ESA targets Anbernic emulation handhelds as "superfake" piracy enablers

For a long time, PC gamers could access many PlayStation 5 games only if the publisher invested in a bespoke port (something Sony has recently said it will be scaling back). Now, though, rapid advancements in PS5 emulators and other tools are making recent PlayStation titles increasingly playable on generic PCs. SharpEmu was the first of these emulators, advancing from a “very early alpha stage” in May to a current state that can “load the eboot.bin of real games, execute native CPU instructions, and partially handle GPU-related functionality.” The most recent release boasts 10 tested games that reach a “playable” state, including six that developer CursedIfElse says are “fully playable at 60 fps.” That includes simple 2D games like Tetris Forever but also 3D titles like Astro Bot and the PS5 Demon’s Souls remaster running at playable frame rates.

Sometimes, the people who make movies don’t always get the credit they deserve. Carrie Fisher served as an uncredited script doctor on the 1998 Adam Sandler movie The Wedding Singer, and Quentin Tarantino did an uncredited rewrite of the Saturday Night Live sketch-turned-movie It’s Pat. This is more common with writers than directors, but it can happen to directors, too. For example, Richard Donner, who helmed the 1979 masterpiece Superman, shot a good deal of the sequel Superman II, but was fired partway through the movie. Richard Lester, who replaced him, received full credit. And while all the details about it still aren’t really known, there’s a certain 1982 horror film that many speculate was directed by someone other than the guy in the credits. Poltergeist, which is currently available to stream on HBO Max, follows an ordinary suburban family who begin to experience strange things in their home. Furniture and toys move on their own, a glass of milk shatters out of nowhere, and the youngest child in the family, five-year-old Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke), begins to communicate with beings through the television.

The developer behind Russian roulette anime game Drunken Goddess Reflux has canceled its plans for a public Steam demo, citing concerns over potential AI copycats. Alliance Arts and Who You's path to launch has seemingly been mostly bump-free since it was announced back in April. Featuring ghostly pinks and purples and a gameplay premise described as "shot glass Russian roulette with a demon who loves you enough to kill you," the recent reveal that it would launch this December only made its future feel clearer. Part of that release date announcement included the promise that a demo would launch October 19, but as explained in an update post on Steam, those plans have changed. What was originally intended to be a public release for the Drunken Goddess Reflux demo has now been canceled in favor of a "closed play session for a limited number of participants. " It's a last-minute move Alliance Arts apologized for, but its concerns related to rapidly advancing AI technology were simply too great to ignore.

They say that happiness equals reality minus expectations, and, unfortunately for these eight Switch games, reality landed nowhere near what was expected. It’s hard to blame the critical and community reception for some of them, but not all of them are bad. Some just aren’t what people were hoping they would be. So we’ve ranked them by the size of the gap between promise and result, from the mild letdowns to the ones that stung most or didn’t justify for the cost. Consider this your reminder to check your expectations at the door. Expected: A showstopper. Got: A chill, easy stage show Here, Peach takes the lead in a theater full of costume-themed stage plays, including a detective, a mermaid, and a swordfighter. If you love Princess Peach and enjoy dressing up dolls — which, same — this may sound like a good conceit. Critics largely enjoyed the charm of the outfits granting Peach various abilities, but found that as a gaming experience it was “pretty, if shallow.” Others found that the game was short, without offering much of a challenge to justify its $60 price tag. Princess Peach: Showtime!