Today sees the release of a game featuring a character who might be familiar to long time Capcom fans, but who hasn’t actually been front and centre of a game for a long time. That’s right, Strider is back in a new game!

Strider is, for those who don’t know, a Capcom character who first appeared back in the late 80s in his first game on arcade systems. It was celebrated back then for its play-style, definitive music and was notable for its use of multi-lingual voice acting during the cut-scenes (Japanese, English, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish) and was one of Capcom’s hits before Street Fighter II brought the company’s name to everyone’s attention. The main character was a young member of a group called the ‘Striders’, a ninja-like group within the world and you as the player were tasked with travelling through the side-scrolling world to eventually kill the ‘Grandmaster’, the rule of the dystopian future world Strider was set in. The game also saw home releases for many platforms such as the Mega Drive and Commodore 64, some which omitted the ending or replaced it entirely.

The game went on to have two sequels, Strider 2 and Strider Returns, which was a Western-only release that had no involvement from Capcom. The sequel Strider 2 introduced new mechanics into the game and had releases on arcade machines as well as the Playstation 1 in 2000.

Other than these games, the character of Strider has made many cameos in other Capcom games down the years.

The new game aims to combine the best aspects of the original game and the sequel as well as improving upon them using the technology of today. Hopefully gamers who fondly remember Strider will not be disappointed by this new adventure.

Strider releases for the Playstation 3 and 4 today and for Xbox 360, Xbox One and many PC digital distributors (including Steam and Green Man Gaming – pre-order for the free 20 track soundtrack and concept art!) tomorrow, February 19^th.

In the classic time-travel film Back To The Future II, Marty McFly wears a very distinctive pair of sneakers. In 2011, Nike introduced the Nike Air Mag sneakers as a limited edition product – and wowed the film's fans by revealing they were an exact replica of Marty's iconic shoes; and that the proceeds from each pair sold would go directly to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, dedicated to finding a cure for Parkinson’s Disease. But there was something missing.

Marty's shoes in Back To The Future II had a cool and unique technology called "Power Laces", which were self-tying laces that meant your shoes would effectively tie themselves the moment your feet settled into them. Many fans loudly decried their absence from the otherwise accurate homage of the Nike Air Mags – but surely such technology was pure fiction, right? According to Nike designer Tinker Hatfield, not any more!

Starting 2015, Nike intends to bring to market shoes with the iconic self-tying Power Laces as designed by Nike's own shoe designers. That timing couldn't be more perfect, as canonically the power-lace-equipped shoes of the classic film were actually said to be introduced in 2015, making a perfect example of art imitating life – one can't help but wonder if Nike have chosen to deliberately delay the launch to fit the events of the film. It's unclear whether the laces will appear on an updated version of the Nike Air Mag or on a new product entirely – which also means we don't yet know what the Power Laces will cost. So, what would YOU pay for shoes that tied themselves?

Last week in gaming saw the release of new user-added tagging to games on Steam. The idea was to allow players to apply tags to games to further refine categories and maybe allow people to find games similar to ones they might already own and be enjoying, a way to give the players more control on how they sorted games available and allow them to choose what tags they followed. What followed was some of what was intended but as is the way of humanity, the new tagging system quickly became a free-for-all. The exploiting of the system ranged from people using the tags to spoil endings of story-driven games, to people using the tags to insult the game or developers to even offensive and abusive tagging on games such as Gone Home from players who opposed themes presented within the game.

Now in a bid to attempt to combat abuse of the new system and prevent strict moderation internally Valve has added a way for other users to flag tags they don’t find helpful, bringing them to the attention of Valve who will remove the tag if it meets one of four criteria: spoilery, offensive/abusive, not appropriate for the game or simply unhelpful. Tags will also now need to be applied by a greater number of people before they will show up as popular tags to the wider Steam audience.

The Steam Dev team says that they are working to improve the feature and to keep feedback coming as to how the new safeguards are working, but also Valve has shown no interest in removing tags that might keep someone from purchasing a game if enough players find it a bad game; which can only be a good thing.

What do you think? Will this new set of safeguards be enough to make Steam user-tags useful and reliable at last?

An undisclosed number of Kickstarter users have been emailed with advice to reset their passwords after the company was made aware of a data breach that may have led to the disclosure of personal information.

Some time in the last 24 hours, Kickstarter updated their website to display a banner on the top of its site for logged-in users, advising them to change their password and providing a link to do so. The advice comes following a statement by Kickstarter – which was emailed to an undisclosed number of users – stating the company was made aware “by law enforcement officials” of hackers breaching their servers to steal account-related information. The advice also recommended users consider using tools such as 1Password or LastPass, which as well as offering storage to let you remember all your passwords, also include password generators to come up with randomised, highly-secure passwords (might I also recommend KeyPass, which does the same but also contains a meter telling you how “secure” any password you type in is likely to be?)

The following is the full text of the email as sent out by Kickstarter – I’ll leave the explaining to them as it puts it better than I could myself:

“On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers’ data. Upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system.

 

No credit card data of any kind was accessed by hackers. There is no evidence of unauthorized activity of any kind on your account.

 

While no credit card data was accessed, some information about our customers was. Accessed information included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords. Actual passwords were not revealed, however it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one.

 

As a precaution, we strongly recommend that you change the password of your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password.

 

To change your password, log in to your account at Kickstarter.com and look for the banner at the top of the page to create a new, secure password. We recommend you do the same on other sites where you use this password. For additional help with password security, we recommend tools like 1Password and LastPass.

 

We’re incredibly sorry that this happened. We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting. We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways, and we will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come. We are working closely with law enforcement, and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this from happening again.

 

Kickstarter is a vibrant community like no other, and we can’t thank you enough for being a part of it. Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. You can reach us at accountsecurity@kickstarter.com.

While it’s disappointing to hear of any type of hack where data is stolen – and a sad reflection of the state of the world today that not even a website that exists to give those with ideas but no money to make them real, the chance to connect with their potential market and get the funding they need, is safe from being hacked – it’s reassuring to see a company own up to the breach so quickly and waste no time in attempting to secure their service better and protect their users. I hope more companies learn from this example.

Smashdate! #3 a little guy with a powerful punch is warming up in the Blue corner, the next contender is sporting some interesting new mechanics as well as snazzy green shorts. We’ll also be looking into a few of the other stages that we can piece together.

[*ALARM*]

A Challenger Approaches

Little Mac

It’s time to touch gloves and come out fighting! Little mac has been upgraded from a mere assist trophy and is ready to go toe to toe with all the other superstars. His short stature and incredible speed will make mac a hard target to hit, although from the release trailer his jump/recovery height seems to be very unimpressive but what else can we expect from a professional boxer. Mac seems to be geared towards keeping his feet on the ground and dishing out the smash attacks. An interesting feature of Mac’s fighting style is the addition of his KO meter. This meter act’s in a similar way to DK’s star punch allowing Mac to charge his haymaker and deal an instant smash, unlike DK, Mac can’t store his charge so will deal his damage as soon as you release the button. This means allot less freedom and a more strategic attack, but one that deals all manner of damage and insta-kills.

One quick bit to mention about Macs announcement video is that he transforms into Mega Mac he has a rainbow aura similar to the Smash Moves of brawl. So it seems very likely that the special Smash Moves will be making a comeback.

The Stage is Set:

Wii Sports Studio

Everybody’s favourite characters home turf looks just as interesting as she does. With little to no features bar a couple of floating platforms this glorified yoga studio looks to be a good stage for a balanced fight. although the lack of a drop off may frustrate more seasoned players.

Green Hill Zone

The Blue Blur’s opening stage is back for another battle, not a lot of info can be obtained from these screen shots other than the stage being set in Sonic Lost Worlds. But if the brawl stage is anything to go by a dynamic shifting stage may be what we get.

Spirit Train

Our first 3DS stage here on Smashdate! Straight out of Toon Link’s series this mystical rail way spans the length and breadth of Hyrule. With bright popping colours and a cute little conductor this stage definitely has the Toon Link charm. As for the stage mechanics it looks like a scrolling base that’ll give players a chance to recover if they’re fast enough. Will we see varying speeds like ice mountain in brawl we will have to wait and see.

Round 3 of Smashdate! Had a couple of TKO’s with some interesting additions to mechanics, stages and characters. And I don’t know about you guys but I’m super excited to see these new mechanics come into play.

After the final bell has rung and the bout is over for now I’m still sat here clutching my moustache wax, hoping, praying that my trusty main will be reviled ready for the championship bout.