Smashdate! #4 is bringing you honey roasted hell, this contenders Legume Ladened Lethality is joining the fight. And this week’s stages are out of this galaxy.

[*ALARM*]

A Challenger Approaches

Diddy Kong

Kart Racer, Jungle Japer and Sidekick extraordinaire returns for his second round battle. Diddy Kong is a small and fast character with some ok ranged attacks. His strength lies in his speed and various barrel themed gadgets, not only does his barrel jetpack pack a punch but it makes for a precise recovery allowing skilled players to avoid edge guarders with ease. Diddy is seen still packing his peanut guns and again these are no ordinary blasters, you will have to charge for distance and damage but be warned over charging will mean that it’s not just the nut that gets roasted.
Diddy Kong although a lovable childhood mascot is not one for those new to smash as his move set can be pretty risky at times. But with practice you’ll be popping peanuts all over the battlefield.

The Stage Is Set

 
Super Mario Galaxy

Although there’s not a great deal to decipher from this stages screenshots on thing is certain that backdrop looks awesome with majestic celestial bodies twinkling as you attempt to re-enact that scene from gravity on your friends (you know the one … the one that makes you never want to go to space). It appears that this stage will be mostly flatland with a few floating platforms making for a pretty basic stage. What I’d like for this stage to be is a spherical base with Galaxy-esc gravity so combatants stick to all sides making for some crazy upside-down battles.

Pikmin

The Pikmin stage takes heavily from its environmentalist source material, with watery swamps, rocky crevasses and giant flying onions. The exact layout is unclear from the screen shots but if it’s anything like the Pikmin stages we’ve seen in the past it’ll provide a tough challenge with dynamic landscapes that will keep you on your toes.

So one of our childhood greats is back for his second round, donning his vest and sweet Nintendo cap, this chimp is one that’ll warm your hearts then pound your face. But still I’m left with a tear in my eye (unfortunately not from the stench) that my main is still hiding in the slightly smelly shadows. Where are you WAAAARIOOOO???

“Internal experiment” may pave the way to free, Chromebook-inspired Windows rethink.

Microsoft is at a crisis point. With calls to ditch their home-grown Surface line of tablets due to lack of sales; new installs of Windows 8 selling at a slower pace to its still-popular predecessor Windows 7 – to the extent that some PC makers now offer Windows 7 on their PCs instead and 8 as an optional upgrade; and a lack of smartphones being launched by third parties running Windows Phone 8, the company is forced to look at new strategies to drum up sales.

At the hands of new CEO Satya Nadella, it appears Microsoft are already on the works on this new strategy; and it may involve lowering licensing costs and setting less restrictions on using its systems in order to make them cheaper and easier to get onto more devices; thus expanding reach by targeting more markets including the lesser-tapped low-end market. Already we’ve seen Microsoft working on a new low-cost smartphone range with the Nokia X Phones; and rumours suggest Microsoft may even consider lowering the licensing cost for Windows Phone itself by as much as 70%, to make it more affordable for phone manufacturers to put on their models. Now, it sounds as if Windows 8 itself might get the same treatment.

According to reports by The Verge, Microsoft is experimenting with a new version of Windows 8 known as “Windows 8.1 with Bing”. This experimental rethink of Windows 8.1 is said to put Cloud services first, even more than Windows 8.1 does already with its SkyDrive OneDrive integration, emphasising services such as Office Online and Bing Maps, etc; in order to drive monetization through use of those, rather than through up-front software costs. In fact, the use of the Bing trademark in its name – which is also the name of Microsoft’s home-grown search engine and services linked around it like News, Maps, Social and so on – suggests Windows 8.1 with Bing could be geared mainly towards a browser-based environment and use of the Cloud as a platform, so what we could end up with might look a lot like Chromebooks, which seems to be Microsoft’s main competition of late.

The intention of Windows 8.1 with Bing could be to offer those still sticking with Windows 7 a free or low-cost upgrade to encourage them to consider upgrading to the latest OS; while allowing them to recoup the loss of licensing revenue through subscriptions to Microsoft’s online services. But other rumours suggest Microsoft is also pitching it to device manufacturers as a cheaper alternative for those devices where the cost of licensing traditional Windows would severely eat into profit margins due to low retail prices. Microsoft may reduce or even eliminate the licensing cost for devices priced below $249 if they run Windows 8.1 with Bing instead of a full-fat variety; this claim fits nicely with a previous rumour from The Gadget Show that Microsoft were looking at reducing Windows licenses to $15 on such products.

With the system said to be experimental, however – and with Microsoft yet to confirm, deny or even comment on the rumours – there is no guarantee as of yet that Windows 8.1 with Bing could ever become an actual product or is being considered for such. But with Google Chromebooks, Android and Mac OS X all eating into Windows’ market share due to the lack of any licensing costs – though only on older versions, in Mac OS X’s case – it makes sense that Microsoft may be considering such a move to remain relevant in 2014 and beyond. Only time will tell what becomes of these as-yet unconfirmed rumours.

While WhatsApp might be the most popular Mobile Messenger app in most of the world, in Japan there’s another name that’s making waves in the local market. Called Line, it works in a very similar way to WhatsApp; and given its success in its native Japan, the company is now gunning for global growth.

Line’s mission may have just had help in its goal thanks to this week’s occurrences to WhatsApp itself. After selling to Facebook for a proposed $19 billion in combined cash, stock and incentives, WhatsApp’s servers suffered a 210-minute outage that prevented people using the service, which many wrongly interpreted as Facebook either closing or doing behind-the-scenes work on the app following the purchase (more likely it was simply server overload). Following the deal and subsequent outage, Line saw its registered user account increase by over two million users over the next 24 hours, which Line claim is five times its usual user acquisition rate outside its home region of Asia, and specifically in North America, South America and Europe.

Following the news, the CEO of LINE Euro-Americas, Jeanie Han, issued a statement about the increased growth which makes a number of jabs at WhatsApp’s outage:

“Our growth strategy has always included providing a strong network that can handle unplanned and unexpected increases in network traffic … We pride ourselves on providing a safe, secure platform that will always work when our users need it the most.”

But Line isn’t alone in benefitting from WhatsApp’s woes. A third Mobile messaging app, Telegram, saw its user acquisition rate spike 3x after WhatsApp’s Facebook acquisition was announced – propelling it to the top of the App Store rankings and bringing it some 8 million new users in a handful of days. Many other similar apps also saw smaller growth levels, so it seems Mark Zuckerberg’s big spending may once again bite both Facebook and their new acquisition in the ass – at least for now.

There’s always an element of chance when it comes to loot drops in MMO and similar games. While you know it is possible to get something useful, there are always times when you have runs of majorly bad luck and land only items that you can’t use with your class and race set-up or worse, are completely not worth the effort.

Knowing this, a while ago Blizzard introduced a ‘currency system’ to their raid system so players who fought the same raid boss multiple times trying to get certain items but never did could instead use the accumulated ‘justice points’ or ‘valor points’ to buy that item instead. But now, they feel that the system has evolved in such a way that the currency will no longer be necessary to counteract the bad luck RNG, so will be removing it from Warlords of Draenor.

“The traditional role of valor was to offer compensation for bad luck – and that goes all the way back to badges in Burning Crusade,” said lead encounter designer Hazzikostas. “The bonus rolls system that we have these days actually goes a long way towards helping counteract that. We think we can take the bonus rolls system and make it a little bit more intelligent, so that it tries to avoid giving you duplicate loots… It removes a little bit of the grind and a little bit of the awkwardness of the current valor system.”

The rolls system was introduced in patch 5.0 and gives players a chance to ‘reroll’ loot received, with the chance of the new loot being something more useful to your character’s class and set-up increasing with each new roll.

A two-currency system also operates on the PvP part of the game and while Blizzard feels that PvP still needs currency, they are hoping to remove one of the currency systems from PvP too to further simplify how the game works.

“We are trying to get rid of one of the two, but at the end of the day a purely random system probably would not work as well for higher PvP gear,” Hazzikotas said. “Conquest makes a lot of sense.”

Today sees the release of a new Minecraft version! Not 1.8 though, rather 1.7.5 with a promised 1.7.6 version to follow soon.

Minecraft version 1.7.5 brings with it some server-side optimisation and fixes as well as a stamping out a few game bugs. The main thing that 1.7.5 brings to the game of Minecraft though has to do with Minecraft Realms. Several of the community’s most popular mini-game maps, such as Survival Games etc. are now available to add to Realms as ‘mini-games’ for the Realm community to try. Mojang are also using this update to pave the way for more countries to have access to the Realms feature, planning to roll it out across the Nordic countries in Europe within the next week.

Mojang are also going to soon release a 1.7.6 version in March which will bring with it support for the new skin system that is currently only accessible if you are running snapshots with your game, as well as beginning to set up the system to change game names (although they say that actually changing names is still a way off). They will also continue to work on 1.8 snapshots as well.

New version announcement is here.