It's been a long, long time coming, but the legendary civilization management sim Dwarf Fortress at last has a Steam and Itch.io release date. It will be available on both storefronts on December 6th for $30. While that might seem steep for a game that has already been around for 16 years and is available for free elsewhere, the latest version has some major upgrades.

For one thing, you won't need to deal with Dwarf Fortress' famously primitive visuals anymore. The ASCII graphics have been upgraded to a pixel art tileset. Other new features include a fresh soundtrack and sound effects, a revamped user interface and menus, a tutorial for newcomers and other quality of life improvements. All of these are designed to help make the game more approachable.

Tarn and Zach Adams have been working on the game for 20 years at their studio, Bay 12. They teamed up with publisher Kitfox Games (of Boyfriend Dungeon fame) for this upgraded version, which has an official title of Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress.

The main Fortress mode and the Legends mode will be available at the outset, with the original game's Adventure and Arena modes arriving later. Even then, Bay 12 is far from done, as the studio has plans for major changes for the map system as well as procedurally generated myths and magic systems. There's "no end in sight" for the project, according to a press release.

If all of that seems too fancy for you, there's still the option to download the original version of Dwarf Fortress from Bay 12's website in all its ASCII glory at no cost. Until now, fans have supported Bay 12 and the game's development through donations.

There’s a reason that, month after month, Vampire Survivors has been the most-played game on Steam Deck: it’s a blast. Your character auto-fires weapons as thousands of enemies invade the screen. All you have control over in the heat of the moment are the character’s movement and their weapon and item loadout (there are persistent powerups you can unlock as well). It’s one of those games that you have to play to really get the appeal, and it’ll soon be far easier for many people to check it out.

Vampire Survivors will make its console debut on November 10th, when it will hit Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. The game will also be available on Xbox Game Pass. While it only costs $5, this will lower the barrier to entry even further. 

The fact that Microsoft is bringing one of this year's biggest breakout hits to Xbox Game Pass isn’t a big surprise. Vampire Survivors was already available to PC Game Pass members.

Also coming to Xbox consoles and Game Pass this month is Return to Monkey Island. The revival of the adventure series landed on PC and Switch in September. It’ll be available on Xbox, PC Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming on November 8th. According to publisher Devolver Digital, Return to Monkey Island will hit Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 then, but not Xbox One or PS4.

The console edition of Football Manager 2023 will hit cloud, console and PC on November 8th as well. The full-blown PC version of the game will land on Game Pass then too. On the flip side, Football Manager 2022 and Football Manager 2022 Xbox Edition will leave Game Pass that day.

There's a lot of other stuff for Game Pass members to look forward to this month. A 2D metroidvania game called Ghost Song, which sees you exploring a distant moon, will arrive on cloud, console and PC on November 3rd. Obsidian's Pentiment, one of the few remaining first-party Xbox exclusives for this year, will land on all three platforms on November 15th. Somerville, from a studio cofounded by Inside and Limbo executive producer Dino Patti, will debut on the same day.

Meanwhile, you can play the full seasons of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and The Walking Dead: Michonne on PC Game Pass as of today. Sidescrolling beat-'em-up The Legend of Tianding just landed on console, cloud and PC as well.

Elsewhere, Halo Infinite's winter update will arrive on November 8th. That will finally bring online campaign co-op and Forge mode to the game, along with new maps, a fresh game mode and (at last) a way to earn XP just by playing multiplayer games. On November 11th, Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Editionwill be available as a free update. Helicopters, gliders and a true-to-life airliner are among the additions.

Update 11/1 11:40AM ET: Noting that Return to Monkey Island isn't coming to last-gen consoles for the time being.

There’s a reason that, month after month, Vampire Survivors has been the most-played game on Steam Deck: it’s a blast. Your character auto-fires weapons as thousands of enemies invade the screen. All you have control over in the heat of the moment are the character’s movement and their weapon and item loadout (there are persistent powerups you can unlock as well). It’s one of those games that you have to play to really get the appeal, and it’ll soon be far easier for many people to check it out.

Vampire Survivors will make its console debut on November 10th, when it will hit Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X. The game will also be available on Xbox Game Pass. While it only costs $5, this will lower the barrier to entry even further. 

The fact that Microsoft is bringing one of this year's biggest breakout hits to Xbox Game Pass isn’t a big surprise. Vampire Survivors was already available to PC Game Pass members.

Also coming to Xbox consoles and Game Pass this month is Return to Monkey Island. The revival of the adventure series landed on PC and Switch in September. It’ll be available on Xbox, PC Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming on November 8th.

The console edition of Football Manager 2023 will hit cloud, console and PC on the same date. The full-blown PC version of the game will land on Game Pass then as well. On the flip side, Football Manager 2022 and Football Manager 2022 Xbox Edition will leave Game Pass on November 8th.

There's a lot of other stuff for Game Pass members to look forward to this month. A 2D metroidvania game called Ghost Song, which sees you exploring a distant moon, will arrive on cloud, console and PC on November 3rd. Obsidian's Pentiment, one of the few remaining first-party Xbox exclusives for this year, will land on all three platforms on November 15th. Somerville, from a studio cofounded by Inside and Limbo executive producer Dino Patti, will debut on the same day.

Meanwhile, you can play the full seasons of The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and The Walking Dead: Michonne on PC Game Pass as of today. Sidescrolling beat-'em-up The Legend of Tianding just landed on console, cloud and PC as well.

Elsewhere, Halo Infinite's winter update will arrive on November 8th. That will finally bring online campaign co-op and Forge mode to the game, along with new maps, a fresh game mode and (at last) a way to earn XP just by playing multiplayer games. On November 11th, Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Editionwill be available as a free update. Helicopters, gliders and a true-to-life airliner are among the additions.

A new Bayonetta game is like the circus rolling into town. Bayonetta is the ringmaster, of course, and she shows up out of the blue with boxcars of strange beasts, weird friends, dangerous spells, magnificent clothing and endless promises to impress. Her stories don’t always make sense, but they’re filled with melodrama and action, magic and gunfire, and once Bayonetta enters the spotlight, there’s no looking away. Especially not when she’s dancing her way through a spell in an outfit made of her own hair, while 40-storey monsters fight to the death at her back.

Bayonetta 3 is full of classic Bayonetta madness, all of it amped up by one degree. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, the enemies are absolutely massive, Bayonetta’s magic is incredibly powerful, her outfits are outstanding, and the fights don’t stop coming. A loose plot holds the entire game together – an army of man-made bioweapons called Homonculi is threatening the existence of the multiverse – but it’s just an excuse to throw Bayonetta and friends into an endless string of battles in a variety of crumbling cities. In that way, Bayonetta 3 isn’t very different from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though PlatinumGames’ latest installment has way more witchcraft, silliness and shoe-operated guns than anything helmed by Robert Downey Jr.

Structurally and mechanically, Bayonetta 3 is as rich as its predecessors. Bayonetta acquires new skills and weapons throughout her quest; she collects fragments of fallen enemies to purchase items, consumables and accessories in the Gates of Hell shop, while orbs unlock abilities on her skill tree. Combat is all about performing stylish combos and executing well-timed dodges, and each fight is infinitely replayable if you’re chasing high scores. There are also plenty of challenges and secrets to find in each level.

Bayonetta 3 is a Switch exclusive, and it struggles as much as any fast-paced action game on that console: At times, inputs feel sluggish and it becomes difficult to track which moves are actually lined up. The game does a fine job of providing visual indicators for attacks and there is a rhythm to be found in the fray, but the entire thing runs in Switch Reaction Time (does not adhere to daylight saving).

For fans of the series, there’s nothing missing in Bayonetta 3 – in fact, there’s just more. More weirdness, more one-liners, more swag, and more combat mechanics. For instance, one section puts players in control of Bayonetta’s witchy buddy, Jeanne, for a side-scrolling action sequence with 1960s espionage flair. Another mechanic allows Bayonetta to control time in short bursts, at times reverting to her younger self. Throughout the game, the Demon Masquerade ability adds hellish features to Bayonetta’s weapons and allows her to transform into various demons, while the Demon Slave skill allows her to summon and control giant creatures of hell, each with a specific moveset.

Most of Bayonetta’s demons are inspired by classically spooky animals like moths and spiders, but one of her forms is a literal train. A little over halfway through the game, Bayonetta is infused with the energy of Satan’s choo-choo and she’s able to summon a hellish tank engine during fights. Attacking as the train with Demon Slave slows down time temporarily, allowing players to quickly draw a track and indicate points of damage along the route, ideally in the path of nearby enemies. Let go of the Demon Slave button and the train barrels down the ghost track in real time, dealing hefty damage to anything it hits. Bayonetta also acquires the ability to turn into a literal train-witch hybrid through Demon Masquerade, rushing forward with heavy-duty chainsaw-like attacks. Because of course she does.

Nintendo/PlatinumGames

By the time the train demon appears, it actually fits into the rest of the game nicely. Bayonetta’s world has always been wacky, and 3 is no exception. If you can handle the idea of Umbra Witches and bartending angels, you can deal with some light locomotive play.

I don’t take Bayonetta games too seriously and this feels like the right move, especially after playing the third installment. The series’ sense of combat is rich and its storyline is incredibly intricate, involving divine wars and parallel universes, and yet it all just feels like an excuse to make Bayonetta dance her way through a spell while massive monsters fight in the background. Thankfully, this is the best part of the series – Bayonetta is powerful and fighting in her (gun)shoes feels great, but her personality is what makes this franchise a cult hit. Bayonetta is confident, sarcastic and always correct; her outfits are stunning and so are her friends; she dances like an angel; she never has a hair out of place and her one-liners never stop. She’s a drag queen in a universe loosely held together by witchcraft, and the chaos of this combination is truly magical.

Bayonetta 3 is ridiculous and slightly disjointed, but that's precisely what makes it so wonderful. It builds on a multiverse of weird and witchy ideas, and it delivers exactly what fans of the series expect – something totally unexpected.

Nintendo/PlatinumGames

On November 2nd, the original Mario Party game and its sequel will be available on Nintendo's Switch Online service. The games were first released in the late 90's for the N64 and feature board games with various themes that you can play together with up to four friends. Like with every board game, you roll a dice to advance. At the end of each turn, you play a mini-game — some of them are are solo games, but others make you cooperate with or play against friends. Or CPU-powered bots... in case you don't have anybody to play with. The first Mario Party has 56 different mini-games you can play, while the second one has 65, including duel mini-games that weren't available in the debut title. 

Although these two will be available on the service within a couple of weeks, Nintendo has lined up several more N64 games for addition. In 2023, the gaming giant will add Mario Party 3 to Switch Online's selection, along with Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Stadium 2, which are strategy games that don't have storylines. Since all the titles we've mentioned so far were originally released for N64, that means you'll need a Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription to be able to access them. The tier will set you back $50 for an individual membership. That's just a bit more than $4 a month, which is also what the basic subscription costs, except you'll have to pay for a year-long membership at once. 

Microsoft wants to bring a taste of Xbox game shopping to your phone. As The Vergeexplains, a company filing with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has revealed plans to build a "next generation" Xbox store that's available on mobile devices, not just consoles and PCs. The shop would unsurprisingly lean heavily on content from the proposed Activision Blizzard merger. Call of Duty Mobile and King's more casual games (think Candy Crush) represent more than half of Activision's revenue and would help attract gamers to the new platform, Microsoft said.

The purchase would boost Microsoft's mobile gaming and ad revenue, according to the company. It would also offer "much needed expertise" in developing and marketing these titles.

The software giant is aware there will be challenges. It will require a "major shift" in consumer habits to pull them away from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, according to the filing. Microsoft says it will apply its open app store philosophy to the Xbox mobile shop, including equal treatment for third-party apps and choices for in-app payments.

It's far from certain that Microsoft will launch the Xbox mobile game store as outlined. The CMA is conducting a deep investigation of the Activision Blizzard buyout over concerns it might hurt competition, particularly in console gaming. There's also no practical way to install a dedicated Xbox game store on iPhones and iPads. While Android users can sideload third-party stores, Apple requires use of the App Store. Microsoft struggled to bring Xbox games to the App Store, and had to offer Game Pass streaming through the browser. Short of antitrust lawsuits forcing Apple to open its platform, Microsoft may have to be content with courting Android gamers.

The strategy behind the filing isn't subtle. Microsoft wants to convince UK regulators that the Activision Blizzard deal would preserve or even improve competition, and the prospect of an Xbox mobile store theoretically helps. Agencies like the CMA might not see it this way, however. Officials are still concerned that Microsoft's potential ownership of Call of Duty on console, cloud and mobile would give the company too much control over the games industry, and the developer's promises to support rival platforms might not be sufficiently reassuring.

When you think of esports, Tetris likely doesn’t come to mind. Let alone NES Tetris played on original hardware. Yet, this weekend at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo a new Classic Tetris World Champion (CTWC) will be crowned, and it’ll likely be the most hotly contested, highest-viewed tournament in the game’s almost 35-year history.

Classic Tetris has seen an explosion of interest in the last few years but it’s fast approaching a crossroads. It needs to either professionalize or accept its destiny as a curious, if cozy, corner of the gaming world.

The trouble is, even the top players aren’t sure a professional league is realistic. “Do I think this could become a viable esport? Absolutely not.” Fractal161, a competitor with a very real chance of winning this weekend’s World Championships, told Engadget.

The annual event in Portland remains the game’s most prestigious tournament, but for the rest of the year, Classic Tetris fans can be found at CTM – Classic Tetris Monthly – a more informal, but arguably more important competition for the game.

“CTM was created by a streamer called Friday Witch in December 2017, and it was more just a casual kind of community thing.” Keith “vandweller” Didion, CTM’s current organizer and perennial host told Engadget. He took over the tournament organization in October 2018.

Since then, CTM has gone from barely scraping together enough players for a bracket, to hundreds of players competing in multiple skill levels every single month. The original concept was one 16-player tournament, but that meant anyone that wasn’t good enough would never get to play. “When I took it over my kind of pledge to the community was everybody who submitted a qualifier will get to play” Didion said.

Both CTWC and CTM offer prize pools but they are modest in comparison to the seven-figure worlds of something like Fortnite. If you win CTWC outright, you’ll take home $3,000 with the rest of the $10,000 purse being divided between the next 15 placements. CTM, on the other hand, typically rewards the top eight placements, but the purse is entirely user contributed, so it varies month to month. Typically the pool reaches around $3,500 with half that going to the overall winner.

“I think for a lot of top players, since we're all kids, we see this as a lot of money. Regardless of whatever it ends up being.” Fractal added. This may be so, but once these players are old enough to start having to pay their own rent or insurance premiums, that perspective is likely to change.

The fact that CTM’s purse relies on donations might present a problem longer term: “We have someone called ShallBeSatisfied that contributes $1,000 - $2,000 in the month. So you have this other person dogwatchingtetris, the same thing there. This individual ScottGray76, he contributes a good amount on a monthly basis.” Didion said. In short, the financial incentive of playing in CTM lies broadly in the hands of a few individuals.

Right now, CTM effectively runs at a loss. Didion certainly doesn’t pay himself. There is some income from Twitch and YouTube but that’s used to pay community members for restreaming games and other contributions they make. “We are starting to explore sponsorships and things like that. But I'm not very good at it. So I'm trying to bring in people that know more than I do, or are just better at that kind of stuff than me,” he added.

Classic Monthly Tetris

As Didion explains, so far there’s only been one from an enthusiastic fan who reached out asking if they could sponsor last month’s tournament for $100. “Sure. Let's do it. I'm excited by that just because that's how I want the sponsorships to be, like something I care about, or people in our community.”

Didion obviously cares deeply about the community he’s built and competitive NES Tetris generally. Even his players think he should be more open to making it profitable. “He says that he runs this at a loss and that's just ridiculous to me.” Fractal said. “I think that he is entitled to a share of the prize pool, if he desired, this is standard for lots of tournaments.”

This is where the next, slightly more delicate issue comes in. CTWC aims for absolute authenticity: All games are played in person (bar the pandemic years) on original NES consoles plugged into CRT televisions. The game is played exactly how it was the day it launched.

With CTM, Didion’s unwavering commitment to making the game accessible means he doesn’t have the luxury of making sure everyone has their own NES and CRT and copy of the game. The tournament happens exclusively online, so he has to allow competitors to play with what they have. Standardizing would be a massive expense.

What’s more, In 1989, when NES Tetris was released, level 29 was most likely designed to be the end of the game. The speed increases so much it’s unplayable earning it the name “killscreen.” Today’s players have mastered techniques to carry on well past level 29 and that requires light modifications to the game for the score to display correctly as the original never expected anyone to accumulate more than 999,999 and thus it cannot display a number higher than that.

Likewise, CTM is where many world records are broken. With players now able to go on almost indefinitely, and new records harder to achieve, not all spectators are enjoying the marathon matches according to Fractal. “I've heard a lot of testimonials about how they don't really watch the killscreen anymore because it's just not fun. I think it's different when you catch it live personally.” Didion agrees. “I think for this esport to grow I don't think that we can continue to have endless chase downs, post killscreen.”

With the game effectively playable forever, matches have gone from a place where records are broken to sometimes, feeling like a broken record. To address this, and make matches more exciting, CTM has modified the game for its highest bracket so that at level 49 it doubles in speed – something known as “double killscreen.”

Other small changes have been added too. Early matches were really just two people playing Tetris at the same time, with the victor being whoever recorded the highest score. More recently, CTM has added the ability for games to use the same random number “seed.” This ensures both players get the exact same pieces in the same order making it a true like-for-like showdown.

It’s these modifications that could pose the real issue for CTM’s growth as an esport. The use of emulators generally has always been something of a legal gray area when using copyrighted games. Modifying and distributing ROMs is a slightly darker shade of gray (no money is changing hands for the ROMs in CTM). Nintendo is famously aggressive against any fan versions of its games being made available online, but ironically, the bigger barrier might be The Tetris Company itself.

Formed by Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris, in 1996, the Tetris Company holds the worldwide rights to both the game and the brand. Didion described the company’s relationship with the community as “mostly benign neglect,” while Fractal is said it had a history of “somewhat aggressive takedowns.” The Tetris Company, for its part, is a major sponsor of CTWC and is actively encouraging new ways to play the game via Tetris Effect Connected on modern consoles.

Ironically, a lot of the challenges competitive NES Tetris faces – clunky old hardware, glitches in the game and a true online multiplayer mode are theoretically solved by Tetris Effect Connected’s Classic Score Attack mode. It’s essentially a modern yet faithful reproduction of NES Tetris playable on Xbox and PC. It supports native two-player battle modes and was even developed with a legendary player from the Classic Tetris scene - Greentea.

I asked Fractal why players don’t migrate over to the “official” version that could still be used for CTM competitions. “mainly we're all comfortable with the status quo, so there's no big incentive to change,” he told me over Discord. “and the negative feedback loop of nobody wanting to play because there's nobody to play against.”

In many ways, this sums up the paradox neatly. Authenticity appears to be crucial to the lure of the game. Despite some practical concessions from CTM to make NES Tetris more accessible and interesting to watch, the original game with all its hidden quirks and secrets is as much a part of it as the scoring and gameplay is.

But this need for authenticity is also what’s preventing Classic NES Tetris from being able to grow into itself as an evolving esport. CTM’s loyal host does see some ways around this. “There could be a team element to it in the future. If we were to continue, and this would allow the teams to market themselves or their franchises as owners of these teams, I don't know.”

He had toyed with building “characters” around the players, similar to other sports. “One of the problems is everybody's so young, so they haven't been around long enough to have stories you're just like, ‘Oh, I was born in Michigan and now I'm 16.’ Okay, all right, great.” But it’s clear that whatever happens next and however it evolves, Didion will likely be the person making it happen.

Right now, the community CTM has created appears to be far more special and interesting to everyone involved than any financial incentive. It’s hard not to get the feeling that it’s less about preserving the integrity of NES Tetris, as it is about keeping this collaborative, genuinely connected community as it is, without letting the pressures of professional play or the looming specter of Mountain Dew-style sponsorships from taking that away.

Or in Fractal’s case, good friends and questionable fried chicken is all you need. “I'm not going to CTWC to win the prize pool. I'm going to hang out with a bunch of people that I only know online. And go to Raising Cane’s with like a bunch of people who really love Raising Cane’s for some reason.”

Rockstar, Zynga and 2K owner Take-Two Interactive is shutting down Playdots, the New York-based studio behind the popular mobile game Two Dots, Bloomberg has reported. Sixty-five employees will lose their jobs, the company confirmed to Bloomberg. 

The company confirmed that the puzzle game "will continue at another Zynga studio and there will be no disruption of service." It added that "everyone affected by this decision will have the opportunity to apply for other jobs at Zynga."

Take-Two acquired Playdots in 2020 for $192 million, and specifically called out Two Dots in its Q1 2022 earnings report, saying it was "among the largest contributors to... net revenue." While it might seem odd then to eliminate the studio behind the game, some reorganization was likely inevitable in the wake of its $12.7 billion Zynga acquisition. 

Microsoft's $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard will have to gain approval from various regulators around the world before the deal can go through, including the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The CMA, which first announced its investigation in July, published a summary of its initial probe in September and recommended a more in-depth inquiry. As Ars Technica notes, a Phase 2 investigation could end up prohibiting a merger or requiring the entities involved to sell parts of a company. Now, shortly after the CMA published the full text (PDF) of its decision, Microsoft released a scathing response (PDF), accusing the regulator of relying "on self-serving statements by Sony."

In its response that it has shared to Ars, the tech giant said the CMA's decision was rooted in the concern that Activision's catalogue of games, specifically the Call of Duty franchise, will allow Xbox to "foreclose its competitors." Microsoft called that concern "misplaced," arguing that the CMA is overstating the importance of Activision Blizzard's games when it comes to competition in the space. It also said that it plans to make Call of Duty more accessible by adding Activision's titles to its Game Pass subscription service. 

Sony did not welcome the idea of this "increased competition," the company said, stressing that its rival "protect[s] its revenues" by not making newly released games available through PlayStation Plus. Microsoft also said that there's no basis for the idea that making Call of Duty available on Game Pass would make people more likely to buy an Xbox console. The company said CoD games would also be available for purchase on PlayStation and buying them would be cheaper than buying an Xbox for Game Pass access.

The CMA has adopted Sony's complaints "without the appropriate level of critical review," Microsoft continued. It added: "The suggestion that the incumbent market leader, with clear and enduring market power, could be foreclosed by the third largest provider as a result of losing access to one title is not credible." Microsoft wrote in its response that it's looking forward to working with the CMA through Phase 2, and it sounds like it's determined to make the regulator understand the benefits of the deal. 

As for Sony, a spokesperson repeated its stance in a statement sent to Reuters, calling the deal "bad for competition, bad for the gaming industry and bad for gamers themselves." Microsoft's acquisition would give the Xbox ecosystem "a unique combination of tech and content," they said, which in turn would give the tech giant a dominant position in gaming that would have "devastating consequences for consumers, independent developers, and Sony itself."

Two extremely rare "unreleased, one-of-a-kind, never-digitized" Nintendo NES games have appeared on eBay, according to a tweet from the Video Game History Foundation's Frank Cifaldi, seen by Kotaku. One of those, called Battlefields of Napoleon, was only ever released in Japan. The other is a cartridge from Rare, and appears to be the demo of one of the few games ever developed for the Nintendo Power Glove.

According to the eBay listing for Battlefields of Napoleon, the game was "rescued from a dumpster after The Learning Company acquired Brøderbund in 1998 and subsequently discarded most of the historical assets." The items in the lot include a WATA certified prototype on a development board and two additional CHR ROMs. It also includes the original packaging design. 

In fact, the ROMs, boards and packaging were likely prepared for for final production, but it was never released in English for some reason. "It comes with the actual files that would be mailed to Nintendo for printing! Using these we can make perfect digital versions," Cifaldi said in a tweet. Four more days of bidding remain, but it's already selling for $5,700. 

Since Napolean is WATA graded, the code has already been dumped for review, so technically "never digitized" isn't quite accurate. As Cifaldi notes, though, the code can be released by whoever buys it. "I can't put it online unless a new owner allows it, and if that new owner is us [the Video Game History Foundation], we will obviously allow it," he said. To see how this (extremely complicated) game worked, check this YouTube video from RndStranger.

The other is labelled "CES SAMPLE: Please return to RARE COIN-IT INC." According to the eBay auction on this one, it's a "1-level prototype demo of game called 'Scanner' which was designed for the Mattel Power Glove" by Rare, the developer that built numerous titles for Nintendo. The listing goes on to say that the seller's husband was the game designer, adding that it was tested in a retail environment and is playable. The auction is currently at $6,000 with 40 hours of bidding left.

Cifaldi is attempting to purchase these for Video Game History Foundation nonprofit dedicated to preserving video games for future generations. However, he said that the organization needs some help in acquiring these as they're bound to fetch high prices. If you'd like to chip in to help them acquire these fun and historically important titles, Cifaldi notes that his DMs are open on his Twitter account.