Way of the Street Fighter

A Dutch professor has spent five years and 1.25m euro seeking to answer a simple question: should Street Fighter be considered a martial art?

A few years ago, during a drink-fuelled graduation ceremony at Leiden University, Chris Goto-Jones, a lecturer in comparative philosophy and political thought, asked a group of outgoing honours students to identify the single most important thing they had learned during their education. “I was somewhat hopeful that their answers might include references to great works of literature, exalted philosophical principles, or perhaps rigorous scientific methodologies,” he says. It wasn’t to be. Some students joked that they could barely remember what had happened during all those indistinguishable semesters, with their hedonistic nights and drowsy, morning-after lectures. One student drolly turned the question around, asking: “Professor, what do you think was the most important thing I learned?”

TOSHIBA TransferJet

TransferJet is an intriguing closeproximity wireless technology that’s taken what seems like a lifetime to arrive. It was first announced in 2008, but it wasn’t until October 2014 that we first saw it demonstrated, after which it became available in Japan. Now, following a splashy Berlin launch event in September 2015, Toshiba has finally brought TransferJet to market.

TransferJet is similar to Bluetooth, in that it allows you to transfer files between smartphones, tablets and Windows computers even if you don’t have an internet connection. The £40 price quoted here gets you an adaptor that plugs into the Micro USB port on your Android device, and a full-size USB adaptor that plugs into your Windows PC or laptop. A separate Lightning adaptor for iOS devices is available separately for £35.

Studio Profile: Techland

From pirate to publisher: the Dying Light maker reflects on 25 years in the game

The development of Dying Light hit a brick wall in 2013. Several, in fact – the game’s parkour system, which hinged on level designers creating each scalable structure with a marker, was laborious. And it wasn’t until the team had placed its 50,000th marker that a better solution was found: frustrated, programmer Bartosz Kulon came in one weekend and performed some technical wizardry that allowed the climbing of anything in the world, marker-free.

The Making Of... Elite Dangerous

How a plucky British studio enlisted players to help create a game on a galactic scale

While celebrated astrophysicist and cosmologist Carl Sagan was working on science-fiction novel Contact in 1983, he documented an idea for how the story might be turned into a videogame. The project’s themes would deal with the development and preservation of galactic civilisations, but at its core would be a realistic representation of the nearest few thousand stars that would teach players about astronomy in a “context as exciting as most violent videogames”.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Joe Madureira goes back to his comic book roots with a new RPG

In 1998, Joe Madureira released the first issue of a rollicking arcanepunk fantasy comic entitled Battle Chasers. The larger-than-life characters, explosive action, and colorful world captured the imaginations of readers. But after nine issues troubled by scheduling problems and publisher transitions, the fan-favorite series was left tragically incomplete. Nearly two decades later, after a successful crowdfunding drive, Battle Chasers is coming back, charging into the world of video games with the help of the same creative minds that brought us the Darksiders games, and they’re aiming to shatter genre expectations in the process.