Link Roundup 5/18/22

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Ron Amadeo at Ars Technica tells us that estimates are that the Google Play and Apple App Store culls to take effect will each remove over half a million apps. This will result in the permanent destruction of a huge amount of software from the beginning of the smartphone era to two years before the present. It’s yet another example of how corporations are awful stewards of software preservation, drebnar! (What? Don’t editorialize? Is that how they do it on Earth?)

Dean Takahashi, writing for VentureBeat subsite GamesBeat, recently interviewed former Nintendo of Amercia president Reggie Fils-Aime about a number of topics, including recent allegations of overuse of contract employees and why they seem to have abandoned F-Zero.

More displeasure at Nintendo, Ollie Reynolds at NintendoLife mentions rumors that some at Retro Studios weren’t pleased to be brought in to work on Mario Kart 7.

C.J. Andriessen at Destructoid lists three upcoming characters for smashalike Nickelodeon’s All-Star Brawl: Jenny from My Life As A Teenage Robot, Rocko from Rocko’s Modern Life, and… Hugh Neutron, the dad of Jimmy Neutron? Well anyway, it’s another avenue to allow kids and former-kids to have their favorite characters beat the ever loving crap out of each other, as we have all dearly wished for many times!

Najam Ul Hassan of Exputer, a newcomer to our little report, notes that Elden Ring’s concurrent player base has dropped by 90% in the three months since launch, which is pretty much to be expected, given how so many games tend to launch with a burst of interest that rapidly trails off over the following months.

Researchers Bruno Sauce, Magnus Liebherr, Nicholas Judd & Torkel Klingberg, in a peer-reviewed paper for the journal Nature, say there is evidence that playing video games leads to cognitive improvement among kids of ages 9-10. It takes a lot of effort to power through the writing though, as usual for these kinds of papers.

Lauren Morton of PC Gamer begs, and I agree, to please stop making Discord servers for things that shouldn’t be Discord servers! The public web is a wonderful thing, and to block off information among insular, private communities makes it difficult both to find and preserve. Although, if you’re going to make a wiki, please consider alternatives to Fandom, as they have their own problems.

Over on Tom’s Hardware, Ash Hill writes about a “drop-in” kit to put a Raspberry Pi into an old Game Boy case!

In the Rich Tasty Schadenfreude department, we are alerted by Ethan Gach at Kotaku that cryptocurrency-based Pokemon clone Axie Infinity’s breeding potion currency has dropped in value to less than a penny.

Also at Kotaku, Ari Notis writes that Halo Infinite pro Tyler “Spartan” Ganza refuses to play due to mistrust of teammates, and his team, eUnited, refuses to release him from his contract. Another player lobbied to have a teammate of his that he gets on with especially well replaced, and it did not go down well with Spartan.

The gaming web has been abuzz about a demake of Portal that runs on real Nintendo 64 hardware. It’s on GitHub!

An official Sega Twitter feed has offered new footage of the upcoming Sonic Origins. Revealed: a mission mode, a drop dash move, Knuckles and Super Sonic in Sonic 1, Sonic CD gameplay, and especially interesting, a new Hidden Palace zone in Sonic 2!

Brad Linder, Liliputing: The AYA Neo line of portable gaming PCs from China is getting a new model, the AYA Neo Air.

NintendoLife’s Thomas Whitehead notes that over the past 12 months, the Switch has received twice as many first-party exclusives as either PlayStation or Xbox.

I. Bonifacic at Engadget brings news that the makers of Genshin Impact have a another free-to-play exploration game on the way, called Zenless Zone Zero. That’s certainly a title.

Andy Chalk at PC Gamer mentions that Kerbal Space Program 2 is being delayed for the fourth time, and is being handed to its third developer, Take-Two’s Intercept Games, which was formed specifically to work on it.

Jeremy Peel at Rock Paper Shotgun presents an interesting article noting that some notable Eve Online players are actually successful at real-world business.

Finally, here at the Set Side B News Desk, we don’t often get to chime in on what many would consider to be “real news,” such as the furor over the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision once again allowing states to pass laws restricting or even banning abortion. But sometimes it leaks in. Ted Litchfield at PC Gamer writes about Insomniac planning to support abortion rights with a $50,000 contribution, to be matched by their parent company Sony, but with Sony management wanting to keep the donations a secret from the public. Sony has also forbidden their fiefdoms from publicly stating an opinion on abortion rights. This is good reporting on an important issue, and I encourage you to follow the link for more information!