Last month the iPhone Duo hit the streets and reviews hit the web. A product launch of the Duo's caliber is like unwrapping an N64 on Christmas morning: pure excitement.

I waited outside my Apple Store Friday morning just to get my hands on the thing. The Duo makes a remarkable first impression.

I didn't buy one or anything—too rich for my blood at the moment—but I left my twenty or so minutes with the device thoroughly impressed. I could see myself "maining" the phone. It doesn't hurt that I have big "early adopter" energy and put up with software paper cuts every summer by putting developer beta one on my main phone. I have a high tolerance (aka stubbornness) for the bleeding edge.

That attitude is also why I was a bit surprised at the weight of negative talking points in the Duo reviews I read or watched. Part of John Gruber's opening gobsmacked me a bit:

"The Duo name is perfect. It truly is like having two devices in one. The outer device is, by far, the worst iPhone Apple has ever made. It’s a miserable fat little thing. The inner device is a splendid, joyful, beautiful tablet, with a UI that out-iPads the iPad. For me, by far, it’s my favorite tablet experience ever. I prefer it to any iPad or Kindle-like reader I’ve ever used."

"...miserable fat little thing" is brutal.¹

More than the device's physical attributes, I was surprised at how many critics focused on the third-party app support. Marques Brownlee spent nearly 20% of his review discussing "The Apps Situation."

"So the app situation on the iPhone Duo is its biggest downside right now. Like, right now, as I release this video, at launch...

...The problem is most apps, at least most of the ones I use right now, are not optimized yet, which means... they look like this."

Gruber briefly mentioned the app compatibility as well. I love his orthodontist line.

"Using apps that haven’t been updated for the iOS 27.0 SDK is a terrible experience. They just look like little virtual iPhone Minis floating in a sea of black on the big inner display. You can zoom them, like the old “2×” button on iPads when running iPhone apps, but that stinks too. Apps that have been compiled for the 27 SDK but haven’t yet updated to the new Duo-specific APIs in the 27.1 SDK are ... OK. But even some of them blow. Take a look at the NYT Games app, and its custom crossword keyboard — it needs an orthodontist..."

But one day later, Gruber updated the review with the following paragraph:

"One day later and there’s an updated version of the NYT Games app, and they’ve fixed the orthodontic mess of their crossword keyboard, in both orientations. Screenshot. This goes to show just how fast the Duo-optimized updates are streaming in from developers. My review was up-to-date when I published at 7:00pm ET Wednesday, and outdated by the time I woke up Thursday morning."

That's the nut of why I felt so surprised. The iPhone Duo is coming in hot and fresh to developers. Apple could have (and should have) stemmed this tide by earlier support and offerings to developers, but that's not the way the development story has unfolded. Apple has to pay for it in reputation and feedback.

To me, reviewing the iPhone Duo should be a long-term commitment. I would take my time, let the device and its software marinate, before I gave a review. That's easy for someone who doesn't have one to review. For the authors and creators with review units, that does not seem to be a luxury they can afford. I get that! Their businesses rely on eyeballs being drawn to their website, platform, etc. It's a battle for attention. When everyone else is hitting publish at the same time, you want to be there and win your slice of the battlefield.

Because I am me, I think of video game console reviews or game reviews themselves. Were the value, performance, and enjoyment of the PlayStation 5 a done deal at launch in November 2020? Did the Wii peak at launch with the likes of Wii Sports, Twilight Princess, Excite Truck, Red Steel, Cars, Happy Feet, and Call of Duty 3? The hardware doesn't change in a definitive way, not unless there are revisions or new peripherals. The PS5 won't stop looking like a white monolithic router and the iPhone Duo won't stop being a miserable fat little thing. The software experience will change though. Developers' and users' understanding of the devices' capabilities will change.

Brownlee often recites this mantra of never buying hardware on the promise of software. I've agreed with that for a long time. It makes sense. Companies love to offer lofty promises, especially when they are selling something. In more recent years, I feel like that piece of advice needs a tweak. Never buy hardware on the promise of software from a person or company that never keeps their promises. I know that doesn't roll off the tongue, but it rings true to my ears.

In November 2012, if you bought a Wii U, were you buying it for the hardware promise of off-TV play and asymmetrical multiplayer or were you buying it for the next-generation Nintendo games that were sure to come? Were those early 3DS adopters there for glasses-free 3D and Street Fighter IV in their pocket or the potential of Nintendo games on the go with that kind of power? Both of those consoles were not received well at launch, critically or commercially. It was up to Nintendo to prove their worth with software and they delivered some of the most acclaimed titles of that generation. The 3DS went on to be the thirteenth best-selling console of all time.

Is anyone buying a new Googlebook with genuine hopes that Google will keep the laptop alive for more than a few years before sending it to the graveyard?²

These products and their ecosystems are unknowable at launch. We may have an idea or even know their potential, but I think we have to live with the new before passing judgment, especially when the new is radical. The iPhone is a known quantity. The Nintendo DS and the Wii were known quantities. Reviews from the voices I trust that take their time are my favorite. Sometimes, all the time you need is the provided review time under embargo. Sometimes it requires more.

Last year, Gruber missed the review window for the iPhone 17 Pro line and the iPhone Air due to an unplanned hiatus. He published his review this year, on the eve of when Apple revealed the iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone Duo to the world.

"354 days is arguably more than a few, but given that I missed the window for reviewing them when they were new, I thought it might be interesting to consider the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air on the cusp of their being obsoleted by the next generation of iPhones."

Gruber lived with the Air. He experienced a year of its battery life, camera, and weight. Stephen Hackett did the same with his superbly titled "Air to the Throne" piece.

"In the world of technology, trade-offs change nature over time. The first iPhone was amazing, but it was expensive and only ran on AT&T. The original MacBook Air was an incredible piece of engineering, but it ran hot and slow.

After a product matures, those trade-offs begin to shift, especially when it becomes a family of products...

...Last year, the iPhone Air upset the apple cart, adding a new third option that was both better and worse than its more established siblings.

I’ve been using one for the better part of a year, and the trade-offs aren’t as bad as you may think."

The catch is these devices never changed the software experience in a radical, meaningful way. Sure, the chips get better every year and enable better performance and capabilities, but Fantastical runs the same on my iPhone 15 Pro Max as it does on today's iPhone 18 Pro Max. Fantastical runs differently on the iPhone Duo. The more and more developers get their hands on and live with the iPhone Duo, the better the third-party software experience will be. Same goes for Apple, as its teams are being flooded with external feedback now.

Games can be the same today, especially those with a live service bent. Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of getting a review code for Bungie's new iteration of Marathon. Press was asked to hold final impressions until after the endgame map was unlocked in the second half of March. My review went out at the end of April. I spent some 130~ hours before I felt like I could publish my review on the game. I went through patches and changes. I tried new modes and levels. I lived with the game and I think my review is all the better for it. I still am living with the game, although not as much as I'd like to. As a live service game though, Marathon is still changing and shifting. Reviewing Marathon should be dynamic as Bungie responds to feedback.

The iPhone Duo is going to change as Apple responds to feedback and updates the Duo's flavor of iOS, and as the third-party developers come up with delightful and useful experiences. The Duo experience media had a month ago has already changed with the swath of updates, both first- and third-party. I hope some critics come back a year from now and revisit the device. I hope some continue to live with the device as their personal phone. I think the best review has yet to be written.

Christian Donlan with my favorite review of the brand new remake. It's an absolute treat to read.

I have a friend who first played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time back in the day, when the game was only just released and he was home from university for Christmas. This is objectively the best of all times to play any video game: not Christmas specifically, but dropped out of the regular world and faced with a few weeks filled with nothing pressing to do whatsoever. Years later, though, my friend told me that the magic of the game didn't just come down to the playing of it, but the way that the playing of it unfolded.

Here's what he meant. He'd play all day, curtains drawn, family ignored, working through dungeons and pelting across Hyrule Field on Epona. Then in the evening he'd call his girlfriend, who was back with her own family for Christmas. She always wanted to know what he'd got up to that day. And not in East Sussex; she wanted to know what he'd got up to in Hyrule.

So as he played he took regular breaks to tell someone else about what he had encountered, and what he had discovered, and what he had yet to overcome. It is my bright delight today to be able to tell you that, around thirty years later, having just revisited the game in Nintendo's new remake, Ocarina of Time is still worth telling people about. It's still an adventure so surprising, so satisfying, so moving that I need to talk about it.

John Linneman breaks down the brand new remake with all the historical context, comparisons, and keen observations you would expect. The level of detail Nintendo has put into this one is astounding. My jaw dropped when John sliced the bushes.

John also surmises that this type of remake helps educate and enlighten the younger and/or newer members of the development staff. I feel like this is how you pass the torch from one generation to the next.

AMB and Xbox announced that FSR 4.1 is on its way to Xbox Series X and S consoles. This announcement came a few weeks after Sony announced QSSR upscaling for base PS5 consoles, which is a result of their partnership with AMD. This pair of news stories got me thinking how this is, as far as I can recall, the first home console generation where the launch hardware will be capable of better visual fidelity and performance deep into its lifecycle.

My first thought jumped to the Expansion Pak for the Nintendo 64, which doubled the console's 4MB of RDRAM to 8MB. You could pay up and upgrade the console's performance in some games or you had to upgrade for others like Majora's Mask or Donkey Kong 64. I remember buying DK64 at a garage sale and then needing to buy an Expansion Pak to actually play the thing. I think we bought one at the Hollywood Video down the street.

In the generations before, developers would design custom chips for the game cartridges themselves to enhance performance; just look at the difference between Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 within five years of each other on the same console. Of course, there was the Super FX chip for certain Super Nintendo games to pushed 3D on the 16-bit console. While I have never owned a Sega Genesis, there's no denying the Sega CD and the 32X as the foundation of the Tower of Power. In more modern times, we have the mid-gen refresh with "Pro" consoles.

But all of those came at a cost post-launch or were exclusive to a certain title. These new software upscalers are patches to the console's operating system. We have already seen with QSSR and PSSR 2.0 how transformative these can be.

That's not to say there is not a cost—there is if you are buying now—but for those day one and early adopters, I can't think of a time where the console you bought at launch got better so late in its life, both in performance and price.

As for the AMD FSR 4.1 support on Xbox, Vikki Blake at GamesIndustry.biz makes a good point:

"AMD did not share any other details for Xbox Series X|S. Developers will have to patch their games to use FSR 4.1, so older titles won't upgrade automatically.

Series X|S also lack dedicated machine-learning hardware, so gains are unlikely to match the PS5 Pro, where Sony already offers its own upscalers, PSSR and QSSR."

The slip-up there is that QSSR is not tapping into machine-learning hardware (that I am aware of). QSSR is exclusive for the base PS5, which launched right alongside the Xbox Series consoles.¹ I would assume the performance would be in line with QSSR, but behind PSSR 2 and the rumored version 3.0. I'll wait for Digital Foundry's analysis for the final verdict though.

The last two parts of the "Ask the Developer" interview series went up today and these are my favorite tidbits.

Aonuma: That makes exploration much more exciting, but since there were places where we preferred players not to jump, the auto-jump system was, in some ways, convenient from a development standpoint. If you remove that restriction and make it possible to jump anywhere, you need to anticipate all kinds of player behavior and make corresponding adjustments to the environment. So, at first, we were like, 'Are we sure about this?' (Laughs) So, even a single change can instantly increase the number of things that need to be reviewed.

I just picture the devs watching speedrunner footage and debating giving those mad lads the power of jumping on command.

Taguchi: For the bosses, we also struggled quite a lot in the early stages of development to decide where to draw the line in terms of what to change and what not to. For example, Gohma, the first boss players encounter, can only take damage if you hit its weak point at the correct timing. However, in the original game, it was a little difficult to tell exactly when you were supposed to attack. As we struggled with what to do, one of the team members figured we could make it clearer by taking advantage of the two arms on top of Gohma’s head. So we made it so that Gohma guards its weak point with those arms anytime it’s immune to attack. When that worked and made things easier to understand, I felt a real sense of confidence for the first time. I thought to myself, 'So this is how you make it feel new again without changing its essence.'

Nintendo is obsessive about essence in their games. It's the crux of my video essay The Spirit of Super Mario Galaxy. That's all the more important when handling the essence of one of their most beloved titles.

Ohashi: That’s right. We also gave a lot of thought to how we could convey the emotion and nostalgia of the original game. In fact, some pieces combine a live full orchestra with sounds from the original Nintendo 64 version.

Wait, the music incorporates sounds from the Nintendo 64 version?

Ohashi: We didn’t use the audio output from Nintendo 64 as is. Instead, we used the original Nintendo 64 sound source as a reference to faithfully recreate some of the sounds. We wanted to do something only Nintendo could as a way of bringing back memories of that time.

Come on! This sounds amazing. I cannot wait for this soundtrack to be dumped.

Ng: We felt that if we were going to improve the graphics so dramatically, the cutscenes needed to be fully voiced to match. But at the same time, we knew we shouldn't mess with established perceptions of how certain characters sound based on the original. Navi’s “Listen!” is one example. Even someone who's never played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time may have heard it before. We absolutely didn’t want to change anything as iconic as that. So when auditioning for each character, our top priority was selecting voices that recreated the sound and feel of the original game. We conducted blind auditions.

Aonuma: We deliberately hid the voice actors’ names during the Japanese auditions to force ourselves to decide based solely on which voices most closely resembled those of the original. And as fate would have it, one of the actors we selected had actually voiced the same character in the Nintendo 64 version. None of us saw that coming.

Even Nintendo knows not to mess with Navi. Kotaku ran a report about fans speculating that the original Japanese voice actor for Navi, Kaori Mizuhashi, has returned, which may be the mystery voice actor mentioned above.

Reviews for the remake ought to hit the web tomorrow. It's a good time to be a Zelda fan.

Last night's weekly My Life in Gaming stream showcased an exciting new feature on the RetroTINK-4K scaler—CRT curvature, bezels, glow, etc.

Here are some of the notes from the initial 1.99.7 experimental firmware version of the RetroTINK software (Mike Chi is already on 1.99.9 as of November 1, 2026).

• Minor modifications to scaler to add tube curvature (spherical and cylindrical), glass glow / scatter, a bezel with reflections, tube sag / breathing and corner misconvergence
• 4K Pro also adds composite video simulation: encodes the picture to composite video and decodes it back using a virtual decoder (source must be 240p/480i/288p/576i)

Our scalers have gone from helping us get the crispest pixels to displaying the worst image quality imaginable...but in a tasteful way! Nothing like the warm phosphor glow of a tube TV to make this gamer's heart happy.

I took a screenshot for the post and forgot to include it. I mean, look at these effects! On a stream! I really need to update my RetroTINK...

Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou, aka Every Frame a Painting, are back at it. Well, they will be back at it. At the end of September the iconic essayist duo made the announcement on their Patreon:

For the last 9 months, we’ve been doing a research project where we compare the South Korean film industry to the Canadian one. The end result is a 60-minute talk that will premiere at VIFF this Saturday October 3rd. 

But very specifically for you, Patreon supporters: we're working on some NEW PROJECTS.

This includes new video essays!

Over the last 10 years, Taylor and I have amassed a series of ideas - some of them originally designed to be on Youtube, some designed to be other things. 

All of this is currently in progress, and there's no release date yet because we’re still cooking.

Today a newsletter went up behind their $5 paywall and I suspect it will offer insight to their vision and plans. As much as I love Every Frame a Painting, my family is not in a spot for more subscriptions. Maybe this blog post will point other financially more capable folks their way!

I can't wait to see what they make.

Nintendo published the latest Ask the Developer interview series with this run focusing on the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. There are plenty of tidbits, but my favorite some of the reasoning behind remaking the game. Here is series producer Eiji Aonuma:

"Many of the team members who work alongside me on Legend of Zelda games today have only experienced developing the more recent titles. That led me to wonder, 'Do they truly understand just how significant The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was to the series as a whole?' Of course, there are team members who vaguely know the game, and those who played it in their childhood days. But I started to wonder how they'd interpret The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as they go about developing future Legend of Zelda games. By learning the game structure and development style behind the original The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and by actually rebuilding it as a full remake, it may trigger new insights that they can carry forward into future development. If we could achieve that, I thought it would be incredibly valuable. That’s what led us to the conclusion that now is the right time to revisit The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time once again."

I hadn't considered the developers at Nintendo not working on or never playing Ocarina of Time. Since we always see the veterans in the Nintendo Direct presentations, I forget that young bucks are hired and building the games under the supervision of the original team.

Volume 2 of the interview features the dev team leadership and only the director of them played the game in their youth. All four of them began working on the Zelda series within the last decade with Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. Here is the art director Aya Shida:

"I played the Nintendo 64 version for the first time after joining this project, and I was amazed that a game this polished had been created 28 years ago."

When it comes to traditional Zelda game design, these developers have...none. All they have worked on are "open air" designed titles. Which, to be clear, are some of the best in the series. This is not a slight at the team, but a revelation to me. Here is the game director HokWai Ng:

"I was really surprised to be given the opportunity. At the same time, though, I was incredibly excited. I played the original Nintendo 64 version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when I was in high school, and I was blown away by it. I thought to myself, 'This is unlike any game the world has ever seen before.' As Aonuma-san said, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time occupies an especially important place in the Legend of Zelda series. But I think many players experienced the series for the first time with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. With that in mind, I wanted to offer players across generations a fresh opportunity to experience the appeal of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time."

I wrote about how the remake is primed for a new audience after Nintendo revealed the gameplay and graphics of the remake after a lackluster reveal in the summer.

"Not everything is for you or me—that includes every entry in one of the most beloved gaming series ever conceived. They can be! Or they can be for the kid who first played the remake on 3DS. Or the kid going to the movie theater with his parents, who played the game series when they were a kids. Or the kid that opens a new Nintendo console on Christmas morning."

I failed to include the players that started with the open world games on the Switch and have "never" had a proper 3D Zelda title to sink their teeth into. Back to Aonuma:

"We wanted players who had grown accustomed to Legend of Zelda games like Breath of the Wild, where they can freely choose their own path from the start, to experience that kind of gameplay as well."

I would love to read reviews from folks playing Ocarina of Time from this perspective.

Even though the developers behind the game may not have the warm fuzzy nostalgia for the classic, they clearly revere the highest rated game of all time.

"At the beginning of development, I remember thinking, “They could be making more changes.” But as the project went on, it really came across just how deeply this development team cared about the original game, far more than we had imagined."

I am amped for Thursday and can't wait to get my hands on this interpretation.

Pay no mind to the pile of cards and drawings from my daughter underneath. Look at all that bland, uniform white text against the sea of Nintendo Switch red, only broken up by a few Steelbook cases. I can only think of one other spine treatment more horrifying than this soulless display.

Six years ago when I got a Super NT for the first time, I set out on a little project to protect my entirely loose SNES cart collection. I bought these BitBoxes and printed art for them. Seeing them in nice boxes with art made my heart quite happy. While my Switch collection is complete-in-box, I got tired of the same bland spines with the only knowledge of what game was where being in my head.

I had heard of custom Switch Spines before (along with custom booklet manuals), but never looked beyond an Etsy page. The cost was always a deterrent. For my collection, it'd be upwards of $60 for spines. Then one day this week, it just hit me that I could do it myself.

So I did. For three bucks.

Of course there is an entire subreddit for Switch Spines, but given the nature of reddit, it is not a very searchable format. Thankfully, someone made The Spine Archive with compiles all the spines into a searchable database and easy tool. Pick the spines you want and it adds them to a PDF that you can download. Just watch out for the height of the "Nintendo Switch" bit at the top if you want them to all be uniform; some creators shorten that element up or remove it.

Also, double check you have all your games selected. I forgot Super Mario RPG and Bayonetta in my first run. So I printed a second with Switch 2 games and ended up forgetting Star Fox.

Now, I have a nice printer, but I wanted a glossy paper finish, so I sent it off to FedEx for printing. Three bucks and an hour later, I had beautiful, glossy prints. As for cutting them, I borrowed my dad's X-acto knife and a ruler. It was tedious, but a cup of coffee and a few music albums later, the task was complete.

I think these all look infinitely better. The games art shines and the shelf is way more readable, despite the cacophony of colors and branding. I think this is a testament that simple and clean is not always the best for users. A game's key art is the first thing you see of a title on store shelves. Back in the day, it was the only way to even imagine what the game was or promised. Sometimes those promises were lies, but others were spot on. As my kid grows up and she explores video games, I hope these spines draw her eye more than white text on a red background. As physical games wither in the marketplace, this project was an infusion of life my collector spirit needed.

Apple Newsroom as a part of the Pro and Tell news this week:

"Final Cut Pro for Mac now integrates MotionVFX directly into the app, giving editors access to thousands of elements, including templates with unique themes, stylish graphics, titles, and transitions, as well as tools for rotoscoping, tracking, and color grading. Editors can also tap into the Content Hub directly within Final Cut Pro and access a library of Apple-curated stock videos, photos, and backgrounds to fill gaps, add polish, or spark new ideas without leaving their workflow."

Yep. The meddling has manifested. I am eager to sign up and give it a go. Hopefully this native integration is a game changer in my workflow. It will be in my annual costs. MotionVFX cost me $350/year when I subscribed in January 2025. Apple Creator Studio is $129/year.

In March of this year, Apple acquired a motion graphics and visual effects subscription company called MotionVFX. No doubt this was a move to bolster Apple's own Apple Creator Studio. Ironically, I had just become a subscriber to MotionVFX a few months prior to this acquisition. Their focus on Final Cut Pro with a drag-and-drop approach was a perfect fit for me and my business. MotionVFX has these stylish collections of effects that help give videos a cohesive appearance. Some of these collections featured partnerships with YouTubers, like iJustine, MKBHD, and Apple Explained.

And as you might guess, some of these collections not-so-subtly crib Apple's style.

Given these endorsements and other services—like support for Adobe and DaVinci Resolve—I have been wondering how and when Apple would announce their plans for MotionVFX and what would change. While nothing official has been announced, I have begun to notice changes in MotionVFX's current iteration that suggests Apple's hand is beginning to meddle.

Primarily, these collaborations have removed all evidence of YouTuber affiliation.

Say goodbye to Justine and say hello to a stock photo.

Sure, this was always going to happen. Not a big deal. Funny to witness in real time as Apple begins removing all evidence of these partnerships. Today I caught the Ghost of MKBHD in my workflow. As of this writing, you can still see iJustine on their website. You can catch tiny glimpses of Apple Explained on their 404 page or MKBHD in their promotional banners. I suspect these will be scrubbed in due time. Even some of the videos I planned on linking to while researching this have been removed by the MotionVFX YouTube channel.

Where all these corporate merger shenanigans lose the humor is when parts of my workflow are deleted without notice. That seems to be the case with the terribly named collection mMessages 3.

As you might surmise from the promo image above or this trailer (if it is still up when you try to watch it), mMessages 3 mimics iMessage, along with other popular messaging and social media apps. There are Twitter¹ posts, Whatsapp messages, and chatGPT text windows to name a few. It's a super handy way to visualize those elements in a dynamic and fun way without having to pour in the work to hand animate them.

Today I went searching for a particular effect and was met with a startling sight.²

Zero elements? Hm? That's not right. So I try searching for a motion graphic I know is in the pack—the chatGPT prompt. It is there in my downloaded effects, but when searching the online library? Bupkis.

I am now quite worried those other favorites of mine like mKeynote 2 (sheesh these names are bad) are not long for this world. Both I and my clients have come to depend on these effects to help their video's identity. I suppose it is a better sign that those other packs have gone through the effort to replace the YouTubers instead of wiping them from the face of the subscription. This is a good reminder that in the world of subscriptions, we own nothing.

Clearly, things are in motion behind the scenes at Apple to prepare the way for MotionVFX's full integration into the Apple Creator Studio subscription. I am excited about the merger. I see ample opportunity to smooth out MotionVFX rough edges as a third-party plug-in and make it a true Apple experience; something the Polish team has clearly emulated for years. Until the merger is complete though, I think those edges are going to only get rougher.

One day I will be right and Analogue will announce a PlayStation FPGA console, but it is not this day. For their annual announcement, Analogue did something I would not have expected. They revamped the Super NT and Mega SG and gave the FPGA consoles the mandatory "+" designation. Here is the announcement tweet:

Introducing Super Nt+ and Mega Sg+

The definitive way to play original Super Nintendo, Super Famicom, Sega Genesis, Mega Drive, and Master System.

Beginning with Super Nt in 2017, the originals set a new standard for video game preservation. Nearly a decade later, they return.

Super Nt+ & Mega Sg+. Definitive, all over again.

Now with Bluetooth + 2.4G. Reworked industrial design, OS, packaging, and more.

At the core: an FPGA architecture engineered in-house from scratch, backed by over a decade of development. Purpose-built 1080p for 2D gaming. No emulation. Zero lag. Total accuracy. Plug and play.

At first glance, I thought the accompanying image was the two consoles fused together, but they are separate products.

The original Super NT and Mega SG had a "final run" as one of the annual announcements four years ago. In the years since, the aftermarket price for the consoles has skyrocketed. It felt like Analogue was done with the 16-bit era and moving forward into an era with the Pocket, openFPGA, and the 3D.

In the four years since, sure, the Pocket is still for sale, the openFPGA scene is vibrant with community support, but none of the products since—including these new plus revisions—support it. The 3D has been received quite well and the M64 from Modretro has kept the pressure on Analogue to update the console with a regular cadence. The 3D may be their most consistently attended to console (although I am still waiting for the "jailbreak"). I figured Analogue would keep marching forward into the 3D graphics generations, leaving 16-bit behind.

I had a Super Nt, but sold is a few years ago, likely to pay for my RetroTINK-4K Pro or my PS5 Pro, I forget. I also sold the Pocket and DAC. I was content with either real hardware or my other solutions for high-res SNES gaming. But out of those sold Analogue products, the Super NT is the one I have missed the most. There's something about the cartridge use, the Phil Fish boot, and that pop of purple. So of course I snagged a Super NT+ this week.

So what is actually new with the Super NT+ and Mega SG+? One might hope for 4K resolution or Wi-Fi or perhaps a built-in DAC. None of that is here. One of the top taglines on the product page says "Refined Not Redrawn" and that sums it up quite well. Here's are the listed new features:

• Built-in Bluetooth and 2.4g wireless controller support
• "Refined" industrial design
• Redesigned retail packaging (seriously)
• USB-C Power and a USB-A port exclusively for DAC support
• The ability to hot swap cartridges without powering down the console
• Wired controller priority over wireless ones
• Powering on the console wirelessly with a paired controller.

The FPGA chip inside is the same as before. It still rocks an SD card like all there consoles. The colorways are identical. The best of the bunch is the built-in Bluetooth and 2.4g support. No more dongles protruding from the controller port. It really is a refinement of the console.

Which I think is fine, possibly great even if Analogue keeps the units for sale and in-stock. All six options (three color options per console) sold out within hours on Monday. There isn't really another plug-and-play solution for these consoles of high caliber outside of maybe the Epilogue SN Operator, but that only interfaces with your computer.

I find it interesting that one of the features listed on the page is "Advanced Video Options: No external scalers or 3rd party products required." It feels more like Analogue acknowledging their competition with RetroTINK or PixelFX in the retro-scaling scene, which was a factor in selling my original Super NT off. When you read between the marketing fluff along with the Analogue 3D patch note tea leaves, you realize the company is perhaps trying to be more agile and available. I do believe there is nothing better for the consume than a plug-and-play option. No fuss. It should work like the Super Nintendo did and Analogue does achieve that with aplomb.

The unanswered questions I have are the typical ones for new Analogue products. Will the Nintendo Switch Online controllers work? There are options for both the Super Nintendo and the Genesis. I wonder if the "jailbreaks" for the original Super NT and Mega SG will work out of the box. I fear the Phil Fish boot sequence will be removed. Please don't take away the sole character of the OS.

Overall, I am happy these 16-bit titans are back. I am happy to re-add one to my collection. I promise I won't get rid of you again. I think it will be nice to have when my daughter and I move onto the 16-bit generation. One can only hope that the consoles can come back and stay back in-stock. Next year the PlayStation will be announced. I bet on it.

Apple finally announced their smart home control hub (dubbed HomeView) yesterday. It's a whopping $299 and an amalgamation of their technologies in an attempt to reinvigorate their home strategy.

Later in the day, Marques Brownlee's impressions video dropped and he said he doesn't really know who the product is for:

"But whenever we see a new product, whenever I think about a new product, I always want to think about the target demographic that they think it's best for, that they're aiming this at. And I've been living with this for all day basically, and I cannot figure any group that this is actually ideal for.

Like maybe, okay, I guess in theory, the complete casual who doesn't really care about the price and just kind of likes that it's in the Apple ecosystem and the couple interesting features of it connecting to the iPhone, that makes it cool, then sure, fine, I guess.

But for like the super bleeding edge smart home enthusiast who already has a bunch of smart lights and is like ready to go all in with a smart doorbell and a smart thermostat and a smart home, well, this ecosystem is still dwarfed by Amazon's and even Google's, and the value proposition of the display product that lives in your kitchen is not that different between them."

I think this is a rare miss from Brownlee and reminds me of two things: First, that he (presumably) does not live at home with a family and second, he's a multi-ecosystem guy.

The target audience for this product is as clear as day. It is for that "complete casual," sure, but it is also for families like mine that are all in on Apple's ecosystem, where Google and Amazon's offerings are atrocious. We have had a Google Nest Hub for four years. It has served diligently as our kitchen timer, clock, and occasional music player. There is plenty of untapped functionality left on the speaker because the hub is outside Apple and an awful experience.

We don't have any of our photos on the device because we don't use Google Photos. We could, but then it is managing our library in multiple places or updating albums. It'd be like the Aura Frames, which many of our family members have, and updating it with photos is a chore. We don't want to do that for our pictures.

Apple Music is an app on the Nest Hub, but man, it never works. Google never plays the music we want. It always tries to go to YouTube before Apple Music. My library isn't on the device or navigable in any intuitive way. My account is often logged out, which requires a song and dance inside the Google Home app. I swear they change the layout and location of settings every time I have to bumble my way through it.

Earlier this year, we bought a base iPad and I use that for cooking, timers, and music every time over my Nest Hub. The HomeView is an eagerly awaited replacement for the Nest Hub because I know all that friction with Google inside an Apple household will vanish.

This product is also for families like my parents next door. My dad is a Home Assistant enthusiast. The house has so many smart objects, alerts, and lights. He is the "super bleeding edge smart home enthusiast" that Brownlee describes. You know who is not a smart home savant? My mother. It's a source of tension when lights don't cooperate or devices don't respond to the incantation she's recited. A HomeView would give my mother a home base for visual digital buttons for those objects, alerts, and lights. It's the bridge between the enthusiast and their "complete casual" family.

Stephen Hackett describes the same scenario in his impressions article:

I run Home Assistant behind the scenes, but my family interacts with things like smart plugs and the garage door using HomeKit, usually via one of the HomePod minis I have placed around the house.

This has led to some frustration over the years when a HomePod doesn’t hear them correctly. Tapping a button would certainly clear that up.

The HomeView has Thread and the smart home standards you'd expect. I am sure this will fit in quite nicely to the enthusiast's—both Apple and smart—home.

Back to Brownlee's closer:

"So I just imagine anyone who gets this, after like the first two weeks when the novelty wears off, it's just going to be reduced to that LCD square attached to a speaker that lives in the corner somewhere. Once in a while you ask it for some some music or for a timer, or you ask Siri some stuff, and it's fine at that, but it doesn't really bring any extra value on top of that that's convincing me that it's worth the extra price."

That is what this product is for. It's the "Aura Frame." It's the kitchen speaker. It's the light switch hub. It's the ask-an-assistant-out-loud screen. It's the digital clock. There's no reduction. Doing all that seamlessly within Apple's ecosystem, for all the other family members inside the home, without having to deal with the ad-ridden, bloated, clumsy experiences of Google and Amazon is the extra value.¹ All of that seems worth the price of admission to me and my family. I suspect it will be for many.

At the start of the month, developers at Capcom—the team behind one of my favorite video game engines—gave a talk about RE Engine's future. News began to swirl about slides, statements, and translations revolving around AI. Satoshi Ishida laid the foundation for what this new "RE neXt ENGINE," aka REX, is setting out to address. Here is Eurogamer's reporting on the talk, which was in Japanese and originally reported on gamebiz.jp:

"Ishida pointed to three challenges driving the REX Project – one, games have grown so large in scope and data volume that build and iteration times are slowing development down; two, RE Engine is now used by over 2,000 developers, including international staff and people coming from other engines, requiring better multilingual and accessibility support; and three, AI needs to be built into the development pipeline rather than bolted on."

What spun reactions out of proportion were mistranslations by news outlets that took "AI" and "Generation" the unintended way, opting for generative AI instead of the "AI generation." The vocal sentiment toward generative AI in game development, at least that I observe on Bluesky and on forums, is absolutist.

What I think the bulk of the detractors fail to realize is that your games today are and were likely made with AI. The benefits of chasing down bugs, coding, and implementation are too advantageous. Jack Buser, Google's Global Director for Games, Google Cloud (who spent near eight years at PlayStation before), claimed that "nine out of 10 game developers" were using AI from a survey Google conducted at Gamescom in 2025.

"'I think what players don’t realise is that their favourite games right now were already built with AI. Those games have shipped. We did a survey around Gamescom last summer with studios all over the world. Roughly nine out of 10 game developers told us, yeah, we’re using it.

'Now you’ll see other surveys from other organisations that have that more around like 40-50%. And you might ask yourself, well, that’s still a large number. It’s still almost half of the developers out there. What’s that gap? And that gap is basically the developers willingness to tell you whether the fact of the matter is it’s being used.'"

Recent examples could be the deluge of decompiled and recompiled classic games. I see a new one pop up all the time and the news is usually accompanied with an indication of whether "slop" was used to make the PC port. There's even a new slop-derived derogatory term—"slopcomp." It's created an aggressiveness in the scene that is quite intense.

"DarioSamo pointed out that his group had already made clear its intentions to produce a port of Banjo-Tooie at some point without using AI. He also slammed the competing project over on the Decomps subreddit, calling on Banjo-Tooie Recompiled to be renamed."

I didn't realize unlicensed fan projects had rights to naming conventions, but here they are calling for changes.¹ It's become so contentious, that there is a list of which decompilations and recompilations are untouched by AI—big Sneetches-with-star-bellies energy. It's not a long list either. From the introduction of said list:

"Now we’re in the mid-2020s, and AI has gotten a hold of everything, with people that have little to NO programming experience porting games completely untested, leading to a wave of buggy AI ports of games that are completely broken. And the sad part is, they overshadow the quality work of decomps/recomps done by actual people."

Just a smidge further down, the list aggregator, Mr. @funky90slion, writes the following:

"I am not against AI-Assisted Projects done responsibly as they’re different from vibecoding. HOWEVER, this list is made to showcase projects made by people who powered through any difficult tasks. And deserve to be commended for their efforts."

This distinction between "AI-Assisted Projects" and "vibecoding" is the crux of the issue.

On the same day that the Capcom news broke, Lex Friedman coincidentally published Vibe-coded apps: The vibes are good for people with specific needs. He closed out a series of wonderful tools, utilities, and apps with this:

"For decades, if the software you needed didn’t exist, you had three options: Learn to code, pay someone, or live without it. Now there’s a fourth option, and people are taking it. They’re not building the next big thing. They’re building the next small thing, for themselves. Sometimes they abandon it two weeks later. That’s allowed, too.

Vibe-coded doesn’t mean subpar. It doesn’t mean bad. And in all these cases, it means empowerment. Computers are meant to help us customize our workflows to the ways we work. LLMs make that more possible than ever."

I'm not arguing that recompiled N64 games are a utility or tool, but I will say that leveraging AI to do this process is a specific need for the person facilitating the project. It's a curiosity, a long-held desire, or a project to make playing a favorite game easier for them. I would wager it is not from some malicious, shortcut, cheating clout-chasing perspective.

It is the same fuel for creating DDDS, my app for recording modded 3DS console footage. No one was going to make that app. I was not learning how to code. I could not pay someone to make it for me. I had been living without it. With Claude Code, I was able to build the best Mac capture experience for those tens of us with modded 3DS consoles and a Mac-centric workflow.

Two days later, Friedman was back with Claude writes code; I author the apps, which I recommend you pause here and go read in full. Friedman has a deep history and background in computers, coding, and game development. It's a wonderful piece about how AI has empowered his creativity. Go ahead. It's fine, even if you get distracted and don't come back.

"As I wrote recently, not everyone’s a fan of vibe-coded apps. “Vibe-coded,” in fact, is used as an insult, the coding equivalent of “slop.” I think the term is problematic, but I understand some of the concern: Just as people are using AI tools to write crappy articles, generate crappy posters, and make crappy fake photos, there are folks using LLMs to create crappy websites, apps, and other software.

But there are good apps out there that are made at least in part with help from LLMs. In fact, I think it’s a safe bet that the vast majority of regularly-updated software you use today is made by developers leveraging AI tools in at least some ways."

I believe the same can be said for video games today. I look to the likes of Pascal Pixel and his decompilation project for the Golden Sun GBA titles—all being done by his orchestration of LLMs. He is coming from a position of passion and care for the games and turning them into readable, malleable code for players and modders alike. I don't think anyone could look at his work and posts and call his authenticity into question. Back to Friedman:

"I know of zero “vibe-coded” apps that started with a single prompt and then were immediately released. There’s a reason we’re not flooded with more amazing apps than ever before. Great apps take time. There is a real problem of too many vibe-coded apps hitting the App Store, lacking in craft, skill, and humanity.

The question, to me, isn’t how much code was written by a human. It’s how much the app was authored by a human, which I think is a more nuanced question. How much care, thought, and humanity went into the app matters far more than tabs vs. spaces or a manually-vs.-machine-built HStack.

Movie editing and newspaper layout aren’t less impressive now that we use software vs. scissors. WYSIWYG text editors don’t make the written word less compelling than typewriters...

...The person using the tool has direct influence over the quality of the final product."

AI is and has been a tool. The same rules that apply to a hammer and chisel apply to a stack of GPUs burning through tokens. The tool doesn't make the art, the product, the application—the human does with the tool. When you hit the publish button, that work is yours, not the LLM's. If that recomp is a buggy mess and it's easier and more delightful to just emulate the old-fashioned way, blame the developer, not the methodology of development. But if that recomp is sound, sturdy, and delightful, I say praise the person and how they use the tools of the trade. Same goes for modern releases and the like. It is like I wrote in Is Coding Not Art?:

"When it comes to AI in game development, I make the call when I see it. Does the game look good, play great, and resonate? The devs used the tool the right way. If it looks sloppy, I say that's the developer's fault, not the tool's."

If there is any studio I trust to build and upgrade their engine for the "AI generation," it is Capcom. If I was ever looking for a reason to play Golden Sun on my computer, I'd look at Pascal's project. I'm looking for the games and projects authored by humans.

The first three episodes of Avatar: Seven Havens released on Friday and I finished up the bundle last night. I am so very pleased to report that the show is excellent. The team there at Avatar Studios has not lost the sauce.

It was filled with charm, stakes, maturity, grace, comedy, and a whole lot of bending. What a treat to be back in the world and in a powerful way. I was stunned at the end of Chapter 1: On the Horizon. Full blown surprised and I am so glad.

Friday, Paramount/Viacom/Skydance/whatever-mega-studio announced at New York Comic-Con that Seven Havens was renewed for Books 3 and 4. What a turn around from The Legend of Korra having mismanaged and unsure timelines. The team can focus on crafting a story and drama that can "sustain a series."

The next series was also announced—Avatar Kuruk: Wave of Chaos—which is focusing on the Water Tribe Avatar three cycles before Aang. Here's the pitch for that show:

"A rebellious teenage Avatar bucks thousands of years of tradition by choosing to learn the four elements through globetrotting adventures, staying one step ahead of his angry teacher, rowdy pirates, and chaotic spirits – all while helping the world in his own unique ways."

The concept art for that show looks like what you'd hope from an Avatar series.

I am excited for the future of Avatar in a way that I haven't been since Korra debuted in April 2012. It's good to be back in the four nations, or should I now say the Seven Havens?

Game developer and YouTuber Bofner has a snazzy look at how Konami created the scrolling spike walls in their Game boy Castlevania games. Thanks to Marcin Wichary of Unsung for sharing this one.

"Konami saw something much more dynamic than just a HUD with the Window Layer. Konami looked at its restrictions and designed an entire level based around it, where the Window Layer becomes your enemy."

The secret was using the Window layer as an enemy not a HUD like everyone else. They then used a rasterization blip to still draw a HUD in the sequel.

"The developers at Konami back in the day really had a knack for bending 8-bit system limitations into strengths, and the Game Boy Castlevania games contain just a small subset of the clever programming tricks Konami figured out to get the most out of their games."

Limitations breed creativity and ingenuity. Sometimes I think games on the whole have lost that ability in the generations with so much horsepower and open worlds. That's not to say there aren't clever hacks, workarounds, and tricks to surprise and delight, but it does feel fewer and far between. Nintendo may be one of the companies that regularly exemplifies this game development mindset, given their own hardware limitations. Tears of the Kingdom on Switch 1 hardware still blows my mind.

Sophie McEvoy at GamesIndustry.biz:

Sony has agreed to transfer 419 global VR patents to Meta, with 180 patents filed in the US under an agreement signed in December 2025...

...Between June and September this year, Sony moved more than 40 of these patents to Meta, which covered virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and head-mounted display systems.

I think Sony is not going to make anymore games for the PlayStation VR2. While I am a big believer in the technology, I definitely bought PSVR2 on the promise of software that was never to come.

Marques Brownlee uploaded a video breaking down the Googlebook. He uses a Pixel as one of his two phones, so I was curious if I missed anything in my original assessment of the new laptop line. I don't think I did.

One angle I did not consider was that the only way to get applications on these machines is the Google Play Store. That means you are at the whims of mobile apps and Android's tablet efforts if there is not a newly dedicated desktop version. The experience is so splintered, Google has five compatibility labels.

• Made for desktop
• Optimized for desktop
• Compatible with desktop
• Better on the website
• Built for mobile

"Better on the website" is both a sick burn and probably true for most apps targeting potential Googlebook users. Also, I guess every app in the Play Store has an ESRB rating because that's the only explanation for Adobe Acrobat Reader: Edit PDF being rated "E for Everyone."

It turns out that Googlebook OS seems to be a thin wrapper around Android 17, because the device details lists the Android version. And my goodness, it has a toggle for "auto-rotate" which these laptops don't even support. I think Google's prompt to Gemini when making the OS was "Make Android 17 into a desktop OS."

While I still think the hardware is ugly, it does seem nice. It's thin and light. The screens sound premium. But these machines seem like they should only be bought by the most diehard Pixel users. Even then, I don't think this "brand-new category of laptop" will survive very long.

Two years ago, 343 Industries rebranded to Halo Studios. Here is what I had to say:

"A name and engine change aren't enough to save this languished franchise...

At a certain point, maybe the author off these 'new' chapters needs to step down, not change to a pen name. "

Two weeks ago, Xbox continued its consolidation and a part of the announcement was that Activision was taking over the future of Halo.

"Activision will also be developing the next Halo title, led by a new, purpose-built team that is separate from ongoing development and plans for Call of Duty. A small team at Halo Studios will continue supporting the Halo community and games in-market."

Seems like the pen name didn't work out after all.

I can't believe buying the PS5 Pro at launch was buying it at near half off.

The inventory for the PS5 Pro has been out of stock the closer we get to Grand Theft Auto VI's launch on November 19, 2026. The supply has been so constrained that Sony has re-introduced a lottery system in Japan for the opportunity to give them ¥137,980 ($872.28~) to buy a new one. PlayStation Lifestyle reports that this shortage may continue into early 2027. This shortage is another good reason for Sony to push out QSSR for base PS5 consoles.

Back in March this year, Sony raised the prices again. The PS5 Pro starts at $899 new, which is more than it cost me for the console, the official stand, and a disc drive back at the mid-gen console's launch two years ago.

What's so striking to me is GameStop following the second-hand market so blatantly. Prichecharting shows the spike happening within the last month. I wonder how high and how long this spike will last.

This generation continues to validate to me buying all these consoles at launch. Never lived through something like this. It makes me wonder if justifying a PS6 at launch makes more and more sense or if I am succumbing to the RAMageddon price fluctuating madness. I wonder if we will ever see price drops on hardware again.