If you visited arcades in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, you surely remember the golden age of beat-em-up games. Cabinets like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, X-Men and more followed a fairly simple formula: take a popular franchise and have its characters cut through swaths of bad guys, throw in some environmental challenges to keep the levels from getting too repetitive, and top it off with a big boss battle at the end. But the real draw was multiplayer — these games let four or even six friends (or strangers) play simultaneously, a totally chaotic but thrilling shared experience.

Given the popularity of the TMNT franchise, it’s no surprise that both the original arcade game and its sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time were both ported to the NES and SNES, respectively. As a pre-teen, my best friend and I spent untold hours playing these ports, as well as the arcade games on the too-rare occasions that we could get to the mall.

I clearly have a lot of nostalgia for these games, and I’m not alone. Last year, developer Tribute Games announced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, a brand-new beat-em-up title inspired by the arcade games of yesteryear. The game features retro pixel-art, two different game modes, online and local multiplayer (up to six players online), and seven playable characters, including the four turtles, Master Splinter, April O’Neil and Casey Jones. On the surface, it seems to have everything you could ask for in a modern version of an arcade classic, and Tribute’s comments prior to the game’s release showed a deep love for the source material.

After a week playing Shredder’s Revenge on the Xbox Series S, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch, I can confirm that Tribute absolutely nailed its mission of bringing the classic TMNT experience into the modern era. It all starts with the art style and music, both of which are spot-on for this franchise; it feels like a natural evolution of the original two arcade games, both of which were largely based on the 1987 cartoon (rather than the comic books, live-action films, or more recent animated shows). The music immediately sets the tone – the score by Tee Lopes immediately brings to mind classic 16-bit tunes, Mike Patton performs the opening theme, and Raekwon and Ghostface Killah contribute as well. While the music isn’t quite as compelling as the soundtrack from Turtles in Time (which is an absolute banger), it evokes the essential mood of playing in an arcade with your friends in the early ‘90s.

The gameplay essentials from earlier games are all intact here — each playable character has different strengths and weaknesses like range and speed, but they’re not so different that you’ll feel thrown by switching players. The core gameplay is still mostly accomplished with two buttons: attack and jump.

Tribute

But, there are a lot more moves than in earlier games, including a variety of throws, slides, aerial attacks and dodges. Dashing lets you pull off different slide and charge attacks, you can grab enemies and throw them right towards the TV screen (just like you do in Turtles in Time), there’s a dodge button that lets you dance out of trouble and there are a host of different aerial moves. And unlike older games, Shredder’s Revenge has unique animations for every move each character in the game can pull off. Even though gameplay between each character isn’t radically different, the distinct visuals for all four turtles and their friends keeps things looking fresh.

As with any good beat-‘em-up, each character has their own special move, too. Unlike in old arcade games, where using a special would usually take a chunk out of your health, these moves are tied to a power bar that fills up as you string together longer and longer hit combos. When it’s full, you can unleash a special move or save it for later use. It’s a good way to make it so players can’t just use special attacks constantly and adds a bit of strategy to the otherwise chaotic melee.

Another way Tribute makes Shredder’s Revenge feel more modern is the game’s story mode. You’ll be able to level up your character over time, which unlocks more health, extra lives and new special attacks. You’ll also eventually get the ability to stack multiple special moves — when you fill up your bar and bank one move, you can keep filling it up and hold two and eventually three in reserve — or you can blow all three at once in a frenzied super-attack. Story mode also lets you re-enter levels to find hidden items or meet the achievement goals for each stage (things like take out 10 enemies with a special attack, or make it through without taking damage). And you can switch your character between levels, rather than stay locked to one turtle for the entire game.

Arcade mode, on the other hand, is for old-school fans who want a tougher challenge. The game is simple: pick a character, and fight through all of the game’s dozen-plus levels before you run out of lives and continues. You get the advantage of having your health bar extended to its max capacity and all your special moves are unlocked — but given the number of stages in this game, it won’t be easy, especially on the intense “gnarly” difficulty level.

Tribute

This all makes for a fun single-player experience, but — just like the arcade games from the ‘90s — Shredder’s Revenge really shines in multiplayer mode. You can have up to four player on local co-op, or an insane six-players online. It’s a glorious amount of chaos, but it’s managed surprisingly well. The game scales up in difficulty depending on how many people you’re playing with; that usually just amounts to more enemies and bosses that can take more damage.

Unfortunately, cross-play isn’t supported for now — Xbox and PC players can team up, but PlayStation and Switch players will need to play the same version as their friends if they want to work together. The good news is that it’s also not hard to get a game going with strangers. It’s not quite as much fun as playing with people you know, but the game definitely feels more alive when you have at least a pair taking on Shredder and the Foot clan.

This all adds up to a game that’s a lot more fun to play than even I expected. Nostalgia goes a long way, but Shredder’s Revenge manages to work as a love letter to games of the past while still feeling fresh. There’s just something incredibly satisfying about teaming up with a few friends and mowing down a never-ending swarm of enemies; that was true in the ‘90s, and it’s still true today.

Of course, it helps if you have some affection for the TMNT franchise, but even if you don’t, the tight gameplay, addictive soundtrack and great co-op features should be enough to enjoy Shredder’s Revenge. And if you grew up playing the arcade games or their home console counterparts, this new adventure is a must-play. That’s especially true if you have friends to play it with, either IRL or online.

The following article discusses spoilers for The Elysian Kingdom.

There’s a genre of writing best embodied by the serial escalation of premises found on forum threads in certain corners of the internet. It’s the sort of energy that imbues this week’s Strange New Worlds as it takes a one-episode detour into a fantasy parody. Not content with dropping the crew into a swords-and-sorcery romp, they’re all tasked with playing against type! Oh, and the only people who can save them is an awkward buddy-cop duo of the noble Doctor and the grouchy engineer! Shut this off five minutes or so before the ending and this could easily be the second best episode of the show’s first season.

The Elysian Kingdom is both the episode’s title, and the subject of the book Dr. M’Benga has been reading to his terminally ill daughter Rukiya throughout the series. She’s annoyed by the ending, which requires the noble king to choose what thing he’s willing to give up at the conclusion of the story. M’Benga tells her, when he’s cured her, she can rewrite the story any which way she chooses. And before you can say gee, that foreshadowing was a bit on the nose, the Enterprise gets caught up in the nebula it’s been studying, unable to move.

By the time the doctor gets to the bridge, the ship has been covered in tapestries and ye olde tiki torches. Everyone bar him (and, as it turns out, Hemmer), has been mind-wiped into becoming characters from the book. Pike is a cowardly courtier, La’an is a comedy Disney princess, Uhura is the big villain and Spock is an evil wizard with a Fabio wig and two-day stubble that reminds us all Ethan Peck is, in fact, hot under that goofy Vulcan haircut.

Marni Grossman / Paramount+

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Star Trek lean into its often-denied campy side and, as I’ve said before, it’s a groove Strange New Worlds works well in. The fact the series feels confident enough to do this just eight episodes into its first run speaks volumes about how the creative team are doing. (You just know there’s a whiteboard in the writers’ room with Musical Episode(?) written up top, and I’m here for it.) If there’s a downside, it’s that the ensemble is big enough that some actors get short-changed in their moments to play out of character. Of course, none of this would work without Babs Olusanmokun’s central performance to hold the story together, aware of the ridiculousness of the situation but remaining true to M’Benga’s inner turmoil.

Of course, I wouldn’t be writing about Strange New Worlds if there wasn’t also a small list of annoyances. The tone reminds me a lot of Futurama’s glorious M*A*S*H parody with iHawk, the robot with a Maudlin / Irreverent switch on his side. This episode wants the switch to be jammed at both ends, mixing high camp with a meditation on, uh, something.

We must now talk about the ending, (again, spoiler warning) which is such a weird left turn that it makes my scalp feel itchy just thinking about it. The denouement of the episode sees the sentient nebula offer to take Rukiya off the ship and cure her illness, allowing her to live a life of fantasy in the stars. She appears, moments later, as an adult, telling her father about her life and reassuring him he made the right decision to let her go. Suitably resolved, he’s back at work minutes later.

Marni Grossman / Paramount+

Sorry, it doesn’t sit right. I can understand the notion of giving up your kid to save their life, and parents have thrown kids from burning buildings on that basis. But the idea he’d make that decision in about half a minute’s conversation with a sentient space cloud with unclear motives? M’Benga has spent the whole season so far working to find a cure for Rukiya, and was even given a promising lead just two weeks back. This storyline has been seeded through enough of the series that this feels like it’s the creative team course-correcting.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the abruptness of this is the resolution of a production problem. My guess is that nobody realized just how quickly children age, making it difficult for Sage Arrindell to play a child trapped in temporal stasis. It’s the reason Malcolm David Kelly left Lost at the end of its first season: You can’t pretend everyone has spent just 40 days on the island if the kid visibly ages a year since they shot the pilot. (I assume, too, the episode was shot on the standing Enterprise sets as a way of saving cash for the finale unless those gorgeous period costumes rinsed through the show’s substantial budget.)

Alternatively, the writers planned this out and it was always meant to be something that resolved itself within the first season. In that case, I’m forced to wonder who in the world thought that a father just handing over his kid in such an arbitrary fashion was a smart emotional beat. Unless it’s one of those situations where more emphasis was placed on the surprise of it, rather than the logic, narratively or emotionally. To me, it feels a bit like yet another Strange New Worlds episode where, much as I want to offer praise, there’s always something that leaves me a bit cold.

Spotify has expanded its old Concert Hub and added more features to make it easier to find information and tickets for live events in your location. The streaming service sources listings for the hub, now called Live Events Feed, from its ticketing partners that include Ticketmaster, AXS, DICE, Eventbrite and See Tickets, among other companies. During the height of COVID-19 lockdowns, the Concert Hub helped users find at-home or studio performances, podcast recordings and other online performances. Turns out Spotify was studying user behavior at the same time. 

Sam Sheridan, Product Manager for Live Events Discovery, said Spotify spent the past two years studying the music industry and its users. One of the most important behaviors the company noticed was that fans would engage with artists on the platform and then leave to search for concert listings or to follow them on social media to be able to stay on top of any upcoming tour dates. "We think the Live Events Feed is an opportunity to help close this loop," Sheridan said. 

If you don't see the Live Events Feed in your app, simply search for "live events." You'll see a listing of all the performances in your area, and clicking on any of them would lead you to an interface that includes a link where you can find and buy tickets. If the artist you're listening to has an upcoming tour date, Spotify will show you that event in-app while you're listening. Spotify has also built a new messaging tool that can notify you about upcoming concerts based on your listening habits. Don't worry — you can tweak your notification preferences so you don't have to get messages if you don't want to. 

Sheridan says Spotify will work "to even further integrate event discovery directly into the app" to make it more intertwined with the listening experience, so we'll likely see more updates to Live Events in the future. 

Instagram is testing new age verification methods including asking followers to vouch for your age and even using AI that can estimate your age via a video selfie. It's part of a push to ensure users are at least the minimum 13 years old and "to make sure that teens and adults are in the right experience for their age group," it announced. 

For the "social vouching" system, Instagram asks three mutual followers of the user to confirm their age. Those followers must be at least 18 and have three days to respond to the request. Users can still verify their age with pictures of ID cards as well. 

The AI part requires you to take a video selfie, which Meta-owned Instagram then shares with a company called Yoti (it doesn't provide any other information to Yoti, only the image, it says). "Yoti's technology estimates your age based on your facial features and shares that estimate with us. Meta and Yoti then delete the image. The technology cannot recognize your identity — only your age," Instagram says in the blog post.

Despite those reassurances, the system is bound to be controversial. Users widely distrust both Facebook and Instagram with their data, to start with. On top of that, Yoti's age recognition AI has higher errors depending on your gender, age range and skin tone.

Yoti's system is already used by the UK and German governments to detect age using deep learning after being trained on "hundreds of thousands" of pictures, Yoti cofounder Robin Tombs told Wired last year. Much like other neural networks, though, how it works is a bit of a black box, so even the company doesn't know exactly which facial characteristics it uses. Yoti has a YouTube demo (above) where it applies makeup to young users to see if the system can still correctly guess their ages (it can). 

You can try Yoti's age estimation yourself — I found that it made me considerably younger (four years) when I took off my glasses, so your own mileage may vary. In general, it's the least accurate (plus or minus 3.97 years) when used on female faces with dark skin and the most accurate (2.38 years) with light-skinned male faces. 

Instagram says it aims to use AI to understand people's ages to "prevent teens from accessing Facebook Dating, adults from messaging teens and helps teens from receiving restricted ad content, for example." It looks like this is just the start, as well, as the company said it plans to expand the use of it "widely across our technologies." 

Your favorite podcast might soon have an official, easy-to-find forum. Meta has teamed up with podcast giant Acast to offer exclusive Facebook Groups for podcasts using Acast+ paid subscriptions. Link your membership to your Facebook account and you'll have a ready-made place to discuss the latest episode with fellow fans — you won't have to hunt for a message board or use social network hashtags. You'll also get exclusives like livestreams and Q&A sessions with show hosts.

The two companies didn't say when subscriber groups would be available. Several podcasts are involved in a testing period, including the beauty show Fat Mascara. The price you'll pay will likely vary, but podcasters can enable Acast+ for free. 

Meta has struggled to compete in the podcasting realm, and began shutting down services in early June. The deal keeps the company involved in the category, however. The social media company can benefit from the rise of paid podcasts (through increased use of its services) without having to pour resources into creating or distributing content. This is the first time a podcast company is using Facebook's new platform for Interoperable Subscriber Groups, but it might not be the last if Acast's partnership proves successful.

Twitter has finally shown off its long-rumored feature for long form writing. The company confirmed that it’s beginning to test a new “Notes” feature, which will allow writers to publish freeform content on Twitter without a character limit.

Notes are essentially blog posts that appear within Twitter without the typical limitations of a tweet. There are no character limits, and writers can embed photos, videos and other tweets within a Note. Writers can also share their Notes via tweets, and their published Notes will appear on their Twitter profiles.

Notes could significantly change how writers interact with their followers, and give them more flexibility than the typical tweetstorm. In a Note announcing the launch, Twitter’s editorial director Rembert Browne wrote that Notes are meant to give writers an alternative to the lengthy threads without having to publish writing elsewhere and share it back to Twitter. “Since the company's earliest days, writers have depended on Twitter to share their work, get noticed, be read, create conversation — everything but the actual writing,” Browne wrote. “With Notes, the goal is to fill in that missing piece and help writers find whatever type of success they desire.”

For now, the feature is available to a “small group of writers” from Canada, Ghana, the United Kingdom, and the United States, though the company says it will eventually expand the test group as it gathers feedback. Notes is part of a broader push by Twitter to build features for writers. The company also renamed Revue, the newsletter company it acquired last year, to Twitter Write. So far, it’s unclear how Revue newsletters may be incorporated into Notes.

Facebook Pay is becoming Meta Pay. Mark Zuckerberg announced the rebranding on Wednesday, calling the change a “first step” toward Meta creating a digital wallet for its vision of the metaverse. In the immediate future, the software won’t change too much. You can still use it to send your friends and family members money over Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as to pay for purchases and donate to charitable causes.

Moving forward, however, Zuckerberg says he envisions a future where Meta Pay will function as a universal wallet for all the digital items you buy or create in the metaverse. “Proof of ownership will be important, especially if you want to take some of these items with you across different services,” he said. “Ideally, you should be able to sign into any metaverse experience and everything you've bought should be right there.”

Put another way, Zuckerberg hopes that Meta Pay becomes the de-facto wallet of the metaverse. He admits the kind of interoperability he’s describing is a long way away but claims it would “deliver much better experiences for people and larger opportunities for creators.” It almost goes without saying, but Meta would almost certainly be the greatest beneficiary of the ecosystem Zuckerberg describes. The company recently confirmed it’s taking a nearly 48 percent cut from digital asset sales in Horizon Worlds. A wallet app is another way for the company to earn money on the back of metaverse creators.

More than a million new titles are published annually in the US, far more than even the most bibliophilic secret agent could get through. Even with a weekly publishing schedule, we can only bring you 52 Hitting the Books each year. To help shine a spotlight on all the fantastic stories that can’t be featured in our weekly column, we now bring to you Hitting the Books Quarterly, a semi-semi-annual roundup of books that may not strictly be about tech but we figure you’ll like nonetheless.

This edition’s selection runs the gamut from STEM to Sci-Fi including selections from New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi, UC Berkeley Professor of Sociology Carolyn Chen, and journalist Stephen Witt. We hope you enjoy.

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Princeton University Press

Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley by Carolyn Chen

Silicon Valley may tout itself as the Emerald City at the end of America’s yellow brick road but one need only pull back the curtain to find the oppressive capitalist machinery hidden behind. In her new book, Work Pray Code, UC Berkeley Professor of Sociology Carolyn Chen examines how an industry already primed to worship the Myth of the Founder has steadily imposed itself upon the religious beliefs and practices of its workers, hawking Buddhist-adjacent “wellness programs” in hopes of them achieving productivity enlightenment. What, you thought the company town wouldn’t include a company church?

Penguin Books

How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention by Stephen Witt

In the earliest days of social media, just as the popularity of physical media began to wane but long before the emergence of omnipresent streaming services, existed a time of boundless possibilities. It was a time when any song ever made could be yours, free and at the click of a button, assuming that at least one other person on your network had a complete copy. Many a music collection was assembled during the unregulated file sharing era, much to the chagrin of the recording industry. But no one pirated music anywhere near the scale of Dell Glover. In his 2016 book, How Music Got Free, journalist Stephen Witt explains how Glover exploited his position working in a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant to surreptitiously steal and leak more than 2,000 albums over the course of a decade before being apprehended. Someone get that guy a medal.

Macmillan

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Stuck in a dead-end gig job amidst the depths of the first COVID lockdown, Jamie Gray is looking for an out, any out of his dreary cash-strapped existence. Unlucky for him, he’s about to get exactly what he wants in The Kaiju Preservation Society, the latest from John Scalzi, NYT bestselling author of Old Man’s War and Redshirts.

Disney Editions

Women of Walt Disney Imagineering: 12 Women Reflect on their Trailblazing Theme Park Careers

Walt Disney may have held the initial spark of inspiration for what would eventually become one of the world’s largest media empires, but ever since his noggin went into cold storage, the responsibility of bringing those stories, rides, and attractions to life has fallen to the company’s legion of passionate designers, fabricators and builders: the Imagineers. Women of Walt Disney Imagineering assembles first hand accounts of a dozen women who worked behind the scenes and struggled in an overwhelmingly male industry to ensure that Disney’s theme parks live up to their reputations as the most magical places on Earth.

G.P. Putnam's Sons

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch

In this taut, time-travelling thriller, NCIS special agent Shannon Moss is tasked with uncovering as to why a Navy SEAL murdered his family — and where his teenage daughter disappeared to. Exploiting the world’s “Deep Time” chrono-hopping phenomena, Moss skips along the fourth dimension, flitting between alternate realities in search of clues to the killer’s motivation. That is, until she stumbles upon a near-future event that may end humanity entirely.

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Got a recommendation for a book that you just couldn’t put down? Drop us a line at Tips@engadget.com about it and we might just include it in a future roundup!

Creators on Instagram and Facebook will have another year to make money from the apps without Meta taking a cut from their earnings. Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that Meta will "hold off on any revenue sharing" until 2024, a one-year extension of his prior pledge to not charge a commission until 2023.

The move will cover monetization features where creators directly charge their fans: paid online events, subscriptions, newsletters and badges sold during livestreams. It doesn’t apply to Meta’s advertising-related revenue sharing features for Reels or other video products.

Zuckerberg also announced several other monetization updates for creators on the platform. The company is expanding Stars, the company’s in-app tipping feature, to more creators, and will open up its bonus program for Reels to more users as well. Meta is also expanding its support for NFTs on Instagram, which it began testing on Instagram profiles last month. Now, the feature will be available to more people, though Meta declined to specify exactly how many will now have access. The company also plans to integrate NFTs into Facebook and Instagram Stories “soon.”

The updates build on Meta’s massive investment into creator-centric features. Meta has made competing with TikTok one of its top priorities, and getting more creators on its platform is central to that effort. Creators could also help the company make big bucks on the metaverse, where Meta will get as much as 48 percent of creators’ earnings.

Diablo Immortal was supposed to debut in China on June 23rd, but those who have been waiting for the game in the country will need to wait longer. NetEase, which co-developed the game with Blizzard, has pushed back the release date indefinitely. It wrote in a blog post that "the development team is making a number of optimization adjustments."

However, there are other factors at play. NetEase found itself in the bad graces of China's censors over a post on its Weibo social media service that seemingly referenced Winnie the Pooh, according to the Financial Times. The cartoon character is used to mock Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In the wake of a screenshot of the post (which read "why hasn't the bear stepped down?") gaining traction, the official Diablo Immortal Weibo account was banned from posting anything. Discussions related to the post were also wiped from the service.

Currently, Diablo Immortal does not have a release date in China, though NetEase still expects to ship the game in the country. It promised players an "exclusive thank-you package containing legendary equipment" as a makegood for the delay.

The PC and mobile title debuted in other territories this month. According to reports, it raked in $24 million in two weeks as a result of its aggressive approach to monetization. China is the biggest gaming market on the planet and not being able to release Diablo Immortal there would likely have a severe impact on the game's expected revenues. NetEase declined to comment to the Financial Times. Engadget has contacted Blizzard for comment.

It's not the first time a game developer has run into issues with Chinese regulators over a Winnie the Pooh reference. Publisher Indievent lost its license to sell Devotion in China, leading it to cut ties with developer Red Candle Games, which included a blatant dig at Xi in the game itself. The studio, which is based in Taiwan, later started selling a DRM-free version of Devotion on its own storefront.