Multiple delays and more than a year after it was first supposed to arrive, Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp has a new release date. Nintendo announced today that the remaster will arrive on April 21st. First announced in the summer of 2021, Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp was originally scheduled to hit the Nintendo eShop later that same year. However, Nintendo first delayed the title in the fall of 2021 to give Re-Boot Camp's development team more time to work on the game. The company then subsequently pushed the remake back again after the war in Ukraine began.  

Re-Boot Camp bundles together "reimagined" versions of Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. The two games, long considered classics of the turn-based strategy genre, were first released by Nintendo on the Game Boy Advance in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Intelligent Systems, best known for its work on the Fire Emblem franchise, was the lead developer on both titles. The remakes will include a level creator that will allow you to share your own scenarios with friends. The games will also support local and online play.     

The original AirPods Pro and AirPods Pro 2 are popular among iPhone users for their convenience and compelling mix of features. However, your options are limited if something happens to the charging case, and your earbuds aren’t under warranty. Apple will replace the case for a fee. If you own a first-generation pair of AirPods Pro, you’re probably better off buying the new model to get a fresh set of batteries. In any event, there’s no easy way to repair a set of AirPods Pro and limit your electronic waste. Replacement parts are either hard to find, expensive or non-existent, and Apple didn’t design any of its earbuds with repairability in mind.

Robotics engineer Ken Pillonel, who became internet famous in 2021 for creating a working USB-C iPhone, is trying to fix that. With his latest DIY project, Pillonel has effectively created an end-to-end solution for those who want to swap the battery in their AirPods Pro case rather than replace it altogether.

Pillonel designed a replacement USB-C PCB he says is possible to install in an undamaged case without milling. If you’ve been following Pillonel for a while, you likely know that he also designed a USB-C PCB for the first- and second-generation AirPods and uploaded the design to GitHub. This time, he’s selling the AirPods Pro part to make the repair as easy as possible for anyone who wants to attempt it. You can get a single PCB from his online store for about $38.

If you damage your AirPods Pro case trying to access the internal battery, Pillonel has thought of that too. He’s uploaded a schematic to GitHub that you can use to 3D print a replacement. The USB-C PCB and case are fully compatible with one another. The only part you need to source independently is a replacement battery. You can find those online for about $20. “The goal of this project is to maximize the number of successful repairs to minimize the quantity of electronic waste,” Pillonel said in a statement. Obviously, most people won’t have the patience or confidence to service their AirPods Pro charging case, but a project like this is invaluable for those who do.

Last September, Google began rolling out Search with Live View, a feature within Maps that adds search functionality to the app's augmented reality layer. At the time, that feature was only available if you found yourself in London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Paris or Tokyo. Today, Google announced it's bringing Search with Live View to Barcelona, Dublin and Madrid within the coming months. The company is also greatly expanding the availability of Live View within indoor locations. Google said Wednesday it's bringing the functionality to more than 1,000 new airports, train stations and malls across cities like Barcelona, London, Madrid, Paris and Singapore. The expansion will take place over the next few months.

Separately, Google (via The Verge) showcased some of its other work in AI-augmented search. In one demo, the company asked for a summary of the best constellations to look for when stargazing. Notably, the demo Google showed wasn't as polished as the one Microsoft brought to its "new Bing" showcase yesterday. In that instance, Bing provided the user with footnotes and links to the material it used to summarize its findings, something that was missing from Google's demo. 

Canon is adding a new, more affordable entry point into its RF mirrorless camera ecosystem. Alongside the full-frame EOS R8, the company unveiled today the EOS R50, an APS-C RF mount camera that will start at $680 when it goes on sale later this year. Canon didn’t send over a full spec sheet, but judging from the information the company did share, the R50 could quickly become a go-to for many beginners.

The camera features a 24.2-megapixel sensor capable of capturing uncropped 4K video footage at up to 30 frames per second. The R50 can also shoot 1080p video at up to 60 frames per second and S&Q-style slo-mo footage at up to 120 frames per second. What’s more, Canon claims the camera can capture a full hour of continuous footage. Despite its modest price, the R50 also includes the company's excellent Dual Pixel autofocus technology, with built-in subject detection for people, animals and vehicles. Best of all, the tech is available for both stills and video.

Canon

You don't get any log modes, but it does have HDR PQ which also gives you 10-bit video — not bad for a budget camera. Other video features include a microHDMI port for external video, both microphone and headphone ports, and UVC compatibility for direct webcam streaming. 

Burst shooting speeds are great at this price as well: 12 fps in electronic first-curtain shutter mode (there's no full mechanical shutter) and 15 fps in electronic shutter mode, both with servo AF. It'll only capture 13 C-RAW+JPEG files in a burst though, likely due to the slow UHS-I SD card support. There's no in-body stabilization (IS) at that price, but it can use the IS built into lenses or digital stabilization (with a crop) for vlogging. It also has an OLED viewfinder, which many cameras in this price range don't, though resolution is fairly low at 2.36 million dots. 

Canon

At the same time, Canon is expanding its RF lens lineup to add new crop sensor glass. The RF-S55-210mm is a compact telephoto lens with a full-frame equivalent field of view between 88mm and 336mm. It features a variable f/5 to f/7.1 aperture, four-and-a-half stops of built-in optical stabilization and close-focusing capabilities. The RF-S55-210mm IS STM isn’t the fastest option in Canon’s RF lens stable, but it does add some much-needed choice on the APS-C side of things.

At $680 for body-only, the R50 slots under the EOS R10, which was previously Canon’s most affordable RF mirrorless camera. Effectively, the R50 is a more capable version of the EOS M50 Mark II that’s less than $100 more expensive and doesn’t limit you to Canon’s dead-end EF-M mount system. It’s also competitive against Sony’s ZV-E10 and Nikon’s Z30, which cost about the same but don’t offer an electronic viewfinder. The EOS R50 will arrive later this year. In addition to selling the body on its own, Canon will bundle the camera as part of a Content Creator Kit that will ship with a microphone, 18-45mm kit lens and grip for $800.

For one night only, Disney’s breakout Star Wars series is coming to cable TV. Ahead of the premiere of the third season of The Mandalorian on March 1st, Disney announced today it would air the show’s debut episode, “Chapter 1: The Mandalorian,” on February 24th. If you somehow haven’t seen the series before, you can catch the episode that started it all on ABC, Freeform or FX. All three stations will air the 41-minute debut at 8PM ET/PT.

If you’ve managed to avoid spoilers for The Mandalorian until now, first of all, great job; it couldn’t have been easy. Second, we won’t ruin the surprise, but the debut episode is a great taste of what made the first season of the series feel so special. It has a bit of everything that people came to love about The Mandalorian, including witty dialogue, fun action set pieces and, of course, a certain cute alien.

This isn’t the first time Disney has brought a Disney+ exclusive to TV. The company previously aired two episodes of Andor on ABC, Freeform and FX when it seemed that series was struggling to find an audience. Considering the company recently lost $1.5 billion on its streaming services, bringing The Mandalorian to broadcast TV makes a lot of sense as an effort to attract subscribers to Disney+.

Microsoft's oft-forgotten search engine is about to get a new lease on life. As expected, the tech giant announced on Tuesday that it is partnering with OpenAI to enhance Bing with the company's AI technology. However, Microsoft also had a surprise up its sleeve: the next release of Bing will feature a new next-generation large language model the company claims is "much more powerful" than ChatGPT and designed specifically to excel at search. The new Bing offers a chat function and an expanded search bar that allows you to input up to a thousand characters. 

Underpinning the search engine is a new proprietary technology Microsoft is calling the Prometheus Model. Among the benefits of Prometheus are more relevant search results, according to the company. Microsoft claims the model will also make using Bing safer and allow the company to update search results more quickly.    

Developing...

When Twitter introduced its curated “For You” tab at the start of this year, the feature shipped with an oversight. If you closed the Twitter app or web client after switching to the platform’s reverse chronological “Following” timeline, both would default back to the For You feed after you came back. At the end of January, Twitter took an initial step to address that oversight, tweaking the web client to remember the tab you left off at before closing your tabs. At the time, the company said a similar fix was “coming soon” for Android and iOS. That fix is now available.

Today’s change won’t bring back Twitter’s old “twinkle” button, but it does let you stick to your preferred timeline. And if you primarily use Twitter to follow real-world events, it should make it easier to use the app for that purpose. Notably, the change to Twitter's interface coincides with the company's recent decision to cut off third-party clients. That move led to apps like Tweetbot shutting down, leaving the official client the only way to access Twitter.

Following a rocky release, it looks like Overwatch 2 is starting to hit a stride. On Monday, Blizzard detailed all the content that’s coming with the game’s latest season, and there’s plenty here for fans to be excited about. To start, season three will introduce the franchise’s first crossover event. Starting on March 7th, players will have the chance to earn cosmetic items inspired by One-Punch Man, the popular superhero series created by Japanese manga artist One. Specifically, one of the skins sees Doomfist recast to look like One-Punch protagonist Saitama.

If One-Punch Man means little to you, thankfully there will be plenty of other skins you can earn this season. After season two took inspiration from Greek mythology, season three will feature cosmetics themed around "Asian mythology." Players who complete the latest premium battle pass will earn the new Amaterasu Kiriko skin. As the name suggests, the skin is inspired by the Japanese Shinto goddess of the sun. What’s more, Blizzard says it has listened to player feedback and made it easier to earn cosmetic items. The season three battle pass will feature 10 additional free reward tiers for players to unlock. Blizzard is also bringing almost all of the skins it released during the availability of the original Overwatch to Overwatch 2’s in-game store, and tweaking the price of those skins to make them cost fewer credits.

On the gameplay front, players can look forward to a new Control map modeled after the Antarctic, a location that has important significance to Mei. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, Overwatch 2 will celebrate the holiday in not one but two ways. First, it’s adding a limited-time game mode that will see everyone in the match play as Hanzo. Second, Blizzard is finally giving fans something they’ve been waiting to get for a while. On February 13th, the studio will release Loverwatch, a dating sim you can play until the 28th through your browser. This “non-canon” text-based experience will allow you to woo either Mercy or Genji. Unlock the secret ending to earn a special Player of the Game highlight reel for use in Overwatch 2.

It’s hard to believe, but Apex Legends is four years old this month. And with the game’s 16th season set to debut on February 14th, developer Respawn Entertainment is promising to shake things up. “Nothing is safe and there are going to be some pretty significant changes that we’ve been working on for a while,” the studio said in a blog post it published on Monday.

One of those changes is a game mode players have been asking Respawn to add since launch. The studio will allow you to queue for team deathmatch games for a limited time. The mode will see two teams of six vie for supremacy. The first team to secure 30 kills wins the round. You’ll need to win two rounds to take the match. At the start of a deathmatch game, you’ll pick your character and one of five weapon loadouts. You can change both between respawns.

At the same time, Respawn is removing Arenas, the game’s current spin on deathmatch. The studio says the 3v3 game mode wasn’t meeting its goal of being a good place to master Apex’s combat mechanics. On March 7th, Respawn will introduce Mixtape, a permanent rotating playlist of limited-time game modes. The playlist will allow you to play favorites like Control, Gun Run and, yes, Team Deathmatch. The season will also add a new energy weapon called the Nemesis for players to master. It’s an assault rifle that fires a four-round burst, and you can hold down the trigger to continue firing.

Season 16 won’t see the introduction of a new playable character. That’s because Respawn wants to tweak the existing ones first. In addition to balance changes targeting Lifeline, Seer and Wraith to start, the developer is adding a reworked class system. Respawn will assign each Legend to one of five classes: Assault, Recon, Skirmisher, Controller or Support. Each class will have access to a unique perk. For instance, it sounds like Support characters will have new ways to revive their teammates. Respawn has promised to share more information about all the Legends changes closer to the release of the new season.

Respawn is adding a new orientation match system that will pit new players against bots to make the game more approachable to newbies. “Our goal with Orientation Matches is to create a lower-pressure environment where new players can get their bearings, learn the core mechanics, and have a little more space to breathe while they learn how to play Apex Legends,” the studio said.

It wouldn’t be much of an anniversary season if the game didn’t have something for players to collect. In the first two weeks of the season, you can unlock Crypto and Ash by logging into the game. You’ll also unlock thematic packs for both of them.

Netflix is adding two more releases to its excellent library of games. The streaming giant announced Monday it recently secured exclusive mobile rights to Dust & Neon and Highwater, two upcoming titles from indie publisher Rogue Games. Of the two, the former will arrive first when it hits Android, iOS, PC and Nintendo Switch on February 16th. As with past Netflix releases, you can download and play Dust & Neon for free on mobile, provided you subscribe to the service. The same will go for Highwater when it arrives at a later date. Additionally, neither game will include ads or in-app microtransactions.

Rogue Games describes Dust & Neon as a rogue-lite twin-stick shooter. Stylistically, the game looks like a mix of Steamworld Dig and West of Dead. One interesting facet of gameplay is that you manually reload your firearms. Each weapon has its own reload animation, and there are almost 2,000 guns to find in the game, according to Rogue Games. Highwater, meanwhile, is an adventure strategy game set in a world ravaged by climate change. It’s a title with a fair amount of excitement around it, partly due to the fact that it was first shown off during Summer Game Fest last year.