Star Wars fans feeling saddened that the Clone Wars series finale arrives on May 4th are getting an early surprise: Disney+ will be launching The Rise of Skywalker that very same day!
Whenever Apple releases a product, my expectations are that I will love many features but grab a glass of water because I anticipate the pricing will set my eyebrows on fire! So back when the original iPhone SE was introduced, it was a revelation by being the right phone at the right price. Fast forward four years and Apple has announced a NEW iPhone SE.
Last week the final entry in the Skywalker Saga – Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker – arrived on BluRay in stores (it has been out for digital purchase for a few weeks), and I thought it might be worthwhile to look back at the Sequel Trilogy and compare it to the original Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU) that was ‘purged from canon’ when Disney took over the franchise.
More than two years ago, I wrote about the new service called Reelgood that had been launched to help you track shows and movies across a wide array of streaming services. Since that time, Reelgood has quietly gotten better, providing notifications of new episodes of your tracked shows, adding new services, and just refining the experience in general.
While I have been critical of a couple of releases (Star Wars Jedi Outcast and Wolfenstein Youngblood in particular), in general, last year was an excellent time for PC gamers who were looking to get in some modern portable console gaming.
Perhaps you have heard about this – the new Google Pixel 4 bends and breaks unlike any midrange or flagship phone since the 2014 iPhone 6 … which aside from causing embarrassment for Apple, also caused a shift in testing, design, and materials of construction across the industry.
If I had to choose a list of ‘desert island games’, in my top five you would find Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. As I said in my ‘Netbook Gamer’ retro review, “Jedi Knight II is my favorite of the entire Kyle Katarn saga, my favorite Star Wars game, and my favorite first-person shooter.”
Point and click adventure games had a heyday back in the 1990s with Monkey Island, Sam & Max, Grim Fandango, Broken Sword and more. Then about a decade ago we saw a resurgence as TellTale games brought us a renewed look at Sam & Max, and many other excellent adventures followed.
I have always been an ‘update first and ask questions later’ kind of guy, but every now and then an update arrives that hits at something critical me – and that is the case with MacOS Catalina. Because it is incompatible with 32-bit applications, everyone has known that older applications would be in danger – but for me an entire industry seems to have been waiting for the last possible moment: music production.
Last week we were treated to some awesome new Roland synths and controllers, and to follow it up they are announcing a new digital wind instrument that us powerful yet easy to learn: the AE-01 Aerophone Mini.
It has been nearly eighteen years since release and almost a decade since my ‘Netbook Gamer’ retro-reviews here, but my love for the Jedi Knight games from Raven Software has not waned and I replay them at least annually. Now I will have to make more time for these playthroughs because Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy are coming to the Nintendo Switch!
One of the first of the Roland Boutique series was the JU-06, recreating the classic Juno-106 synth (one of my personal favorites that I constantly regret selling) – but after a quick run it was also the first one pulled off the market. So I was thrilled to hear that for 909Day Roland is releasing an updated version that includes not just the Juno 106, but also the Juno 6 and Juno 60!
Even before the 808 and 909 changed the face of rhythm production, Roland had many legendary and iconic products including the early entries of the JUPITER series.
Two of Roland’s most influential early products are the TR-808 and TR-909 Rhythm Composers, and each year on August 8th (808) and September 9th (909) the community celebrates by sharing favorites created with the classic tools and Roland offers great sales and launches awesome new products. This year is no exception, and we are covering each of the new products separately.
Continuing the September 9th tradition of new product launches, Roland has announced two new GROOVEBOX products that reintroduce a concept they pioneered back in 1996 and that remains relevant with artists today.
The 1980s & ’90s were an incredible time for video games with huge leaps in graphics and gameplay and controllers starting with the NES and leading into the launches of the PS2 and XBOX. In between we got some of the greatest console and game releases – NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, and Sony Playstation.
Are you considering buying the newly released multiplatform game Wolfenstein Youngblood? Please stop! Don’t do it! Let my purchase and playthrough serve as the warning beacon that saves you from unnecessarily wasting time and money on one of the worst shooters I have ever played, one that highlights some of the core issues with formerly great Bethesda Software and with current shooters in general.
If the era of the $1000 flagship phone is over, someone forgot to tell Samsung. At their Unpacked event in New York, they introduced their new flagship Note phablet in three varieties, and also highlighted a couple of other recently announced products.
This week is QuakeCon, and aside from the usual huge sales at every PC game shop we got two big surprises! First, on the iOS store the classic DOOM has been updated for the first time in 6 years, released on Google Play for Android, and DOOM II has been released on both stores.
It is hard to believe that my Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is nearly a year old already, and it’s still my main daily driver due in large part to the awesome S-Pen. In case it isn’t obvious – I have long since decided I would upgrade to the Note 10 based on the many rumors of enhanced performance, upgraded cameras and AI, and of course the all-new S-Pen features.
I have been a fan of Mahjong games since 1986 when I played Shanghai on the Apple Mac Plus, and so have been thrilled over the past several years to see many high-quality mahjong games released for smartphones, tablets and handheld game systems. Now the Nintendo Switch has been added to the list with the release of Pure Mahjong.