Woot! has a brilliant deal right now on Nintendo's latest handheld gaming console. You can pick up the family-friendly Nintendo Switch 2, along with a free digital game code, for as low as $459 right now if you're a new Woot customer with the SAVETOBER coupon code. If you're not, you can still grab it for $479.

● Check out this deal at Woot

Woot! is Amazon's discount sister site, so you've got the full backing of the huge global retailer behind this deal. $459 is an awesome price for a Switch 2 and a free game, and the good news is, you get to choose the game. Options for you to choose include Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, or Pokémon Pokopia, which you'll need to download straight onto your Switch 2's storage.

This is a limited-time deal, with only four days left to run at the $519 sale price, but the coupon code is expected to run out tomorrow, November 1, at 11:59 pm ET, but don't expect it to be around even that long. This is a popular console, and as we approach the holiday season, this is the time that consoles like these become tricky to buy. With The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time launching in just a few days, expect to see a huge spike in demand for this console, too.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is Nintendo's second generation of its popular Switch console. It has a 7.9-inch 1080p touchscreen, designed for you to hold in your hands. That said, if you prefer the big-screen treatment, it also has a dock that'll let you play games on a TV for 4K gameplay at up to 120 fps. You're also getting Joy-Con 2 controllers, which you can use attached or detached, depending on if the console is docked or not.

There's 256GB of internal storage included here for games, but the Switch 2 does have support for microSD Express cards to boost this further. If you're planning to install a big game collection, a card upgrade might be a good option. Right now, for instance, you can pick up this 512GB Samsung P9 Express microSD card for $99 at Amazon, another limited-time deal that saves you 34% on its usual price.

As we've mentioned, you also get a free digital game with this Switch 2 deal. Buying Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, or Pokémon Pokopia separately would cost you between $69.99 and $79.99 at their usual prices, so with these discounts, you're getting a great deal.

The $459 sale price for this Woot! Nintendo Switch 2 bundle is a great option ahead of the holiday season. Don't expect to be able to wait for a better discount in a few weeks, as this is a popular console, and with a huge release like Ocarina of Time on the way, demand might outstrip supply. Just remember to use coupon code SAVETOBER before 11.59 am ET on November 1 at checkout to get the full $60 discount if you're a new customer, or $40 if you've used Woot! before.

A rare, prototype copy of Pokémon Red for the Nintendo Game Boy, originally released back in 1998, is on sale at auction, with a single bid of $25,000 currently registered so far. This prototype, spotted by Retro Dodo, is "incredibly rare" and features 32KB of readable data. According to the Goldin auction page, the cartridge has been authenticated by specialists at PSA, who examined the card. According to them, while a "complete data read" wasn't possible, the first 32KB of data was, a "technically unique" result. The PSA notes, however, that the game data is otherwise "completely identical" to the U.S. release version of the game, with PSA "expressing confidence" that the rest of the data, if it were readable, would match.

The PSA report does note two changes to the ROM's header data that don't affect the game data. According to PSA, "the difference is at offset 0x014C, which denotes the Mask ROM version and is incorrectly set to 55 when it should be 00. This has the effect of changing offset 0x014D, which is a calculated header checksum, to CB instead of 20."

This prototype development cartridge has a sticker reading DMB-MBC-16M-FLASH, with a part number DMG-(F)KGDB-01. DMB likely refers to Dot Matrix Game, the original internal codename for the Game Boy, while MBC likely means Memory Bank Controller, a custom chip that allowed games to use more than the Game Boy's 32KB ROM limit. 16M likely refers to a 16 megabit limit of flash-writable memory. Retro Dodo notes that the cartridge is longer than a standard Game Boy cartridge, too.

The auction notes that this uses a "previously undocumented" development board, although the DMG-(F)KGDB-01 part number has been seen before. The Rare Gaming Dump wiki, for instance, lists the same part number for a development cartridge from 2000. It, too, had a 16 megabit Sharp flash chip, with U1 FLASH MEMORY printed on the board. Close-up views from the Goldin auction page show an almost identical design, although the wiki entry shows a slightly different DMG-MBC3-16M-FLASH cartridge sticker.

Pokémon Red is a gaming classic that helped kickstart the global Pokémon franchise in the 1990s, along with Green and Blue. Combined with Blue, Pokémon Red is reported to have sold more than 31 million copies. There are several days left to go on this auction, so while the single bidder may secure this piece of gaming history for $25,000, it may sell for an even higher price before the auction process ends.

While Sony remains committed to phasing out physical media, Nintendo is taking the opposite approach. In a recent interview with the Brazilian YouTube channel Coelho no Japão, Bill van Zyll, Nintendo's VP and General Manager for Latin America, confirmed that the company has no plans to abandon cartridges.

"Historically, we’ve been very agnostic, right?" stated van Zyll in the interview.

The Nintendo executive firmly continued, "We go off what the consumer prefers, and take that into account very heavily. We also have a platform that was just launched. We're barely just over a year into NS2. It's got both digital and physical – that capability. There's no plans to ditch physical. We know how much the fans like it as well, so our position has been to be agnostic."

In an era where the gaming industry is rapidly shifting toward digital distribution, it is comforting to see at least some companies still supporting physical media. The core issue with digital purchases is that you do not truly own what you buy; instead, you are purchasing a license to access the game, unlike owning a cartridge or game disc. Some storefronts, such as GOG or itch.io, offer DRM-free downloads of the titles you purchase, but only a handful of them exist.

However, even cartridges cannot completely escape the march toward digitalization. With the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo introduced game-key cards, physical cards that contain a license to download the full game data. Modern AAA game releases have exceeded the storage capacity of traditional cartridges or discs. For instance, Black Myth: Wukong and the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI use this code-in-a-box model.

On the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, cartridges max out at 32GB and 64GB, respectively. That is not much capacity by modern standards, so publishers turn to game-key cards as a compromise for a physical release. Compared with fully digital releases, game-key cards bind the license to the card, so owners can still trade or sell them like normal cartridges.

Owning physical copies can sometimes cost more than going digital, especially for Nintendo’s first-party titles. Effective as of May 2026, physical versions of first-party Nintendo titles sell for $10 more than their digital counterparts. The price increase was due to manufacturing, packaging, and distribution costs for cartridges. However, Nintendo frames the pricing adjustment differently, claiming it lowered digital game prices by $10 to pass the savings on to consumers.

Nintendo has announced plans for the Switch 2 to mirror its predecessor's lifespan, about six to seven years. No one anticipated Sony's decision to phase out game discs, so Nintendo's future remains uncertain, even though the company pledged to continue physical releases. With the Switch 2 launching just last year, we can at least look forward to another six good years of physical media.

Rising component costs have forced every major console maker to raise prices. However, Amazon U.K. has stepped up for Nintendo fans by slashing the Switch 2's retail price by 15%, bringing the console to an all-time low of £354.99. Other U.K. retailers, including Argos, John Lewis, and Smyths Toys, have also followed suit.

• Check out the Nintendo Switch 2 deal on Amazon
• Check out the Nintendo Switch 2 deal on Argos
• Check out the Nintendo Switch 2 deal on John Lewis
• Check out the Nintendo Switch 2 deal on Smyths Toys

The Nintendo Switch 2, which debuted a little over a year ago, originally entered the U.K. retail market at an MSRP of £395.99. Like its competitors, Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo ultimately raised the Switch 2's MSRP to £419.99 just last month due to the memory and storage shortage. This context makes the current offer of £354.99 exceptionally compelling, since you are essentially saving up to 10% off the launch price and up to 15% off the newly adjusted MSRP.

Not only is the Switch 2 available at a fantastic price, but it also opens the door to an unmatched library of franchises and upcoming blockbuster releases. Major titles, including the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and Metroid Ravenous, are set to launch soon, so you can secure your Switch 2 now at an unbeatable price.

If you are a longtime Nintendo fan, you already know that Nintendo rarely offers direct price cuts or holiday discounts on its highly sought-after consoles. It is uncommon to find a Nintendo console priced below the MSRP. Being able to buy the Switch 2 at a record-low price is already a blessing given how recent the handheld console has been on the market. Having a handful of retailers to choose from, including Amazon, Argos, John Lewis, and Smyths Toys, feels like an early Christmas.

There's a brilliant deal to be had on the Nintendo Switch 2 over at Amazon in the UK right now. This family-friendly console has just hit £354.99, which is a new record low price for this retailer, and arguably one of the cheapest prices we've seen for it to date. You'll save £65, or 15%, on this Switch 2 compared to its usual RRP, just before the big sales season starts.

● Check out this deal at Amazon

There are no compromises or hidden catches with this deal, and this item is brand new and sealed, so you're not getting a used return. Amazon is running this as a limited time deal ahead of its Big Deal Days event next week, but there's no guarantee that this deal will last long, so you'd better be quick to secure the console at this price.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is Nintendo's second generation version of the popular Switch. It comes with a 7.9-inch 1080p touchscreen that you can hold in your hands, but it also includes a dock that'll let you play games on a TV for 4K gaming at up to 120 fps. The included Joy-Con 2 controllers can be used attached or detached for flexibility.

You're getting 256GB of internal storage for games, but the Switch 2 does support expansion using microSD Express cards. The more big games you want installed, the more storage you'll need, so picking up a card here might not be a bad idea. A good option is this 256GB Samsung P9 Express microSD card for £73.98, saving you 19% on its usual price.

The £354.99 sale price for the Nintendo Switch 2 is an awesome deal to pick up before Amazon's Big Deal Days event next week. Expect this limited-time deal to sell out fast, though, especially with console purchases ramping up before the Christmas period starts.

Nintendo of America just won a lawsuit against James Williams, who allegedly moderated the r/SwitchPirates subreddit and sold pirated Switch games online. According to Aftermath, the company sued Williams in June 2024 for copyright violations. However, they failed to respond even after several months, so the company asked for and received a default judgement in their favor.

The court is now directing Williams to pay $4.5 million to Nintendo of America for damages and shut down the pirated shops they control. “To effectuate this injunction, Williams shall immediately disable access to all online ‘shops’ that he operates or otherwise controls which have offered to the public extensive libraries of pirated Nintendo Switch games for download,” Washington court clerk Joshua C. Lewis and deputy clerk Natalie Wood said in the default judgement filing.

Williams was reportedly uncovered through an in-depth investigation by the company and its lawyers, which tracked them through their Archbox persona on Reddit. Nintendo then matched the details it found on the social media platform to its internal database and discovered that it was linked to a Nintendo account that had a handheld sent in for repairs. A few days after the unit was returned to Williams’ address, the company sent a cease-and-desist, to which the defendant allegedly replied via email.

Nintendo said in its filing that Williams agreed to comply and cooperate with the company’s demands and requests that are within their control but has since cut-off communications. Because of this, it asked the court for a default judgement in October 2025, which the court finally granted.

Nintendo is known for being litigious when it comes to its intellectual property. The developers of Switch emulator Yuzu settled with Nintendo for $2.4 million in 2024, while the company won a $2 million settlement against a Switch modder making backup devices like the MIG Switch and MIG Dumper last year. It has also successfully applied DMCA strikes on over 400 GitHub repositories hosting Switch emulators earlier this year.

But despite many public wins, Nintendo does not always prevail in its lawsuits. Palworld, which is often described as “Pokémon with guns,” has sold over 5 million copies on Steam, and Nintendo hasn’t filed a copyright lawsuit against the company. Instead, it sued the developers of the game for patent infringement several months after it went viral. The case is still ongoing, but sources say that Nintendo could only expect a maximum payout of $30,000 if it were to win its case.

Nintendo of America got its tariff refund and is using the money to hold a sale, rather than returning it to customers who paid higher-than-expected prices for the Nintendo Switch 2 and accessories. The rare promotion, dubbed the "Customer Appreciation Sale," will run from September 13 to 26 and will offer 30% off digital Switch games, bundles, and "select physical games, downloadable content, accessories, amiibo, and apparel." Discounts will be available in Nintendo Stores and the Nintendo eShop, as well as other participating retailers.

"The Customer Appreciation Sale is our way of saying thank you to Nintendo players for their continued support and is made possible in part by tariff-related refunds," a brief blog post on Nintendo's U.S. website reads. "While Nintendo absorbed most tariff-related costs, the refunds helped make promotions like this one possible."

In a 2026 earnings document, the company stated that it got $300 million in tariff refunds.

Nintendo of America is facing a proposed class action lawsuit from customers who believe the company will be made whole twice: once through raised prices and a second time through the refunds. Sony is facing a similar suit, and in September, Nintendo of America filed a motion to dismiss its suit.

Nintendo was hit hard by the Trump administration's tariffs. Soon after the Switch 2's initial announcement, the company delayed U.S. pre-orders for the console, though the system launched on time. In May, Nintendo raised the price of the Switch 2 by $50 to $499, though that also priced in component shortages and included hikes in Europe and Japan.

In March, Nintendo of America sued the U.S. government in the U.S. Court of International Trade seeking refunds, joining Costco, FedEx, Revlon, and more than 1,000 others. The Supreme Court ruled that large swaths of the tariffs were unlawful, with over $166 billion due back to American businesses. By the end of July, the government had paid $100 billion in refunds.

Most companies seem to be pocketing the refunds, even though costs were typically passed on to American consumers. In August, Panic, which makes the handheld Playdate focused on indie games, refunded tariffs to customers.

Nintendo just aired one of the most important Directs of the Switch 2 generation, showcasing the upcoming Ocarina of Time remake in all its glory. The presentation also brought along the announcement of the first special edition Switch 2 hardware: The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition. The console costs $519.99, but there's also an identically themed Pro Controller for $99.99 that you can pre-order right now — either item ships later this year on October 29.

• Pre-order The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition Switch 2
• Pre-order The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition Pro Controller
• Pre-order The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Edition Carrying Case

The company's first handheld to be adorned in special edition Zelda makeup was the Game Boy Advance SP released in 2004 alongside The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. The first home console to receive the same treatment was The Wind Waker HD edition of the Wii U in 2013. Most recently, we got a Tears of the Kingdom-themed Switch OLED in 2023, followed by the Hyrule Edition of the Switch Lite next year.

Across every handled and home console released, The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary special edition Switch 2 will be the 12th piece of Zelda-themed hardware Nintendo has put out. Moreover, it took the original Switch just a few months to get its first limited-edition hardware (Monster Hunter XX Special Pack), but the Switch 2 has clearly taken its time with this design, and it's sure to be a collector's item.

The tablet itself is mostly the same boring black except for a few golden triangles at the back. However, the Joy-Cons feature a beautiful green design with a Tri-Force symbol on the left. The dock is a gorgeous, two-tone golden and black color with a very bold Tri-Force theme across the front and some easter eggs on the back. Even the packaging is supposed to have textured foil cover art. The console will retail for $520 and does not come with any game.

Alongside the console, there's a Switch 2 Pro Controller that looks very similar to the Joy-Cons, with a green and gold theme that combines elements of the Triforce with a crest emblem. It comes as is for $100, but you can also get it with a subtly themed display stand for $110. Finally, there's also a $40 carrying case adorned with Zelda illustrations. You even get a custom, green-colored microfiber cloth inside and a screen protector.

• Pre-order The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (remake)

Keep in mind that all of this hardware celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Zelda franchise, which already passed earlier this year. It has nothing to do with the upcoming Ocarina of Time remake and, as such, the game is not included in the $520 limited edition Switch 2. Pre-orders for all the items discussed above are open, and they will be released on October 29, 2026. The Ocarina of Time remake drops next month, on November 19, 2026, and will be sold separately for $60.

Grand Theft Auto V came out in late 2013 for PS3 and Xbox 360 before it was ported to eighth-gen consoles. Despite running on seventh-gen hardware, Rockstar never released it on the Nintendo Switch. Fast forward 13 years later and modders have done Rockstar's job for them. An unofficial Homebrew port of GTA V is now available for the Switch, and it runs natively on the hardware at roughly 30 FPS. You do need a jailbroken device, and it needs to be overclocked in order for the game to be playable.

The port is developed by Paralympics Productions and is based on the leaked source code from 2023. That source code allowed modders to reverse-engineer the game logic and recompile it for Arm, allowing it to run natively on the Switch's Tegra X1 SoC. That means GTA V can technically also run on Android, and sure enough, Paralympics' Discord server teases that an Android port is coming soon.

The Discord server is also where you'll find all the necessary resources required to make this work. There are four key components: a package builder, an asset converter tool, modified config files, and a specific folder layout. They work together to patch the original GTA V files, construct an executable (.NSP), and make the game data compatible with Switch's Horizon OS.

Obviously, we can't detail the entire process here, but it's relatively straightforward, and you'll find detailed guides, including a video tutorial, on the Discord. There are a few bugs to look out for, but personally we did not face any during installation. You can skip all the work and just download the already-prepped archive from Switch piracy sites, too, which is around 50GB.

Once everything is set up, you transfer the NSP to a jailbroken Switch running custom firmware, along with the modified game files, and open GTA V like you would any other game. It's kind of surreal at first, but it boots up and runs directly on the console without any emulation overhead. The load times are alright; it doesn't heat up the handheld like crazy, and battery drain was similar to any other demanding title.

Despite that, the performance is quite wonky because the Tegra X1 inside is dated and thermally constrained. You'll get between 10-25 FPS depending on exactly what Switch model you have and the silicon lottery. To get a more stable experience that mostly locks the framerate at 30 FPS, you'll need to overclock your Switch. It's easy enough to do so through sys-clk, and you can create different profiles for handheld, docked, and charging modes.

We tried moderate overclocks across the CPU, GPU and memory on a Switch OLED, and were able to run the game at a "smooth" 30 FPS as long as there wasn't too much action going around. The moment a bunch of NPCs pop up in a mission, or there's an explosion, for instance, the framerate dips quite aggressively. The controls also felt weighty since Joy-Cons aren't suited for precise movement, so the portable experience might be a bit compromised.

Plenty of folks online have gone past the starting mission and explored the open world, too. There are no issues with save states, and the game runs surprisingly well considering the Switch's stature. Keep in mind that the source code making this possible comes from GTA V Legacy in particular, which is the PS4, Xbox One, and PC version. The PS3/Xbox 360 version of the game did not leak, or else scaling down the logic to fit within the Switch's 4GB memory buffer would've been far easier.

Those consoles only shipped with 512MB of unified RAM. Instead, the modders had to deal with high-resolution PC assets that needed to be heavily compressed first. The modified config files mentioned earlier throttle settings like draw distances and particle counts, so the PC engine code doesn't instantly melt the Switch. At the end, the Homebrew port performs similarly to the PS3/Xbox 360 versions of the game.

Paralympics Productions has already put out a few patches that improve performance, with more to come down the line, especially once the Android port rolls around. You can already emulate GTA V on Android phones through apps like GameHub and Winlator that translate x86 instructions into Arm. That will run much better if you have a flagship (Snapdragon) phone from the past few years. You can even emulate this Homebrew port through a Switch emulator if you want to enjoy twice the overhead.

It feels like the emulation and modding community across the entire handheld space is going through a renaissance. Ever since the Steam Deck lit the spark, these developers have made the impossible seem possible. People used to wonder why GTA V never came out on the original Switch (the answer is GTA: Online) up until literally weeks ago, and now we have the game running natively on an almost decade-old device that was underpowered even at the time it came out.

This does not suddenly mean that the Switch 2 can run GTA VI. For the PS5/Xbox Series version of the game, you'll need a potential Switch 3 if we follow a similar trajectory. More importantly, though, Rockstar's stance towards Nintendo in general has changed, and that plays a much bigger role in getting GTA VI on Nintendo hardware one day as opposed to just the capabilities of the silicon.

A family from Pierce County in Washington, Seattle, claims that thieves broke into their home and stole a haul of retro Nintendo hardware worth more than $50,000. Amongst other items taken, Fox13 reports the perps made off with more than 850 NES games, collected by the family over the span of some forty years.

According to the report, the thieves simply forced entry to the home by breaking in through the front door. The stricken family told the outlet that it appeared the thieves knew the layout of their home, targeting the master bathroom and making off with a tennis bracelet, amongst other things.

"They’ve been in our home. They know our home layout. They’ve been in our master bathroom. They took my wife’s tennis bracelet," Roger Holler said. The prize haul, however, seems to have been the aforementioned bundle of retro video games.

Holler told the outlet he had begun collecting Nintendo games from 1984, and had spent some 30 years "driving around on the weekends from game store to game store." Holler's son reportedly said the father and son duo would spend up to 10 hours on car journeys, collecting and cleaning the cartridges.

All in all, the collection amounted to 850 NES games, some of which are said to have been worth a small fortune. An image from the report shows five games that appear to be from the collection, likely not worth more than $25 a piece as loose cartridges. They are:

• The Legend of Kage (1987)
• Ice Climber (1985)
• Raid on Bungeling Bay (1987)
• Rygar (1987)
• Donkey Kong 3 (1986)

Depending on the condition and the game, NES titles can indeed fetch astonishing amounts of cash in today's retro market. One lucky scavenger recently discovered a collection of 97 untouched Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. cartridges, thought to be worth $10,000 each. In 2024, an ultra-rare NES Gold Nintendo World Championships cartridge sold for $207,400.

Given the stated value of the stolen collection, Holler told the outlet that it "was going to be my grandkids' inheritance or college tuition." Beyond the financial value, Holler lamented the loss of decades of family history.

Nintendo has just issued DMCA takedowns against seven GitHub repositories hosting Switch emulation code, leading to 401 affected repos being removed from the platform. Most of these belonged to a single parent repo of the Suyu emulator, which itself is a fork of the previously shut down Yuzu emulator. Nintendo leveraged GitHub policies to their fullest extent to execute its notice, arguing that emulators inherently rely on circumventing anti-piracy protections built into Switch games.

TorrentFreak reports that this was a coordinated campaign by Nintendo as it filed seven different strikes on the same day. GitHub has a rule that says if a parent repo contains more than 100 forks, then the platform will not look at each one individually but rather remove the entire network. Suyu had 311 of these repos under its parent, so all of them were wiped off the map. Suyu was born in 2024, picking up after Yuzu following a lawsuit against its creators, Tropic Haze, that ended in a settlement.

Besides Suyu, the Android-based Skyline emulator was also affected in this campaign, but it has already been defunct for the past three years. It's not based on Yuzu, so it stands out in this lineup. Skyline devs actually stopped development in 2023, fearing legal repercussions, so the source code has remained dormant, but it did have 29 independent forks under the parent repo. Since it's an open-source project, anyone can iterate on it and publish their own versions.

Similarly, Yuzu Android, another fork of Yuzu was also struck with a DMCA notice that took down 8 forks under it. NicholasArvani's Yuzu fork had a network of 14 repos that were removed. A repo focusing on an early access build of Yuzu with 21 forks was taken down as well. Finally, MonoNX and its 17 forks, along with the parent repo of the main Yuzu emulator, were hit by Nintendo, too. These repos now link to the seven DMCA notices Nintendo sent to them, as visible in the sidebar, while their forks may return a 404 error.

The reasoning for the takedown is tied to piracy, with the company saying these emulators "illegally circumvent Nintendo's TPM in order to run illegal copies of Nintendo Switch games." Switch games require cryptographic keys upon every boot to verify the authenticity of the title, and emulators rely on a ripped-off prod.keys file to bypass this failsafe at runtime. Nintendo argues that, therefore, these keys are used to play pirated games instead of legally acquired ones.

The company lists two previous court cases as justification. The first one is its settlement with Tropic Haze — the devs behind Yuzu — and the second one is a default judgment against streamer EveryGameGuru who streamed pirated copies of Switch games ahead of their release using emulators. According to Nintendo, both convictions prove that merely providing the tools that lead to piracy also constitutes illegal trafficking since they rely on circumventing the company's TPM.

Keep in mind that neither case actually set a legal precedent because they weren't contested rulings where a judge interpreted the law; there was no verdict. Tropic Haze decided to settle, and EveryGameGuru failed to appear in front of a court entirely, granting Nintendo a victory by forfeiture. Still, the outcome of either case sets a strong legal blueprint on which the Japanese game company stands today as it tries to warp the legal precedent surrounding emulation as a whole.

YouTuber Kouzex has transplanted the internals of a pair of Joy-Con 2 controllers into two original Wii Remote shells, producing motion controllers that snap magnetically onto a Switch 2 and work in every game. The build keeps only five parts from each Joy-Con 2: the motherboard, thumbstick, magnetic rail, battery, and HD rumble motor, while the Wii Remote's circuit board stays in place to handle its buttons. KOUZEX tested the result in Mario Kart World, Super Mario Galaxy, and Nintendo Switch Sports, and said he'll use the pair for Nintendo Switch Sports Resort when it launches in October.

The left (blue) unit has its thumbstick where the Wii Remote's A button used to be, and the right (red) unit has the stick in the old speaker cutout. The Joy-Con 2 stick's ribbon cable is too short to reach either spot, so KOUZEX harvested the stick connector from a dead first-generation Joy-Con, which uses the same connector type, and soldered individual wire extensions to each pin before potting the joints in UV resin.

The battery and rumble motor cables required the same treatment. Fitting the rail, Joy-Con board, and battery into the Wii Remote's thicker rear section required removing three of the shell's four screw posts, so the magnets in the rail now hold the case together when the controller is docked. There's now no release button, so you pull the controllers off by hand, and the two Wii Remotes no longer work with a Wii.

The D-pad and minus button wire directly to their Wii Remote equivalents, Home maps to Capture, Plus to one shoulder button, and the rear B trigger to R, with buttons 1 and 2 serving as B and A when the unit is held sideways. An attempt to drive the Wii Remote's four blue player LEDs from the Joy-Con 2's power circuit failed, which he attributed to blue LEDs requiring a higher voltage than the green LEDs the Joy-Con 2 uses.

The thumbsticks are epoxied only around their outer frame so they can be replaced if they drift, a deliberate choice given that Nintendo confirmed the Joy-Con 2 doesn't use Hall effect sticks and iFixit's teardown from June last year found the same potentiometer design as the original Switch. The 18mm Joy-Con 2 sticks and magnetic attachment were among the changes we examined when testing the console. KOUZEX credited Shank Mods, whose 2020 GameCube Joy-Con build used a similar approach, as inspiration.

Nintendo has released NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube-style controllers for the Switch family but never a Wii Remote, and the Switch 2 can't pair with the original controller despite both using Bluetooth.

On February 6, Nintendo's support site briefly listed a page titled "Nintendo Switch 2: Wii Remote" with no product details, as reported by My Nintendo News; the page was later removed. Nintendo Classics added Super Mario Sunshine to its GameCube library on August 13 but still has no Wii titles, and Switch Sports Resort, the first new entry in the Wii Sports line for Switch 2, is built around Joy-Con 2 motion and mouse input across 12 sports.

A Nintendo DS game that was classified as ‘lost media’ for nearly two decades is currently within tantalizing reach of video gaming fans and archivists. All the fans need is about $9,100, and no rival bidders on an eBay auction for an ultra-rare, perhaps one-of-a-kind, development cartridge thought to contain the PokePark Fishing Contest DS minigame.

Japanese game archaeology enthusiast Yoshino @ Federation (renpou.com) shared details of the eBay auction and its significance to their tens of thousands of social media followers.

So, what’s the deal with PokePark Fishing Contest DS, and why is it ultra-rare or even classified as ‘lost media?’ This fishing mini-game was lost for several reasons. Firstly, it was a download-only title. Secondly, its distribution was limited to those attending a short-lived Pokémon theme park venue in Japan (PokePark 2005). It also eluded archivists because it would be removed from a DS handheld when it was powered off, or after a 12-hour limit, whichever triggered first.

The eBay listing shows a large development and testing cartridge, front and back. There’s also an image showing the cartridge working. However, the on-DS-screen proof of viability is limited to “a Japanese-language screen indicating a high-score ranking communication program.”

The Germany-located seller, catbearpaws, says the cart was acquired as part of a private lot, and is selling the hardware as-is, with no promises regarding functionality, compatibility, or provenance. Catbearpaws has a 100% selling record and is asking for bids starting at €7,999 ($9,100), with less than three days left to run. They also may accept offers via the eBay Make Offer button/process.

Our machine-translated version of the eBay listing screen content appears to confirm that this is indeed a dev cart that was used for hosting “PokePark Fishing Contest DS” assets of some kind. Whether a playable version of the game can be downloaded, transmitted, or extracted from this hardware remains to be seen. As mentioned, the seller isn’t guaranteeing anything about this expensive but potentially important retro gaming artifact.

The Peaceful Outcome, a retro gaming solutions provider, has announced an SSD upgrade kit for the Wii U, allowing owners to increase the storage on their console from 8GB or 32GB to 1TB or higher. You get the kit for $21.99 on the TPO shop. It lets you internally attach a SATA or NVMe M.2 drive of various sizes so you can directly load your games on your Wii U without needing an external drive or to swap out DVDs. It also comes with a USB port that lets you transfer files to your SSD without needing to disassemble your console again.

You can already get a 3.5-inch SATA hard drive mounting kit at the same price (or a 2.5-inch kit for $17.99), but TPO said that it created the M.2 version for longevity reasons. It also noted that SSDs won’t give you a significant performance boost on the Wii U — an SSD loads just 7.5% faster than the DVD drive and 6% quicker compared to a hard drive — but it does give you more space to save your games on the console. TPO said that this does not offer any performance uplifts versus SATA drives, but it created this anyway because of easier M.2 NVMe drive availability in the future.

Note that this isn’t a straightforward upgrade — first, you have to provide your own drive, which could be one of the best SSDs you can get today or one that you already have lying around at home, and then you’ll need to break open your console to install the kit. This is the easy (and most expensive, given current storage pricing) part. Once done, you’ll need to hack into your console so that it can use the custom Aroma firmware. While there’s a complete guide on how to install it, it’s not without risk, as there’s a small chance that you could brick your device during the process.

If you’ve previously purchased a drive upgrade kit from TPO in the past, you could get updated parts to upgrade your current kit at shipping cost. All you need to do is upgrade the firmware on your interposer board, and you should be good to go.

While the Nintendo Wii U already accepts external drives, installing this upgrade kit will give your console more storage without needing to have a bulky drive hanging outside it all the time. This upgrade is more for aesthetics, but if you’re willing to accept the risk of (or already have) homebrew software, then finding a way to have a “permanent” storage upgrade on your Wii U is a no-brainer.

In the modern age, password cracking is an activity that generally begets quite powerful hardware, usually high-powered GPUs. Hashing algorithms have gotten trickier, and brute-forcing them has become computationally expensive. It's only natural, then, that a new software project has come up to port the common hashcat cracking utility to the mighty... Gameboy Advance (GBA).

The gba-hashcat software is the brainchild of security engineer solstICE (Ice), to whom the question of "why" is seemingly answered with "why not." Running on an original GBA, the app can power through SHA256 hashes at 727 h/s. At that rate, the author estimates that one year's worth of gba-hashcat would be equivalent to one second of a modern GPU-accelerated rig.

The GBA's main processor is an ARM7TDMI chip, a 32-bit RISC affair clocked at all of 16.8 MHz. It connected to most of its data buses and memory on a 16-bit bus, though, and the machine only carried 288 KB of RAM, plus 98 KB of VRAM. Most password-cracking software makes use of precomputed tables to help speed the repeated attempts along, but given that standard GBA cartridges are limited to 32 MB in size, all that Ice could include was the ignis-1M (one million) word list that rings in at 8 MB.

The software itself is quite small, given that Ice made good use of the Butano engine, a library that allows developers to easily write GBA games using plain C++ code. The gba-hashcat user interface is quite sparse, showing only an intro screen, progress statistics, and the current password attempt. It's not like you need much more for this application, save perhaps for a "please be patient" message.

In the GitHub commit, Ice calls gba-hashcat "[their] dumbest app of all time." That's quite the statement, but X commenters were quick to request networking support so they could make a cluster of password-cracking Gameboys, an idea that may have merit considering the price of graphics cards these days. At any rate, joke all you want, but for the one really important password retrieval I was once tasked with — recovering access to an Excel payroll sheet — even the original Gameboy would have sufficed. The password was "123".

A new Nintendo Switch dock shell has been designed to mimic the sleek undulating curves of the classic Nintendo 64 (N64). Dubbed the 64BITDOCK, this Switch accessory kit can be bundled with an 'N64 cart' that will help you keep your Switch Game Cards tidy. The 64BITDOCK is available now direct from the maker on Etsy, priced from $89.

In the assorted images of the 64BITDOCK from Nintendo Switch accessories specialist Krasivoe, you can see that the ‘N64’ cradles the Switch (Nintendo Switch / Switch 2 / LCD / OLED) horizontally, so the upper curves of the ‘N64’ are uninterrupted. Pleasingly, the ‘N64’ cart slot is actually useful here as a Nintendo Switch Game Card silo if you buy the optional magnetically secured storage receptacle (with 6 slots).

● Check out this product on Etsy

This is a cosmetic kit for your original Switch Dock

The 64BITDOCK is basically a snap-on cladding kit for your existing original Switch Dock. What you are buying is a set of “custom plates inspired by the iconic 64-bit console… [which] snap onto your Switch dock in seconds, transforming it into a nostalgic centerpiece while keeping all sides open to prevent overheating.”

The Krasivoe 64BITDOCK is available in light grey and ‘original’ charcoal finishes, with matching Game Card storage receptacles. For the dock plates alone, the Etsy store asks $89. If you want a Game Card cartridge holder, the price rises to $103. Worldwide shipping is $6.99.

This isn’t Krasivoe’s first retro-inspired Switch Dock makeover kit. It also sells the 8BITDOCK, 16BITDOCK, and CUBEDOCK. Fans of retro Nintendo consoles will surely know what those look like.

The market is overflowing with Nintendo Switch docks, so Krasivoe has cannily sought to offer some eye-catching differentiation in the form of this 64BITDOCK. Its $89 starting price is quite a premium offering, though, as it doesn’t even include docking hardware – it’s just a cosmetic 3D-printed shell for your original Nintendo Switch Dock. We see that you can get basic, fully functional Switch docks from $20 or $30 on Amazon, with original ‘toaster’ style replacements priced at about $40.