Category: Games

Quantum Leap star Scott Bakula has revealed there are “significant conversations” taking place with regards to a possible reboot of the ’90s sci-fi series.

As reported by Deadline, Bakula recently appeared as a guest on Bob Saget’s Here For You podcast to tell stories and share insights into his decades-long career in the entertainment industry, including the time he body-hopped into the role of Dr. Sam Beckett, a time-travelling quantum physicist who leaps into other peoples lives to “put right what once went wrong.”

During the discussion, Bakula confirmed that talks had been happening around a possible reboot of the series, which originally ran on NBC for five seasons, between 1989 and 1993. He didn’t divulge the details of any such conversations, however, he indicated that those involved were in the very early stages of working out whether there’s a way to bring the show back.

“There are very significant conversations about it right now going on,” Bakula told Saget of a potential Quantum Leap reboot, though he admitted there may be some challenges. “I don’t know what it would be. I don’t know who would have it. The rights were a mess for years. I don’t know if they’re even sorted out now. That’s always been the biggest complication.”

Bakula also revealed that he had spoken to series creator Donald P. Bellisario periodically over the years about a potential comeback of the show. He said he had encouraged him to move forward with an idea despite jokingly noting that Dean Stockwell, who played his wise-cracking hologram sidekick Admiral Al Calavicci, “costs too much money” these days.

“[Bellisario] would always say, ‘I can’t write it without thinking of you and Dean [Stockwell].’ I said, ‘Just think about me and Dean and write your show. Get it out there. If you have an idea, just write it. I am sure it will be great,'” Bakula recalled of some of the past conversations he had had with Bellisario, admitting that he didn’t know “what that idea would be if we did.”

Several shows and sitcoms have received reboots, revivals, and spin-offs in recent years, albeit with mixed results. It seems that for every terrific and twisted Twin Peaks-level continuation, there’s a disappointing Heroes Reborn. The minds behind these projects continue to test the water with audience reaction to see what works and what doesn’t.

Plus, many series are continuing to get a second life, with Dexter Morgan set to make his return on Showtime, a Frasier revival with Kelsey Grammer greenlit at Paramount Plus, and a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reboot featuring a new cast set for NBCUniversal’s Peacock. Outside of these ones, there’s a whole list of cancelled TV shows we’d love to see revived at some point.

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

As the Roblox community continues to grow, the Roblox Corporation has taken the decision to roll out an ID verification service to confirm users’ ages. Currently operating on an opt-in basis, the developer says that its new service will not only signal a level of trust between users but also enable the platform to provide better methods for age-appropriate communication between creators.

As announced in an article on the Roblox blog, the developer says that age verification on the platform is important as it rolls out its new communication tool, spatial voice. The feature, which is currently being tested in a limited Developer Beta and is set to move into early access soon, will allow users to engage in voice chat within spatial voice experiences in Roblox, and aims to mirror real-life conversation, taking into account proximity, tone of voice, and more.

Despite the company offering its age verification service on an opt-in basis, only those who successfully complete the process will be eligible for spatial voice chat when it becomes available for Public Beta. It’s not clear if the age verification service will become mandatory in future although, given that more than 50% of Roblox users are under 13, it feels unlikely.

For Roblox, this primarily comes down to safety. “As our community continues to expand, both globally and by age (nearly 50% of the users on our platform are over the age of 13 as of Q2 2021), we want to make sure that everyone can express themselves in a safe and respectful way,” explains Senior Product Manager Chris Ashton Chen. “Being confident in a user’s age and identity is a critical foundation for metaverse safety and civility. We are developing new and innovative ways to do so while always respecting users’ privacy.”

So, how does it work? Roblox’s ID verification process comes in two stages. Using image processing technology, Roblox will first ask users to submit to an ID document check via its app. The documents themselves can take a number of forms with the platform accepting a user’s passport, driver’s license, or ID card as appropriate means for verification.

To complete the verification process, those taking part will then need to capture a selfie using the system. Roblox says that this stage of the service checks for “liveness” (whether or not the image it’s seeing is of a living, breathing human being) and “likeness” (whether or not you are actually the same person shown in the documents uploaded).

The Roblox Corporation says that its verification process will roll out over the course of the next few weeks. For those worried about their data and privacy, the developer has also assured users that the platform will not store user’s raw ID documents nor selfie data. Instead, when a government-issued ID document is scanned, an anonymized value is generated, allowing Roblox to verify identity without risking exposure of the user’s real identity.

Roblox’s ID verification process might seem strict, but it’s similar to that used by many gambling sites and financial apps worldwide. However, with the platform home to many young gamers, it’s a move that will hopefully help to increase safety platform-wide.

In a similar vein, IGN previously reported that Roblox had seen a number of incidents of mass shooting recreations arising on its platform. While the developer hasn’t stated that similar incidents are a reason for the introduction of an age verification service and ID checks, incorporating such a system would likely help to improve users’ accountability throughout the community.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

IGN has officially been around for two and a half decades, and has borne witness to a lot of monumental shifts in video game and entertainment culture in that time. To celebrate our lengthy tenure on this earth, IGN’s 25th Anniversary Feature series will hone in on these shifts, and the movies, video games and TV shows that helped define them. Today, we’re looking back 2004’s hit TV show Lost and how it changed television fandom forever.

Today you can’t move on the internet without stumbling over spoilercasts, theory videos, and online conversations about your latest favourite TV show. So it’s hard to believe that as recently as 2004, people simply just watched television and then, at best, spoke about it within their close circles the next day. Even when television shows such as Twin Peaks and The Twilight Zone presented mysteries, theories and discussion often lived or died in the workplace, student halls, or family rooms.

But in 2004, with the rise of new technology and pioneering ideas, a mysterious new hit show for ABC changed the game. It altered the landscape in how we, as fans, engaged with our favourite series. This is the story of how Lost changed the way we watch television forever.

Part 1: “A leader can’t lead ’til he knows where he’s going.”

Despite the outlandish budget – at the time, the most expensive pilot ever shot – and the uniquely diverse cast, Lost, the show about survivors of a plane crash on a mysterious island, arrived on television in a very traditional sense. The rollout of episodes followed the pattern of a long-established televisual format, dropping weekly episodes with little more than conventional advertising spaces to promote the next installment. But something else was percolating in the media world; a new medium of entertainment was in its infancy, ready to birth a new form of fan conversation and interaction for a worldwide audience. Podcasting.

“I had no idea what a podcast was,” says Jack Glatfelter, one half of Jay & Jack, a father-and-son hosted Lost podcast.

“For some reason, I had a subscription to USA Today, that was one of the newspapers I had,” recalls Jay Glatfelter. “I think it was the summer of 2005, they had an article about this new thing called podcasting. I thought ‘oh, it’s like a blog, but it’s an audio blog. This is so cool.”

Jay and Jack were huge fans of Lost but were mostly limited to discussing their theories with each other. But the birth of podcasting presented a unique opportunity to create something not only by fans but for fans.

“I really wanted to do something with Jack, ” says Jay. “I always thought he was a really funny personality. So I was like, ‘We need to do something with you on the forefront.’ But we kind of tossed around ideas a lot, and then it was in that moment of us just really being into talking about it [Lost]. I was like, ‘Oh my God, we could talk about the show and it would be like a forum, but alive.’”

Podcasting was extremely new at the time, with a lot of creators still trying to understand what form it could and would take. But the obvious initial comparison was simple: podcasts could be a very niche, modern take on a radio show.

”In radio back then, conversations didn’t happen about niche topics the way you would in a forum,” says Jay. “With Lost [we] were able to kind of talk like a talk show, but about these more niche topics, like you would find when you would go in a forum on some topic that you’re really passionate about.”

“It was much more about the conversation about the show and like, ‘Oh, hey, did you see this Easter egg?’ Or ‘What about this scene? Let’s talk about that’,” Jay adds. “And I think that was much more what it was, as opposed to a review of the episode.”

Like Lost, podcasting began to explode in popularity. The show and the format proving to be a match made in heaven. Dozens of fan podcasts dedicated to combing through the latest episode began to arrive, and this movement was quickly noticed by Lost’s official channels. Spotting a new tool to promote their weekly episodes, the show’s creators started ‘The Official Lost Podcast’ in November of 2005.

“The show was just the perfect show for a podcast,” says Jack. “Because after you watch the show, you’re going, ‘Okay, I got to find out what is The Smoke Monster? What is this? I need to get those answers!’”

Lost presented the perfect vehicle for the podcasting world to hitch its ride on, even beyond an avenue to discuss the mysteries fans were eager to solve.

“Remember shippers? The people that were into the relationships? They had their stuff in this show,” says Jay. “You had the sci-fi element. You had the Easter eggs, theories and all that kind of stuff. It had all these different angles, so you had all these different things that you wanted to talk about. And it was still a network TV show, so it was weekly. You had a whole week in between each episode. That’s a lot of time for a show like that to percolate ideas, think and theorize, and really dig into every little nitty-gritty minute detail. In the modern world – especially with streaming where you get all at once – there’s no big breaks.”

Fans were eager for not only answers but more content. The show had become a phenomenal success, and with that bred a desire for information about this mysterious island and our survivors. So in an effort to uniquely deliver on this salacious desire, the showrunners looked to another media platform: video games.

Part 2: “You Needed Them, And They Needed You.”

In 2006, Ubisoft announced that it had licensed the rights and begun production on a Lost video game, later revealed to be Lost: Via Domus. Unlike other video games based on television shows of its era, though (The Sopranos: Road to Respect, 24: The Game), the Lost video game would be a true companion piece to the show, contributing towards its lore and, ultimately, serving the audience’s desire to find out more information about the mysterious island. At the beginning of development, though, how to achieve that vision was a little hazy.

“My idea, stupidly, was I wanted to make a shooter based on the Dharma initiative because no one knows what the Dharma initiative was.” says Gadi Pollock, Producer on Lost: Via Domus. “ I thought it would be a really cool mystery, make it really cool shooting where maybe we could go into some of the areas of the island. And I could leverage some of the Far Cry engine technology in the lush islands because it was a no-brainer, right? But it was really shot down because we really needed to be true to the show, and we were afraid that the audience wouldn’t really appreciate that type of angle.”

The showrunners’ vision for the game was simple; this was to be a companion piece for fans of the show to learn more. The decision was then made to run the game’s plot alongside (and intertwined with) the events of the first 70 days of the show’s story.

“So we created a character that was on the plane,” says Pollock. “That character crashed and we built, through the eyes of this character, another point of view in the plane crash and surviving the island.”

“The audience of Lost is very finicky and it had to be exact,” he adds, “So it was not even a question that we were going to do a spinoff character, but [they also needed to be] living the story of the actual show.”

Lost’s production company, Bad Robot was heavily invested in this idea and worked closely with Ubisoft to make sure everything was perfectly aligned.

“From a story perspective, they were very, very informative. And we spent a lot of time massaging the story with them,” recalls Pollock. “What was good about them is that they allowed us to use whatever we wanted to create the experience for the audience. And I think also as they were evolving with the audience and the show, they also evolved the story because they also picked stuff from us, and we picked up from them. So it was a really true collaborative experience. I really enjoyed it.”

In 2021, the idea of weaving a narrative through different forms of storytelling is very commonplace. It’s part of the foundation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But in 2006, the idea of stretching your plot over several mediums in a primitive version of today’s popularised metaverse strategy seemed like a risky proposition.

“Everyone keeps bringing up metaverse and all these things” shares Pollock. “But we were making metaverses when we made the Lost video game with all the different elements attached to it.

“To me, it was more content that was related to the experience for you to grow with the product,” he says. “Not just supplementary content to get you engaged [and] to come spend more money on the platform.”

With detailed podcasts, webisodes (exclusively online, lore-connected clips from the show), and a video game, Lost was truly pioneering the approach to engaging an audience outside of the television screen. But the show’s creators had another trick up their sleeve. One that would fuse the digital and real-world experience of watching Lost. Alternate reality.

Part 3: “It was a dream, but… it was the most real thing I’ve ever experienced.”

The Lost Experience was an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that took place between seasons 2 and 3 (with more following after its success). It engaged fans during the off-season break, sending them further down the rabbit hole of mysteries the show had presented. But what exactly is an ARG?

“It’s something that exists in the real world,” explains Luke Smith, owner of YouTube channel Hydra Collectables, and passionate Lost fan who experienced the ARGs firsthand. “So you’re looking for real-life clues, real-life puzzles. It’s spotting things in the real world that other people who aren’t playing the game might just walk by.”

Cynically, an ARG can be viewed as a modern marketing tool, capitalising on the most dedicated fans to comb through hints and puzzles teased in other marketing materials, and then subsequently chasing the rabbit to the next clue. This all leads to a (hopefully!) satisfying lore drop you wouldn’t get by simply just watching the show.

“That was the first time that I’d ever seen anything quite like it,” recalls Smith. “I knew that something was up the minute I saw the advert in amongst all the normal adverts for Oceanic Airlines.”

The Lost Experience was almost like a modern version of a treasure hunt. Clues were sprinkled throughout official merchandise, and website links buried in fake adverts that sent fans further into the abyss. Clues were hidden in magazines, built into the show’s Comic-Con panels, and even on the inside of Apollo Bars (real-world recreations of the show’s fictional candy bars being sold in stores). These breadcrumbs offered promises of knowledge to those seeking answers about the Hanso Foundation, the fictional shadowy company behind the show’s mysterious Dharma Initiative.

“You went to the Apollo website, you found all these little different clues,” recalls Smith. “And they said that they were going to be doing a limited edition of these chocolate bars in certain cities around the world.

“So at the time of getting these, we didn’t know what they were actually for,” he says. “I just stuck mine in my bag, thinking I’ve got this cool item, I’m going to take it home and keep it, which I have done all this time. And then I heard someone shouting out, ‘Open them up, open them up. You won’t believe what’s inside!’ And there it was, there was this website.”

The Lost ARG provided a supplementary television experience like no other. Captivating fans by leveraging the latest ideas and ultimately, keeping fans engaged and talking about the show.

“My favorite thing about this show is mystery,” Smith shares. “And the fact that these clues were sprinkled around that directly led to certain aspects of the show. It was just too intriguing not to go ahead and do it. And what we have to also remember is this existed at a time before social media as we know it. So there wasn’t any YouTube, there wasn’t any Facebook, there wasn’t any Instagram. It was literally just people on forums going to actual web pages to discuss what they had found.”

The obtuse, mysterious nature of The Lost Experience felt incredibly on-brand for the show. Along with the other companion pieces of media, it only helped keep Lost in the cultural zeitgeist and bring together a passionate community.

“It really did embed me in the show,” Smith says, clearly passionate about the ARG’s effect. “It made me so much more intrigued and interested. So much so that I’d be recording it from the television, just to rewatch the episodes over and over again, or even slow bits down to try and find more clues. So it really did heighten the show’s experience.”

Part 4: “If We Can’t Live Together, We’re Going To Die Alone.”

With every piece of supplementary media, the Lost fan base spread further and grew more passionate. And now, with modern means to share, discuss and explore the show’s ideas, a fan base like no other began to emerge.

“It was just people really happy and willing to share information,” recalls Smith. “This is from all over the world. So even when someone would write on the forums, they’d be speaking in their own language and we would have to put it through a very early version of what we would now call Google Translate, so we were able to work out and find these clues. It was the internet before the internet existed. And I didn’t realize how close anyone could really be just through those wires, through that internet line.”

Most importantly though, and perhaps unlike other shows, this time it felt like the show’s creators were actually listening to this passionate fan base.

“Nikki and Paulo were a case in point example, right?” says podcaster Jay Glatfelter, referring to two less-than-popular characters introduced in season 3 who were removed from the show almost as swiftly as they were added. “They brought them on. Everybody hated them. Which again, is almost commonplace now, every time some fan franchise adds some new character, there’s always backlash. I think they had good intentions for it and I understand the concept behind it, but it wasn’t taking. And they were reading comments about it as it was happening on the podcast. And so clearly there was the pivot. But the way they sent them off was such a nod and wink to the fans. It was one of those moments where you could see they were a part of it. And you could sense that they were feeling the disdain of the characters. I think they even would make jokes about them during the podcast at the time. And then they switched and pivoted and killed off the characters, but in a really fun tongue-in-cheek way.”

Fans, for the first time, felt like they truly had a voice. If they were loud and united enough, they could influence decisions. It’s something that seems less of a foreign concept these days in the era of Snyder Cuts and online petitions, but back then it was something new.

“That’s what’s neat, they looked to the fans as a bit of that source of truth,” says Jay, referring to showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. “Like almost the smell test, does this pass, does this check? They said it doesn’t and then they adjusted to it. Whereas now it doesn’t always necessarily work. I feel like Last Jedi to the Rise of Skywalker is an example of there was a lot of pushback to The Last Jedi. They clearly did a whole bunch of trying to pivot to what they wanted. And I think it almost made it a lesser product. So it doesn’t always necessarily work. But in that sense [Nikki and Paulo], I thought they did a really good job of pivoting and adjusting too. And they probably saw it like ‘we tried this, it didn’t work, let’s move to something else.’”

Part 5: “See ya in another life, brother.”

Despite Lost being a multimedia pioneer, incorporating all the latest digital forms it could find to stretch the viewing experience, it also surprisingly (and passionately) clung onto the last intrinsic staple of broadcast television from the previous half-century. Along with a few of its contemporaries, such as Game of Thrones, Lost would be one of the last bastions for something we’d accepted as part of the furniture for a long time. Appointment viewing.

“The reality is that we want things instantly now,” says Pollock. “That’s why everything now is on demand. And if it’s not now, and it’s not today, we’re going to lose the attention span.

“You have to have that space to be able to have that level of engagement and interaction,” says Jay. “I think there are shows that rise to that level of Lost, but it doesn’t have that space and it doesn’t have that need to fill in that space. And so I think there are things that are like appointment TV, but even the Disney Plus stuff you still watch it at your own time. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube on that one.”

“Yeah, the streaming aspect really hurts,” says Jack. “Because we’ve done other TV shows and we do Stranger Things, but it’s not the same because some people are ahead of where we’re talking about. So it kind of hurts.”

Lost was clearly a product of its time, hitting a sweet spot in television history. It rode the final wave of appointment television whilst simultaneously launching and co-opting modern media and marketing ideas, drawing the blueprint for television fandom for years to come. Despite its extremely divisive conclusion, it was a huge success on all fronts. But arguably, it might not have worked as well in any other period of entertainment history. It needed to exist in this particular pocket of time to not only have the option to pioneer these ideas but also have the opportunity to truly capitalise on them.

“I think to me, it’s definitely set the tone for the shows that came after it,” says Pollock. “I think from a story perspective, it really dictated a lot of the future of not just TV shows, but what gaming storytelling was about, too. I think it is really something that we should definitely remember. To me, the way they shaped the story was just… genius.”

Lost’s techniques molded a fan base like no other. The community was cultivated not only through the contents of the show, but how it nurtured its audience in the gaps. So much so that it built to a crescendo that inevitably, was always going to disappoint a large portion of the rabid fanbase. Hardcore fans desperate for answers they’d been craving for 6, uninterrupted years.

“When the finale happened, there definitely was more negativity,” recalls Jay. “But while it was happening, it was one of the coolest communities to be in.”

“Jack and I, we’ve done panels on Lost at Comic-Con,” he says. “But we do that Lost panel now and people are coming that didn’t watch it while it aired, and they stream it and just watch it straight through. I feel bad for those people because so much of the experience of Lost was the community.”

“There are people that I consider family from those relationships built out of those fan communities,” he adds. “We still meet up once a year and invite a bunch of people to my house from those communities. Friendships from all different walks of life, because of that show.”

Despite your lasting impressions of Lost, there’s no disputing its legacy. What began life as premium television in the most traditional form evolved the landscape so much that we’d never watch television in the same way again. It grew and vocalised fan-driven content, drew the blueprints for modern marketing tools, and pioneered cross-media storytelling. Lost was a show that spent its entire 6-year run adjusting the formula for how a television show could thrive, paving the way for the shows and fandoms that followed. And despite finishing its run in 2010, its legacy will be felt for decades to come. And as Jacob once said, “It only ever ends once. Everything before that is just progress”.

Dale Driver is an IGN Senior Video Producer, and he’d like to thank Jay and Jack Glatfelter, Luke Smith from Hydra Collectibles and Gadi Pollock for all their help and insight. Follow Dale on Twitter.

Apple has released the official trailer for its ambitious new sci-fi series, Invasion, starring Jurassic Park’s Sam Neill.

The three-episode premiere of Invasion will be available to stream on Apple TV+ on Friday, October 22, 2021. Invasion comes from the minds of X-Men and Deadpool producer Simon Kinberg, as well as The Twilight Zone’s David Weil. The series follows the events of an Alien invasion through the lens of several characters spread across multiple continents.

IGN can exclusively reveal the thrilling trailer for Invasion in the video below or at the top of the page:

We spoke to Kinberg to learn more about the origins of Invasion’s story, where he shared how Alejandro Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning 2006 film Babel, and H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds were both inspirations.

“Well, initially I had a thought of doing a very modern global Babel, like the movie Babel meets War of the Worlds,” Kinberg told IGN. “And I met [co-creator David Weil], because I wanted a partner in creating and writing it, and we really connected. And the more we talked about it, the further and further it got away from anything resembling War of the Worlds other than it being an alien invasion. And so it became its own original thing. And what was, from the beginning, the biggest draw to me and the thing that got me the most excited, was playing the reality of what it would feel like to be invaded. I think there are a lot of nations, unfortunately, around the world that know what that feels like, but there’s a whole lot of nations that don’t, and America is one of them.”

Kinberg went on to explain that his love of science-fiction movies and TV shows comes from their ability to act as powerful metaphors for so many things in our world. Some of his favorites growing up were Alien, The Terminator, and Star Wars.

“So in the case of the X-Men movies that I spent a lot of my life working on, the mutants were a metaphor for any persecuted or oppressed people,” Kinberg said. “And in the case of Invasion, it’s really about two things for me, metaphorically. One is the fact that we’re all aliens, that there is a sense of alienation that I think all people carry with them in some form, whether they’re alienated from their families, alienated from their communities, alienated from their jobs, there is a sense of disconnect. And I think I was really trying to find storylines in our show that would explore that feeling of alienation and really sort of explode it under the intensity of the magnifying glass of an actual alien invasion.”

Joining Neill is an expansive ensemble, including Shamier Anderson (Goliath), Golshifteh Farahani (Gen: Lock), Firas Nassar (Sirens), Shioli Kutsuna (Deadpool 2), and more.

What did you think of the trailer? Let us know in the comments and be sure to check out Invasion when it debuts on Apple TV+ on Friday, October 22, 2021.

David Griffin is the TV Streaming Editor for IGN. Say hi on Twitter.

From build quality to missing features, small mice usually pack big sacrifices. They also tend to feature hellish ergonomics. In other words, they’re not the first mouse you grab when you’re ready to game. SteelSeries is looking to flip the script with its Prime Mini (and Prime Mini wireless). While they’re undeniably small, they don’t scream “mini.” Instead, they’re slightly shorter, slightly slimmer versions of SteelSeries’ streamlined Prime mouse. Does the Mini pack big enough features to warrant $60? Let’s find out.

Steelseries Prime Mini – Design and Features

Like the Prime, the SteelSeries mini sports a clean design, with a textured matte finish and minimal branding. In fact, the only design flourish is an RGB light embedded in the click wheel. It features a right-handed design and two side buttons on the left.
In the box, you’ll find a mesh 6.6 foot USB Type-C to USBA Type-A charging cable. This cable can be removed and replaced, but the Mini isn’t wireless and requires a constant connection.

It’s equipped with a TrueMove Pro Sensor and Optical Magnetic Switch that’s rated for 100 million clicks. This switch sports a design I don’t think I’ve encountered before, utilizing a steel torsion spring, neodymium magnet and an infrared light that’s advertised with a super fast response time. While I didn’t notice any special precision from this magnetic switch, I did notice how loud it was. Very loud. It’s by far the loudest mouse in my home and might be a cause for concern if you’re gaming in the same room as other people. However, I liked the sound and feel of the click, and it never bothered me (No surprise: I’m a Cherry Blue kind of guy).

Build quality is all-around high. There’s virtually no rattle when shaking the mouse, and despite its light weight, it doesn’t flex, squeak, or creak when squeezed. On the bottom, you’ll find virgin PTFE feet that help the mouse achieve a smooth glide (though it can sound a bit scrapey on bare wood).

There’s also a CPI button on the bottom of the mouse that switches between 5 levels, ranging from 400 CPI to 3200 CPI. Long pressing the CPI button changes the polling rate between 1000Hz and 125Hz. You can further adjust and refine these settings using SteelSeries Engine, the company’s customization software.

The big story here is the Prime Mini’s size and weight. At 61 grams, the Mini is shockingly light; it’s lighter than a C battery, or about the weight of a kiwi. It’s also quite small at 120mm long, 66.2mm wide, and 40.7mm tall.

That’s small enough to make a palm grip impractical for most, meaning you’ll have to adjust to claw or fingertip grip.

The SteelSeries Mini costs $60. Though this review is focused on its wired counterpart, I also tested out the wireless version, which removes the cord while adding 12g to the weight and $70 to the price tag.

SteelSeries Prime Mini – Gaming

The first thing I noticed about the Prime Mini is how deceptively small it is. Visually, it looks nearly identical to the Prime, but once in your hand, it’s clear just how much it’s been slimmed down. While the normal Prime doesn’t quite fill my palm, with the Mini, my palm rests firmly on the desk. This can be a tad annoying depending on what you’re using for a desk pad (on my leatherette mouse pad, it felt great. On my wool one, not so much.)

And while the mouse’s dome provided a decent amount of ergonomic support, after a while I started to feel a bit of cramping near my pinky, which didn’t fit on the mouse. For folks with similarly sized hands, that means your pinky will either drag or you’ll need to clench it to the mouse. After a few hours doing the latter, I started noticing the discomfort was creeping from the side of my hand all the way to my forearm. I’m used to the extreme ergonomics of a Logitech MX Master 3, so I was a bit taken aback when I realized it was imperative to switch my grip.

For some, that’ll make this mouse a non-starter. But if you have smaller hands or already utilize a claw or fingertip grip style, there’s a lot to love.

That starts with the PTFE feet. These tiny patches of Polytetrafluoroethylene are a huge boon, offering a wonderful glide across every surface except my (somewhat ill-advised) wool desk pad. Sliding the mouse from side to side reminded me of a puck on an Air hockey table. It’s really that noticeable

Down by those feet you’ll also find the device’s CPI button. If you’re unfamiliar with CPI, it’s mouse sensitivity on steroids. CPI allows you to decide the exact number of pixels you’d like your cursor to move with a one-inch movement of your mouse.

Because the CPI button is on the bottom and cycles between five programmed presets, it’s not very practical to switch while in the middle of a game. Thankfully, with the Engine software, every button is programmable from a short list of functions, CPI level included, but you’ll still need to cycle between the five settings, which still isn’t very practical for fast-paced FPSs and the like. The SteelSeries Engine also offers more granular control, allowing you to choose a CPI level in gradations of 50—all the way from 800 to 3200. I found a comfortable level right at 1400, but popped it higher for Valorant, League of Legends, and Age of Empires.

The Engine software offers a few more customization options. You can change the color of the scroll wheel between a static color, a breathing pattern, or a color shift. You can make your own presets or choose from several presets. It’s one of the only design flourishes on the mouse, so I ended up keeping the wheel brightness at max level and didn’t find it distracting.

Elsewhere in the software, you can launch a Macro editor, adjust the polling rate and angle snapping, or customize the mouse’s acceleration and deceleration. (There’s no hardware acceleration.) All in all, it’s a pretty bare-bones package, but it gets the job done by including all of my must-haves.

Finally, a note on that cord. Over the last year, I’ve transitioned to a standing desk and an all-wireless setup, so I was expecting the cord to cause some headaches, which it faithfully delivered. At six-and-a-half feet, the cord is long enough to reach my PC whether I’m sitting or standing. However, the corded braid is super lightweight and prone to snags on my speakers. I also noticed small tugs on the cords would often move the mouse around and the cord flopped around annoyingly during fast-paced swiping. Thankfully, the cord can easily be replaced with something a bit more hefty – it’s just a USB-C cord, after all.