Nintendo

The Analogue 3D is the modern N64 fans have been waiting for

analogue, Emulation, fpga, gaming, HDTV, n64, Nintendo, openFPGA, Upgrade / DJ Henderson / November 18, 2025

Excellent design and display filters, but the lack of OpenFPGA support rankles.

Your Super Mario 64 cartridge has a new home. Credit: Kyle Orland

If you’ve ever tried to hook an old Nintendo 64 up to a modern HDTV, you know the results can be less than ideal. Assuming your original hardware still works and your flatscreen even has the requisite R/F and/or composite inputs to allow for the connection, the N64’s output will probably look like a blurry mess on a flatscreen that wasn’t designed with those old video signals as a priority.

The Analogue 3D solves this very specific problem very well, with a powerful FPGA core that accurately replicates a Nintendo 64 and well-made display filters that do a good job of approximating that cathode-ray tube glow you remember from decades ago. But the lack of easy expandability limits the appeal of this $250 device to all but the most die-hard fans of original N64 hardware.

A beauty to behold

As a piece of physical design, the Analogue 3D is a work of art. The gentle curves of its sleek black shell evoke the original N64 design without copying it, coming in at a slightly smaller footprint and height. Plus, there’s no ugly power brick.

3D COMPUTER GRAPHICS SYSTEM. Kyle Orland

This is a solidly built device, with a nice grippy underside and springy, elegant power and reset buttons. The shell has a lot of small, thoughtful touches, too, like a front power indicator that doubles as a Bluetooth sync button and lights on each controller port to indicate when a wireless controller is connected to that slot (the Hall Effect joysticks on 8bitdo’s wireless “64” controller are a joy compared to the crunchy mechanical sticks on your old N64 controller).

The one downside to this design is that the hardware can get slightly hot after running for a while, and it emits some noticeable fan noise when stressed. The welcome screen when you first boot the system recommends you give the vents adequate space to breathe, so be careful if you plan to place it directly on the carpet or something.

I saw the TV glow

The Analogue 3D’s custom 3DOS software automatically detects the game cartridge you’ve placed into its top-loading slot and displays basic info like player count, developer/publisher, and release date on-screen (you can also load your own custom cartridge images onto an included SD card). The system maintains this info in a scrollable list of every cartridge you’ve ever inserted, allowing for a quick way to browse through your library without the need to dig out your actual cartridges. You do have to plug in the cartridges to actually play the games, though, which limits the usefulness of the on-screen library more than a little bit.

Before you launch a game, you can also configure the Display Mode between five preset options (these can also be swapped during gameplay using controller hotkeys for an on-screen menu). Of these, you’ll generally want to stay away from the “Clean” option, which upscales the N64’s 320×240 image by simply blowing up each individual pixel to fit the display. The result is an incredibly blocky image with lots of jagged edges and blobs of color that refuse to blend well with nearby elements. It’s a look that’s especially unsuited to the low-resolution textures on most N64 games, which exploited the gentle blur of a CRT to create some vivid effects.

Switching over to the “Scanlines” display option helps a bit in rounding out those jagged N64 polygons, but things really start to look better if you activate one of the system’s three different CRT emulation modes. With these, 3DOS does its best to recreate the look of an electron beam actually scanning across the phosphors on an old tube TV. These filters do an admirable job of softening the hard edges of polygons and sprites while subtly and accurately blending the colors on those low-res textures.

A scene from Starfox 64, upscaled with the Analogue 3D’s “Clean” filter (direct capture). Nintendo / Analogue

The Analogue 3D has three tube TV emulation modes, each representing consumer CRTs and the kind of Pro/Broadcast Video Monitors you’d usually only find in TV station control rooms. You can go into the menus for each mode and tinker with settings like “beam convergence” and “edge hardness,” and you can toggle N64 hardware effects like anti-aliasing and de-blurring (you can also stretch the 4:3 image to fill a 16:9 display if you’re a specific kind of monster).

In general, though, I didn’t see much upside in this kind of settings tinkering. Using the system’s default “CRT” settings created a visual experience that was surprisingly authentic to the actual CRT sitting in my home office. The only thing really missing is an option to simulate the curve of a classic CRT; the hard square edges of the Analogue 3D output are a bit lacking on that score. But that’s a minor complaint for a filter that does such a good job mimicking an old TV on new display technology.

Paper Mario with the Analogue 3D’s “Clean” filter (direct capture). Nintendo / Analogue

Open and shut

Like previous Analogue hardware, the Analogue 3D uses FPGA to accurately recreate the inner workings of an N64 at the level of individual logic gates. This time, the Analogue 3D’s Altera Cyclone FPGA sports a whopping 220,000 logic elements. That’s a big step up from the two FPGAs on 2021’s Analogue Pocket, which have just 49,000 and 15,000, respectively.

That powerful FPGA allows for perfectly accurate and lag-free N64 emulation in all of our tests with original cartridges (Analogue’s Christopher Taber warns us that “flash carts and unofficial 3rd party products can be a bit of a wild card”). But players hoping to emulate other gaming systems with that powerful hardware may run into some problems. That’s because the Analogue 3D doesn’t support the OpenFPGA standard that Analogue itself rolled out in 2022 as “the future of video game preservation.”

That standard has allowed a vibrant community of OpenFPGA developers to create dozens of free “cores” that can recreate everything from classic arcade games to 16-bit consoles with amazing fidelity. Currently, though, those cores will only work on the Analogue Pocket and not subsequent hardware like the Analogue 3D or 2023’s Analogue Duo.

That’s a shame because the OpenFPGA community would certainly be happy to get their hands on the new, larger FPGA in the Analogue 3D to build out core support for even more classic gaming consoles. And we’re sure Analogue 3D owners would be happy to use their purchase to play existing OpenFPGA cores on the big screen, complete with 3DOS’ great display options.

The beginning of Goldeneye as seen through Analogue’s CRT filter (photo of the HDTV screen).

“If we wanted to offer Analogue 3D with OpenFPGA (which is not the purpose or focus of the product), it would require not only a second FPGA, but an even more powerful base FPGA, therefore increasing the price to a price that doesn’t suit our goals,” Analogue founder Christopher Taber told Ars when the system was first announced back in 2023.

It seems likely that hackers and tinkerers will be able to expand the Analogue 3D’s emulation capabilities in the future. As it stands, though, it’s hard to recommend the hardware when options like Android-based, emulation-focused handhelds, Raspberry Pi-based emulation consoles, and even (more expensive) MiSTer FPGA boxes offer able support for much more than just N64 games.

If you’re looking for a simple, plug-and-play way to use your original N64 cartridges and accessories on a modern display, the Analogue 3D offers pretty much everything you could hope for. If you want a single device that can handle more, though, you should look elsewhere.

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

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Super Mario Galaxy Movie trailer introduces Princess Rosalina

culture, Entertainment, film trailers, Nintendo, Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Trailers / Kelly Newman / November 12, 2025

Nintendo officially announced The Super Mario Galaxy Movie in September with the briefest of teasers, showing a napping Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom before panning out to reveal the film’s logo. Its 2026 release just happens to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the gaming franchise.

The main voice cast is returning for the sequel: Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, Keegan-Michael Key as the anthropomorphic mushroom Toad, and Kevin Michael Richardson as Bowser’s advisor and informant Kamek. We’re also getting two new cast members: Brie Larson as Princess Rosalina, protector of the cosmos and the Lumas; and Benny Safdie as Bowser, Jr., Bowser’s son and heir to the throne. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are also back, as is screenwriter Matthew Fogel.

The imprisoned Bowser features prominently in the trailer, as we see him in his mini-prison creating a painting of himself with Peach—and losing his temper when Mario dismisses it as “trash.” But that was just a momentary lapse, the “old Bowser talking,” as he continues to work through his personal demons. Then we see Mario and Peach jumping into a cosmic portal. We catch glimpses of Peach and Toad in an underwater world and a desert world and Peach showing off her fighting skills. Then Bowser Jr appears, vowing to take his father “now.”

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie hits US theaters on April 3, 2026, and will be released in Japan on April 24, 2026.

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Modder injects AI dialogue into 2002’s Animal Crossing using memory hack

AI, AI integration, Animal Crossing, Biz & IT, chatgpt, Dolphin emulator, Emulation, game hacking, game modding, GameCube, gaming, generative ai, Google, large language models, machine learning, Nintendo, openai, retrogaming, retrotech, Tom Nook / Mike M. / September 13, 2025

But discovering the addresses was only half the problem. When you talk to a villager in Animal Crossing, the game normally displays dialogue instantly. Calling an AI model over the Internet takes several seconds. Willison examined the code and found Fonseca’s solution: a watch_dialogue() function that polls memory 10 times per second. When it detects a conversation starting, it immediately writes placeholder text: three dots with hidden pause commands between them, followed by a “Press A to continue” prompt.

“So the user gets a ‘press A to continue’ button and hopefully the LLM has finished by the time they press that button,” Willison noted in a Hacker News comment. While players watch dots appear and reach for the A button, the mod races to get a response from the AI model and translate it into the game’s dialog format.

Learning the game’s secret language

Simply writing text to memory froze the game. Animal Crossing uses an encoded format with control codes that manage everything from text color to character emotions. A special prefix byte (0x7F) signals commands rather than characters. Without the proper end-of-conversation control code, the game waits forever.

“Think of it like HTML,” Fonseca explains. “Your browser doesn’t just display words; it interprets tags … to make text bold.” The decompilation community had documented these codes, allowing Fonseca to build encoder and decoder tools that translate between a human-readable format and the GameCube’s expected byte sequences.

A screenshot of LLM-powered dialog injected into Animal Crossing for the GameCube. — A screenshot of LLM-powered dialog injected into *Animal Crossing* for the GameCube. Credit: Joshua Fonseca

Initially, he tried using a single AI model to handle both creative writing and technical formatting. “The results were a mess,” he notes. “The AI was trying to be a creative writer and a technical programmer simultaneously and was bad at both.”

The solution: split the work between two models. A Writer AI creates dialogue using character sheets scraped from the Animal Crossing fan wiki. A Director AI then adds technical elements, including pauses, color changes, character expressions, and sound effects.

The code is available on GitHub, though Fonseca warns it contains known bugs and has only been tested on macOS. The mod requires Python 3.8+, API keys for either Google Gemini or OpenAI, and Dolphin emulator. Have fun sticking it to the man—or the raccoon, as the case may be.

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Over three decades later, Nintendo remembers the Virtual Boy exists

3D, Classic, gaming, Nintendo, retro, stereoscopic, virtual boy / Shannon Garcia / September 12, 2025

It’s been a long wait

Nintendo says 14 Virtual Boy titles will be made available to Switch Online Expansion Pack subscribers over time. The eventual software list includes cult-classic Nintendo first-party titles like Virtual Boy Wario Land and Mario’s Tennis, as well as extremely hard-to-find third-party games like Jack Bros. and Virtual Bowling, which can command hundreds or thousands of dollars for an original cartridge.

The fact that Nintendo is officially acknowledging these games at all is a bit surprising after all these years of neglect. Even the 3DS Virtual Console—which would have seemed like a natural place for a Virtual Boy resurgence—never got official support for the retro system. Instead, fans of Nintendo’s least successful console (it’s estimated to have sold fewer than 800,000 units) have either had to track down rare original hardware and software or resort to unofficial emulators (one of which recently added full-color support beyond the usual red tints displayed by the original console).

The Nintendo Switch will eventually host a large majority of the entire library of official software released for the Virtual Boy. Credit: Nintendo

The Switch-docking strategy Nintendo is using for stereoscopy here is more than a bit reminiscent of 2019’s Nintendo Labo VR, which slotted the original Switch into a lens-equipped cardboard sleeve for a low-resolution, bare bones introduction to the idea of VR. At the time, we called that experiment a “fine, serviceable, decent” introduction to virtual reality seemingly designed for small children.

Today’s Virtual Boy announcement, of course, comes with a hefty added dose of nostalgia and represents a long-overdue official recognition of an often-ignored part of Nintendo history. For all its faults, the Virtual Boy was a prime example of Nintendo designer Gunpei Yokoi’s philosophy of “lateral thinking with withered technology,” as Ars’ own Benj Edwards laid out in detail when contributing to a book-length treatise on the console.

Over three decades later, Nintendo remembers the Virtual Boy exists Read More »

Accessory maker will pay Nintendo after showing illicit Switch 2 mockups at CES

3d printed, CES, gaming, genki, leak, legal, mockup, Nintendo, switch 2 / Mike M. / September 9, 2025

Nintendo also accused Genki of “extensive use of Nintendo trademarks” in association with their unlicensed products, a move that “exploit[ed] and appropriate[d] for [Genki] the public goodwill associated with… Nintendo Switch marks.”

The Switch 2 mockup Genki showed in a CES video ended up matching very closely with the final console as released. Credit: Genki

The lawsuit also dealt in part with conflicting reports that Genki may have had “unauthorized, illegal early access to the Nintendo Switch 2,” as Nintendo put it. Media reports around CES quoted Genki representatives asserting that their 3D-printed case mockup was based on early access to a real Switch 2 console. But the company later publicly backtracked, writing on social media that “we do not own or possess a black market console, as some outlets have suggested.”

In their settlement, Nintendo and Genki simply note that “Genki represents and attests that it didn’t obtain any unreleased Nintendo property or documents before the system’s official reveal.”

The public settlement document doesn’t go into detail on the confidential “payment in an agreed-upon amount” that Genki will make to Nintendo to put this matter to rest. But the settlement outlines how Genki is barred from referencing Nintendo trademarks or even parody names like “Glitch” and “Glitch 2” in its future marketing. Under the settlement, packaging for Genki accessories also has to “make clear to consumers Genki’s status as an unlicensed accessory manufacturer” and not mimic the color scheme of official Switch 2 hardware.

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Switch modder owes Nintendo $2 million after representing himself in court

daly, gaming, hacking, legal, mig, mig switch, modding, Nintendo, Payment, settlement / Kelly Newman / September 9, 2025

Daly’s pro se legal representation in the case was notable for its use of several novel affirmative defenses, including arguments that Nintendo’s “alleged copyrights are invalid,” that Nintendo “does not have standing to bring suit,” and that Nintendo “procured a contract [with Daly] through fraudulent means.” For the record, the judgment in this case reasserts that Nintendo “owns valid copyrights in works protected by the TPMs, including Nintendo games and the Nintendo Switch operating system.”

In addition to $2 million in damages, Daly is specifically barred from “obtaining, possessing, accessing, or using” any DRM circumvention device or hacked console, with or without the intent to sell it. The judgment also bars Daly from publishing or “linking to” any website with instructions for hacking consoles and from “reverse engineering” any Nintendo consoles or games. Control of Daly’s ModdedHardware.com domain name will also be transferred to Nintendo.

Nintendo’s latest legal victory comes years after a $4.5 million plea deal with Gary “GaryOPA” Bowser, one of the leaders behind Team Xecuter and its SX line of Switch hacking devices. Bowser also served 14 months of a 40-month prison sentence in that case and said last year that he will likely be paying Nintendo back for the rest of his life.

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Dev says Switch 2’s physical Game Cards were too slow for Star Wars Outlaws port

data transfer, gaming, Nintendo, speed, star wars, switch 2, ubisoft / 9u50fv / September 5, 2025

A video shows how different storage media can affect Mario Kart World load times.

CD Projekt Red VP of Technology Charles Tremblay has alluded to this same challenge when talking about the Switch 2 port of Cyberpunk 2077. In a June interview with IGN, Tremblay said the data transfer speeds enabled by MicroSD Express were “great,” while streaming data from a Switch 2 Game Card was merely “okay.” Tremblay did go on to say that “all the performance we have on [input/output] is very good on [the Switch 2],” especially compared to the extremely slow physical hard drives that plagued Cyberpunk 2077‘s performance on older hardware.

Slow down, you move too fast

From the outside, it’s a bit odd that Nintendo allowed this loading-speed dichotomy to exist on the Switch 2 in the first place. On the original Switch, read speeds for both SD cards and Game Cards reportedly maxed out around 90 MB/s. But when designing the new Switch 2 game cards, Nintendo settled on a format that would stream data much more slowly than for downloaded games on the same console.

That decision might have been an attempt to minimize hardware costs for the Switch 2’s Game Card interface. If so, though, it doesn’t seem to have done much to reduce the costs of manufacturing Switch 2 game cards themselves. The cost of manufacturing those physical Game Cards has been frequently cited as a major reason many publishers are using cheaper Game Key Cards in the first place, though Bantin said that he “[didn’t] recall the cost of the cards ever entering the discussion [for Star Wars: Outlaws]—probably because it was moot.”

Nintendo could get around this variable loading speed issue by letting players pre-install games from a Switch 2 Game Card to internal or expansion storage, as Microsoft and Sony have either allowed or required on their disc-based consoles for decades now. But that solution might prove onerous for physical game card players who want to avoid clogging up the limited 256GB of internal storage on the Switch 2 (and/or avoid investing in pricey MicroSD Express cards).

As time goes on, many developers will likely learn how to adapt to and tolerate the Switch 2’s relatively slow Game Card interface. But as gamers and the industry at large continue to transition away from physical media, some developers might decide it’s not worth compromising on loading speeds just to satisfy a shrinking portion of the market.

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Sony makes the “difficult decision” to raise PlayStation 5 prices in the US

gaming, microsoft, Nintendo, PlayStation 5, Sony, Tech / Shannon Garcia / August 20, 2025

Sony will join Microsoft and Nintendo in raising US prices across its entire game console lineup, the company announced today. Pricing for all current versions of the PlayStation 5 console will increase by $50 starting tomorrow.

The price of the PS5 Digital Edition will increase from $450 to $500; the standard PS5 will increase from $500 to $550; and the PS5 Pro will increase from $700 to $750. If you’ve been on the fence about buying any of these, retailers like Target and Best Buy are still using the old prices as of this writing—for other console price hikes, retailers have sometimes bumped the prices up before the date announced by the manufacturer.

“Similar to many global businesses, we continue to navigate a challenging economic environment,” wrote Sony Global Marketing VP Isabelle Tomatis. “As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to increase the recommended retail price for PlayStation 5 consoles in the U.S. starting on August 21.”

Sony says it’s not increasing prices for games or accessories and that this round of price increases only affects consoles sold in the US.

Sony was the last of the big three console makers to raise prices this year. Microsoft raised the prices for the Xbox Series S and X consoles in March. And Nintendo has gone through two rounds of price increases—one for Switch and Switch 2 accessories in April and another for more accessories and Switch 1 consoles earlier this month.

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Not (just) seeing red: Virtual Boy emulator adds full color support

Color, Emulation, gaming, Nintendo, RED, retro, virtual boy / DJ Henderson / July 30, 2025

With Red Viper’s built-in color support, though, anyone with a 3DS modded for homebrew software can now easily add a bit of color to the Virtual Boy library. And running the emulator on the 3DS means you don’t even have to give up the Virtual Boy’s stereoscopic graphics to do so; Red Viper works with the filtered LCD screen on the 3DS to emulate the visual depth built into Virtual Boy games.

More than just Wario Land

Red Viper currently doesn’t have any “default” palettes to choose from, meaning it can take some manual fiddling to get multicolor games to look halfway decent (you can save your palettes on a per-game basis). Once you do, though, it’s impressive just how much color adds to games that were never designed to be seen in more than a few shades of red.

The higher contrast between the road and the racers helps make homebrew Virtual Boy Mario Kart much more playable. Kyle Orland / Red Viper

We’ve found that high contrast yellow or green can really help sprites stand out from the jet black backgrounds that dominate most Virtual Boy releases. Accent colors in the blue or purple range, meanwhile, can help set off background elements and make them easier to distinguish from the foreground gameplay. Those color enhancements can be more than just aesthetic, too; in a game like Red Viper, distinct colors make it much easier to distinguish enemies from stationary obstacles in the game’s awkward wire-framed 3D.

After you’re done colorizing all the Virtual Boy ROMs you’ve dumped off of your own legitimately purchased cartridges (cough), it’s worth dipping a toe in the impressive collection of homebrew Virtual Boy games created by homebrew coders over the years. That includes impressive ports of games like Street Fighter II and Mario Kart and original efforts like a cartoony fish-eat-fish simulator or a hamburger based shoot-’em-up .

Whether you’re a Virtual Boy aficionado or new to the world, the newly colorized Red Viper is the perfect excuse to visit this odd cul-de-sac in Nintendo’s hardware history. Now if we could just convince Nintendo to release an official miniaturized set of Virtual Boy VR goggles à la the NES Classic.

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Donkey Kong Bananza is a worthy successor to Super Mario Odyssey’s legacy

Donkey Kong, gaming, Nintendo, platformer, Switch, switch 2 / 9u50fv / July 16, 2025

D-K… donkey kong is here!

Cathartic, punch-fueled land destruction is a great showcase for Switch 2 hardware.

Screenshots you can feel. Credit: Nintendo

When the Switch 2 was fully unveiled in April, we weren’t alone in expecting the announcement of a true follow-up to Super Mario Odyssey—one of the original Switch’s best-selling games and our pick for the best game of 2017. Instead, we got our first look at Donkey Kong Bananza, the big ape’s first fully 3D adventure since the Rare-developed Donkey Kong 64 in 1999.

The fact that Nintendo wasn’t willing to commit its long-standing plumber mascot to its first first-party platformer on the Switch 2 could have been seen as a sign of a rushed, second-tier spinoff effort. After playing through Donkey Kong Bananza, though, I’m happy to report that nothing could be further from the truth for this deep and worthy spiritual successor to Super Mario Odyssey (from many of the same development staff). Donkey Kong Bananza captures the same sense of joyful movement and exploration as the best Mario games while adding an extremely satisfying terrain-destruction system that shows off the capabilities of the Switch 2 hardware.

Beat up the earth

It’s that terrain-destruction system that sets Donkey Kong Bananza apart from previous 3D platformers from Nintendo and others. Three of the four face buttons on the Switch 2 controllers are devoted to letting Donkey Kong punch either horizontally, upward, or downward, often taking out large chunks of the nearby scenery as he does.

Punching through the terrain in this manner forms the fast, crunchy, and powerfully kinetic core of the game. It’s hard to overstate how incredibly cathartic it can be to quickly reduce a well-ordered chunk of dirt and rock into a mountain of valuable, collectible golden rubble (then gathering up all the nearby rubble with a quick tap of a shoulder button). Imagine a 3D Mario game by way of Traveller’s Tales Lego games, and you’ll have some idea of the extremely satisfying combination on offer here.

The semi-persistent changes in scenery also do a good job of highlighting the Switch 2’s hardware, which doesn’t seem to drop a single frame, even as the rubble flies and the ground’s shape morphs under Donkey Kong’s persistent punching. That extra hardware power also lends itself to some nice graphical touches, from the mirror-like shine on a pile of golden rubble to the gentle movement of fur that rustles in the breeze.

I get around

Donkey Kong can also pick up chunks of terrain, using them as impromptu melee weapons or hurling them to destroy far-off enemies, obstacles, or key switches. The aiming-and-throwing controls for this terrain-throwing system are just clunky enough to be annoying—this is a far cry from Gears of Donkey Kong or something. Still, the interactions between different types of hurled terrain end up forming the root of many interesting situational puzzles—throwing some snow to harden sections of a harmful lava lake into a solid platform, for instance, or using a chunk of explosive rock to destroy an otherwise impervious spiky enemy.

When you’re not tearing up the scenery to your benefit, simply getting around in Donkey Kong Bananza is a joy. Donkey Kong Country fans will be happy to know the classic roll is back and can be used to help extend jumps or quickly change mid-air direction (a la Cappy from Mario Odyssey). Donkey Kong can also slide along on chunks of terrain in a zippy, madcap land-surfing mode that’s wonderfully difficult to control effectively. The ability to climb along the edge of most surfaces adds a layer to the vertical gameplay dimension that doesn’t rely on precision jumping and which is utilized well to hide some of the game’s more out-of-the-way secrets.

This Kong’s got a funny face… Credit: Nintendo

As the game progresses, you’ll also unlock a handful of animalistic “Bananza” transformations from a menagerie of gigantic animal DJs (don’t ask). These temporarily grant DK new powers—a quick-dashing zebra or a fluttering, hovering ostrich, for instance. The game builds some specific gatekeeping challenges around each transformation, of course, but the extra locomotion options become a welcome part of your toolbelt when simply exploring generic areas.

Running around and smashing up the world isn’t all joy, though. Problems arise when you dig into thick patches of dirt, crafting a narrow, Kong-sized tunnel surrounded by opaque earth. The camera system does its best to deal with these tricky scenarios, making the ground opaque and highlighting only the notable features around you. Still, it’s easy to lose track of where your digging has taken you and how to get back to the surface, especially when the best way out of a jam is to “dig up, stupid.”

Oooh, Banana!

All this terrain destruction and digging is in service of the game’s primary goal: collecting a bunch of giant bananas. These are roughly as plentiful as the Power Moons scattered across Super Mario Odyssey and roughly as varied in their availability. Some sit out in the open, waiting to be stumbled on. Others are hidden in some of the game’s most out-of-the-way underground crevices and practically require the use of collectible in-game treasure maps to find. Many are hidden in elaborate challenge rooms that test your precision platforming, terrain destruction, or combat skills.

Unlike the Power Moons in Mario Odyssey, though, hunting down bananas is largely optional to progress down the succession of elaborate, wide-open, high-ceilinged layers (read: “levels”) on a quest toward the planet’s core. Instead, bananas are primarily used to unlock upgrades in a surprisingly deep skill tree or grant DK more health, more punching power, or longer Bananza transformations. Other collectibles can be used to buy stylish and protective outfits to further increase DK’s endurance.

You’d be forgiven for not believing that these large explorable “layers” are supposed to be underground. Credit: Nintendo

These upgrades provide ample incentive for those who enjoy exploring and dozens of hours of challenges for completionists to delve into after the credits roll. But the game’s structure also allows skillful and/or impatient players to zip to the game’s conclusion quite quickly, rushing through the visually inventive bosses that guard the game’s major chokepoints.

Those who rush, though, may end up struggling with the game’s final gauntlet of challenges, which quickly ramp up the difficulty while re-introducing some classic DK enemies (that we aren’t allowed to say more about at the moment).

Wait, that kid is Pauline?

Thus far, we’ve avoided talking about the ridiculously convoluted plot the game builds around Donkey Kong’s quest for bananas and the evil corporate forces that want to stop his journey deep into the planet’s core. The game’s underground world is populated with all sorts of talking animals, sentient rocks, and familiar Kong faces to assist DK or ask him for help with various ridiculous errands. They’re cute, but their chatter is more or less ignorable.

The reimagined Pauline is an adorable addition to the lineup. Credit: Nintendo

The main exception is Pauline, the damsel-in-distress from the original Donkey Kong, recast here as a precocious child working with DK to find a way back to her home on the surface. Pauline’s effort to overcome inherent stage fright and embrace the magical power of her singing voice was surprisingly touching. That’s largely thanks to a winning voice-acting performance that forms the basis for some toe-tapping gibberish playing behind DK’s Bananza transformations.

The adorable relationship between young Pauline and the silent Donkey Kong is the icing on a very satisfying cake. Even though Mario is nowhere to be seen, Donkey Kong Bananza seems destined to be thought of in the same category as the Mario games that defined earlier Nintendo hardware launches.

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Switch 2 users report online console bans after running personal game “backups”

Backup, gaming, iracy, mig flash, mig switch, Nintendo, Switch, switch 2 / 9u50fv / June 17, 2025

Earlier this week, the makers of the popular Mig Flash cartridge, which allows users to play Switch games loaded via an SD card without modifying the console itself, issued a firmware update enabling the cards to run original Switch games on the Switch 2. Since then, though, multiple Mig Flash users are reporting that they’ve seen their Switch 2 consoles banned from Nintendo’s online servers, even in cases where the devices were only used to run backups of legitimate games the users purchased themselves.

“My Switch 2 test has been banned after using the Mig [Flash] with perfectly legal dumps of my own cartridges, so it would seem that Nintendo can detect something,” popular hacking news account Switch Tools posted on social media Monday (along with a follow-up showing a stack of legitimate Switch games they said they had backed up using the device). “I strongly recommend that you do not use the Mig [Flash], it was already very risky to use but it is even more so on Switch 2.”

My Switch 2 test has been banned, after using the mig switch with perfectly legal dumps of my own cartridges, so it would seem that Nintendo can detect something

Similar reports on reddit are starting to come in.https://t.co/nbPMlRWSaP https://t.co/3eq6dkbFMi

I strongly… pic.twitter.com/btzjQYJzE4

— SwitchTools (@SwitchTools) June 16, 2025

The insistence that the ban came while using “perfectly legal dumps of my own cartridges” is important here. Nintendo has long used certificates with robust cryptographic signatures to identify when individual copies of Switch games are being shared for the purposes of piracy. If Nintendo notices the same cryptographic signature on security certificates being used by hundreds of different consoles and accounts, for instance, the company can be relatively sure that all those users are engaging in piracy.

But the Mig Flash can also be used for backup and play of an individual’s legal Switch game purchases on a personal console, which shouldn’t lead to any such signature conflicts. On the Mig Flash website, the developers of the device say they “only support and guarantee your gaming with your own games backups. This applies to online, too. If you want to play online with the full Mig Flash warranty, you need to use your own dumped backups… Failure to respect this rule might end up in bans from Nintendo online service, which we won’t be held responsible for.”

Switch 2 users report online console bans after running personal game “backups” Read More »

Nintendo Switch 2’s faster chip can dramatically improve original Switch games

gaming, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, nintendo switch 2, Switch, switch 2, Tech / DJ Henderson / June 7, 2025

Link’s Awakening, Switch 1, docked. Andrew Cunningham

It’s pretty much the same story for Link’s Awakening. Fine detail is much more visible, and the 3D is less aliased-looking because the Switch 2 is running the game at a higher resolution. Even the fairly aggressive background blur the game uses looks toned down on the Switch 2.

Link’s Awakening on the Switch 1, docked.

Link’s Awakening on the Switch 2, docked.

The videos of these games aren’t quite as obviously impressive as the Pokémon ones, but they give you a sense of the higher resolution on the Switch 2 and the way that the Switch’s small endemic frame rate hiccups are no longer a problem.

Quiet updates

For the last two categories of games, we won’t be waxing as poetic about the graphical improvements because there aren’t many. In fact, some of these games we played looked ever-so-subtly worse on the Switch 2 in handheld mode, likely a side effect of a 720p handheld-mode image being upscaled to the Switch 2’s 1080p native resolution.

That said, we still noticed minor graphical improvements. In Kirby Star Allies, for example, the 3D elements in the picture looked mostly the same, with roughly the same resolution, same textures, and similar overall frame rates. But 2D elements of the UI did still seem to be aware that the console is outputting a 4K image and are visibly sharper as a result.

Games without updates

If you were hoping that all games would get some kind of “free” resolution or frame rate boost from the Switch 2, that mostly doesn’t happen. Games like Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe and Pokémon Legends Arceus, neither of which got any kind of Switch 2-specific update, look mostly identical on both consoles. If you get right up close and do some pixel peeping, you can occasionally see places where outputting a 4K image instead of a 1080p image will look better on a 4K TV, but it’s nothing like what we saw in the other games we tested.

Pokémon Legends Arceus, Switch 1, docked.

Pokémon Legends Arceus, Switch 2, docked.

However, it does seem that the Switch 2 may help out somewhat in terms of performance consistency. Observe the footage of a character running around town in Pokémon Legends—the resolution, draw distance, and overall frame rate all look pretty much the same. But the minor frame rate dips and hitches you see on the Switch 1 seem to have been at least partially addressed on the Switch 2. Your mileage will vary, of course. But you may encounter cases where a game targeting a stable 30 fps on the Switch 1 will hit that 30 fps with a bit more consistency on the Switch 2.

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