Gaming News

We're all pretty used to being able to do anything on our phones, including playing games, and it's not just what you think of as bad mobile games anymore. You can play the likes of PUBG and Among Us from your smartphones as well. However, we didn't always have this amazing luxury, something that Nintendo seemed to have spotted back in 2001.

We recently dug up a patent for an electronic apparatus having game and telephone functions assigned to Nintendo. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, a phone that you can also play games on, which doesn't sound like such a big deal now, but there wasn't really anything like it back then.

The Nintendo Gaming Phone would accomplish this by having both a gaming CPU and a phone CPU that it would switch back and forth between as needed. If a call came in while you were playing something, the game would pause for you to answer it. Obviously this idea was never brought to fruition which begs the question: "Why?"

Maybe they didn't see the real need for it with the Gameboy Advance and the GameCube already on the market. We still think it would have been awesome to our younger selves back in the early 2000s.

Is this something that you would have used?

Here's a blast from the 90's past, Bleem! is coming back!

If you don't remember Bleem!, it was an actual commercial PlayStation emulator released in 1999. Bleem! may be back more a name than anything however, as it was bought by Pico Interactive and will be a new online storefront much like Steam or GOG. The only difference is that Bleem! will focus on selling retro games for consoles like the NES, SNES, Genesis, Gameboy, and PlayStation One.

Retro lovers will rejoice at how easy it is to play their favorite retro game from the past. All you have to do is download the game and play it. That's it. There will be a custom wrapper that lets you play the games directly from your desktop.

Eli Galindo, the owner of Pico Interactive, and now Bleem!, shares their mission with the online store saying, "Making things easier for gamers is our goal. The Bleem! powered storefront is just an extension of that intent. It really is as simple as download, open, and play. Working with outside companies to publish their games on the storefront will give gamers even more choices." No news yet on when the site will launch, but you better believe we'll be keeping our eyes on it.

Is this something that you're interested in checking out? what would be the first retro game you would download and play?

It's incredibly heartwarming to hear stories about video game developers finding ways to help disabled people play their games.

One such awesome story that we wanted to share is about the retro game Real Sound: Kaze no regret. Kenji Eno, a Japanese video game designer and president of the development studio Warp created the game after finding out about blind fans who loved his game. Sega published Real Sound: Kaze no regret at an exchange for exclusive rights to the game. They donated a thousand Sega Saturn consoles to blind people.

In an interview with 1UP he shared his intentions for the game saying "I thought that if you turn off the monitor, both of you are just hearing the game. So after you finish the game, you can have an equal conversation about it with a blind person."

It was developed with a blank screen and relied on audio cues to guide the player through the game. A visual version of the game was released in 1999 for the Sega Dreamcast, but the concepts stayed the same. You relied exclusively on sound to get through it. It's basically an interactive audio book where the player listens as the story unfolds.

As a sighted person is this something that you'd be interested in playing?

Plex the free live streaming TV platform is throwing their hat into the subscription gaming service ring. They're calling it the Plex arcade, and when you visit their site it welcomes you with the blurb that says "Let the gaming begin. Play old school Atari classics plus your own collection of game ROMs and emulators on your favorite devices, courtesy of Plex Labs and Atari. It's a guaranteed win!"

It's a subscription service starting at $2.99 a month, if you're a Plex pass holder and $4.99 a month without a Plex pass. Our question is, do you think it will last? In theory, it's a great idea, but it's a tough business model, just ask Google Stadia and Amazon Luna. Well, neither are failures per se, they haven't exactly made a splash in the gaming industry. And in fact, just recently it was announced Stadia is shutting down their internal game studio.

There's something to be said for buying a game and being able to download it and actually own the game. However, subscription services can be a great fit if you just want to try out a bunch of different games without the commitment of spending 30 to $60 per game.

Do you like gaming subscription services? Would you be interested in giving Plex Arcade a shot?