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      Valve request takes down Portal 64 due to concerns over Nintendo involvement

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 12 January - 19:23

    Window open inside Portal 64

    Enlarge / Valve took a look inside Portal 64 , saw itself inside near something involving Nintendo, and decided to shut down the experiment. (credit: Valve/James Lambert)

    Any great effort to generate appreciation for Nintendo's classic platforms, done outside Nintendo's blessing, has a markedly high chance of incurring Nintendo's wrath. This seems to apply even when Nintendo has not actually moved to block something, but merely seems like it might.

    That's why, one week after announcing that his years-long "demake" of Valve's classic Portal to the Nintendo 64 platform had its "First Slice" ready for players, James Lambert has taken down Portal 64 . There's no DMCA takedown letter or even a cease-and-desist from Nintendo. There is, as Lambert told PC Gamer , "communication with Valve" that "because the project depends on Nintendo's proprietary libraries, [Valve] have asked me to take the project down."

    Ars contacted Valve and Nintendo for comment and will update the post with any new information. Lambert could not be reached for comment.

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      Portal 64 is an N64 demake of Valve’s classic, now available as a “First Slice”

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 4 January - 20:45

    The Portal Effect, or seeing oneself step through sideways.

    Enlarge / Remember, this is the N64 platform running a game released at least five years after the console's general life cycle ended. (credit: Valve/James Lambert)

    James Lambert has spent years making something with no practical reason to exist: a version of Portal that runs on the Nintendo 64. And not some 2D version, either, but the real, blue-and-orange-oval, see-yourself-sideways Portal experience . And now he has a "First Slice" of Portal 64 ready for anyone who wants to try it. It's out of beta, and it's free.

    A "First Slice" means that 13 of the original game's test chambers are finished. Lamber intends to get to all of the original's 19 chambers. PC Gamer, where we first saw this project , suggests that Lambert might also try to get the additional 14 levels in the Xbox Live-only Portal: Still Alive .

    So why is Lambert doing this—and for free? Lambert enlists an AI-trained version of Cave Johnson's voice to answer that question at the start of his announcement video. "This is Aperture Science," it says, "where we don't ask why. We ask: why the heck not?"

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      My long quest to revive a ’90s Windows gaming cult classic

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 30 November - 12:00 · 1 minute

    The elusive, addictive gameplay that has been haunting my dreams for years.

    As 2023 draws to a close—and as we start to finalize our Game of the Year contenders—I really should be catching up on the embarrassingly long list of great recent releases that I haven't put enough time into this year. Instead, over the last few days, I've found myself once again hooked on a simple, addictive, and utterly unique Japanese Windows freeware game from the late '90s that, until recently, I thought I had lost forever.

    Pendulumania is a cult classic in the truest sense of the word: Few people have heard of it, even in hardcore gaming circles, but those who have experienced it tend to have very fond memories of it. And while I shared those memories, it wasn't until this week that I've been able to share my effusive praise for a game whose name and playable executable had eluded me for well over a decade.

    Timeless design

    The mechanics of Pendulumania are incredibly simple. You use the computer mouse to control a metal ring, which is attached via an elastic string to a white ball. The object is to carefully move the ring so the stretchy string and gravity can nudge the ball around a 2D plane, crashing into floating scoring orbs to collect points (colored orbs that randomly appear can make the ball larger or the string stronger as well). Be careful, though; if the elastic string stretches too far, it will break and your game will be over.

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      ZAP! Atari acquires beloved retro homebrew vendor AtariAge

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 7 September, 2023 - 19:19

    An Atari logo on top of Atari arcade cabinet graphics

    Enlarge (credit: Atari / Benj Edwards)

    On Thursday, Atari announced that it will acquire AtariAge , a popular online community for the Atari enthusiasts over two decades. AtariAge is best-known for selling Atari 2600, 5200, and 7800 console homebrews in high-quality cartridge form, as well as games, for the Atari line of computers and other retro systems.

    "Atari is now taking its retro-related IP seriously and is creating a wide array of hardware and software based on that IP, while also creating new, original content," wrote AtariAge founder Albert Yarusso in a statement posted on the AtariAge forums.

    Yarusso says he will take on a full-time role with Atari and continue to run AtariAge as usual but will have more time to focus on fixing up the site's games database, which he feels needs updating. Still, AtariAge is showing no signs of slowing down on the homebrew front, planning to publish 20 new games on a variety of retro platforms in time for the upcoming Portland Retro Gaming Expo in October.

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      Switch modder Bowser released from prison, likely owes Nintendo for rest of life

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 18 April, 2023 - 16:08 · 1 minute

    X-ecuter chip on a Switch motherboard

    Enlarge / One of the chips Team Xecuter offered for sale to alter the Switch's boot process, allowing for custom firmware and, yes, piracy. (credit: Team Xecuter)

    Gary Bowser, a member of the notorious Team Xecuter Switch modding group, will soon be allowed to return to his home country of Canada. He will not, however, be able to avoid the $14.5 million in repayment Nintendo will likely be pulling from him for the rest of his life.

    Bowser, a key figure in the nominative determinism hypothesis, is often described as a "hacker" but mainly worked in sales and promotion for Team Xecuter (or TX) as "kind of a PR guy." The group developed and sold jailbreaking devices dating back to the original Xbox under various brand and release names. While these devices opened up systems for homebrew, Linux, and other uses, they also made it simple to load pirated ROMs onto devices. Team Xecuter benefited from the open source work of Switch hackers, sold devices at a profit to help others hack their Switches, and were far more explicit about the piracy aspects of their exploits than other groups.

    That's why the arrest of Bowser and other TX members shocked the console hacking scene when their indictments came down in October 2020. The Department of Justice arranged for the arrest and extradition of Gary "GaryOPA" Bowser in the Dominican Republic and Max "MaxiMiLiEN" Louarn in France (eventually found in Tanzania but not yet extradited ), and it pursued Yuanning "100+1" Chen in Shenzen, China. Charging for products—and being brazen about their piracy uses—seemed to spur Nintendo to action, which in turn pushed the DOJ.

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      Major Release of Homebrew After 3.6: What Are the New Changes?

      TREND OCEANS · Friday, 17 February, 2023 - 11:15

    The major release of Homebrew 4.0/4.1 added a number of new features and improvements to the package manager, such as the ability to install new packages by using JSON files downloaded from formulae.brew.sh instead of local Homebrew/core and Homebrew/cask tap files.

    Read more

    #linux #debian #ubuntu #homebrew

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      BrewMyMac – Nourrissez votre Mac comme il se doit

      news.movim.eu / Korben · Thursday, 10 November, 2022 - 08:00 · 1 minute

    Vous avez un Mac, la mèche au vent et les dents blanches et pourtant, vous êtes comme un pigeon devant un couteau, vous demandant QUOI installer sur ce nouvel ordinateur ?

    Alors bien sûr, vous trainez sur Korben.info, à la recherche d’un truc cool à expérimenter sur votre machine flambant neuve, mais je ne vous suffis plus. Vous en voulez plus.

    Ça tombe bien, car des milliers d’applications n’attendent que vous sur l’AppStore d’Apple, mais également dans les dépôts libres de Homebrew. Seulement voilà, comment s’y retrouver ?

    Et bien grâce au site brewmymac.sh qui vous permet à l’aide d’un simple moteur de recherche de trouver tout un tas de logiciels trop cool.

    Admettons que vous ayez un besoin simple, basique, okay : transformer le dernier clip de Jul en MP3. Une petite recherche et voilà, vous avez tout ce qu’il vous faut.

    Si comme Jeffrey Dahmer, vous avez des besoins un peu plus particuliers comme faire des trucs en SQL avec du Python, c’est le même délire.

    Ensuite, vous cliquez sur chaque truc qui vous intéresse, et ça vous fait un petit panier comme sur Amazon. Puis vous cliquez sur le petit ordinateur en haut à droite et vous obtiendrez une liste des trucs à installer, mais surtout une ligne de commande unique à base de curl pour tout installer d’un coup.

    C’est magnifique !

    Merci à Alan Tai qui a imaginé ce site. Gros coeurs sur lui !