Nintendo’s Digital Event may have contained other games, but the spotlight was almost squarely put on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the latest iteration of the game that’s coming to Nintendo Switch on December 7.

While we were afraid it might not be playable at the show this year, Nintendo opened its doors to some of the game’s elite players at its Super Smash Bros. Invitational tournament where Ultimate was playable for the first time.

Lucky enough to snag a ticket to the coveted VIP area, we were able to test our mettle against some of the best fighting game players and Twitch streamers – and while we expected to walk away ashamed, the results were surprising.

In case you don’t make it to the Smash Bros Invitational for yourself, here’s what it’s like to play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. 

Setting the stage

One of the big announcements made about Super Smash Bros Ultimate is that it will bring every character ever featured in a Super Smash Bros game under one roof. Perhaps just as importantly, though, Nintendo will also bring back some of the series’ most beloved stages from previous entries as well. Stages that were available to demo included Saffron City from the original Smash Bros on N64, alongside a dozen others from the last two decades.

Each of the classic stages retain their original mechanics and quirks – Electrode still pops out from Silph co. on the roof in Saffron City, for example – but all of them have been given a fresh coat of paint to match the game’s more detailed aesthetic.

In the demo provided to the VIP area (and we assume the general show floor), the number of selectable stages was staggering – far too many to play in one sitting, especially in a room chock full of fighting game fans.

Stage selection echoes the character selection screen in that the options for selectable characters easily hovered close to two dozen. In that group you could find the Smash Bros staples (Mario, Link, Fox, Kirby, etc…), returning favorites like Ike, Snake and R.O.B. and the DLC characters from Super Smash Bros. on Wii U / 3DS: Ryu, Cloud and Bayonetta. 

It’s a family affair

Of course, this showcase demo was also the first place we could check out Ridley and Inkling, two new characters that will appear in Super Smash Bros for the first time when Ultimate comes out later this year.

While Ridley is a powerhouse that can toss players around the stage like it’s nothing, Inkling is a tactician’s dream as you carefully manage your inkbar by using specials and periodically refilling by pressing shield and ‘B’.

Like Super Smash Bros on Wii U, combat feels fast and impactful. Smash moves land with satisfying crunches and there’s a definite sense of gravity weighing on the characters. That means the tough-to-master-but-highly-effective meteor smashes are tougher to land but they are significantly more effective.

In order to keep gameplay moving, the demo was locked to two-minute timed battles – either in a free-for-all or team battle mode. (Whether stock mode will be featured in the final version remains to be seen, but given the fan service we’ve already seen it seems likely.)

The first battle was fought on a Battlefield version of a classic stage (I.e. three platforms and a flat surface formed the primary arena) and it was fought as a team battle. We picked Fox – a staple character from the beginnings of the franchise – while our partner and frenemies picked fan-favorite Snake and Ridley. 

What ensued was the fastest two minutes of our lives. We caught glimpses of the new assist trophies and items but in the midst of battle it was hard to focus on anything other than staying alive. In the end of that first bout, we walked away victorious but it came at the cost of stopping to smell the roses.

Demoers lucky enough to go hands-on for themselves at E3 either at the Super Smash Bros Invitational or on the show floor itself can expect two two-minute battles before seeing a “thank you for playing” message, signaling the next players to step up. 

While we didn’t get long with the game we walked away just as giddy as we were the first day we played Smash on N64 – it’s fast, frenetic and just plain fun to beat (and be beat by) friends new and old. December 7 can’t get here soon enough.

• E3 is the world’s largest exhibition for the games industry, stuffed full of the latest and greatest games, consoles, and gaming hardware. TechRadar is reporting live from Los Angeles all week to bring you the very latest from the show floor. Head to our dedicated E3 2018 hub to see all the new releases, along with TechRadar’s world-class analysis and buying advice about the next year in gaming.

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Microsoft was due to release Hololens v2 in 2017, but decided to skip straight to v3 and keep improving on its augmented reality (AR) headset. With no major AR rivals, Microsoft’s team felt no need to rush out a new headset until it was fully ready.

Now, with AR or mixed-reality headsets coming soon from Apple, Samsung, Google and Magic Leap, Microsoft may finally be ready to release its next-gen mixed reality viewer. 

And, thankfully, this HoloLens likely won’t ship for $3,000 (£2,719 / AU$4,369). 

Thurrott’s Brad Sams reported earlier today that he’s viewed internal Microsoft documents on the HoloLens project, indicating that the tech giant aims to ship out the v3 HoloLens—codenamed “Sydney”—by the end of Q1 2019. 

It’s unclear whether this date refers to a general commercial release or, once again, a limited supply of developer kits. HoloLens creator Alex Kipman claimed last year that a consumer-ready HoloLens wasn’t planned for some time, but plans may have changed. 

Sams also asserted that HoloLens Sydney would have significant hardware and design upgrades. Specifically, the headset would be lighter and more comfortable for longer wear times, and would come with “significantly improved holographic displays”. 

Predicting Sydney’s features

At Day 1 of Microsoft Build 2018, Microsoft announced some new HoloLens functionality. Remote Assist added hands-free video calling and MR annotations to support calls, while Microsoft Layout incorporated support for room-sized, 3D holographic layouts. 

HoloLens Sydney will undoubtedly incorporate these features, but may also call upon the powers of a notoriously failed Microsoft product: Kinect. 

Microsoft has stopped building new Kinects for Xbox One, but it has continued to work on improving Kinect’s motion gestures using its AI Project Azure. 

Project Kinect for Azure combines the Kinect camera—which features a wide FOV, twin lasers for measuring range, a megapixel sensor and 1024 x 1024 resolution—with an Azure-enabled computer. Combined, the AI and camera are far better at tracking movements than ever before, and can spatially map your surroundings with “high fidelity”. 

Microsoft may not use Project Kinect for Xbox Two, but it will use it for HoloLens Sydney. Kipman confirmed this on LinkedIn, writing that Kinect was “the sensor that will give the next version of HoloLens new capabilities”. 

Microsoft also wrote last year that it was upgrading the HoloLens’ Holographic Processing Unit (HPU), and that its HPU 2.0 would allow the team to reduce latency, increase the headset’s processing power and add something called Deep Neural Networks to the device. 

We’ll likely hear more concrete details as we get closer to early 2019, but Microsoft isn’t hiding how excited it is about bringing HoloLens into next-gen territory with Sydney. 

Predicting HoloLens Sydney’s pricing

The Thurrott piece also declares that HoloLens Sydney will cost “significantly less” than Hololens 1.0, which sold for $3,000 (£2,719 / AU$4,369). 

If HoloLens Sydney is truly a commercial device, this definitely checks out. Kipman admitted last year that, “You have to reduce the price point until it’s affordable to the majority of the populous of Earth, which will be under a $1,000 and then some to get there.”

HoloLens’ mixed-reality competitors, meanwhile, also are likely aiming for a similar price point. Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz said that his company’s upcoming prototype, Magic Leap One, would be priced similar to a “higher-end mobile phone to higher-end tablet.” 

Abovitz conceded the iPhone X, which prices at $999 / £999 / AU$1,579, as a valid example, and that this could be the “floor” of Magic Leap’s eventual price. Microsoft could aim to price its new headset at a similar level. 

However, all of this remains speculative. And, while the eventual commercial HoloLens could sell for less than a grand, it could continue to release devkits at a higher price point to start once Q1 2019 rolls around. 

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Acer has made something of a name for itself in the PC gaming world these past few years for some absolutely bonkers pieces of gaming hardware. The trend started with the Acer Predator 21X, a 21-inch gaming laptop with desktop parts inside.

The laptop costs $8,999 (about £6,729, AU$11,879) at the time of writing, and houses some of the most intense silicon available today. It also weighs a back-breaking 18.74 pounds (8.5kg).

Acer then followed up this barely mobile monster with an even more powerful machine, a desktop known as the Predator X. The company hasn’t even issued a price or release date for the PC yet. But, with two server-grade Intel Xeon processors and the latest, most powerful Nvidia graphics cards paired together via SLI, rest assured that it too will rival the down payment on your house.

Surely the market for these pre-built, mega-powered gaming PCs is tiny – how many people do you know with thousands in cash lying around? So, if that’s the case, then why does Acer bother crafting such power-packed PCs?

“You are right, X is pushing to the limit. But [that] may not be 100% limited to in terms of GPU performance, [hardcore] gamer performance,” Acer President of IT Products Jerry Kao tells us. “Because we’re also thinking a different kind of usage model – when you’re playing a game you are still doing multitasking. 

“A lot of gamers are playing games,” he says. “[But] they also broadcast while they are playing games. They livestream to other people. So, I was thinking about different usage, the amount of pure, strong [GPU] performance sometimes may not help.”

Targeting the 1% of PC gamers

With these devices, Acer is targeting a very specific type of PC gamer that perhaps other mainstream PC product manufacturers aren’t: effectively the 1% of PC gamers. So, it’s easy to consider the Predator X line of products an extremely low volume, high yield end of its business.

So, it’s clear that Acer looks to establish its might and position in the PC gaming space with these highest of high-end devices, but how does it go about that? It’s not quite as simple as just putting the most powerful components into a box and shipping it off.

“For the first time we created our 9000 series, last year, [it] got to be a very successful concept when we launched it, because we were starting from the gamers’ demand,” Acer’s General Manager of Stationary Computing Products Jeff Lee says. “That’s the starting point from the design.”

“We don’t just say, well, put the best CPU, put the best GPU inside – what [is] the end user needing? For example, for our special edition Acer Predator Helios 500 … because our end-user survey tells us that our female gamers, what they care about most in addition to performance is the noise control. So, we did a special edition in fact [that] has a special, tailor-made application where an end-user can change what kind of noise level they can accept.”

Like any product maker, Acer designs and conceives its highest-end PC gaming products with the end user in mind, but not just from a gaming perspective. We’re told that, especially with the Predator X, Acer is considering what gamers do other than gaming while a game is running. Kao promises that this isn’t just a cliche for Acer but a defining tenet of its design philosophy.

“Again, it’s back to the user demand,” Lee tells us. “For example, our users not only play games but also do the streaming [and] multitasking, so I think [the latest] technology and also the end-users’ demands will be our [focus].”

Of course, Kao and Lee are keen to point out that Acer offers PC gaming devices for several levels of budget, and that features first conceived at the highest end can eventually trickle down into those more approachably-priced products.

What’s Acer’s future in extreme gaming hardware?

That said, Acer’s mission to deliver the highest-end PC gaming experiences of any mainstream computer maker will not stop. In fact, Acer is already cooking up a new extreme PC gaming product aimed at another niche: portability in the high-end desktop space.

“So, I think we are thinking more about something like a form factor change, a new usage model, Kao teases. “Not just the CPU [or] GPU – of course that’s something that all the competitors are doing. But, we are thinking [of having] a revolutionary form factor change, or usage model change. So, thinking about a LAN party, what you can carry today: [the] desktop is too heavy; the notebook … you need to carry a keyboard and all those things, and it’s not easy – or a notebook is not strong enough. So, [how can] you carry a strong notebook with luggage, or is there or something like that? We are thinking of solutions. So, a new form factor change is something that we’re working on now.”

• TechRadar’s fourth annual PC Gaming Week is officially here, celebrating our passion with in-depth and exclusive coverage of PC gaming from every angle. Visit our PC Gaming Week 2018 page to see all of the coverage in one place. 

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