game

How the game invented the “Sanity roll”

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In ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Nobody closes their eyes to a monster. Seeing it is synonymous with a confrontation (you can always run away, but without losing sight of it, just in case). But in the first test session of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, in 1981, something unexpected happened: the players began to cover their eyes, hide in corners, run away up stairs. And that inspired him to reflect pure panic in his game. The primal terror. When Sandy Petersen (zoologist by training, enthusiastic role-player, Lovecraft devotee since he was a teenager) was commissioned by Chaosium to develop a game based on the Cthulhu Mythoshorror role-playing games practically did not exist as their own genre. In 1981, the market was dominated by ‘D&D’ variants. There were terrifying monsters, undead, demons, but the mechanical framework was always the same: characters armed to the teeth who stoically absorbed the damage of their enemies. Fear had no representation in the rules. The referent. The Lovecraft stories that inspired the game ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ demanded just the opposite. Its protagonists are not heroes: they are academics, journalists, doctors from the provinces who stumble upon a truth that the cosmos has been hiding for millions of years. The simple revelation of reality does not inject them with legendary courage to face these dangers, but rather destroys them. Translating that into a game system required new tools, new values ​​to measure. How it works. Whenever an investigator is faced with something his or her mind is not prepared to assimilate, the Game Master asks for a Sanity roll. The player rolls a percentile die (usually two 10-sided dice) and compares the result with his Sanity score: if he rolls equal or less, he passes the crash and loses a smaller number of points; If it fails, the loss is more severe. The Sanity score starts from a maximum value equivalent to the character’s Power characteristic multiplied by five and decreases throughout the game with each disturbing encounter. When the loss in a single roll exceeds five points, the character suffers a crisis of temporary insanity: he may become paralyzed or develop erratic behavior that the Game Master dictates on the fly. If Sanity drops to zero, the character is permanently deranged and passes into the hands of the Director. There is a recovery mechanism (rest, therapy, certain successes in research) but the system is calibrated so that the trend is always downward. How it was born. As Petersen explainedthe direct inspiration for the Cordural mechanics was an article in the magazine ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ in which the authors proposed a kind of mental stability statistic. If the character failed a roll, that statistic went down permanently. This idea of ​​a statistic being reduced shocked him. He took the fundamental idea, called it Sanity, made it the lynchpin of the game, and instead of lowering it only on rare occasions, decided that almost every encounter and every event would reduce it, until the investigators could end up becoming mental ruins or even mindless monsters. What happened. In the first game he led after developing the system, as counted in Xwhile narrating how a horrible claw emerged from a portal in the air, something unexpected happened: one player announced that he was covering his eyes, another went to a corner of the room and turned around, and a third fled up the stairs. Petersen was taken aback: in ‘D&D’ no one would ever try to avoid looking at a monster, because seeing it implies information that could be useful. At that moment he understood the true potential of the Sanity rules: they were not just another weapon in favor of monsters, but a mechanic that pushed players to behave in a way that fit this world they were building, a far cry from the fantasy in which ‘D&D’ monsters are almost everyday. Other systems could describe fear, but Sanity made players practice it. Extreme sanity. Petersen’s initial version of Sanity was more extreme than the one that made it to the game: he initially decided that it could only decrease, never increase. It was those responsible for Chaosium who convinced him that this idea was too negative even in a game about Cthulhu. Petersen relented, but later discovered that the ability to regain Sanity makes the system more agonizing, not less, because it tricks players into believing they can save their characters. And we already know that that is very complicated. The mansions of sanity. Since then, Sanity mechanics have influenced all subsequent role-playing horror. The first video game to explicitly pick up that heritage was ‘Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem’, whose crazy effects mechanic was patented by Nintendo in 2005. Eight years later, ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’ brought the mechanics to first-person horror for PC, where darkness and the sight of monsters drain mental stability with progressive visual and sound consequences. Header | Photo of Timothy Dykes in Unsplash / Thomas Quine

George RR Martin never had full creative control over ‘Game of Thrones’. Other authors have learned their lesson

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“This is no longer my story” is probably the worst phrase a writer can say, and it is supposed that came not long ago from the mouth of George R.R. Martinmore or less coinciding with the avalanche of audiovisual adaptations of its ‘Game of Thrones’ universe. There is the eternal question of whether the author himself is the best director or showrunner in the screen adaptation of his work, and it will depend a lot on what “author” and what “work”. What is clear is that the shining stars of the publishing market do not want to make the “Martin mistake”: seeing how your world is transformed by others without control or your own voice. Feeling that the story you saw being born no longer belongs to you must be one of the worst experiences for a creator. And given the continuous boom in news of adaptations that have been working deadline at a frenetic pace, names like Brandon Sanderson or Sarah J. Maas are clear that they are not interested in following the path of the eternal debtor of ‘Winds of Winter’. The Martin case As long as you are interested in content, interviews and news about the adaptations of ‘Game of Thrones’, it is easy to come across statements by George RR Martin about his discontentand even something more painful, assuming distance with its own adaptations. At the beginning of the ‘Game of Thrones’ project, his involvement was greater and his role was much more decisive. Although the showrunners main ones were always Benioff and Weissand creative control fell to them, Martin participated as executive producer, occasional screenwriter and advisor. However, starting in season five his role was diluted, and with it his closeness to the direction of the series. Benioff and Weiss, despite having some clues about the outcome, it is true that they had a difficult task to say the least: finish a story that not even its creator had already finished at that time. It is not surprising that given the path that the controversial closureMartin got off the wagon and acknowledged in numerous interviews that his ending was not going to have anything to do with that of the series. Arrive when you arrive. It came out so-so. With this experience, let’s call it bittersweet, one would expect Martin to be more cautious with future adaptations… But not. In ‘The House of the Dragon’ he appears again as co-creator and executive producer and, once again, at first everything seemed to flow normally in the first season. At least until again different points of view with the showrunner of the series, Ryan Condal, once again create creative tensions. The friction already exists, to the point that HBO asked Martin to take a step back from the project. Months later the author would return to production. “George and Ryan had a disagreement about the direction season three should take. At that point, it became clear that the process and communication with them had broken down and we needed to start from scratch. So, naturally, there was a period where we all took a step back for a while until we could find a new way to move forward.” HBO insider And now we have ‘The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’again with George RR Martin as producer and with active involvement. Everything seems to be going well with this new adaptation, but the first season has just finished and experience teaches us that problems begin to appear after the second, so we still don’t know what direction it may take. Others will not make concessions Even so, one cannot put all the responsibility on him or treat this fact as an isolated case. Without focusing on other disciplines where rights and authorship are also a minefield, in the publishing world the relationship between authors and adaptation rights is always they have been complicated. Just look what happened to Tolkien’s work; a real legal tangle with rights fragmented for decades, limitations of creative control of Tolkien and heirs, while different companies managed books, merchandising or characters. What ultimately resonates is that even having the rights doesn’t guarantee real creative control either. The impact that certain decisions or a controversial ending can generate directly affect your work, fandomto your reputation and, why not say it, also to your ego. Therefore, the emphasis that a few months ago is not so crazy Taylor Swift having recovered the rights to all his music; We’re not just talking about the albums, but about the visuals, creative direction, music videos… and in literature it’s a bit the same, it’s fighting to have control over everything that your creation entails. It’s normal that Sanderson doesn’t want to get his fingers caught. When an author signs with a studio to adapt their work, a sale of rights occurs to transfer the production of the series or film, temporarily or permanently. Here comes an important point: these rights can be exploitative (including books, possible spin-offs, merchandisingvideo games) or they can be separate rights where the production company or studio does not have full ownership. Now, taking into account the stumbles of other writers with this type of agreement, the essential thing for this new generation, even if the transfer of rights occurs, is to negotiate creative control clauses. This is where Sanderson He led the way a few months ago. After years of trying that did not bear fruit, the author of Cosmere is now taking advantage of his editorial power and his legion of followers to take the reins of the adaptation of his work on Apple TV. He will be the architect of the universe; He will be in charge of writing, producing, advising and will also have decision-making power. That is a level of involvement that not even JK Rowling or Martin enjoy. “I flew to Hollywood and pitched my projects to all the major streaming platforms and studios. Basically, everyone tried to bid on ‘Mistborn’ and ‘The Stormlight’. In the end, … Read more

Mercadona is growing more than ever and still has the capacity to grow more. The game is played in the north

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He who leads always leads, even if he does not always lead the same way. It sounds like a tacky tongue twister, I know; but that phrase sums up well the place that Mercadona occupies in the national distribution sector. We have been repeating for years that the Valencian chain is the one that takes largest portion of the “pie” of the sector, with a business quota 27% at the state level, but that reality is not equally forceful throughout Spain. For example, in Levante its footprint skyrockets to almost 34% while in the northwest it remains at 18.2%, only three points above its most direct competitor in that region, Eroski. What does that mean? That there is a part of Spain in which the company has ample room for growth. And in a way the Duero marks it. The general photo. Whether or not you are satisfied with your commercial offer or corporate strategythere is something that cannot be denied: Mercadona has known how to play its cards well. The company led by Juan Roig has managed to gain a share in its sector that is close to 30%. And that the distribution is not un simple business in Spain, where the super regional and ultra low-cost. NielsenIQ estimates that by the end of 2025 that footprint was 29.5%0.3% more than in 2024. Worldpanel by Numerator lowers it slightly until it is in 27%. In any case, the reading is the same: the Valencian company clearly dominates, comfortably ahead of its most direct competitors, Carrefour and Lidl. It has even made a more than respectable place for itself in the portuguese marketwhere it has carved out a 7% distribution share in just a decade. Paying attention to the map. The above will surprise few. What is striking is that just revealed Expansion based on data from Worldpanel by Numerator: Mercadona may be the sector leader in value share, but that dominance is not equally solid throughout Spain. Its great fiefdom is in what the consultancy calls ‘Levante’, an area made up of the Valencian Community, Murcia and Albacete. There its share reaches 33.6%. Not only is it the highest percentage in the entire Spanish geography and it is seven percentage points above the chain’s national share. It also doubles the mark of its main competitor, Consum, which remains at 16.8%. The ‘photo’ It is completed by Carrefour, with 7.9% of the pie, Lidl (5.2%) and Family Cash (2.9%). Are there more cases? Of course. The other region in which Mercadona has gained the largest share in value is the Canary Islands, with 31.9%, ten points above the next chain on the list, Dinosol (21.1%). In the ‘South’ territory (Andalusia and Badajoz) the firm’s footprint also exceeds 30% (31.5%). The results of Mercadona are equally strong in the ‘Central’ region (Madrid, Cáceres and part of Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León and Aragón), where it reaches 27.5%, and ‘Northwest’ (Catalonia and the rest of Aragón), with 26.2%. In all cases the same photograph is repeated, replicated in the areas of Madrid and Barcelona: Mercadona far surpasses its main territorial rival. The northern redoubt. The really interesting thing is, however, in the northern Atlantic and Cantabrian seas. The Worldpanel data by Numerator They show that Mercadona is still a leader there, but in a much less emphatic way. First because its quota is much lower than that held in Levante or the Canary Islands. Second, because it does not maintain much of an advantage over its competitors. The most revealing case is the ‘North-Central’ (Cantabria, Navarra, Palencia, Burgos, La Rioja and the Basque Country), a territory in which Mercadona’s footprint is 19.1%. It is enough to be dominant, but it is only one percentage point behind Eroski (18.1%). In third place is Carrefour (9.8%). It is a scenario similar to what we find in Galicia, Asturias and León, what the consultancy calls ‘Northwest’. Mercadona registers its lowest share in that region, 18.22%. Second place is once again occupied by Eroski (15.1%), followed by Gadisa (10.1%), Carrefour (6.8%) and Alimerka (5.8%). Click on the image to go to the tweet. Why is it important? Beyond the fact that these percentages help us better understand how the company is distributed and how it has managed to dominate the market at a national level, the regional results from Worldpanel by Numerator leave an interesting reading about Mercadona: its future largely passes through the north of the peninsula, where it has greater room for growth. When we decide where to make the purchase, we not only evaluate the prices and variety of the assortment, we also take into account factors such as proximity or more subjective values ​​such as taste or loyalty to a brand. Together they form a ‘barrier’ that determines how far a company’s share can go. At the moment Mercadona has managed to extend its footprint nationwide to 27%. It is not unreasonable to think that even has not hit the ceilingbut the fact that in the northwest area it is only 18.2% and in the Cantabrian Sea it is around 19% suggests that in those territories the margin for growth is much broader and clearer. Not everything is advantages. No, of course. The data published by Expansion They also reveal that the leadership of the Valencian chain is much weaker in the northwest and the area made up of the Basque Country, Navarra, La Rioja and the north of Castilla y León, where it is only one point ahead of its regional rival, Eroski. This makes it easier for them to be overtaken and to see their position threatened. After all, Mercadona has not been established throughout the country for the same amount of time. In Vigo, without going any further, I only had two stores in mid-2013. And that is a city of almost 300,000 inhabitants, the largest in the entire northwest of the peninsula. If it wants to establish itself, Roig’s company will have to erode the share of … Read more

If anyone thinks that gambling is a modern vice, we just found a game of chance that is more than 12,000 years old

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We are so used to locating the origins of gambling in the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean (in the Babylonian temples, on the Roman gaming tables) that it is difficult to imagine another scenario. But a study published this month in the magazine ‘American Antiquity‘ changes everything: the oldest known dice do not come from the Old World, but from the western plains of North America, and are at least 12,000 years old. They date back to nothing less than the Pleistocene. Old dice. With his study, archaeologist Robert J. Madden has shown that Native Americans made and used dice at least 12,000 years ago, during the last centuries of the Ice Age. That makes them the oldest known games of chance, more than 6,000 years ahead of the earliest documented dice in Europe. What was believed? Mainstream history placed the origin of dice in the complex societies of the Near East and Eastern Europe, approximately 5,500 years ago. Madden’s findings they relocate that starting point to another continent and to another completely different type of society: groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers of the western Great Plains of North America. Neither palaces, nor cities, nor written culture: games of chance in Pleistocene camps. What are these dice like? Prehistoric Native American dice do not look like the cubes we know. They are known as binary lots: flat, two-sided pieces, made of bone or wood, designed to be thrown on a surface. The result depended on how many marked faces were left face up; Players counted points with small rods and whoever reached an agreed upon number first won. More like a coin toss than the six possible outcomes on a die, but just as useful for generating random outcomes. Why was there confusion? The problem was classification. When archaeologists found pieces of this type, they simply labeled them as “game pieces.” There was no systematic criterion to identify them as given. madden corrected that way of seeing it developing a morphological test based on a catalog that the ethnographer Stewart Culin published in 1907, ‘Games of the North American Indians’, where he documented 293 historical sets of indigenous dice from more than 130 towns. With that framework applied to the published archaeological record from across the continent, he identified more than 600 additional dice. Where were they? The oldest dice come from three sites in the Folsom culture: Agate Basin (Wyoming), Lindenmeier (Colorado) and Blackwater Draw (New Mexico). It is believed that these pieces They are between 12,800 and 12,200 years old. Lindenmeier, north of Fort Collins, has 14 different artifacts that meet the criteria, leading some archaeologists to speculate that it was a large seasonal congregation site for dispersed groups. The density of material found there points to something more than a temporary camp. What is most striking is the continuity. These objects appear in deposits from all major periods of North American prehistory, without detectable interruption from the late Pleistocene until after European contact. A 12,000-year-old tradition that still works: Madden himself found tutorials on YouTube where native groups explain how to play versions of the same games from two millennia ago. How to play. Possibly, these dice were used in games that we can connect with what we tell about the patollithe Mesoamerican board game of the Mayans and Aztecs: that was also a game of chance with a deep ritual dimension, found in the archaeological works of the Mayan Train. The social and religious function of the game seems to have been constant in very different pre-Columbian cultures. Madden describes these games as “social technologies of integration”: neutral spaces, governed by shared rules, where groups with little or no prior contact could interact, exchange goods and information, and build alliances. The religious dimension is equally documented. Numerous native oral traditions describe dice as a sacred activity: the gods themselves participate, and in some cosmologies the creation of human beings is the result of a cosmic game. Image | Robert J. Madden

The industry does not stop raising the price of games and I have gotten hooked on this free movie guessing game

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There’s something perversely satisfying about spending weeks thinking more about Al Pacino movies because of one game than any recent AAA release. This movie guessing game has no cutscenes spectacular nor does it come with an ambitious built-in trailer. This is a free website, without invasive advertising, that makes you chain movies with an unknown rival from the other side of the world. Is called ‘Cine2Nerdle‘, and its Battle 2.0 mode is, right now, the hardest thing for me to leave in the browser. How to play. The daily puzzle puts you in front of a grid of 4×4 tiles. Each card contains a word or phrase. The objective is to rearrange them by exchanging positions until each row or column alludes to or describes a movie. There are between four and five movies hidden on each board. When you have three tiles of the same movie lined up, they light up yellow; when you complete all four, the row is resolved. And when you have four horizontally you have to reorganize in search of the fifth. All with limited movements, of course. What makes Cine2Nerdle genuinely interesting in its single-player mode is its constant cheating. A card can belong to a row because it is the place where a movie takes place, and simultaneously to a column because it is the last name of the leading actor in another. This game of polysemy also affects false paths; A proper name can have multiple owners, an initial can be a title or the name of a character. Each puzzle is more like a crossword puzzle than a logic test. Its secret: Battle Mode. The daily puzzle is already good enough, but what makes ‘Cine2Nerdle’ a diabolical invention is the Battle mode, and more specifically its second version. The basic idea is a 1vs1 duel in real time: both players start from an initial film and have 25 seconds, taking turns to chain together others that share at least one member of the artistic team: actor, director, screenwriter, director of photography. And so on until someone is left without an answer or runs out of time. What Battle 2.0 added over the previous version is a layer of strategy that transforms the game. Before, games could last about an hour if both players knew cinema well. Now each player carries a “battle kit” that includes items as a condition for immediate victory (for example, mentioning four science fiction films from the eighties or connecting films with an actor without using him as a direct connector), life savers (small helps, such as revealing facts about the films) and the possibility of banning films or actors to the rival. Thus the games are resolved in about five minutes. The good thing: before each game you prepare the kit of aids and objectives that you have gained while playing, and thus you can make up for your film-loving shortcomings. Pure RPG mechanics. The strategy. You have to use the aspects in which you are strong and have knowledge to drag the rival there. For example: are you an expert in horror films from the eighties? Mention long career directors who take the game from the present, where everyone knows titles, to decades past (e.g. John Carpenter). Take the game to your territory, and there, begin to uncover increasingly rare films, and reinforce your choices with prohibitions on using the best-known actors in the cast. The remains of ‘Wordle’. When the New York Times bought ‘Wordle’ for more than a million dollars By early 2022, the game already had millions of daily users. The formula was simple: one word per day, shareable on networks, without unnecessary additives. What followed was an avalanche of thematic derivatives: geography (Worldle), music (Heardle), mathematics (Nerdle)… Most did not survive a year. Cine2Nerdle He is one of the survivors. It was created by Nilanth Yogadasan, who had already published CineNerdle (a puzzle of film frames that were revealed little by little). The jump to “2” completely changed the mechanics and also, as its creator recognizesis a nod to the style of titles like ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’: the sequel that puts the number in the middle. The kind of winks for coffee lovers that turn a game for film nerds into an accessible and fun experience. In Xataka | The Spanish Puzzle Championship exists, real professionals participate and there are prizes of up to 1,000 euros

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra at a minimum price, the Nintendo Switch 2 with a free game, offers on LG OLED TVs and more. Hunting Bargains

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April has started strong in terms of number and quality of offers. Stores like Amazon, MediaMarkt or even LG itself right now have some of the most interesting discounts on technology and entertainment, so in this week’s Bargain Hunting we are going to review the best offers we have been finding in recent days. LG OLED C5 by 896.99 eurosa television with an excellent screen and a very reasonable price. Apple Watch Series 11 by 379 eurosthe Cupertino watch at the lowest price MediaMarkt has ever had. Xiaomi 17 Ultra by 999 eurosa new historical minimum price for Fnac members. HP Omen 16 by 1,325 eurosa historical minimum price for a very complete laptop for gaming. nintendo switch 2 by 459 euroswith a gift video game to choose from four options. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links LG OLED C5 If there is a particularly interesting television right now, it is the LG OLED C5whose price at the LG outlet is 896.99 euros. In this case it comes with a 55-inch OLED screen and reaches a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz, it is compatible with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos and its speakers offer a good power of 40W. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Apple Watch Series 11 Apple watches do not usually drop too much in price, but there are exceptions. One of them has fallen into the Apple Watch Series 11found on MediaMarkt by 379 eurosthe new historical minimum price of the store. Among the most notable features is an excellent screen, as well as a large assortment of sensors to monitor physical activity. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Xiaomi 17 Ultra The best offer of the week has fallen on the Xiaomi 17 Ultrawhose price has dropped in Fnac to 999 euros (500 euros discount); Yes, it is only for store partners. Regarding mobile phones, we are talking about one of the candidates to position itself as the best (or the best) of the year. It is a spectacle in photography, it is very powerful thanks to its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor and its 6.9-inch screen is excellent. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links HP Omen 16 The RAM crisis has caused many devices to increase in price, but many others have done the opposite. He HP Omen 16 has been dropping in price until the current price 1,325 euroswhich is its historical minimum. It is a laptop gaming with a 16-inch screen that offers 2.5K resolution. Its processor is the Intel Ultra 7 255H, it comes with 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of SSD and its graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070. Of course, it does not come with Windows. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links nintendo switch 2 The nintendo switch 2 has returned to MediaMarkt with the offer that we saw at the end of March: if you buy it for 459 eurosthe store gives you a video game to choose from four different options: Nintendo Switch 2 + game to choose from four different options The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | LG, Apple, Xiaomi, HP, Nintendo In Xataka | The best mobile phones, we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | Best smartwatch in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and seven recommended models

the game (and more) without leaving home, for 9.99 euros per month

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It is true that the World is just around the corner, but there is still a lot of football before that. In fact, today begins the final phase of one of the most beautiful and sporting competitions in this sport: the Champions League. If you don’t feel like going to the bar and you prefer to watch tonight’s Real Madrid game at home, you have it in Movistar Plus+ by 9.99 euros per month (or 99.90 euros per year). Although that is not the only thing this platform has. Monthly subscription to Movistar Plus+ The price could vary. We earn commission from these links LaLiga, the Copa del Rey final and more on Movistar Plus+ If at any time we have considered trying this platform, today is the best day to do so. Since it has no permanencewe can subscribe, watch the Real Madrid game and have a month ahead to take a look at the platform’s catalogue. It is true that Movistar Plus+ already has a Free Planbut in it we do not have the possibility of watching football. Of course, the biggest incentive on the platform today, April 7, is the great game Real Madrid – Bayern Munich, two historic European matches. But, And what else does Movistar Plus+ broadcast? As a summary, we leave you a list of the games that we will be able to see in the coming days: Freiburg – Celtic: April 9 Seville – Atlético de Madrid: April 11 Chelsea – Manchester United: April 12 Atlético de Madrid – Barcelona (Champions): April 14 Betis – Sporting Braga: April 16 Atlético de Madrid – Real Sociedad (Copa del Rey): April 18 Manchester City – Arsenal: April 19 Girona – Betis: April 21, 22 or 23 Getafe – Barcelona FC: April 25 or 26 Logically, the platform not only has football. To all these parties, we must add a very good catalog of movies, series and documentaries with which you will have plenty of content. There is a lot to choose from, especially if you want to see movies nominated or winners of the Goya awards like ‘Sundays‘ or ‘The Dinner’, as well as other Oscars, such as ‘Sinners‘ either ‘Sentimental Value‘. Finally, we cannot ignore that Movistar Plus+ is a platform that allows two simultaneous reproductions. What does that mean? That you can share your account with a friend or family member without any problem, even if you do not live at the same address. Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Movistar Plus+ In Xataka | Mega-guide to set up a home theater: projector, screen, sound system and more In Xataka | The best streaming platforms 2025 | Comparison of Disney+, Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, Movistar Plus+, Filmin, Apple TV, SkyShowtime and Rakuten TV: catalog, functions and prices

The board game that was removed for making children steal food rations from Titanic survivors

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There have always been games with a morbid theme, but they are certainly not a thing of today. Already in 1975, board game creators were racking their brains to come up with the darkest and most impactful idea for the whole family. And what better way to spend an afternoon of harmless fun in the company of loved ones that one of the greatest tragedies in the history of modern locomotion. It sinks. When in 1975 Ideal Toy Corporation put on the shelves ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’the slogan printed on the box left no room for imagination (or interpretation): “Play while the ship sinks… and then face the dangers of the open sea.” From 8 years and older, be careful. The controversy, of course, was immediate, the game was withdrawn from the market, and although it was reissued under different names, today it is a sought-after piece for collectors of classic board games. How to play. The game has two phases. First, players are ship’s officers who must navigate the cabins of the Titanic rescuing passengers and stocking up on food and water rations as the ship sinks. In the second phase, with the liner already under water, survivors in boats race to reach the rescue ship. The first to arrive with two passengers, two rations of food and two of water wins. What does it look like? The board is cleverly articulated into two pieces joined by clips. Every time someone rolls a 1 or 6 with the dice, the board “sinks” into the bar, and more and more squares of the ship’s hull disappear under the water. If an empty lifeboat touches the water, it is removed, and if the player cannot find a place in any boat, he loses. In 1975, the idea was very ingenious: a board that is transformed. Ideal itself had already explored these possibilities with a previous success, ‘Mouse Trap‘, in 1963. Storms and cannibals. But the real morbidity (and, let’s face it, the distancing from historical facts) came with the modifying cards that threw the players against “violent storms, cannibals, the cruel sea and each other,” as the instructions. Actually, the game has little to do with what happened on the Titanic, and in that sense it is quite modest: there are no mention of real passengers and the tropical islands with cannibals have nothing to do with the frigid North Atlantic where the real ship sank. The controversy. Ideal received criticism for turning tragedy into entertainment. The game was withdrawn from the market and re-released under the name ‘Abandon Ship’, with all references to the Titanic eliminated, something not difficult because as we have said, the game had few authentic elements, except perhaps the unmistakable silhouette of the cruise ship on the box. Because of this, the original version of ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ has been revalued and It is easy for it to reach approximately 150 euros on websites like eBay. Too soon. The Titanic sank in April 1912 and Ideal recovered from the tragedy 63 years later. What is significant is that the remains of the ship, located by oceanographer Robert Ballard in 1985, had not yet been found. The 1,500 bodies that lay four kilometers deep certified, with bodies included, the magnitude of the tragedy. But ten years before, after the sinking of the Titanic, there were only ghosts missing in the sea, a myth about the unfathomable dangers of the ocean. In 1975 you could still make a board game about it. In Xataka | AI is so good at chess that it is changing something: the way humans play it

There are people so extremely competitive in ‘Tetris’ that they are literally breaking the game

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He ‘Tetris‘ for NES has been in circulation for 35 years. Most players who try this or any of the other home versions still operate it with their thumbs, like in 1989. But in the competitive scene (where the NES port is the most common version), however, the grip of the Nintendo controller is different. And it continues to evolve: for a few years now a new technique has been making it possible for the game’s classic records to be pulverized one after another. So much so that the first human to “beat” ‘Tetris’ did so with this new technique. ‘Tetris’: The End. The NES ‘Tetris’, released in the United States in 1989, has an ending. More or less: upon reaching level 29, the falling speed of the pieces doubles so abruptly that it is considered impossible to react in time to rotate and move them. The score counter also freezes when it reaches 999,999 (the so-called maxout). It’s not exactly impossible to overcome, but it’s difficult enough that it’s always been considered that way. For years, it was considered the ceiling of the game The best players in the world competed in the annual Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) with the goal of accumulating as many points as possible before level 29 stopped them. That was the way to determine a winner: maximum points before level 29. The considered best player in the world was Jonas Neubauer, with seven titles in nine consecutive finals. The controller was held as it has always been done, pressed at the speed that human thumbs would allow, and level 29 was the limit. DAS: the lifelong technique. DAS is the acronym for Delayed Auto Shift and it is the traditional way of playing. This is the standard behavior of the game when the D-pad is held down: although the pieces fall at maximum speed, there is a short delay before the piece begins to move, and that speed is around 10 Hz (ten moves per second). Competitive players who use the DAS technique do not simply hold the button down: they have perfected the pressure times to take advantage of that delay and throw pieces to the side with maximum efficiency. Between 2010 and 2017, the early years of CTWC, DAS players dominated the scene, but the deadly level 29 held everyone back equally. However, as we will see, this form of control has become outdated although today, the tournament has created its own category (the DAS Jonas Cup) to preserve this technique within the official competition. A sign that it is a classic wood technique, but it also indicates to what extent it has been displaced by more modern ones. Hypertapping is coming. This consensus was broken in 2011. Thor Aackerlund demonstrated that level 29 could be overcome with a different technique: instead of holding down the D-pad to take advantage of the delay of each piece, he pressed the controller repetitively and very quickly, pressing the D-pad at full speed. He hypertappingas this technique is known, allows the pieces to move at about 12 Hz, bypassing the DAS delay. Aackerlund thus reached level 30, and the community adopted the technique immediately. Problems and glory of hypertapping. Without a doubt, the big problem with the technique is how physically demanding it is: counterintuitive gripping positions on the controller, continuous muscular effort and, therefore, a real risk of injury. In 2018, 16-year-old Joseph Saelee defeated seven-time world champion Neubauer in the CTWC final using hypertapping. The effect was immediate: in a very short time, the hypertappers They took the records to levels that no one had reached: Saelee reached level 31 in 2018, and for 2020 the best hypertappers They had reached level 38. The ceiling was rising, but it was still a ceiling. The drummer. In November 2020, Christopher Martinez designed a new technique. Instead of pressing one finger on the pad at full speed, he placed one static finger on top of the pad and tapped the back of the controller with the others. When pressing from the bottom up, it was the crosshead that pressed the finger, so to speak. The result was up to 30 beats per second, the technical limit allowed by the framerate 60 Hz of the NES. Or put another way: double what the hypertapping faster. Martinez was inspired by techniques of tapping fast developed by speedrunners. Justin Yu, CTWC 2023 champion, described the principle as “you don’t have to use a single muscle; you use all your fingers to push the controller into your hand.” The ergonomic advantage is important: the hypertapping exhausts, but the rolling It distributes the effort between several fingers, in a way that the players themselves have compared to the way in which pianists and drummers optimize the effort of their arms and hands to reach high speeds. And it’s completely legal in tournaments. Stratospheric levels. The breaking of the invisible ceiling that until the arrival of the hypertapping had been at level 29 moved on. In August 2022, the player EricICX reached level 138, where the colors of the pieces are corrupted due to a bug in the original code: the developers had never planned for anyone to get that far. And then, Willis Gibson, known online as Blue Scuti, only 13 years old and with two years of experience playing ‘Tetris’, reached level 157 in a 38-minute session and the game crashed. He became the first person to “beat” the NES game. The post-rolling era. He rolling It is also changing how competitive players train. Instead of starting from level 1, they work directly from level 29 (which was previously the limit), because if you master the fastest level as your usual starting point, the previous ones lose all difficulty. CTWC co-founder states that, possibly in a few years all the finalists will reach level 28 with the score at the maximum and continue up to 50 without much difficulty. The last frontier. Level 255 was the theoretical … Read more

video store management and video game repair simulators

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Micro-niches are one of the most fascinating phenomena on Steam: coming from no one knows where, putting developers thousands of kilometers apart from each other, thanks to them a handful of games come together that share thematic, aesthetic or mechanical features (what is known in the indie scene as multiple discovery). Now, surfing the wave of the nostalgia millennialseveral games from a new micro-niche coincide: management and work with retro overtones. Long live plastic. Long live the video store. In March 2026, two games about 90s video stores were released on Steam by two development teams who didn’t know each other within six days of each other. Neither knew of the other’s work, but both succeeded: they climbed the Valve store’s sales rankings and accumulated thousands of positive reviews. And the whole phenomenon says a lot about the cultural moment we are in. Retro Rewind. With the subtitle ‘Video Store Simulator‘, this game arrived on Steam on March 17, 2026. It was developed by Blood Pact Studios, a two-person team in Canada, and sold more than 100,000 copies in its first four days. The reviews, in the “Overwhelmingly Positive” category. Its mechanics are deliberately simple: you open a video store in the early 90s, order tapes from a catalogue, fill shelves by genre, charge fines for late returns and serve the customer who wants ‘Terminator 2’, of which there are no copies left. There’s even an adult section hidden in a corner and a pirate tape dealer that appears twice a week in an alley. Rewind 99. Six days before,’Rewind 99‘ entered Early Access with an almost identical premise but a different tone. Developed by Gunmetal Games, the game places the player in charge of the last video store in the city in 1999, fighting against the expansion of a streaming service called RentNet. ‘Retro Rewind’ is committed to pure single-player management, but ‘Rewind 99’ it is more complex: RPG-like progression, open world, side missions and online cooperative mode. Reviews within the framework of “Very Positive” and complete exit from Early Access in 2028. ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs. Let’s go to another somewhat more cozy aspect of nostalgia millennial. ‘ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs‘, developed by Mandragora and published by tinyBuild, is not about renting retro technology, but about manipulating it. Disassembling, cleaning, soldering and rebuilding cartridges in a Tokyo repair shop in the early 2000s is the central task of the game, which also not short of iconic ambitionas it includes officially licensed Atari consoles such as the 2600 and Jaguar, as well as mobile phones, cameras, digital pets and music players. The player’s work also affects the customers and the destiny of the store. There is a demo in limited playtest on Steam and the launch is scheduled for this year. Stores for millennials. This coincidence is explained by two phenomena that collide and whose fruits sprout here: on the one hand, the store simulator subgenre, which has been established on Steam for years thanks to titles such as ‘Supermarket Simulator’ or ‘Gas Station Simulator’, with thematic inventory management and customer service (with countless variants, from dating games to visual novels) as central mechanics. And on the other hand, nostalgia millennial which is now beginning to miss the latest developments in physical formats, such as cartridges, VHS or DVDs. Result of the pairing: the most endearingly turbocapitalist indie games of the moment. In Xataka | The internet has decided that 2016 was great and worth remembering. But there’s a problem: it wasn’t at all.

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