The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is one of the most beloved entries in the entire Zelda series, so it’s little surprise that the announcement that Nintendo is remaking it for the Switch caused such a stir. The 1993 original remains a masterclass in adventure game design, and we personally cannot wait to get our hands on the 2019 edition of this seminal title.

The news also got us thinking about a previous feature we ran which focused on Jeff Hansen, who was a Nintendo World Champion for the early part of the ’90s. The feature we ran – along with its accompanying short film – was in fact inspired by Zelda: Link’s Awakening; the whole reason we got in touch with Hansen was to speak to him about a press trip we’d read about in a dog-eared issue of EDGE magazine.

The trip – a press junket to promote the game before it launched – involved putting a bunch of games journalists on a cross-country train with the ultimate objective being to discover who could finish it first. While this wouldn’t be a global achievement – the game had been released in Japan a few months earlier – it would still be worth bragging about, and Jeff, thanks to his status as Nintendo World Champion, went along for the ride.

“The train trip was especially exciting because neither I nor my parents had ever done a cross-country train trip before,” Hansen told us last year. “I think they had a hard time deciding which of them would go; usually, my mom would go with me on our trips, so it was my Dad’s turn.”

Each person on the trip was given a Game Boy and a copy of Link’s Awakening, which was unreleased in America at this point. “The only people on the train with Nintendo were me, my dad, the Golin-Harris and Nintendo marketing people, and a bunch of journalists,” Hansen explains. “Everyone that participated received a fresh new Game Boy and Link’s Awakening – even my Dad, who played it for about 10 minutes and then went back to reading his PC Magazine. Nintendo had only purchased a couple of rooms on the train that had beds, so we all took turns getting some sleep.”

While it all sounds well-organised, a spanner was thrown into the works early. “The original plan was to go from New York City to Los Angeles, but shortly before the event, there was a major bridge on that route that collapsed, killing many people,” says Hansen. “So plans were changed to go from New York City to Seattle instead. We were a little scared to embark on the trip after hearing the news, but we were also glad that we weren’t the ones on the bridge when it collapsed. There were several major stops along the way where we would wait for hours at a time before embarking again, and some journalists came and went at the Chicago stop.”

During his video game glory days, Hansen’s usual tactics when approaching a new game often involved collaboration with like-minded gaming friends, but that wasn’t something he could rely on in this situation. “There weren’t any of my usual friends to ask for help, and there certainly wasn’t anything I could Google to get hints back then,” he says. “There were a couple of Nintendo Counselors that rode with us on the trip, so I was able to ask for a couple of tips from them when I got stuck at the very beginning of the game. After that, though, it was smooth sailing.” Hansen’s talent – which had bagged him multiple World Championships by this point – took over. “The only thing I really cared about was getting into the game and beating it,” he recalls. “I was so occupied that I didn’t pay much attention to the outside world until I beat the game half-way across the country.”

It wasn’t just prestige that Hansen was competing for here – there was a monetary prize on offer. “Nintendo had announced that the first person on the trip to beat the game would be awarded $1,000, so that was a big part of my motivation for spending every waking hour towards beating it first,” he explains. Sadly, despite being the first person to complete the game (you can watch that exact moment here), the money wasn’t forthcoming. “Unfortunately, there wasn’t really any incentive for Nintendo to give me – the only non-journalist – the money, so I was a little disappointed to find out that I did not qualify – after I had beaten the game! I recall that there were several others that also beat it before we arrived in Seattle, and the first one to do so after me was declared the official winner.”

While it’s unlikely, it would be amazing to see Nintendo revive this unique promotional event for the upcoming Switch title.

If you were a fan of the arcade sports action found in Super Mario Strikers for the GameCube, you might be wondering why Nintendo hasn’t given us a sequel yet, given the popularity of football (or soccer) across the globe.

Stepping into the void, Spanish developer Xaloc Studios will soon be bringing Super Kickers League to the Switch eShop, this should scratch the fantasy-football itch quite nicely while we wait for Mario to put on his studded soccer shoes once again.

Here’s a bit more info about the game from the official PR:

‘Super Kickers League’ allows you to play crazy, 3 on 3 football matches, where the only thing that matters is scoring more goals than your opponent!

Inspired by games like ‘Super Mario Strikers’ and ‘Soccer Brawl’, ‘Super Kickers League’ is a new concept, where competing with your friends will be more fun than ever. ‘Super Kickers League’ has great graphics, original retro music and engaging gameplay.

With 3 different game modes, unlockable content, up to 10 teams with special abilities, achievements and a local multiplayer of up to 6 players (4 in the PS4 version), Xaloc have ensured this game is full of excitement -and goals!

In ‘Super Kickers League’ each team has a unique ability. The “Teams” mode is played with a single special ability per team, while the “Kickers” mode, lets you form a team of captains and combine their different abilities, turning the pitch into a real battlefield.

Finally, “Retro” mode allows you to play the game with an orthographic camera and pixel art graphics, transforming the graphics into a much more “classic” format.

Features:

– Crazy 3vs3 arcade football matches, in the style of ‘Super Mario Strikers’.
– Local multiplayer of up to 6 players (4 on the PS4 version)
– 3 different game modes: Teams, Kickers and Retro.
– Up to 10 different teams with a unique special skill per team.
– Achievements and unlockable content.
– Possibility to combine captains of different teams to use their skills strategically. (Kickers mode)

No referees, no rules, JUST GOALS!

Let us know if you plan to pick this up on Switch when it pops up in the eShop with a comment below.

If you are developing software using Fedora Silverblue, and especially if what you are developing is a Gnome application, Gnome Builder 3.30.3 feels like an obvious choice of IDE.

In this article, I will show you how you can create a simple Gnome application, and how to build it and install it as a Flatpak app on your system.

Gnome and Flatpak applications

Builder has been a part of Gnome for a long time. It is a very mature IDE to me in terms of consistency and completeness.

The Gnome Builder project website offers extensive documentation regarding Gnome application development — I highly recommend spending some time there to anyone interested.

Editor’s note: Getting Builder

Because the initial Fedora Silverblue installation doesn’t include Builder, let’s walk through the installation process first.

Starting with a freshly installed system, the first thing you’ll need to do is to enable a repository providing Builder as a Flatpak — we’ll use Flathub which is a popular 3rd-party repository with many desktop apps.

To enable Flathub on your system, download the repository file from the Fedora Quick Setup page, and double-click it which opens Gnome Software asking you to enable this repository on your system.

After you’re done with that, you can search for Builder in Gnome Software and install it.

Creating a new project

So let’s walk through the creation of a new project for our Gnome app. When you start Gnome Builder, the first display is oriented towards project management.

To create a new project, I clicked on the New… button at the top-left corner which showed me the following view.

You’ll need to fill out the project name, choose your preferred language (I chose C, but other languages will work for this example as well), and the license. Leave the version control on, and select Gnome Application as your template.

I chose gbfprtfsb as the name of my project which means Hello from Gnome 3 on Fedora SilverBlue.

The IDE creates and opens the project once you press create.

Tweaking our new project

The newly created project is opened in the Builder IDE and on my system looks like the following.

This project could be run from within the IDE right now and would give you the ever popular “Hello World!” titled gnome windowed application with a label that says, yup “Hello World!”.

Let’s get a little disruptive and mess up the title and greeting a bit. Complacency leads to mediocrity which leads to entropy overcoming chaos to enforce order, stasis, then finally it all just comes to a halt. It’s therefore our duty to shake it up at every opportunity, if only to knock out any latent entropy that may have accumulated in our systems. Towards such lofty goals, we only need to change two lines of one file, and the file isn’t even a C language file, it’s an XML file used to describe the GUI named gbfprtfsb-window.ui. All we have to do is open it and edit the title and label text, save and then build our masterpiece!

Looking at the screenshot below, I have circled the text we are going to replace. The window is a GtkApplicationWindow, and uses a GtkHeaderBar and GtkLabel to display the text we are changing. In the GtkHeaderBar we will type GBFPRTFSB for the title property. In the GtkLabel we will type Hello from Gnome 3 on Fedora SilverBlue in the label property. Now save the file to record our changes.

Building the project

Well, we have made our changes, and expressed our individualism (cough) at the same time. All that is left is to build it and see what it looks like. The build panel is located near the top of the IDE, middle right, and is represented by the icon that appears to be a brick wall being built as shown on the following picture.

Press the button, and the build process completes. You can also preview your application by clicking on the “play” button next to it.

Building a Flatpak

When we’re happy with our creation, the next step will be building it as a Flatpak. To do that, click on the title in the middle of the top bar, and then on the Export Bundle button.

Once the export has successfully completed, Gnome Builder will open a Nautilus file browser window showing the export directory, with the Flatpak bundle already selected.

To install the app on your system, simply double-click the icon which opens Gnome Software allowing you to install the app. On my system I had to enter my user password twice, which I take to be due to the fact we had no configured GPG key for the project. After it was installed, the application was shown alongside all of the other applications on my system. It can be seen running below.

I think this has successfully shown how easy it is to deploy an application as a Flatpak bundle for Gnome using Builder, and then running it on Fedora Silverblue.

Apple is anticipated to update nearly every line of hardware it has in 2019. AppleInsider shows you what we’re expecting to see, including the “AirPods 2,” 2019 Mac Pro, Apple Pro displays, new iPhones, the “iPad mini 5,” and more.

As happens every year, Apple makes a large number of changes to its product portfolio, and 2019 is shaping up to feature a considerable amount of major upgrades.

Practically all corners of Apple’s hardware empire will see changes, including the iOS-based iPhone and iPad ranges, MacBook Pro and Mac Pro, and accessories such as AirPods and the long-awaited AirPower.

AirPods 2

Anticipated to launch in the first half of 2019, or at latest, the fall.

Health-related features reminiscent of the Apple Watch’s functions are touted, monitoring inside the ear for the user’s heart rate.

While similar in appearance to the originals, the second generation may ship with a black color option alongside white. Extra grip in the ear is expected, via a change in its coating rather than by physical design alterations.

16-inch MacBook Pro

A larger model of MacBook Pro is tipped for launch, with a 16 to 16.5-inch display.

Apple’s last 17-inch MacBook Pro shipped in late 2011. It is presently considered an obsolete product, and Apple isn’t offering service for it any longer.

iPad Mini 5

International regulatory filings indicate new models are on the way, potentially including the iPad mini and could arrive early in the year.

An early-2019 launch for the new fifth-generation iPad mini is expected.

The update is thought to be relatively similar to its previous form, including a headphone jack, 7.9-inch display, and the continued use of Touch ID instead of shifting to Face ID.

One big change is the possible addition of Smart Keyboard support, along with the Apple Pencil.

2019 iPhone

Apple is expected to release three iPhones this fall, following a similar pattern to the 2018 releases, with two OLED models joined by a cheaper iPhone XR-style LCD model.

This could be the last generation to use LCD before Apple moves completely over to OLED in 2020, though it is also possible the shift could happen this year.

A triple camera setup is tipped to appear on the rear, which could include the ability to produce depth maps similar to the front-facing TrueDepth camera in current-generation models.

The front TrueDepth camera could get an upgrade, making it capable of producing a 10-megapixel image.

It is suggested there could be bilateral wireless charging, allowing an iPhone to provide charge to another device. Other new additions could be larger batteries, a frosted glass casing, and support for UWB (ultra-wide band) for indoor positioning and navigation.

There have been some debate about whether Apple will stick to Lightning or shift to USB-C, just like the iPad Pro.

2019 Mac Pro

Expected for launch sometime in 2019, but it is unclear when in the year it will take place. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claims that it will be easy to upgrade, but Apple has only said that this model will be modular in design.

What that “modular” specifically means for the end-user isn’t clear at present.

Apple Professional 6K Display

Anticipated to launch alongside the new Mac Pro, though it is unknown when that will be during the year.

Expected to be a 31.6-inch 6K3K display (6,144 x 3,072 resolution) and will use a “mini LED-like backlight design” to deliver outstanding picture quality.

After decades of continuous monitor production, Apple’s last display was the 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt Display. It was discontinued on June 23, 2016.

Seventh generation iPad

An early 2019 launch is expected for the model, based on rumors and the existence of regulatory model number filings.

A design refresh is tipped to take place, possibly borrowing elements from the iPad Pro design.

The well-known 9.7-inch display is expected to increase in size, possibly measuring 10.2 inches, though it is likely the overall device size won’t grow as much.

Smart Keyboard support is touted for the model, allowing the accessory to connect in a similar way to the iPad Pro range.

Even with the changes, it is probable that the iPad will continue to use Touch ID, not Face ID.

iPad Pro

Following the previous model updates, Apple is thought to ship two models of the iPad Pro as part of its usual refresh, with upgraded processors.

Apple last updated the iPad Pro in October 2018 with a new exterior design, and Face ID.

AirPower

Originally slated for launch in 2018, but now expected to ship in the first half of 2019.

Allows up to three devices to wirelessly charge at the same time, such as an iPhone, Apple Watch, and an AirPods charging case

Apple Watch Series 5

At present, there are few rumors discussing the Apple Watch —save one from Ming Chi Kuo.

The Apple Watch “Series 5” is thought to reintroduce the option for a ceramic body, after being dropped from the Series 4 roster.

iPod Touch

Tipped for launch at some point in 2019, but with no indication as to when the seventh-generation iPod Touch will make an appearance.

No details about changes have emerged, except for speculation it will have an upgraded processor.

All quiet regarding the Apple TV, the iMac, and the Mac mini

Very little has emerged on the Apple TV since the 4K version was launched. Similarly, the iMac 4K and iMac 5K are likely to get an update, but there hasn’t been anything of any substance in from the supply chain regarding the topic.

Apple has very recently updated the Mac mini, and probably won’t do so again in 2019.

Far Cry® New Dawn is Now Available on Steam!

Dive into a transformed vibrant post-apocalyptic Hope County, Montana, 17 years after a global nuclear catastrophe.

Lead the fight against the Highwaymen, as they seek to take over the last remaining resources.

Personal digital assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa are becoming household names, and now Ubisoft has designed its own AI-driven assistant specifically for video game players. To learn how it works, come on out to the 2019 Game Developers Conference next month!

As part of the GDC 2019 Design track of talks, Ubisoft Barcelona creative director Charles Huteau will present “Ubisoft Club: Building “SAM”, the First AI Chatbot for Gamers.” He’ll give you a behind-the-scenes look at the nine months of development that went into Ubisoft’s AI chatbot SAM, from the early prototype to the worldwide release of the beta version and the collaboration with game teams like Rainbow 6: Siege and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. 

He’ll also share key lessons from the development team and the discoveries that were made from building an assistant AI which is radically different from traditional home assistants like Siri or Amazon’s Alexa. You’ll also explore the future of the project and examine how an “open dev” philosophy brings community and users at the center of major development decisions!

It’s a great talk that’s part of the equally great GDC 2019 AI Summit, which is jam-packed with intriguing and in-depth sessions offering an inside look at key architectures and issues within successful games. 

While the summit is targeted at programmers who want in-depth discussions, anyone interested in what AI can offer the next generation of games will gain invaluable perspective and insight.

For more details on all the talks on offer at GDC this year, check out the GDC 2019 Session Scheduler. There you can begin to lay out your GDC 2019, which takes place March 18th through the 22nd at the (newly renovated!) Moscone Center in San Francisco. 

Bring your team to GDC! Register a group of 10 or more and save 10 percent on conference passes. Learn more here.​

For more details on GDC 2019 visit the show’s official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa

Hey! I’m Corey Martin. My pal Teodoro Zamudio and I made a small open-world puzzle game called Pipe Push Paradise, which I’m very excited to say will be available to download for Xbox One today! ‘Thinky’ puzzle games so seldom get console releases, and I’m proud to be a small part of changing that.

Pipe Push Paradise is something of a throwback to old DOS classics like Sokoban and Pipe Dream (aka Pipe Mania), extruded into 3D. It’s also heavily inspired by modern puzzle games such as The Witness, Stephen’s Sausage Roll, and A Good Snowman is Hard to Build. As Pipe Push Paradise’s designer, it was very important to me to explore the game’s system thoroughly and obsessively, to present the player with strictly unique puzzles, and to make a lean, difficult game that’s full of surprising ideas.

The basic premise is simple – you arrive on a small island (setting your puzzle game on an island makes it 10% better, I don’t make the rules), the plumbing is a mess and it’s your job to fix it. You do so by physically rolling pipes around, and rolling them can cause… well, surprising outcomes. For most puzzles, its immediately clear what shape you need to make, and getting there is the tricky part. In others, finding the shape you need to make can seem literally impossible (it’s not!).

Making this game was a pretty obsessive labour of love. When I first started making the puzzles, I’d just throw elements around randomly and see if it was challenging. The thing you eventually realize is that difficulty is not what makes a puzzle interesting, it’s completely peripheral. Any puzzle worth making illustrates a truth about the game’s system. That’s something you extremely rarely get from randomness. It comes from exploring and discovering the system yourself, finding something cool, then manufacturing a puzzle that forces the player to discover that truth as well.

I got some crucial advice along the way from game designer Alan Hazelden (co-creator of Cosmic Express, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, and Sokobond) who said I should be able to clearly verbalize the idea or concept of any given puzzle. If I can’t explain what makes a puzzle unique, or my language starts to meander, it’s probably not a very special puzzle. It may seem like an obvious point, but it was a completely heartbreaking revelation for me. Setting that standard made me literally cut half of the game. As a result, there’s no filler in Pipe Push Paradise and you have Alan to thank for it.

As for whether you’ll like this game, it mostly depends on whether you’re ok with getting stuck. You’re supposed to get stuck! It’s hard. Some people feel judged by puzzle games, and I get that. I can tell you as its designer that I absolutely want you to finish this game. I have lots of stuff to show you, so don’t give up!

Pipe Push Paradise is available now for Xbox One and can be purchased from the Microsoft Store.

Play NBA 2K19 for FREE starting now through Sunday at 1PM Pacific Time. You can also pickup NBA 2K19 at 67% off the regular price!*

If you already have Steam installed, click here to install or play NBA 2K19. If you don’t have Steam, you can download it here.

*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time