Analogue’s 4K remake of the Nintendo 64 has been delayed again and again due to the US tariff situation. But at least you can get 8BitDo’s updated take on the N64 controller, which was announced alongside the Analogue 3D, while you wait. You can get one through Amazon in white or black for $39.99 and while it’s one of 8BitDo’s more budget-friendly controllers, its functionality is limited.

The Nintendo 64, which launched in 1996, had an unusual three-prong controller design, with a single analog joystick in the center of the gamepad above the middle grip. The 8BitDo 64 offers the same buttons as the N64’s controller in a more traditional layout, but while it’s easier to hold, the lack of a second joystick limits its compatibility with modern games, which generally expect two. The 8BitDo 64 is compatible with the Switch, Switch 2 (after updating the controller’s firmware), Windows, and Android devices and connects to consoles, PCs, and mobile devices using either a Bluetooth connection or a USB cable. 

It also features more durable Hall effect joysticks and shoulder buttons which should help prevent it from developing stick drift over time. But if you’re not planning to use it with the Analogue 3D (someday), the controller will potentially only be useful for playing classic N64 games through an emulator or the Nintendo Switch Online service but your GoldenEye 007 muscle memory may not perfectly transfer over to the updated button layout. Nintendo’s own wireless N64 controller is a more accurate reproduction, but you still need to be a Nintendo Switch Online subscriber to buy one.

Roblox and Fortnite are two of the biggest games around, and a huge part of why is because they aren't just one game: instead, they're vast platforms where you can party up with your friends, dress up in ridiculous digital outfits, and quickly jump from one experience to another. Back in the day, Fortnite copied PUBG by making a battle royale, and now, PUBG is mimicking Fortnite by trying to become more of a platform than a game.

As part of a roadmap released earlier this year, PUBG developer Krafton said that it would let players create their own modes as part of an alpha, and it revealed more details about the alpha this month. This week, …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The developers are also required to submit proof that an authoritative third-party body has declared the app to be a "game of skill," the company proposed.

Here at Ars, we're big fans of classic console emulators that go beyond providing perfect re-creations to those that actually improve on original hardware with new features we could only dream of as kids. So we were excited when we recently stumbled on a Reddit post that shows a full Super Game Boy-esque color palette added to the usual shades of red and black found in Virtual Boy Wario Land.

After experiencing colorized Virtual Boy emulation for ourselves (and grabbing the sample screenshots you can see in this piece), we were struck by just how much a splash of color adds new life to Nintendo's failed '90s experiment (which Ars' own Benj Edwards has written about extensively). Going beyond the usual red-and-black graphics helps to highlight the artistry in the small selection of official Virtual Boy games and provides a great excuse to check out the system's surprisingly vibrant homebrew scene.

Red in the face

Nintendo famously chose to use a line of (then cheap and abundant) red LEDs for the Virtual Boy's stereoscopic display, leading to its iconic monochromatic color palette. While the handful of '90s Virtual Boy developers did their best under this limitation, the hardware's red-on-black graphics have aged even worse than the often muddy grayscale found on the original Game Boy.

Read full article

Comments

© Kyle Orland / Red Viper

Ayaneo is bringing back the Nintendo DS nostalgia with the Pocket DS, as the 'world's first' dual-screen Android handheld gaming device.

We try upcoming open-world adventure Where Winds Meet and end up with the bubonic plague.

Looking for NYT Connections answers and hints? Here's all you need to know to solve today's game, plus my commentary on the puzzles.

Nintendo has officially announced the next Nintendo Direct showcase.

Nintendo Switch Online just overhauled its CRT filter for SNES games, and it's way better than I thought it would be.

Nvidia’s usual budget winner can’t keep up with the competition this year.

Now that the Switch 2 is out, and the console’s biggest exclusives — Mario Kart World, and Donkey Kong Bananza — are delighting fans, it’s time to see what else this thing can do. Nintendo’s hosting its next Direct presentation on Thursday July 31st bright and early at 9 AM ET. You can watch the direct on YouTube here and, of course, in the Nintendo Today app.

According to Nintendo, the 25-minute presentation will be a partner showcase, focusing on third-party titles for the Switch and Switch 2. (Sorry, y’all are gonna have to wait a little longer for more news on Metroid Prime 4.)

Join us for a #NintendoDirect Partner Showcase tomorrow, July 31, at 6am PT! Tune in for roughly 25 minutes of information on upcoming #NintendoSwitch2 and #NintendoSwitch games from our publishing partners.

Watch here: https://t.co/PvBBmmxGTI pic.twitter.com/8hJBngwXHw

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) July 30, 2025

A handful of older games are finding new life (and new audiences) on the Switch 2 like Cyberpunk 2077, and I expect there will be many more announcements of studios bringing their backlogs to the console. And for new games, Silksong, the long, long awaited sequel to Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight might finally get to see the light of day.

Last month, rumors from prominent insiders and leakers swirled that a Direct would be announced for the end of the month. They also speculated about what games would be shown which included a Persona 3 Reload port and, of all things, a new Animal Crossing. But we’ll find out for sure what Nintendo will give us next when the presentation airs tomorrow at 9 AM.

I maintain a to-do list of story ideas to write at Ars, and for about a year "monthly column on DOS games I love" has been near the top of the list. When we spoke with the team at GOG, it felt less like an obligation and more like a way to add another cool angle to what I was already planning to do.

I'm going to start with the PC game I played most in high school and the one that introduced me to the very idea of online play. That game is Descent.

As far as I can recall, Descent was the first shooter to be fully 3D with six degrees of freedom. It's not often in today's gaming world that you get something completely and totally new, but that's exactly what Descent was 30 years ago in 1995.

Read full article

Comments

© GOG

Fortnite OG's first live event was the Blast Off rocket launch. Here's our live coverage as it happened, including info on the start time.

Looking for NYT Connections answers and hints? Here's all you need to know to solve today's game, plus my commentary on the puzzles.

The Quersus ICOS.2 has decided to do the gaming chair a little differently – but has its gamble paid off?

All we've heard about Fable so far this year is that it's delayed until 2026. Surely we're due more of an update...

Yesterday, I mentioned how GPD is teasing the most potent handheld yet made — a GPD Win 5 that will house the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 chip, with AMD’s most powerful integrated graphics yet, inside a PlayStation Vita-shaped machine.

If you’ve been wondering how that huge chip could even fit, handheld expert Cary “The Phawx” Golomb now has the answer: the 7-inch handheld will apparently have no internal battery taking up space. The Win 5 is designed to either be plugged into the wall, with a gaming laptop sized 180-watt charger providing the juice — or powered by a big 80 watt-hour external battery “backpack” that will (only? additionally?) be sold separately.

Breaking news! The GPD WIN 5 is expected to make its debut at Chinajoy 2025 pic.twitter.com/G6cwqajspJ

— GPD Game Consoles (@softwincn) July 24, 2025

We can see the full spec sheet for the new Win 5 in the Phawx’s video, and as he notes, GPD had to make its Win 5 larger than the Win 4 even before you add that backpack battery.

While the Win 4 is a compact 6-inch handheld with a 45 watt-hour pack, the Win 5 with its 7-inch screen will be narrower but thicker than the Asus ROG Ally X handheld — which is an apt comparison, considering that handheld similarly pairs a 7-inch screen with an 80 watt-hour battery pack.

Here, though, the battery will add extra girth: it’s roughly 4 inches (110mm) wide and tall, and 0.7 inches (18mm) deep; it’s not clear how it attaches yet, as GPD has only shared the one dark video of the Win 5 filmed from the front, but the spec sheet mentions a “Battery to Host Dedicated Connector” as an accessory, so it might require plugging in a cable.

If you’re curious what the handheld’s controls might look like in better light, I tried brightening it up:

Other intriguing things we can see in the full spec sheet include:

• A 120Hz variable refresh rate screen, where the Win 4 was limited to 60Hz
• Two configs: AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (16C/32T/ Radeon 8060S) or AI Max 385 (8C/16T/ Radeon 8050S)
• 32, 64, or even the full 128GB of unified memory AMD offers for these chips
• USB-4 with 100W PD charging and 8K/60 DP output
• Two fans and four heat pipes for cooling
• An optional HDMI and USB dock with a “battery charging slot,” presumably for the external battery
• No mention of any integrated keyboard, whereas previous Win devices had a hidden keyboard underneath a sliding screen

You can peruse the whole sheet at your leisure in the Phawx’s video or the screenshots we took from Phawx (with his permission) below. Be sure to tap a couple of times to make them large enough for full reading.

Perhaps we've been thinking the same thing, you and I. That there won't be a long-standing drought of Nintendo Switch 2 availability after all. The console has been easy to buy online from several retailers this week, including Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. Amazon, which didn't sell the Switch 2 at launch, is currently selling it by invitation only.

The console's messy preorder process and spotty launch availability made it feel a little like late 2020 all over again, when the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Nvidia RTX 30-series GPUs launched in extremely limited quantities due to component shortages. However, Nintendo appears to have ad …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Read How Game Developers Detect and Prevent Modding and Scripting and learn Gaming with SitePoint. Our web development and design tutorials, courses, and books will teach you HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python, and more.

Continue reading How Game Developers Detect and Prevent Modding and Scripting on SitePoint.

Indie game clearinghouse itch.io is the latest online gaming storefront to take action to remove or limit the availability of some adult content, bowing to pressure from payment processors spurred by an Australian grassroots group's campaign against certain sexualized content.

Wednesday night, itch.io creators and users began noticing that many adult-oriented games and content were no longer appearing in search results on the platform. Other creators reported that their adult-focused titles had been removed from the platform entirely, without any advance warning.

By early Thursday morning, itch.io had confirmed in a blog post that it had "'deindexed' all adult NSFW content from our browser and search pages." Itch said the move—which it admitted was "sudden and disruptive"—came in response to a pressure campaign from Collective Shout, an Australian nonprofit that describes itself as "a grassroots movement challenging the objectification of women and sexualization of girls in media, advertising, and popular culture."

Read full article

Comments