Image: Nintendo / PNGWing / Kotaku / designer491 (Getty Images)
A YouTuber created an alternative Nintendo Switch controller for their pet fish, which allows them to play video games on livestream. That fish managed to spend real money on some digital purchases while trying to beat a gym leader in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet (h/t: GamesRadar). And all of this happened because Scarlet and Violet are so buggy that they can sometimes cause the game to crash to the home page.
Mutekimaru Channel is a popular Japanese YouTuber who streams fish playing video games via an assistive device—an initiative that was intended to help viewers stay home during the pandemic. When a fish swims over a certain area of the “controller,” the game registers it as a specific button input. It’s not just one fish playing Pokémon either. The owner of the channel rotates fish every twelve hours in order to keep them healthy.
If the entire story stopped at “a fish was playing Pokémon on stream,” then I would have been suitably impressed. But no, the fish took things a step further. Not only have multiple fish managed to travel through towns and the wilderness with a specialized controller, they have even managed to spend its owner’s real-life money. I’m a little afraid to think about what else these fish might be capable of. Armed robbery?
ライブ配信でペットの魚にクレジットカード情報を公開され、挙句の果てに決済されてしまった件について
Normally, only one fishy gamer is allowed into the Switch tank at any given time. Once the owner walked away from the game, multiple fish took over and planned their nefarious heist.
The fish had been in the middle of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, but the game crashed due to its infamous performance issues. Once the fish was taken to the main Nintendo Switch home page, they managed to open the eshop, where its owner’s credit card information had been saved (and doxxed as a result).
The fish added 500 yen into their owner’s account. Then it used the resulting Nintendo gold coins (a loyalty reward from digital purchases) to buy a golfing cosmetic from Nintendo Switch Sports. According to Sora News 24, the owner intends to request a refund from Nintendo.
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Be careful out there, gamers. Not only can hackers and other unscrupulous types get your credit card information, so can common pet fish. So don’t put your credit card number on shared devices!
Pokémonsaved the Switchin 2022, which was also the year that the console officially started to feel old.
As we approach the Switch’s sixth anniversary, it feels like Nintendo’s innovative hybrid gaming device has finally peaked and is now on the decline. Missing features and poor online experiences that were once easier to forgive have started to feel more frustrating. Even the latest visually impressive first-party games likeKirby And The Forgotten Land and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 struggled to mask the hardware’s aging limitations.
2022 was the unofficial year of the Kirb. Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
Don’t get me wrong. The Switch’s release calendar was still lowkey stacked month in and month out. The OLED version continues to bring out a level of vibrancy in games big and small that helps make up for some of the technical drawbacks. And despite never receiving a price drop since it launched, the Switch remains an extremely competitive gaming option when stacked up against pricier alternatives like the PS5, Xbox Series X, and Steam Deck.
Still, a meaningful hardware refresh has never felt more overdue. 2022 was the year of the missing Switch Pro, and the year it felt like Nintendo’s existing handheld hybrid went from punching above its weight to under-delivering on the promise of its core conceit.
Great games, chugging hardware
Nintendo made up for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdombeing delayed this year through sheer quantity of new releases. On the first-party side Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Nintendo Switch Sports, Mario Strikers: Battle League, and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes anchored the first half of the year, while Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Splatoon 3, and Bayonetta 3 delivered heavy-hitters in the second half.
Gaps were stuffed with many of the year’s biggest indie games: Sifu, Citizen Sleeper, Nobody Saves the World, Return to Monkey Island, OlliOlli World, Shredder’s Revenge, Tunic, and Neon White. Square Enix’s 2022 JRPG bonanza was well represented, including Switch exclusives Live a Live and Triangle Strategy. Plus big ports like No Man’s Sky, Personal 5 Royal, and Nier Automata brought over some of the best games of the last console generation.
At times Arceus gives off the vibe of a Nintendo 64 game in HD. Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
It’s safe to say, however, that it might have still felt like one of the quieter years on Switch if not for Pokémon Arceus: Legendsand Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. In addition to selling tons, both games also perfectly represented the platform’s growing pains this year: they iterated on the series’ tried and true collectathon formula in creative and refreshing ways while also looking like ass and running badly.
On the Arceus side, the game’s open world often looked empty and flat. On the Scarlet and Violet side, framerate drops, constant pop-in of objects, and rogue glitches held back an otherwise ambitious new blueprint for the future of the mainline Pokémon games. It’s hard to know how much these shortcomings are due to the Switch’s old chipsets, a lack of development time, a particular set of design trade-offs, or some combination of those and other factors.
This screenshot is not as pretty as I remembered it. Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
A modern spec sheet probably wouldn’t hurt though. Even Xenoblade Chronicles 3, a sprawling RPG with big open environments that look much better than what you’ll find in Pokémon, brushed up against the limits of the Switch. The frame rate was far from stable in the later half of the game, and the sweeping vistas themselves lose all sorts of detail and definition the second you move away from them. This didn’t stop Monolith’s game from feeling and looking great when in motion, but it does mean that almost every screenshot I have from my time with it is full of jagged edges and washed out textures. Bayonetta 3 was even worse.
Switch Online is still a drag
Another game that gets at the increasing duality of the Switch is Splatoon 3. A gorgeous and colorful sequel with even more content and features, it nevertheless is held back by Nintendo’s online infrastructure. It’s 2022. Splatoon 3 is one of the best competitive shooters out there. And you will almost certainly spend at least part of any gaming session mired in disconnects or other connectivity woes.
It’s especially notable considering some of the biggest shooters around like Fortnite and Apex Legends are also on Switch, and those games also don’t require players to download a separate app to use voice chat. These problems were easier to ignore when Nintendo’s online service was free, but as the company continues to double-down on its monthly subscription service, subpar online performance continues to be a sore spot.
Last year, Nintendo launched the Switch Online + Expansion Pack, a $50 version of the service that raised the price in exchange for access to Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games, as well as various bits of Switch DLC. It felt like a terrible deal at the time, and nothing over the past 12 months has done much to change that.
That’s not to say that Nintendo hasn’t been diligently filling out the Netflix-style retro library. Notable additions included Earthbound, Shining Force II, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
In total, Switch Online received five more NES games, six more SNES games, 17 more Genesis games, and 11 more N64 games this year. Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games remain MIA, however, as do notable third-party SNES titles like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI.
As rival services like PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass expand and evolve to include some of the biggest new releases and cloud gaming, it’s hard not to look at Switch Online and feel like it comes up short, despite being significantly cheaper. Switch Online did experiment with week-long free trials for games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe this year, as well as add a new Switch Online missions and rewards feature, but four years into the service’s life it still feels like it’s struggling to justify itself.
Netflix is never coming
If Switch Online still seems like an underwhelming value proposition, the base console user experience remains absolutely barebones. The Switch firmware received six updates in 2022, and the only notable feature added was “Groups” which allows players to organize their game libraries into folders. It’s nice to have and was long overdue, which mostly serves to underline just how little the rest of the console experience has changed since launch.
Despite the popularity of the Switch, Nintendo has never prioritized social features—-and that didn’t change in 2022. There’s no way to search for friends, send them messages, or gift them games. There’s no social feed to speak of when it comes to wondering what they are playing, buying, or sharing. Again, this has been the status quo, but as each new year passes, the fact that the Switch hasn’t improved on any of it becomes more glaring.
*Sigh*Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
The apps never came this year, either. For years the joke was that you could get Netflix on every modern Nintendo device but the Switch. The streaming wars are in full swing, with services like Game Pass including complimentary subscriptions to Apple TV and Disney+, neither of which exist on Switch. Hulu remains the lone exception, joined last year by Funimaiton and this year by Crunchyroll.
The Switch has been outpaced by app integration in other areas as well. Spotify has been a mainstay on PlayStation and Xbox for years, while social hub Discord was finally added to both this past year. Neither are on Nintendo’s platform, which is especially surprising considering how many communication shortcomings would be solved by the arrival of Discord. The Switch didn’t get achievements or home screen themes in 2022, either.
So…Switch Pro when?
When the Switch released in 2017, holding games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey in your hands and taking them on the go was a powerful revelation. In 2022, thanks to the bar already raised by Nintendo half a decade ago, it’s somewhat less novel.
At the low-end, an explosion in cloud gaming peripherals and third-party handhelds means you can stream Assassin’s Creed Valhalla alongside Dead Cells to a bunch ofcompetitors’ portables. The experience isn’t great but it’s often good enough.
At the high-end, Valve’s Steam Deck went from a trickle of pre-orders to on-demand availability, and let people take Steam hits from The Witcher 3 to Vampire Survivors to the bathroom and beyond. It’s clunky, the battery life isn’t great, and it’s a much less streamlined user experience than the Switch. Valve is also selling the device at a big loss. And yet while it’s only sold less than 2 percent as many units as the Switch so far, it’s shown the massive leap handheld gaming is capable of since the latter first shipped.
The Switch OLED is nice but it’s no Switch Pro.Photo: Nintendo
While Kotaku has mentioned a mythical Switch Pro in every State of the Switch review since 2018, this is the year it went from “when is it coming?” to “where the hell is it?” Many fans expected Nintendo to reveal upgraded hardware at E3 2021. Instead, it revealed the Switch OLED: a fancy screen atop the same basic guts for $50 more. This led to a lot of questions about repeated Bloomberg reports that Nintendo was gearing up to release a 4K successor to the Switch, but Nintendo’s past history alone says we’re due for a new Switch.
The Nintendo DS launched in 2004. The DS Lite followed in 2006. The DSi in 2008. And the DSi XL in 2009. The first and last iterations of the device showed a long range in terms of improvement. The 3DS launched in 2011. A 3DS XL arrived the following year. A 2DS was added to the lineup the year after that. And a New Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL launched the year after that, both of which notably played a handful of games the earlier versions of the system couldn’t run. The Switch is already two years older than the PS4 was when the PS4 Pro came out, and older than the Wii U was when the Switch launched.
The global pandemic, which created shortages for semiconductors that affected everything from cars to smartphones, no doubt threw any traditional timeline for a Switch Pro out the window. At the same time, that hasn’t stopped the Switch from continuing to age in the interim. From Joy-Con drift to finicky Wi-Fi reception, the console has succeeded despite notable design flaws and shortcomings thanks to its brilliant form factor and exclusives.
The form factor is becoming less and less of a differentiator though, and despite the development wizardry at Nintendo, old hardware is starting to catch up with it. We’ll see if 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom can replicate the magic of Breath of the Wild on a six year old machine. By the time it comes out in May, the gap between them will be even bigger than the one between GameCube’s TwilightPrincess and the Wii’s Skyward Sword.
In October, gaming history YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming reported on a failed 2004 pitch for a Zelda tactics game on the Nintendo DS called Heroes of Hyrule. Two months later, the Mario maker has now used a copyright strike to erase the video from the internet. The channel, which has made hundreds of videos about Nintendo games and their history, says it’s the first time the company has ever responded with a takedown notice.
“Nintendo has removed our Heroes of Hyrule video from YouTube,” DidYouKnowGaming tweeted late Wednesday night. “This was a journalistic video documenting a game that Retro Studios pitched to Nintendo nearly 20 years ago. This is an attempt by a large corporation to silence whatever journalism they don’t like, and a slap in the face for video game history preservation.”
The original video by contributor Dr. Lava documented the Metroid Prime developer’s decades-old pitch for a Zelda game that sounded a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. A turn-based strategy game with puzzle-solving mechanics, it focused on children reading a history book about the defeat of Ganon, and then playing through those historical battles. The children would find new pages and magical objects in their time that would then affect battles that took place in the book.
DidYouKnowGaming’s report was sourced to the original 22-page pitch document for the game, as well as an interview with the Retro programmer who had crafted it, Paul Tozour. While there was no game to share early build footage from, it did include some illustrations from the document (Kotaku included one in our previous coverage of the video and has not yet received any legal complaints). In addition to describing what the game might have been, the video also told of the studio’s burnout from Metroid Prime 2 at the time, and some staff members’ desires to take a stab at a different type of project.
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The above is one of the sample illustrations from the Heroes of Hyrule pitch document that DidYouKnowGaming used in its video. Screenshot: Retro Studios / DidYouKnowGaming
It was a perfect example of the type of qualityYouTubegaming journalism channel DidYouKnowGaming has become known for, and of how easily fascinating moments in the medium’s history can be lost without people putting in the time and effort to document them. But apparently, the fact that the pitch was from nearly 20 years ago and ultimately unsuccessful didn’t prevent the notoriouslylitigious Nintendo from treating it like a highly sensitive trade secret.
“The Heroes of Hyrule video was created using the same process and video editing style used for most other videos on the channel,” DidYouKnowGaming told Kotaku in an email. “What sets the video apart is that it’s one of the few videos on the channel that documents a piece of Nintendo history that was first uncovered and reported on by us.”
The group believes the coverage of the pitch falls under fair use protection, and stands by its original reporting. “We had heard from several sources during the video’s production that Nintendo were becoming upset with the amount of former Nintendo employees that were willing to talk about and share material from unreleased games, failed pitches and other canceled projects,” the channel said. “This did not deter us and will not deter us from documenting video game history.”
While the Switch manufacturer has become infamous for YouTube copyright striking everything from free fan mods toold video game soundtracks, this appears to have taken the knee-jerk pettiness to an entirely new level. “This is Nintendo trying to bully and silence independent historical researchers doing completely above board work,” tweeted Liam Robertson, who did not work on the Heroes of Hyrule video but has been a contributor to DidYouKnowGaming in the past. “They should not get to pick and choose what is said about them on YouTube.”
Nintendo and YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Correction 12/8/22 10:54 a.m. ET: A previous version of this article said the video was created by channel creator Shane Gill.
The organisers of the Smash World Tour have today announced that they are being shut down after Nintendo, “without any warning”, told them they could “no longer operate”.
The Tour, which is run by a third party (since Nintendo has been so traditionally bad at this), had grown over the years to become one of the biggest in the esports and fighting game scene. As the SWT team say:
In 2022 alone, we connected over 6,400 live events worldwide, with over 325,000 in-person entrants, making the Smash World Tour (SWT, or the Tour) the largest esports tour in history, for any game title. The Championships would also have had the largest prize pool in Smash history at over $250,000. The 2023 Smash World Tour planned to have a prize pool of over $350,000.
That’s all toast, though, because organisers now say “Without any warning, we received notice the night before Thanksgiving from Nintendo that we could no longer operate”. While Nintendo has yet to comment—we’ve reached out to the company—Nintendo recently teamed up with Panda to run a series of competing, officially-licensed Smash events.
While this will be a disappointment to SWT’s organisers, fans and players, it has also placed the team in a huge financial hole, since so many bookings and plans for the events had already been made. As they say in the cancellation announcement:
We don’t know where everything will land quite yet with contracts, sponsor obligations, etc — in short, we will be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars due to Nintendo’s actions. That being said, we are taking steps to remedy many issues that have arisen from canceling the upcoming Smash World Tour Championships — Especially for the players. Please keep an eye out in the coming days for help with travel arrangements. Given the timeline that we were forced into, we had to publish this statement before we could iron out all of the details. All attendees will be issued full refunds.
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The move blindsided the SWT team who had believed, after years of friction, they were starting to make some progress with Nintendo:
In November 2021, after the Panda Cup was first announced, Nintendo contacted us to jump on a call with a few folks on their team, including a representative from their legal team. We truly thought we might be getting shut down given the fact that they now had a licensed competing circuit and partner in Panda.
Once we joined the call, we were very surprised to hear just the opposite.
Nintendo reached out to us to let us know that they had been watching us build over the years, and wanted to see if we were interested in working with them and pursuing a license as well. They made it clear that Panda’s partnership was not exclusive, and they said it had “not gone unnoticed” that we had not infringed on their IP regarding game modifications and had represented Nintendo’s values well. They made it clear that game modifications were their primary concern in regards to “coming down on events”, which also made sense to us given their enforcement over the past few years in that regard.
That lengthy conversation changed our perspective on Nintendo at a macro level; it was incredibly refreshing to talk to multiple senior team members and clear the air on a lot of miscommunications and misgivings in the years prior. We explained why so many in the community were hesitant to reach out to Nintendo to work together, and we truly believed Nintendo was taking a hard look at their relationship with the community, and ways to get involved in a positive manner.
Guess not! In addition to Nintendo now stipulating that tournaments could only run with an official license—something SWT had not been successful applying for—the team also allege that Panda went around undermining them to the organisers of individual events (the World Tour would have been an umbrella linking these together), and that while Nintendo continued saying nice things to their faces, Panda had told these grassroost organisers that the Smash World Tour was definitely getting shut down, which made them reluctant to come onboard.
You can read the full announcement here, which goes into a lot more detail, and closes with an appeal “that Nintendo reconsiders how it is currently proceeding with their relationship with the Smash community, as well as its partners”.
Nintendo said its Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet games for the Nintendo Switch hit an all-times sales record for the company. Pokémon is one of Nintendo’s longest-running and most popular franchises.
Nintendo on Thursday said it latest Pokémon games have set a sales record at the Japanese gaming giant as it continues to pump out blockbusters ahead of the crucial holiday season.
The Kyoto, Japan-headquartered company said sales of the Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet games for the Nintendo Switch surpassed 10 million units in the first three days since their global launch on Nov. 18.
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That is the highest level of sales for a game’s debut in Nintendo’s history.
Nintendo’s success with Pokémon comes two months after Splatoon 3 hit a domestic sales record in Japan, in signs the gaming giant is hitting the mark with players ahead of the holidays.
Pokémon is one of Nintendo’s most recognizable and longest-running franchises. Nintendo breathed new life into the series by releasing Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield three years ago and Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl last year.
Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet are different as they are open-world games, allowing players to explore the game environment without completing missions in a linear way.
The video games industry saw a boom during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 as people were stuck at home during lockdowns. But as economies have reopened, the industry has started to normalize, which has weighed on video game giants including Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.
“With the new Pokémon, Nintendo achieved a rare feat among all video game companies: scoring two blockbusters in a difficult 2022 for the industry,” Serkan Toto, CEO of Tokyo-based consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC.
“Sure, Pokémon is almost always a safe bet, but the new title has exceeded expectations, just like Splatoon 3 did earlier this year.”
Investors are backing Nintendo thanks to its recent blockbusters. The company’s shares are up more than 11% this year, outperforming Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index. In September, Nintendo carried out a 10-for-1 stock split which has also boosted sentiment.
Nintendo also has a strong pipeline of games. Toto expects The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom slated for release in May to be the company’s next major hit.
But Nintendo is not the only gaming giant entering the holiday season in a strong fashion.
Sony said Wednesday that the God of War Ragnarok title for its PlayStation console sold 5.1 million copies in its first week making it the fastest-selling debut of any first-party game for the company. First-party games are those made by a gaming studio owned by Sony.
Sony shares closed more than 2% higher in Japan on Thursday.
Having a (relatively) small device that can play basically any big game on it is a cool idea, and that’s what I love about Valve’s Steam Deck. But the Deck can be a bit bulky, and its battery just doesn’t last sometimes. Plus it doesn’t work easily with Xbox Game Pass. So the idea of a new, smaller handheld dedicated to streaming Game Pass and Xbox titles sounds great! However, at $300, it seems too expensive in a world where the Steam Deck and Switch OLED exist at around the same price point.
Announced today by Microsoft and Logitech, the new G Cloud handheld gaming console is a small Android-powered device built around streaming video games. 10 years ago this would have seemed like a weird idea. But today, you can stream practically every game across most platforms with enough tinkering. The idea behind this new G Cloud device is to cut out the tinkering and modding and provide players with a simple, fast, and lightweight way to stream all the great games on Game Pass.
First, the positives. The new Android device claims to have an extended battery life, probably thanks to the fact it is only streaming games and not running them natively. It boasts a solid 1080p 7-inch touchscreen, built-in controls, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a button and stick layout similar to an Xbox controller. I also really like the look of the device. It’s a bit smaller than Steam Deck, which should be nice for folks who have smaller hands.
But here’s the problem: The price. Currently, you can pre-order the G Cloud at $300 which is pretty high considering this is basically a fancy Android phone with built-in controls, a bigger battery, and no ability to make phone calls. It does have support for the Google Play Store, so presumably, mobile games and apps will work on it. And being based on Android, it will basically be moddable from day one. But still, $300 for that seems high.
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And that’s just for now. Once it’s out on October 17, the price shoots up to $350, aka the same price as a new Switch OLED and only $50 less than a 64GB Steam Deck. Now, it’s true that the Switch can’t stream the entire Game Pass library, but with some tinkering the Steam Deck actually can, while also playing (most) of your Steam games.
When I first saw the G Cloud on Twitter I was interested. A small device dedicated to Android apps and Xbox Game Pass cloud streaming could be nice to have. But only for like…$200. At the current price, I’d recommend folks buy a new phone, an external controller for their current phone, or a Steam Deck instead.
The PlayStation 5’s Accolades feature has allowed users to offer awards to fellow players in multiplayer games, the idea being it’d help foment kindness and camaraderie in the gaming community. But Sony formally retired it from PS5 this week for one reason: No one used it. Most people (hi) didn’t even seem to know it existed.
This spurred a thought exercise: What other gaming consoles still have useless features? Take the Switch, for instance. Sure, Nintendo’s hybrid handheld has plenty of quietly helpful little tricks, like its universal zoom function. But it also has some that could probably get purged without anyone caring—or even noticing.
The “Find Controllers” Function
Of the slew of options in the Switch’s “Controllers” menu, the “find controllers” function far and away collects the most dust. Open it, and you’ll see a menu containing a list of Joy-Cons paired to your console. Hold down the “A” button over the Joy-Con you’re looking for and it’ll rumble. Quietly. At, like, animal-hearing frequency. It’s intended to help you locate any detached Joy-Cons that may be misplaced, but isn’t really effective enough to do its one job—Never mind that you actually need at least one Joy-Con on hand to use it in the first place.
Sadly, there’s no console function that addresses the scourge of Joy-Con drift.
The “News” App
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
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Most of the seven permanent icons on the Switch’s home screen are genuinely useful shortcuts to submenus. One, however, is used only by the people who accidentally click on it: the “News” app. Open it up and you’ll see a reverse chronological feed of digitized press releases from the annals of Nintendo’s marketing machine. (You can also see the three most recent “stories” on the left bar of the screen when you boot up the console.) But if you’re looking for gaming news, you’re not going to read it on a gaming console—which you’ve presumably booted up to, y’know, play games. You’re especially not going to read it on that console if the text is so very tiny. You’re far more likely to get your news from a favorite gaming site.
Voice Chat
Despite what you may have heard, yep, the Switch has voice chat! Kinda. It’s a convoluted mess. On PlayStation and Xbox, if you want to get voice chat going, you…plug in a headset and get voice chat going. On Switch, however, you have to go through a multi-step process and boot up a companion smartphone app. Nintendo could scrap its voice chat without anyone caring. Really, if you’re using a smartphone app to talk to your party members, Discord is right there.
Keyboard Support
Everyone hates punching in a password (twice!) to buy something on Nintendo’s eShop, what with the console’s small touchscreen keyboard. This workaround doesn’t function in handheld mode, but you can plug a USB keyboard into the dock and use that to type instead. But also: the time it takes to pull out a keyboard and plug it into the Switch’s dock probably takes longer than whatever task you were initially trying to circumvent. (If you must get into the eShop faster, just deactivate the password requirement.) Nintendo could likely lose keyboard support without much uproar.
Screen Lock (or, well, that it’s an option)
Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
Yes, the Switch’s screen lock feature is indeed enormously helpful, dare I say essential. Turn it on, and you’ll give your console a purgatory of sorts between its waking and sleeping states. You’ll then need to tap the same button three times to use your console, which can prevent it from inadvertently turning on when, say, it’s rustling around in your bag. Honestly, it shouldn’t even be an option: It should be the standard. Get rid of the choice, I say, and let screen lock be the standard.
Dark Mode
I’m kidding! I’m kidding. But hey, on this note, wouldn’t it be nice if the Switch had more color themes for its backdrop? Hello? Hey, where’d you go?
Analogue Co.’s Pocket has always turned heads: first for being the most authentic-seeming Game Boy replacement ever announced, then for taking an extraordinary length of time to finally come out. But come out it did, and it was pretty good. For some, its biggest drawback was that it required old, increasingly expensive physical cartridges to play games, as (for the most part) it couldn’t just load convenient ROM files. The Pocket really needed something the kids call a “jailbreak,” at least if it was going to fulfill the fantasy of being the ultimate Game Boy device. Today, that jailbreak just slipped in the side door.
A little place-setting: When the Pocket finally shipped last December, it had only the most barebones operating system, and lacked many of the system’s long-promised features, like save states that backed up your game progress. (Analogue also didn’t release the originally announced Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket, or TurboGrafx-16 cart adapters.) Early adopters, glad as they were to have their uber Game Boys with beautiful retina-quality screens, realized it’d be quite some time before the device in their hands was actually finished.
The same was true for would-be developers eager to make the new machine do fun new stuff. The Pocket contains two field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), which programmers can reconfigure to closely approximate the hardware of another device. They are wonderful for simulating classic video game systems, and hobbyist developers could surely put them to great use, perhaps by developing new FPGA cores—meaning software that tells the FPGAs how to configure themselves—to simulate even more consoles. But that feature was delayed too.
Fast forward to today. At 8:01 a.m. PT Analogue finally released a new version of the Pocket’s Analogue OS. Today’s Analogue OS v1.1 beta adds the long-promised “Library” and “Memories” features; the first displays information about games you insert, the second is basically save states. v1.1 also finally opens the system up to developers, under the moniker “openFPGA.” As an example of what hobbyists can accomplish with the newly unlocked FPGAs, Analogue released an openFPGA core that simulates Spacewar!, one of the first video games. Neat.
And that was it. A nice and necessary update, but it wasn’t the jailbreak many folks’d been hoping for, either. See you in another six months! (Actually, Analogue being Analogue, more likely eight.)
But then.
Some three hours later at 11:23 a.m., a Github account called Spiritualized1997, created less than 24 hours before, uploaded a repository called openFPGA-GBA; one minute later, it uploaded another called openFPGA-GB-GBC. Each repository contained a single downloadable file. “To play Game Boy Advance on your Pocket follow these instructions,” said the instructions accompanying the GBA repository, outlining five steps to install a v1.0.0 Spiritualized1997 GBA core on the Pocket and get it running ROM files. The second repository offered similar instructions, but for a core that ran Game Boy and Game Boy Color ROMs.
So to recap: Today Analogue Pocket got the ability to run third-party FPGA cores. Three hours and 22 minutes later the Pocket’s two most popular supported handhelds mysteriously received new, third-party FPGA cores that could Do The Thing that everyone’s wanted the Pocket to do since it came out: load games from ROM files stored on a microSD card. Is this…is this finally the jailbreak?
Yes, yes it is. Or rather, the jailbreak’s finally started, because today’s two v1.0.0 Nintendo cores are just the first wave of what is clearly going to be a longer, more sustained rollout.
So what is happening here? Who is Spiritualized1997, and how the hell did they develop and release GBA and GB/GBC cores for the Analogue Pocket just three or so hours after today’s Analogue OS v1.1 beta release made running such things possible? Why is the account so new?
Most observers’ theory—which, to be clear, Kotaku cannot confirm—is that Spiritualized1997 is Kevin “Kevtris” Horton, a legend in the emulation scene and the FPGA emulation guru behind all of Analogue’s FPGA-based game machines. He’s worked on the Analogue NT mini (which played 8-bit NES games), the Super NT (SNES games), the Mega Sg (Sega Genesis games), and of course the Pocket.
Kevtris checks in on the popular Classic Gaming Discord today about 40 minutes after the two unexpected FPGA cores were uploaded.Screenshot: Kotaku
Horton has a history (you’re now thinking of a Dr. Seuss book) of releasing unofficial “jailbreak” firmware for the Analogue Co. consoles he’s helped develop, starting back in 2017 when he uploaded the first jailbreak firmware for the NT mini. “The Core Store is officially open for business!” he wrote on the AtariAge forum, referring to the potential to make the NT mini run games from a variety of systems, when until then it had only played 8-bit Nintendo games loaded off of physical cartridges.
In case that left any doubt, he added, “Yes, this means that it runs ROMs now!”
And that’s how it’s gone for all the Analogue consoles since. Horton got a little more discreet after the NT mini jailbreak, instead releasing his jailbreak firmwares through intermediaries like emulation scene mover-and-shaker Smokemonster. But folks in the scene, with a wink and a nod, understand where these popular, hardware-enhancing bits of software really come from. (Prior Analogue consoles have been closed platforms, so who else could have made them?)
That’s why many people considered it a given that the Analogue Pocket’s wonderful hardware would itself get liberated to play games from ROM files. It’s been a long eight months, but today’s surprise Spiritualized1997 FPGA cores are pretty much exactly what Pocket owners wanted, just in a slightly different form than usual—discrete FPGA cores loadable through the Pocket’s new openFPGA feature. That’s made this “jailbreak” seem a little more subtle than usual. It’s not a firmware replacement, but just alternate cores you run off the microSD card. The end result is exactly the same, though.
But again, this is just the start of a longer jailbreak process that will play out over the coming months. After all, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance are just three of the handhelds people want to play on Pocket, not to mention folks clamoring for it to support TV-based consoles like Genesis and SNES. The Spiritualized1997 FPGA cores, both at just v1.0.0, are also missing a few features enjoyed by the Pocket’s official built-in cores, most notably screen filters. These and further enhancements are coming; the missing filters are apparently just because the openFPGA API is still immature.
Spiritualized1997, who only joined Github yesterday, is a very helpful person.Screenshot: Kotaku
Spiritualized1997, whoever they may be, is also being quite active on Reddit. One user bemoaned the lack of a Sega Game Gear core, to which Spiritualized1997 replied, “coming soon.” This seemingly supernaturally helpful individual also released an 80MB archive containing 6,959 title screen images of Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and Game Gear games that are in, wouldn’t you know it, exactly the special file format that the Pocket’s new “Library” feature expects. So now you know how to make your Library look pretty.
“This is fantastic! Finally the Pocket awakens from its deep slumber,” said a Reddit user in response to news of the two new FPGA cores. “I haven’t powered on mine [in] months!”
“Today has been a roller coaster.” said another. “Sincerely, thanks!”
So while the heavens didn’t part and there was no neon sign flashing “the jailbreak is here!”, make no mistake, on July 29, 2022 the Analogue Pocket finally got the key feature owners have desired since December. But this jailbreak isn’t once and done; this is slow and steady, and now that the pump is primed, more ROM-friendly cores will come with time. Game Gear first, seemingly.
Kotaku reached out to Analogue Co. for comment.
At the end of today’s Analogue OS v1.1 announcement, the company tweeted, “Analogue does not support or endorse the unauthorized use or distribution of material protected by copyright or other intellectual property rights.”
DeoxysPrime, who runs a YouTube account with 165,000 subscribers that is home to all kinds of video game soundtracks, has had to remove their entire library of Nintendo music after receiving over 500 copyright claims from the trigger-happy company.
They weren’t hosting uploads of commercially-available albums; rather, like the rest of their channel (which we’ve featured on the site before!), they had uploaded the complete soundtracks to titles like Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon taken directly from the games themselves. In a statement posted to Twitter on May 30, they write:
Effective immediately I will be removing all Nintendo music from my channel. With 500+ claims and a dozen soundtracks blocked over the last week it’s pretty clear they don’t want their music on YouTube. I’m sorry to everyone who enjoys their music but I don’t have much choice.
I have no intention of deleting my channel and the rest of my non-Nintendo soundtracks will remain up for the foreseeable future. It’s frustrating but as I’ve said before it’s ultimately their choice to have their music blocked on the platform.
Best of luck to anyone still holding out having Nintendo music on YouTube. So many of those soundtracks have never gotten official releases. But like how bigger channels than mine have gotten hit before eventually those who take their place will end up like this too.
In a follow-up message posted on their YouTube page, they say:
Once again I’m sorry for the inconvenience this will cause, as I enjoy listening to Nintendo music on here just as much as you all do, but it just doesn’t make any sense to continue on like this.
As always you can follow me on Twitter for any other updates and as a general reminder, if you do see any soundtracks on my channel removed, it’s always safe to assume it was for copyright reasons. Be respectful of their right to do this but also please continue to push Nintendo to release their music in official formats, because there’s no reason these soundtracks should have to disappear forever. Thank you.
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Some of the soundtracks that have been taken down include those for the Smash series, Donkey Kong Country games, Wind Waker,F-Zero series and most of the modern Mario and Mario Kart games.
Like they say, Nintendo, if you’re going to do this please at least release these soundtracks in official formats (albums! Spotify!), because I am getting so tired of having to link to this old post all the time.
This isn’t the first time a major music channel has been targeted by Nintendo recently. Back in January GilvaSunner received over 1300 copyright blocks, saying at the time “I’m…not angry or surprised that Nintendo is doing this, but I do think it’s a bit disappointing there is hardly an alternative”.
In light of recent reports by Kotaku and others about worker complaints at Nintendo of America, former president and gaming icon Reggie Fils-Aimé was asked about how the company treats its employees. “I know I was able to achieve [a healthy culture], and certainly what’s being described does not seem like a healthy culture,” he told The Washington Post in an interview Tuesday.
Fils-Aimé is currently on a mini-press tour promoting his new business memoir, Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo. Much of the book documents his time overseeing the company’s largest business unit outside of Japan from its Redmond, Washington headquarters. However, it arrives just as many current and former Nintendo of America employees are speaking up about exploitative working conditions at the beloved gaming company, following news of a labor complaint reported by Axios.
At the heart of this arrangement is a contractor system that employs hundreds of testers, customer service reps, and other “associates” in a permatemp status where they receive low pay, poor benefits, and no guarantee of job security even as they do the same work as people in full-time positions. As first reported on by Kotaku, current and former employees say this creates a two-tier system where permatemp associates feel like second-class employees, both in terms of compensation and the lack of respect from top brass.
“As I read the stories and I read the reports it struck me that this wasn’t the Nintendo I left,” Fils-Aimé told The Washington Post. He went on to point out that during his tenure from 2006 to 2019 he held regular lunch meetings with employees that permatemp associates were free to sign up for and attend. One former associate told Kotaku they were aware of the lunches but had never heard of contract workers being allowed to attend. They and others did not even have badge access to the main building in which they were held.
On Tuesday, IGN released its own report documenting complaints about the contractor system and general employee dissatisfaction with some of the ways Nintendo of America operates. “It’s always been a positive part of the culture to recruit in the very best of the contract employees into the company,” Fils-Aimé toldIGN’s Nintendo podcast in a separate interview. “This division between contract and full-time employees—all I can say is that that is not at all the culture that I left as I retired from Nintendo.”
Whether Fils-Aimé and others in leadership were aware of it or not, dozens of current and former employees have told Kotaku frustration over the contractor system was well known within the ranks for years. While morale and specific issues fluctuated over time, complaints about poor pay, and lack of opportunities for hard-working associates to progress within the company, are not new to the last few years, they say.
Fils-Aimé, through his publicist, declined an interview request by Kotaku. He also declined to elaborate further on his recent comments about working conditions at the company. “Reggie has already relayed his position on this question in other interviews, and since it’s not something that he discusses in the book, he doesn’t have anything else to comment on at this time,” his publicist wrote in an email.
