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It's been over a year since the last major update but I hope it's been worth the wait!

GB Studio 4.2.0 includes over 180 changes, improvements, new features, and bug fixes, making it the biggest release so far.

Available today at: chrismaltby.itch.io/gb-studio

YouTube video by Design Room Sound Fantasy Beat Hopper gameplay demo

If 3D Hopper fans care they should be with me asking for Sound Fantasy to be on Nintendo Classics
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBQX...

i've sort of always vaguely considered myself a retro game person, and the bits i've dipped into the retro game world online over the years have been my biggest & most visceral experience of "the moment you believe you are escaping ideology is the moment you are living within ideology" i've ever had

I say this with zero irony: if you are even tangentially a part of a retro video game community, it is your civic duty to push back against this company and shun anyone who doesn't. This is fascism tapping gently at the door and as soon as you let it in, it's going to invite its friends.

So after several years of investigation, it seems there really is no source of funding for Game Boy homebrew, except for the recently established you-know-who.

I don't really see much room for competitors. So my advice would be to not look for funding from a third party, do it yourself.

Toshio Iwai's journey from Sound Fantasy to Electroplankton We profile the artist behind two of Nintendo's attempts at making experimental music games in the '90s and early 2000s -- one a canceled Super Famicom game based on musical insects, and the other a Ni...

Next up in our music game series: a big profile of Sound Fantasy and Electroplankton creator Toshio Iwai, based on a three-hour call with @radishgames.com.

Also in the main story: archival photos showing the packaging for Iwai’s canceled Super Famicom game Sound Fantasy.

I have some hope for a Game & Watch - Nintendo Classics now. Not because the museum (they have presence but that’s expected) but because how they have been showing them almost daily in the Nintendo Today app.

(Although an argument could be that showing them in the app is how much they care)

Oh! I missed this info back then. I remember the Virtual Boy demo at the museum as non interactive, so I always assumed it was just a video like the Labo VR one with Mario Tennis.

A quote from Shigeru Miyamoto: It was the kind of toy to get you excited and make you think, “This is what we can do now!” I imagined it as something that people who were on the lookout for new entertainment or who could afford to spend a bit of money could buy and enjoy even if the price was a little expensive. But the world treated it like a successor to the Game Boy system.

Interesting Iwata Asks from around the Nintendo 3DS launched. Miyamoto, Iwata and Itoi talk about the failure (or not) of the Virtual Boy.

The comments about it being an expensive toy and not a gaming platform seem appropriate given the recent news.

www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Iwata-...

Ah, of course! I misunderstood. They can adjust the rendering to the size of the screen to work with the devices.

I don’t think they’ll be putting nfc chips or anything that the console can read to identify it in the cardboard (or even the plastic) device. Maybe some magnets or something clever that might do the trick but not sure about that tbh.

An image of Labo VR cardboard headset

An image of the Virtual Boy for Switch cardboard model

I guess we’ll see. But from the images they look quite similar.

Will the Labo VR work with it? 🤔

Even if the cardboard is very cheap requiring the device felt off. Isn’t as much the need that the device will be useless if you don’t pay for NSO (still a nice on the shelf) but most of those games are perfectly fine without the 3D effect so I want to play them on the tv or sofa comfortably!

Making Sense of MAGA An ideological roadmap to help you understand the madness.

If you read one thing today, make sure it’s this truly excellent piece from @asharangappa.bsky.social

That Venn diagram is everything.

asharangappa.substack.com/p/making-sen...

piracy is a morally correct choice in a world where prices increase in inverse relativity to job prospects. you deserve access to culture no matter what side of the poverty line you're on. buy a used video game console and jailbreak it, learn to torrent, install soulseek. art is for everyone

"I'm gonna dump all my pent up angst and infodump material into a blog post about Itch/payment processing" I say to myself. It ends up like a million words, oops.

but well, I got it out of my brain: voidfox.com/blog/payment...

Slightly off topic, but: There hasn’t been any indication that the game boy emulator might have support for the camera cart (via usb camera) in the future, right?

GB Camera might be too weird to release 😅

Stop Killing Games made it to 100% required signatures.

Now, I'd like to make it perfectly clear: If you have not signed, yet or know someone who hasn't: DO IT NOW!

The more buffer the petition has, the better!

www.stopkillinggames.com

European Citizens' Initiative Give your support !

if you're in Europe PLEASE consider signing the Stop Destroying Games initiative. the deadline is July 31st 2025. it aims to create legislation for publishers to stop killing the games you pay for and to provide an end-of-life plan for live-service products. thanks!

eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#...

This rules for a lot of reasons, but especially because it dispels the myths that A.) old games were never political and B.) games like this are just stories, they aren't "about" anything. Should serve as a reminder to anyone writing about games why we should be close reading 'em.

PlayNews by pautomas A news reader for Playdate

And if you’re looking to read your favourite news websites and blogs on your Playdate, check PlayNews!

pautomas.itch.io/playnews

How does ROLLBACK NETCODE work, why is it so difficult to program, and why is it the gold standard for fighting games? A whirlwind tour of different solutions #pixelart #gamedev #AnimationVERSUS

The setup: you have a video game with couch co-op and want to add online multiplayer. Easy, right...?

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Phew! 44 fonts for GB Studio and retro dev! A variety of styles and sizes and with .ttf files too!
2bitcrook.itch.io/44-game-boy-...
#pixelart #gbstudio

The Balatro Timeline — LocalThunk It’s been approximately 3 years since I began work on Balatro - and in that time I have personally documented almost nothing about the journey. This is something that has bothered me since the game la...

I've had parts of this written down for a while - but I thought it was about time to document the detailed version of what happened during Balatro development

localthunk.com/blog/balatro...