Atari is reaching far back into its treasure trove of retro classics with its new 50th Anniversary Collection, which includes games from the forgotten Atari Jaguar days of yore.

Today Atari announced a mega-bundle of games across six generations of hardware, including Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari ST, Atari Jaguar, and Atari Lynx. The last two are pretty exciting for retro buffs due to their rarity.

The Jaguar in particular is an interesting entry in the annals of gaming. The Jaguar was the world's first 64-bit console and released one of the most notorious video games of all time, Cybermorph, which was lampooned by the angriest gaming geek on the internet (AVGN). "Where did you learn to fly?" was the first introduction that many had to the strange experimental system. Still, though, the console is a charming look at the earliest age of home console polygonal graphics that helped usher in a new era of 3D gaming.

DolphiniOS and Switch hacker Oatmeal Dome was able to get Half-Life 2 to run on the Nintendo Switch.

Oatmeal Dome, a big player in the modding scene who uncovered the Nintendo Switch's VR mode back in 2018, just got Half-Life 2 running on the Switch...and it runs pretty good.

The modder used the newly released Portal Companion Collection on Switch to load Half-Life 2 onto the handheld-console hybrid. "The main reason why this works so well is that Portal 1 is basically just a glorified mod for Half-Life 2. (For example, the player code for Portal is based directly on the player code for HL2)," Oatmeal Dome explained on Twitter.

Sony has been shipping out PlayStation VR2 devkits and one developer has taken a snapshot of the headset.

While Sony already revealed exactly what the retail version of its next-gen PlayStation VR2 will look like, the first photo of the HMD out in the wild has been released. The photo comes by way of Bit Planet Games, the developers of space planet sim Sol Survivor and airflight sims Ultrawings 1 & 2.

The HMD's look and presentation isn't exactly a surprise...but what is still surprising is just how small the complete kit is. The original PS4-powered PSVR was a tangle of cords thanks to its required breakout box peripheral required for play. The PSVR2 significantly reduces these requirements and only runs on a single USB-C cable. Having used a base PSVR headset I can say that a single cord is a life-saver and will pretty much eliminate friction while playing.

Old-school RPG Swordquest will finally be complete: Airworld has appeared out of thin air.

Back in the 80s, Atari released the Swordquest series of games The plan was to release four games after each element: Earthworld, Fireworld, Waterworld, and Airworld. The games were a kind of interactive scavenger hunt where players would collect clues to win a contest with serious prizes: There was a chalice, a talisman, a crown, and a philosopher's stone--all of which were encrusted with gems and precious metals. Winners would also come back for one final competition with the ultimate reward: a silver sword full of gems.

Airworld was never made, though. The video game crash during the 1980s pretty much wrecked Atari's financial books. Now as part of Atari's 50th anniversary, Airworld is coming back. The infamous Swordquest game will be released in Atari's new 50th Anniversary Collection, which packs in 80+ classic games including Airworld.

Blizzard bought a new studio to help build World of Warcraft's future.

Blizzard Entertainment has purchased Proletariat, the Boston-based indie studio behind Spellbreak, to work on new World of Warcraft content. The move comes shortly after Blizzard had its lowest revenues and monthly active users in the last six years, and close to the successful yet highly controversial release of Diablo Immortal.

Under Blizzard, Proletariat will apparently have no time to keep hosting and updating its online game Spellbreak. The studio announced that Spellbreak will be pulled offline in 2023, and development of new content will cease. Proletariat is to work on Dragonflight, the next major World of Warcraft expansion, as well as other future content and updates.

A video shared by Jordanian state media shows security camera footage of the devastating incident.

A crane on the docks in the Aqaba port in south Jordan was loading tanks containing chlorine gas onto a cargo ship on Monday, June 27th, 2022, picking them up from trucks queuing up with additional tanks to be loaded. The container dropped from the crane as it was being loaded onto the ship, causing yellow chlorine gas to explode in massive plumes, covering the ship and the docks.

The tanks contained liquid chlorine, created by pressurizing and cooling chlorine. However, the tank rupturing upon impact with the ship allowed the poisonous gas to rapidly form and spread, causing dock personnel to flee on foot. The gas, used during World War I for chemical warfare, causes pain, difficulty breathing, and fluid in the lungs. In households, chlorine is useful in creating bleach and sanitizing things like water.

Animator Hashem Al-Ghaili has shown off a concept for the nuclear-powered sky hotel on YouTuber.

A video rendering shows off the vessel, called the Sky Cruise, which is described as a "futuristic hotel above the clouds. Animated by Al-Ghaili, the video features designs by Tony Holmsten of an aircraft capable of hosting 5,000 guests while remaining in the air for over a year continuously, with small aircraft able to ferry passengers and supplies to it by landing on its decks.

"Thanks to nuclear energy, the hotel never runs out of fuel and can remain suspended in the air for several years without ever touching the ground," claimed the designers.

A study on cocaine titled "Muscarinic Acetylcholine M2 Receptors Regulate Lateral Habenula Neuron Activity and Control Cocaine Seeking Behavior" has been published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Researchers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), discovered that blocking particular acetylcholine receptors in the brains of rats made it more difficult for them to resist seeking cocaine. In the experiment, rats were trained to recognize when cocaine was available based on a light being turned on or off and to self-administer cocaine by pressing a lever, resulting in the injection of the drug.

The researchers blocked the receptors in the lateral habenula (LHb), a brain area responsible for balancing reward processing and inhibition. The LHb is particularly interesting because it interfaces with various brain regions associated with reasoning, reward systems, and higher-order thought processes - factors associated with substance abuse disorders.

A study on influenza vaccination and Alzheimer's disease titled "Risk of Alzheimer's Disease Following Influenza Vaccination: A Claims-Based Cohort Study Using Propensity Score Matching" has been published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) have found that people administered at least one dose of influenza vaccine are 40% less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease over the next four years compared to non-vaccinated peers. Their study involved a "large nationwide sample of U.S. adults aged 65 and older," with and without prior flu vaccination.

"We found that flu vaccination in older adults reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease for several years. The strength of this protective effect increased with the number of years that a person received an annual flu vaccine - in other words, the rate of developing Alzheimer's was lowest among those who consistently received the flu vaccine every year. Future research should assess whether flu vaccination is also associated with the rate of symptom progression in patients who already have Alzheimer's dementia," said first author Avram S. Bukhbinder, MD, a recent alumnus of McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.

A study on the experiment titled "Rapid Radiolytic Degradation of Amino Acids in the Martian Shallow Subsurface: Implications for the Search for Extinct Life" has been published in the journal Astrobiology.

A recent NASA laboratory experiment indicates that potential signs of ancient life on Mars are more likely found about 6.6 feet (~2 meters) below the Martian surface. Researchers determined that ionizing radiation from space could quickly destroy small molecules like amino acids, erasing signs of life from the surface. Though amino acids can be created by non-biological chemistry or by life, their discovery on Mars would be strong evidence for terrestrial life.

"Our results suggest that amino acids are destroyed by cosmic rays in the Martian surface rocks and regolith at much faster rates than previously thought. Current Mars rover missions drill down to about two inches (around five centimeters). At those depths, it would take only 20 million years to destroy amino acids completely. The addition of perchlorates and water increases the rate of amino acid destruction even further," said Alexander Pavlov of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.