Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Trending Now Look Up Mashable Selects Say More Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook In My Bag AI at School Safety Net Versus All Series Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer with Mashable. She's written for various entertainment websites since 2017, covering everything from tech to games to film. You'll currently find her work on IGN and Fangoria alongside Mashable, but she also has bylines at Rock Paper Shotgun, Collider, Screen Rant, and more. When she's not writing, she enjoys catching up with the latest films and shows -- horror, in particular -- and has a deep love of FromSoft games, which she continues to happily replay. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers.

AI at School Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable Selects Look Up Say More Safety Net Versus Creator Playbook In My Bag Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age All Series Don't wait for Lego deals: We found early Prime Day deals on Lego Star Wars, Lego Pokémon, and more Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer with Mashable. She's written for various entertainment websites since 2017, covering everything from tech to games to film. You'll currently find her work on IGN and Fangoria alongside Mashable, but she also has bylines at Rock Paper Shotgun, Collider, Screen Rant, and more. When she's not writing, she enjoys catching up with the latest films and shows -- horror, in particular -- and has a deep love of FromSoft games, which she continues to happily replay. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers.

The slogan, from the 1990s, is one of the most famous in video game history. It was a time when the bitter rivalry between the two Japanese game companies was at its fiercest. Today, that relationship has softened. You can play Sonic games on Nintendo consoles and the characters have even appeared in games together. But is Sega trying to restart the beef?

Experts don't think Mario Kart World will be a one off. Christopher Dring, editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Game Business, said he expected to see price rises elsewhere too - particularly for the most anticipated titles, such as the latest edition of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. "I think if you're going see a game that's going to be able to charge more, look out for when GTA 6 gets a release date later in the year," he said. He says there are lots of reasons prices might go up, part of which is that modern games are a lot of work. "These games are taking longer to make, they require more people to make them," he said. But there's also the fact, he says, that video game prices have not kept up with inflation.

By 2004, video games were well into their adolescence. The war between Sega and Nintendo that defined the early 1990s was in the rear-view mirror – the PlayStation had knocked both of them off their perch, and Microsoft had released the Xbox. The critical and commercial hits of the day were not cartoon platformers but operatic space shooters (Halo) and anarchic crime games (Grand Theft Auto). There were lots of guns, and most games were embracing increasingly cinematic cutscenes. Nintendo, meanwhile, had fallen into third place with its Game Cube home console – but it still owned the handheld game market with the Game Boy Advance.

A mid-day drunk-dial from a friend has changed one man's life forever. Noland Arbaugh, 29, rose to fame after being revealed as Neuralink's first patient to receive its brain chip, but it all started when his friend called slurring his words in September. Arbaugh was paralyzed eight years ago during a diving accident. The friend called Arbaugh to tell him about Elon Musk opening up human trials and urged him to apply and even helped him fill out the form. Just five months after he was approved for the Neuralink trial, Arbaugh had a cutting edge brain chip embedded in his skull.

Classic video games never really die. While they're still remembered by designers and producers, their influence lives on and they can crop up in the most unexpected places. It combines the explorable world and discoverable challenges of Forza Horizon with the fun handling, weapons and power-ups of Mario Kart – but its origins lie in a completely different set of car games. Executive producer Mark Pierce started his games career at Atari in the late 1980s, working on the company's classic racers RoadBlasters, Road Riot and San Francisco Rush, and was around while another team was crafting the legendary 3D racing sim Hard Drivin'. "I was so fortunate because a lot of the original Atari guys were still there," he recalls.

Friday night has rolled around, and you're trying to pick a restaurant for dinner. Should you visit your most beloved watering hole or try a new establishment, in the hopes of discovering something superior? Potentially, but that curiosity comes with a risk: If you explore the new option, the food could be worse. On the flip side, if you stick with what you know works well, you won't grow out of your narrow pathway. Curiosity drives artificial intelligence to explore the world, now in boundless use cases -- autonomous navigation, robotic decision-making, optimizing health outcomes, and more.

The highly-anticipated next installment of the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise will feature a playable female protagonist for the first time, according to a report. Developer Rockstar Games first announced it was working on GTA VI earlier this year, writing in a February statement that'active development of the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series is well under way'. Now a report in Bloomberg reveals that GTA VI will be the first to let players take on the role of a female lead character in its story mode. The woman, who is said to be'Latina', reportedly will be one of a pair of leading characters in a story influenced by the bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde. People familiar with the game told Bloomberg that developers are being cautious not to'punch down' by making jokes about marginalised groups, in contrast to previous games.

Shane Rafferty plays video games for a living. He's neither a developer nor a ranked professional, but his work revolves around gaming all the same: Rafferty is a gaming technology specialist. As the name suggests, he uses technology--and video games in particular--to provide social and emotional support for hospitalized children and their families. Though the job description sounds like fantasy, gaming technology specialists are a reality at more than 50 hospitals worldwide. Among them is the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.