When good robots fall into the wrong hands, bad things can happen... (credit: Aurich Lawson | Nintendo)

The Super Mario Maker community and "Team 0%" have declared victory in their years-long effort to clear every user-submitted level in the original Wii U game before the servers shut off for good on April 8 . That victory declaration comes despite the fact that no human player has yet to clear "Trimming the Herbs" (TTH), the ultra-hard level that gained notoriety this month as what was thought to be the final "uncleared" level in the game.

This strange confluence of events is the result of an admission by Ahoyo, the creator of Trimming the Herbs, who came clean Friday evening regarding his use of automated, tool-assisted speedrun (TAS) methods in creating the level. That means he was able to use superhuman capabilities like slow-motion, rewinding, and frame advance to pre-record the precise set of perfectly timed inputs needed to craft the "creator clear" that was necessary to upload the level in the first place.

"I’m sorry for the drama [my level] caused within the community, and I regret the ordeal," Ahoyo wrote on the Team 0% Discord and social media . "But at least it was interesting. However in the end the truth matters most. Congratulations to Team 0% for their well-earned achievement!"

Enlarge / "Coming 2025." (credit: Rockstar Games / YouTube)

Grand Theft Auto VI , like its protagonist Lucia, keeps finding itself in an awkward spot because of "Bad luck, I guess."

The trailer for Rockstar Games heavily, mightily, impossibly anticipated sequel in its record-breaking series landed on YouTube Monday evening , earlier than its previously published Tuesday morning release. That's because a pop-up, quickly suspended X (formerly Twitter) account posted it early, and Rockstar rushed to get its official version out, ending with a "Coming 2025" notice.

It's a mishap far smaller in scale than most leaks, but it's notable for Rockstar, which typically lets out very little about its games beyond official trailers. GTA VI had nearly an hour of early gameplay and testing footage leak out in early September 2022, following a network intrusion. A teenager in the UK was arrested on charges related to the leak quickly after Rockstar confirmed its veracity. TikTok videos have also recently surfaced, with computer monitors showing off images of the game's setting, according to The Verge .

Enlarge / AMD's Radeon RX 7600. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

It's been an up-and-down decade for most consumer technology, with a pandemic-fueled boom in PC sales giving way to a sales crater that the market is still gradually recovering from . But few components have had as hard a time as gaming graphics cards, which were near impossible to buy at reasonable prices for about two years and then crashed hard as GPU companies responded with unattainable new high-end products .

According to the GPU sales analysts at Jon Peddie Research, things may finally be evening out. Its data shows that GPU shipments have returned to quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year growth after two years of shrinking sales. This is the second consecutive quarter this has happened, which "strongly indicates that things are finally on the upswing for the graphics industry."

JPR reports that overall GPU unit shipments (which include integrated and dedicated GPUs) are up 16.8 percent from Q2 and 36.6 percent from a year ago. Dedicated GPU sales increased 37.4 percent from Q2. When comparing year-over-year numbers, the biggest difference is that Nvidia, AMD, and Intel all have current-generation GPUs available in the $200–$300 range, including the GeForce RTX 4060 , the Radeon RX 7600 , and the Arc A770 and A750 , all of which were either unavailable or newly launched in Q3 of 2022.

Hey, remember Dragon Age: Dreadwolf ? It has been over a year now since the game's title was first revealed and almost exactly five years since the then-unnamed sequel was first announced at the 2018 Game Awards . And today, just to make sure you didn't forget about the long-in-development game completely, Bioware and EA are out with yet another teaser presaging a "full reveal" planned for summer 2024.

The short "Dragon Age Day" video, titled "Thedas Call," features unseen voiceovers speaking over airborne, still-life shots of three locations that will feature in the new game. An accompanying blog post goes into a bit more detail on the locations, describing "the desolate, beautiful badlands of the Anderfels with curtains of distant mountainous spires. The twisting channels and gleaming towers of Antiva, where Crows may lurk in any shadow. The turquoise seas of Rivain with its rushes of greenery and hardy sea-faring people."

The short teaser concludes with a statement that seemingly comes from Solas (a.k.a. Fen'harel), the Dread Wolf that will serve as the game's antagonist: "All the world will soon share the peace and comfort of my reign." And EA's blog post expands a bit on Solas' motivation as "not a man who sees himself as evil, but someone who believes he's fighting for a good cause and is willing to get his hands dirty."

Enlarge / Cast members from Star Trek: The Next Generation . (credit: CBS)

It would be hard to overstate the impact that Star Trek has had on geek culture. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when folks who spent years watching the shows pursue careers in game development, they seek out the actors from one of their favorite TV shows to bring their creations to life. From TOS to VOY, many Star Trek actors followed up their star-making screen performances with voiceover work in video games.

Of course, many of the cast members reprised their roles for licensed Star Trek games or reappearances of their Starfleet personas over the years; studios understandably don’t want to recast iconic parts if they can avoid it.

But games have also provided many of these talented actors with a chance to create new characters and explore new genres beyond the ones that made them household names. If they’re not so versatile, working in games at least meant a chance for a paycheck after the series finale aired.

Enlarge / Just some of the prizes you can win in this year's charity drive sweepstakes. (credit: Kyle Orland)

If you've been too busy playing Pendulumania to take part in this year's Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes , don't worry. You still have time to donate to a good cause and get a chance to win your share of over $2,500 worth of swag (no purchase necessary to win).

So far, in the first three days of the drive, over 100 readers have contributed over $8,500 to either the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Child's Play as part of the charity drive (EFF is now leading in the donation totals by about $2,000). That's a long way off from 2020's record haul of over $58,000 , but there's still plenty of time until the Charity Drive wraps up on Tuesday, January 2, 2024.

That doesn't mean you should put your donation off, though. Do yourself and the charities involved a favor and give now while you're thinking about it.

Enlarge / macOS Mojave's wallpaper. (credit: Apple)

Valve Software's Steam gaming marketplace and app will drop support for macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and 10.14 (Mojave), according to a support page post . The change will go into effect on February 15, 2024.

What will happen exactly? Valve writes:

After that date, existing Steam Client installations on these operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates. Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions.

macOS 10.14 (dubbed Mojave by Apple) shipped more than five years ago, and time has a way of marching on, so this might not seem that momentous at first glance. But there's a reason it's particularly noteworthy as these things go: this change means the end of support for the last versions of macOS that could run 32-bit games.

As 2023 draws to a close—and as we start to finalize our Game of the Year contenders—I really should be catching up on the embarrassingly long list of great recent releases that I haven't put enough time into this year. Instead, over the last few days, I've found myself once again hooked on a simple, addictive, and utterly unique Japanese Windows freeware game from the late '90s that, until recently, I thought I had lost forever.

Pendulumania is a cult classic in the truest sense of the word: Few people have heard of it, even in hardcore gaming circles, but those who have experienced it tend to have very fond memories of it. And while I shared those memories, it wasn't until this week that I've been able to share my effusive praise for a game whose name and playable executable had eluded me for well over a decade.

Timeless design

The mechanics of Pendulumania are incredibly simple. You use the computer mouse to control a metal ring, which is attached via an elastic string to a white ball. The object is to carefully move the ring so the stretchy string and gravity can nudge the ball around a 2D plane, crashing into floating scoring orbs to collect points (colored orbs that randomly appear can make the ball larger or the string stronger as well). Be careful, though; if the elastic string stretches too far, it will break and your game will be over.

Enlarge / The enhanced edition trilogy includes Grand Theft Auto 3 , Grand Theft Auto Vice City , and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas . (credit: Rockstar Games)

Netflix subscribers will be able to play the three original 3D Grand Theft Auto games on iOS and Android starting in December, according to a blog post from the streamer.

The titles included are 2001's Grand Theft Auto III , 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City , and 2004's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas .

All three released initially on the PS2 and Xbox. The first 3D entry in the series, Grand Theft Auto III , was a crossover cultural sensation when it debuted, and it is credited as one of the main originators of the open-world genre, which remains one of the most popular genres in triple-A games to this day.