Nintendo

Seventeen Bucks Turns an NES Gamepad Into a Pocket Full of Classics

By Bill Smith August 4, 2026

Original NES controllers still feel right. The click of the D-pad, the springy A and B buttons, the solid rectangular shape that fits perfectly in two hands. Most of them now live in drawers or boxes. Logic Gate Labs decided one of those controllers could do more than sit around. They gutted a standard NES-style gamepad and packed a complete retro gaming system inside it, complete with a screen, speaker, storage, and enough power to run dozens of 8-bit games plus a slow but playable version of DOOM.

Golden Balloon Lifts Diddy Kong Racing Onto PC at Last

By Bill Smith August 2, 2026

Diddy Kong Racing arrived on the Nintendo 64 with a different rhythm than Mario Kart. You collected golden balloons to unlock worlds, switched freely between car, hovercraft, and plane, and chased a genie named Taj across tracks that felt bigger and stranger than anything else on the system. Nearly three decades later a fan project called Golden Balloon has turned the game into a proper PC and browser title. It is built from the community decompilation that only recently reached completion, and it asks only that you supply your own legal ROM.

Retroid’s Pocket Nova Puts Classic Games Back in Their Proper Frame, This Hands-On Review Proves It

By Bill Smith August 2, 2026

Retroid opened shipping on the Pocket Nova at the end of July, and the early reaction from people who care about older consoles has been unusually consistent. This is the one they have been waiting for if their idea of a good handheld starts with a screen that matches the games instead of forcing them into a modern widescreen box.

Ninety-Seven Sealed NES Mario Cartridges Sat Forgotten in a Wisconsin Storage Room Until Someone Opened the Box

By Bill Smith August 1, 2026

Photo credit: NintendoWire
Kevin Braun runs OneStopWonders, a small retro shop in Waukesha, Wisconsin, about fifteen miles west of Milwaukee. Six years ago a man walked in with a plain rectangular box and sold it to him. The seller explained that his grandfather had operated a precious-metal recovery business. Nintendo had once sent the company old NES circuit boards so the gold contacts could be melted down and salvaged. This particular box never made it into the furnace. Instead it sat in a garage for more than twenty years before landing in Braun’s temperature-controlled storage unit.

Twenty Years Later a Seemingly Lost Pokémon PokePark Fishing Contest DS Cartridge Surfaces for Nearly Nine Thousand Dollars

By Bill Smith July 31, 2026

Photo credit: Tiramisu090401
A Nintendo DS development cartridge listed on eBay for just under $9,100 has collectors and preservationists watching the auction closely. The cart powers on to a Japanese-language screen that describes a high-score ranking communication program. Fans believe the hardware connects to PokéPark Fishing Contest DS, a short-lived promotional title from 2005 that disappeared almost as soon as players finished their sessions.

Crissa Graves Built a Handheld Game Boy Pocket Camera That Actually Shoots

By Bill Smith July 30, 2026

Photo credit: Crissa Graves
Crissa Graves has spent years making the old Game Boy Camera feel less like a novelty and more like something you might actually carry. Her latest prototype, the GBD-M2, takes that work further. It starts with a fully working Game Boy Pocket and turns the whole thing into a dedicated handheld camera with a removable camera module and interchangeable CS-mount lenses.

Ocarina of Time Finds a New Home on iOS and iPadOS After Years of Community Work and One Long AI Session

By Bill Smith July 28, 2026

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a 1998 Nintendo 64 adventure, is now available as a native app for iPhones and iPads. Full screen resolution, sixty frames per second, widescreen perspective, usable touch overlays, Bluetooth controllers that simply work, plus keyboard and mouse capabilities for good measure. There is no blurry 240p image, no stuttering twenty-frame limit from the original hardware, and no remote streaming via PC. The game has been recreated and is now running on the device itself.

Anbernic’s RG SP Puts a Familiar Fold Back in Your Pocket

By Bill Smith July 28, 2026

Anbernic just pulled the cover off its newest handheld, and the shape alone will stop anyone who grew up with a Game Boy Advance SP. The RG SP closes flat into a compact clamshell that sits almost exactly where the original did in a backpack or jacket pocket. Closed dimensions come in at 83 by 82 by 24 millimeters and the whole unit weighs about 168 grams. That is roughly ten percent thinner than Anbernic’s earlier clamshells and noticeably more pocket-friendly than most modern Linux handhelds.

Banjo and Kazooie Unreal Engine 5 Remake Makes the Duo Finally Feel Like They Belong in 2026

By Bill Smith July 27, 2026

Twenty-eight years after a honey bear and a red-crested bird first scrambled across Spiral Mountain, a fresh batch of Unreal Engine 5 footage has arrived that makes the wait for an official return feel almost unbearable. François Montagud, the same creator who previously rebuilt Doom 3 in the engine for his portfolio, has posted seven uninterrupted minutes of his Banjo-Kazooie fan remake. It will never ship. You cannot download it. Yet the short video already does more to answer the quiet question hanging over the series than any corporate teaser has managed in years.

Four Players, One Big Panel, and a Switch 2 That Finally Feels Like a Real TMNT Shredder’s Revenge Arcade Cabinet

By Bill Smith July 26, 2026

Cowabunga hits different when four people can actually stand side by side and mash buttons the way the game was meant to be played. A builder working under the name arcademinimalist just finished a commissioned machine that takes an old Arcade1Up cabinet, drops a Nintendo Switch 2 inside it, and turns Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge into a proper four-player arcade experience.