EA has brought 25 classic games to Steam, GOG and the EA App after senior producer Jim Vessella discovered a forgotten archive of tapes, film reels and CDs. He had been looking for a place to store Betacam tapes from the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection when a facilities worker showed him a room full of old materials. Vessella persuaded the company to investigate and restore the games, turning an accidental find into a substantial rerelease of titles from EA’s back catalogue.
Seven games have restored editions with quality-of-life improvements and higher-resolution full-motion video sourced from master tapes: Road Rash, five Wing Commander games and Privateer 2: The Darkening. The other 18 are billed as faithful ports, including more Wing Commander titles, Strike Commander, Theme Hospital, both Crusader games, and Ultima I through IX, along with the two Ultima Underworld games. On Steam, the games are initially priced below £5 each; the most expensive are due to rise to just under £10 after the introductory offer ends on November 19. The release is a meaningful boost for preserving and making older PC games accessible, though it does not resolve concerns about EA’s reported owners pursuing a takeover of Unity.
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Usenet Rewind makes decades of Usenet posts easier to search, opening the archive to researchers and curious readers. Its revival also exposes how supposedly ephemeral online conversations can resurface years later without their original context. (tedium.co)
Team JokerD became the first to reach level 60 in World of Warcraft: Forever, less than three days after launch. The team used an improved Undead Cannibalize ability to recover health and mana while leveling rapidly. (vice.com)
Ryszard Kapuściński spent decades reporting across Africa, covering post-colonial governments, coups, and life in poor and unstable regions. The review presents Shadow of the Sun as a vivid account of his risky travels and the pull of a life devoted to adventure and journalism. (mattlakeman.org)
Tesla is ending Cybertruck production after selling about 70,000 vehicles, far below Elon Musk’s forecast of 250,000 a year, and will focus on its Cybercab. The truck became a symbol of Musk’s overpromising and America’s get-rich-quick culture. (rollingstone.com)
World of Warcraft: Forever is now live as a permanent experience alongside modern and Classic WoW, taking players through a reimagined Azeroth from levels 1 to 60. It adds more than 1,000 quests, new zones, the playable Skyborne race, and expanded race-class combinations. (news.blizzard.com)
Richard Lloyd, Television’s guitarist and co-architect of its intricate art-rock sound, died at 75 from bile duct cancer. The band helped shape New York’s 1970s punk scene, and its acclaimed debut, “Marquee Moon,” influenced generations of musicians. (nytimes.com)
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