Flanders; Frank Grimes; Bleeding Gums Murphy?
12 Thirteen-year brood XIX and seventeen-year XIII in 2024?
13 Tokyo; Sapporo; Fukuoka; Matsuyama?
14 Delon; Hopper; Damon; Malkovich; Scott?
15 Dunmore Park folly; St Paul’s Cathedral towers; Wimbledon men’s trophy?
The Mad Max: Fury Road heroine gets an origin story, while Channel 4’s Muslim female punk band returns for a second gig
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Out now
One of the year’s most anticipated movies sees director George Miller return to the post-apocalyptic world he and Byron Kennedy first created in 1979 with Mad Max. Both spin-off and prequel to 2015’s Fury Road, this new adventure unveils the origins of Imperator Furiosa, with Anya Taylor-Joy in the title role.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Organisers expect 75% of identified bacterial pollution will be gone by the time the starting gun fires for the open water events
Beside a sign saying “No swimming”, Pierre Fuzeau defiantly pulled on his swimming cap, slipped into the green water of the Ourcq canal on Paris’s northern edge, and set off with a strong front-crawl.
The 66-year-old company director regularly joins his open-water swimming group for well-organised illegal dips, including in the River Seine, where swimming has been banned since 1923 largely as a result of the health risk from unclean water and bacteria from human waste.
Continue reading...Bournemouth striker Dominic Solanke, NFL stars and Olympic athletes are finding inspiration in the characters’ resilience
The Bournemouth striker Dominic Solanke twice thought he had scored the opening goal against Brentford on 11 May. Each time he wheeled away to celebrate, he put on an orange mask with a spiral pattern and one eyehole before posing in front of the cameras.
The goal was ruled out by VAR but the celebration went viral, as journalists wrote about “masked mayhem” and others wondered what this “bizarre” celebration could mean.
Continue reading...If you hear the words ‘down by the river’ and immediately start humming one of modern gaming’s most gorgeous earworms, you have the Bafta-winning Borislav Slavov to thank
For Borislav “Bobby” Slavov, it is not enough to just be a composer. The Bulgarian musician sees himself as a man who wears many hats: composer, music director, arranger, mixer. Yet back in 2002, he had just finished a master’s in computer science and was working for the fourth biggest software company in the world. Unlike a number of other composers I have spoken to for this column, Slavov spends as much time as possible at the game studio he’s working with, embedded in narratives and mechanics “at a granular level” so that his music “isn’t massacred and chopped up”.
“I remember the very day I came up with that main theme, or Down By the River,” he tells me before a sold out Game Music festival concert in London’s Southbank Centre, where the Philharmonia Orchestra performed more than 80 minutes of music from his soundtrack to Baldur’s Gate 3. “I was having one of my favourite walks down one of the channels of the city of Ghent, and the lyrics were swimming around in the back of my mind. There was this special moment when I started hearing this theme. I stopped for a moment. I thought: this sounds exciting. I need to record this tune right now!”
Continue reading...Springsteen receives Academy fellowship as Raye named songwriter of the year, and Yussef Dayes, Victoria Canal and Speakers Corner Quartet pick up major awards
Bruce Springsteen was the top honouree at the 2024 Ivor Novello awards, given an Academy fellowship – the first international artist to be handed that accolade.
Paul McCartney presented him with the award in a playful speech: “I couldn’t think of a more fitting recipient,” he said. “Except maybe Bob Dylan. Or Paul Simon, or Billy Joel, or Beyoncé, or Taylor Swift. The list goes on … He’s known as the American working man, but he admits he’s never worked a day in his life.” He reminisced about the pair’s performance together on Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage in 2022, calling Springsteen “a lovely boy”.
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Phobia toggles turn off scary elements like enemies, combat and spiders – but far from being too ‘cosy’, they help make gaming more accessible for even the most squeamish
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As I mentioned the other week, I’ve been playing through a PlayStation 1-style, low-poly horror game called Crow Country. Survival horror games aren’t usually my thing. They’re too intense, and full of unpleasant surprises – I even played The Last of Us with a text walkthrough to tell me when the fungal zombies were going to appear. For last year’s critical darling Alan Wake 2, I recruited my partner so I could hand over the controller whenever I felt like something was about to jump out at me.
Like Alan Wake 2, a section of Crow Country is set in an abandoned theme park – a well-worn horror setting (Max Payne did it too, as did Left 4 Dead), but one that still reliably freaks me out. Unlike Alan Wake 2, I didn’t need my partner to shield my eyes.
Continue reading...The acting sports minister of Ukraine, Matviy Bidnyi, has told his country’s athletes to keep a “cold head” and pay no attention to any provocation from their Russian counterparts at the Olympic Games this summer.
Speaking to the Guardian at the ministry of youth and sports in Kyiv, Bidnyi predicted that Russia will use its representatives in Paris as part of its propaganda operation and explained that recommendations have been drawn up to help the Ukraine team to avoid becoming embroiled in controversy.
Continue reading...‘Purchase scams’ often pegged to big events, warns UK Finance’s annual fraud report
The clamour to secure tickets for Taylor Swift’s sold-out UK shows is expected to fuel a summer fraud bonanza as figures showed a “staggering” £1.2bn was stolen from unwitting consumers in 2023.
Swift’s Eras tour, which arrives in the UK in June, and the Olympic Games, are contenders for biggest ticketing scam of the year. The warning, from industry group UK Finance, came as its annual fraud report revealed that the number of people succumbing to a “purchase scam” in 2023 soared.
Continue reading...An entire generation nurses fond nostalgic memories of the gaudy kids’ game that came packed in with Windows Vista. But who actually made it?
If you had a PC in the 2010s, you probably owned a copy of Purble Place. The gaudy kids’ game came with every copy of Windows Vista and 7. It was a simple, three-title package: Purble Pairs was a basic tile memory game; Purble Shop had the player design a mystery character using logic and deduction; and the last game of Comfy Cakes had kids playing line cook for the Purble Chef while juggling orders on a conveyor belt. And for many online teens, the legacy of these games easily equals that of Minesweeper and Solitaire, the more venerable pack-in games of PCs past.
Yet nobody knows who made it. Curious players noted a simple credit to Oberon Games in the game’s help menu, but that’s all. Despite being installed on hundreds of millions of computers worldwide, the actual creators of the game have lived in obscurity for two decades.
Continue reading...There are games for which I have great admiration, pleasant memories, and an entirely dreadful set of skills and outcomes. Heroes of Might & Magic III (or HoMM 3) has long been one of those games.
I have played it on just about every PC I've owned, ever since it chipped away at my college GPA. I love being tasked with managing not only heroes, armies, resources, villages, and battlefield positioning but also time itself. If you run around the map clicking to discover every single power-up and resource pile, using up turn after turn, you will almost certainly let your enemy grow strong enough to conquer you. But I do this, without fail. I get halfway into a campaign and the (horse cart) wheels fall off, so I set the game aside until the click-to-move-the-horsey impulse comes back.
With the release of Songs of Conquest in 1.0 form on PC today (Steam, GOG, Epic), I feel freed from this loop of recurrent humbling. This title from Lavapotion and Coffee Stain Publishing very much hits the same pleasure points of discovery and choice as HoMM 3. But Songs of Conquest has much easier onboarding, modern resolutions, interfaces that aren't too taxing (to the point of being Verified on Steam Deck), and granular difficulty customization. More importantly for most, it has its own stories and ideas. If you love fiddling with stuff turn by turn, it's hard to imagine you won't find something in Songs of Conquest to hook you.
Juergens had never acted before she played the fearsome but troubled Senua in Ninja Theory’s game – and won a Bafta for it. Now she’s back to battle the character’s demons in a sequel
‘I hope people can relate to Senua,” says actor Melina Juergens, who plays the lead character in Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, the newest game from British developer Ninja Theory. “I hope people play it and feel what somebody goes through on a daily basis who suffers from mental health issues – particularly psychosis. [They] come away with an understanding of it, able to empathise with people more.”
Juergens did not expect to be playing this role for the second time. In fact, she never expected to play it the first time. She was a video editor at the independent games studio when the first Hellblade game, Senua’s Sacrifice, was gestating in 2012. “They were looking for an actress, but in the meantime they asked me to step in to help out with [performance capture] tech experiments,” she tells me. “At some point, they asked me to perform a scene. The director really liked it and offered me the role.”
Continue reading...Video game services company backs EQT private equity bid in latest foreign move on UK-listed firm
The video game services company Keywords Studios has said it would be willing to accept a £2bn buyout offer, in the latest foreign takeover of a London-listed business.
Shares in the Dublin-headquartered Keywords jumped 62% on Monday morning after it said it would be minded to recommend an offer from the Swedish private equity investor EQT Group.
Continue reading...With 100 days to go until the Paris Games, the IPC’s Andrew Parsons says it is vital for disability rights they are the best ever
With 100 days to go until the Paralympic Games begin in Paris, Andrew Parsons has a job to do. The 47-year-old Brazilian is the president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC). But these Games matter, as a moment for disability sport and the movement that lies behind it, and the pressure is on.
“This is the first edition of the summer Games where we will be able to explore our full potential,” he says. “We had London, which is still regarded as the benchmark, and then we had Rio, which was a tough games for us to put together. Then it was Tokyo and the pandemic.
Continue reading...The Frenchman has battled with injuries and perceptions to remain one of tennis’s great entertainers at the age of 37
At any tournament in almost any part of the world, one of the certainties over the past 20 years is that whenever Gaël Monfils plays, fans are present. Tennis, after all, is entertainment, and there have been few greater entertainers than the 37-year-old. He is one of the purest athletes the sport has seen and displays immense skill, feel and showmanship. At his best, Monfils makes tennis look so easy.
But the Frenchman is adamant that it is not. Especially not in the final years of his career: “[People say] ‘Ah, Monfils is not disciplined’,” he says smiling, from the grounds of the Italian Open on the eve of the tournament. “Guys, don’t think this because I’m enjoying myself on the court. The work I do outside is big.”
Continue reading...From price rises to a ridiculous mascot, the French have had it up
to here with the event
We tend to view Paris as a fairytale princess, all romance and half-seen glitter. But for all its glamour, Paris has actually been depressed and irritable for a couple of hundred years now.
Far from being subdued by it, the citizens of Paris wear this perma-gloom like a disconsolate badge of honour. More tightly packed than in any housing estate high-rise, Parisians lead their stressed, underpaid lives defiantly. They mock and complain. They rail and grumble. Unlike anywhere I’ve ever known, in this city, if you say something nice about the place, the citizens disdainfully correct you. Paris doesn’t believe it is the best place. It just knows everywhere else is worse.
Continue reading...From a burrowing clam to toilet cleaner, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 The OED’s first citation for “video game” mentions which Atari product?
2 Which river has Damietta and Rosetta branches?
3 Who were bribed in the 1950s payola scandal?
4 Which poet was nicknamed the White Myth of Amherst?
5 What athletics world record has stood at 7291 since 1988?
6 Which PM was described by Caitlin Moran as a “C-3PO made of ham”?
7 Which philosopher had a brother who was a celebrated one-handed pianist?
8 What brand name was used by M&S from 1928 until 2000?
What links:
9 Bummalo; out first ball; Pacific burrowing clam; toilet cleaner?
10 John Deydras; Lambert Simnel; Perkin Warbeck; Mary Baynton?
11 Calderdale, West Yorkshire and Nova Scotia, Canada?
12 The Night Manager; Conversations with Friends; Notes on a Conditional Form?
13 Leda; Nut; Rebecca; Rhea Silvia?
14 Beaded; flush; keyed; recessed; tuck; V-grooved; weathered?
15 Relating to a city (8); devout (12); not guilty (13); merciful (14)?
John Krasinski and Ryan Reynolds go family-friendly in their new imaginary-friends comedy, while the singer swaps introspection for lust on her long-awaited new album
If
Out now
In what has to be one of the more enviable showbiz lives, John Krasinski has played Jim in The Office, married Emily Blunt, and written and directed acclaimed horror franchise A Quiet Place. Now he turns his hand to family entertainment, writing and directing this part-animated fantasy about imaginary friends made visible with a little help from Ryan Reynolds and Steve Carell.
Nearly 30 years after the launch of the Virtual Boy, not much is publicly known about how, exactly, Nintendo came to be interested in developing what would ultimately become its ill-fated console. Was Nintendo committed to VR as a future for video games and looking for technological solutions that made business sense? Or was the Virtual Boy primarily the result of Nintendo going “off script” and seizing a unique, and possibly risky, opportunity that presented itself? The answer is probably a little bit of both.
As it turns out, the Virtual Boy was not an anomaly in Nintendo’s history with video game platforms. Rather, it was the result of a deliberate strategy that was consistent with Nintendo’s way of doing things and informed by its lead creator Gunpei Yokoi’s design philosophy.
↫ Benj Edwards and Jose Zagal at Ars Technica
I’ve never used a Virtual Boy, and in fact, I’ve never even seen one in real life. It was mythical object when I was not even a teenager yet, something we read about in gaming magazines in The Netherlands. We didn’t really know what it was or how it worked, and it wasn’t until much later, in the early YouTube age, that I got to see what using one was actually like in the countless YouTube videos made about the device.
It seems it caused quite a few headaches, was cumbersome to use, had very few games, and those that were sold ended up collecting dust pretty quickly. In that sense, it seems not a lot has changed over the past thirty years.