If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to play Super Smash Bros. a decade before it came out — with online gaming tech that didn’t exist in the 80s — Super Tilt Bro. is your answer. The retro homebrew NES game pays homage to Nintendo’s fighting franchise (while steering clear of Nintendo IP) in a lovingly crafted passion project now seeking funding on Kickstarter.

The platform-fighting game will ship as an NES cartridge using a custom memory management controller (MMC) with a WiFi chipset and antenna, allowing for online matches and software updates. It even uses modern tricks like rollback netcode, which predicts each player’s moves to account for potential network lag, correcting itself quickly if needed. In addition to online play, you can enjoy local co-op or try its solo story mode with AI-controlled opponents. It’s retro gaming with some modern luxuries, and Ars Technicanotes that it “shines when played on a real NES and CRT television set.”

Sylvain Gadrat / Kickstarter

Super Tilt Bro. has been years in the making. Developer Sylvain Gadrat began work in 2016 on an ode to both the Smash Bros. franchise and NES pixel art aesthetics. After soliciting feedback from friends and fellow enthusiasts, Gadrat unveiled the retro platformer’s first version two years later, with subsequent iterations fine-tuning the game engine while adding new characters, stages and initial online capabilities. He even shipped a more rudimentary WiFi-friendly cartridge in a limited run of 50 copies. In sum, this isn’t some hasty money grab: Today’s version is the culmination of seven years of dedication.

At publication, the game’s Kickstarter campaign has raised nearly $60,000, surpassing its initial $44,182 goal with 26 days to go. If you want to contribute, you’ll need to pay €55 (just over $60) for a WiFi-capable cartridge; a €15 pledge will get you a digital copy to play with an emulator. Delivery is expected in April 2024. Finally, you can download a demo here to see if Super Tilt Bro.’s retro vibe suits you.

Fans of the long-dormant Armored Core series can look forward to the franchise’s return before long, as FromSoftware announced today that Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon launches on August 25th. In addition, there is a new trailer and fresh story / gameplay details that shed more light on the upcoming mecha-based title.

Announced at The Game Awards 2022, Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is the franchise’s first mainline game in over a decade. Fresh off the success of the acclaimed Elden Ring, FromSoftware had previously said the new entry is a reboot that will take advantage of the developer’s expanded resources to make the Armored Core game it always “wanted to make” while honoring the 26-year-old franchise’s roots, according to president Hidetaka Miyazaki. “What we are aiming to create with AC6,” game director Masaru Yamamura toldXbox Wire, “is a new mech action game as a product of what the current day FromSoftware can output.”

Armored Core VI’s story is set on the planet Rubicon, where a precious but dangerous resource called Coral is discovered. Having previously been turned to ash by a massive disaster (thanks to Coral), Rubicon is a world of “hollowed-out industrial ruins” only barely concealed beneath a corporate “shiny shell of state-of-the-art mining constructs encasing the planet.” Whether the game flies or not, that’s a fun premise with plenty of opportunities for staggering set pieces (which you can see in the trailer) and real-world metaphors with present-day relevance.

FromSoftware / Bandai Namco Entertainment

“It’s an intricate and multi-layered world, brimming with mega-structures and enormous underground facilities built by its former inhabitants. These structures cover a planetary surface wracked with extreme cold and contamination in the aftermath of the great disaster, and the player will be exploring these various environments as they proceed,” game director Masaru Yamamura explained toPlayStation blog. 

New gameplay features include the new Assault Boost, a button-triggered skill that lets you instantly switch between long-range shooting and melee. “Assault Boost is an offensive action that helps close the gap between enemies and lets you quickly go from long distance to close range,” Yamamura said. “Say you activate Assault Boost to make your approach while using machine gun fire and a missile salvo to stagger the enemy, then use your pulse blade to score a direct melee hit once you’re up close.”

The developer says it’s building on and fine-tuning the franchise’s familiar customization. “The main thing we focused on in AC6 was to make sure that this customization element is not just about the parameters going up and down and numerical values; we want to reflect these changes in customization in the way the game and action feel as much as possible,” said Yamamura. “For example, you obviously you have the head, core, arms, and leg parts of the AC. The leg parts in particular control the mech’s movement and so these will change the basic behavior of the AC depending what type they are. Like, tank-type legs will be able to perform drift turns. Weapons will differ in terms of how they fire, how much recoil they have, and how the projectiles behave. We’ve been conscious of how this all affects the game feel and the individuality of different builds.”

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon launches on August 25th, and you can pre-order it now (in a $60 standard edition or $70 deluxe edition) for PlayStation 5 / 4, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One and PC.

Swiping and tapping on flat screens is something we’ve learned to deal with in smartphones, tablets and other touchscreen gizmos, but it doesn’t come close to the ease of typing on a hardware keyboard or playing a game with a physical controller. To that end, researchers Craig Shultz and Chris Harrison with the Future Interfaces Group (FIG) at Carnegie Mellon University have created a display that can protrude screen areas in different configurations. It’s a concept we’ve seen before, but this version is thinner, lighter and more versatile.

FIG’s “Flat Panel Haptics” tech can be stacked under an OLED panel to create the protrusions: imagine screen sections that can be inflated and deflated with fluid on demand. This could add a new tactile dimension for things like pop-up media controls, keyboards and virtual gamepads you can find without fumbling around on the screen. As Gizmodonotes, haptic feedback like Apple’s Taptic Engine produces natural-feeling vibrations but doesn’t help you find onscreen elements by touch alone. For activities like typing and playing games that require rapid-fire response time, a screen with pop-up elements could make things much less frustrating.

The Embedded Electroosmotic Pumps (EEOPs) are arrays of fluid pumps on a thin actuation layer built into a touchscreen device, like a smartphone or car display. When an onscreen element requires a pop-up button, fluid fills a section of the EEOP layer, and the OLED panel on top bends to take that shape. The result is a “button” that sticks out from the flat surface by as much as 1.5 mm, enough to feel the difference. When the software dismisses it, it recedes back into the flat display. The research team says filling each area takes about one second, and they feel solid to touch.

Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon

If the concept sounds familiar (and you’ve been following consumer tech long enough), this tech may remind you of Tactus’ rising touchscreen keyboard, which ultimately shipped as a bulky iPad mini case. FIG’s prototype can take on more dynamic shapes and sizes, and the research team says their version’s thinness sets it apart from similar attempts. “The main advantage of this approach is that the entire mechanical system exists in a compact and thin form factor,” FIG said in its narration for a demo video. “Our device stack-ups are under 5mm in thickness while still offering 5mm of displacement. Additionally, they are self-contained, powered only by a pair of electrical cables and control electronics. They’re also lightweight (under 40 grams for this device), and they are capable of enough force to withstand user interaction.”

The researchers see this as a tactile equivalent to the way pixels work on displays. “Much like LCD pixels, which modulate light from a common backlight, EEOPs draw from a common fluid reservoir and selectively modulate hydraulic pressure in and out of haptic cells.”

The pop-up buttons in their current form have a limited scope of shapes and sizes, reducing their versatility. But if they can eventually apply the same principle to a layer with more / smaller pop-up buttons (essentially “higher resolution” if we’re extending the “pixels” metaphor), it could open new doors for user interaction, including easier onscreen typing, gaming, in-car controls and even accessibility features like onscreen braille.

Magpie Aviation announced a novel new approach to electric airplanes on Monday. Today’s battery technology (including CATL’s new, more efficient one) severely limits the practicality of zero-emission aircraft, leaving clean-energy innovators with two incomplete options: flying a plane full of batteries or one full of people — but not both. So the California-based startup wants to tie them together, extending the rear plane’s range by hundreds of miles.

Towing planes isn’t a new concept, with military use going back to World War II when aerial tows would pull smaller aircraft carrying troops and supplies. But applying it to the world of green transportation is new. Magpie Aviation’s concept uses one or more electric aircraft to act as a tractor plane towing a passenger (or cargo) aircraft using a long cable. The towed plane would have enough battery power for takeoff, landing and flying to alternate airports but not enough to fly the full distance on its own, as reported byAeroTime.

The lead plane would take on the bulk of the traction, and when its battery is depleted, it could hand off towing duties to another electric towing aircraft to extend the rear plane’s range. Magpie CEO Damon Vander Lind summarized toAviation Week, “You get towed until you’ve depleted down to your reserve in the lead aircraft, and then you swap in another tow aircraft.” Although it’s still a regional solution impractical for cross-country or international flights, Vander Lind says it could allow for a trip from San Francisco to Seattle — far beyond the sub-regional distances battery-powered passenger flights can travel on their own.

Magpie says it’s conducted successful small-scale tests using a synthetic fiber rope around 330 ft. long; the company envisions a later commercial version to use nearly mile-long cables. The startup plans to scale up its testing gradually and believes it could be implemented commercially by 2030. It expects advances in battery tech to allow it to tow single-aisle airliners eventually. Magpie suggests that the concept, mainly targeting electric planes, could also work with hybrid, hydrogen and standard aircraft in low-power modes. Additionally, the company says it’s working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with an eye toward certification.

“It sounds kind of crazy, but we kept coming back to it because we couldn’t find any reason why we couldn’t do it,” said Vander Lind. “While our modeling shows that there is an advantage to doing a custom tow aircraft like this, we get a big advantage because the more expensive and critical passenger- and cargo-carrying ‘main aircraft’ has similar requirements to today’s aircraft and so adapts well to existing in-operation and already-in-development platforms. Remember that if we want to hit a zero-carbon 2050 goal, an airliner has a 30-year life, so we’re already at the point where airlines have to think hard about the operating life of the assets that they are buying today.”

OpenAI is tightening up ChatGPT’s privacy controls. The company announced today that the AI chatbot’s users can now turn off their chat histories, preventing their input from being used for training data.

The controls, which roll out “starting today,” can be found under ChatGPT user settings under a new section labeled Data Controls. After toggling the switch off for “Chat History & Training,” you’ll no longer see your recent chats in the sidebar.

Even with the history and training turned off, OpenAI says it will still store your chats for 30 days. It does this to prevent abuse, with the company saying it will only review them if it needs to monitor them. After 30 days, the company says it permanently deletes them.

OpenAI also announced an upcoming ChatGPT Business subscription in addition to its $20 / month ChatGPT Plus plan. The Business variant targets “professionals who need more control over their data as well as enterprises seeking to manage their end users.” The new plan will follow the same data-usage policies as its API, meaning it won’t use your data for training by default. The plan will become available “in the coming months.”

Finally, the startup announced a new export option, letting you email yourself a copy of the data it stores. OpenAI says this will not only allow you to move your data elsewhere, but it can also help users understand what information it keeps.

South Korean authorities announced today that they indicted the co-founder of Terraform Labs, the company that develops and manages the blockchain payment platform Terra. According toBloomberg, Daniel Shin and nine others linked to Terra now face multiple charges, including violations of capital markets law, which regulates the nation’s securities and financial markets.

The authorities indicted eight people, including Shin, for illegal trading; two others face breach of trust charges. Prosecutors say all the defendants were directly involved with Terra, having handled marketing, systems development and management. In addition, prosecutors have frozen 246.8 billion won ($184.7 million) in assets from the defendants. Korean officials said they’re working with the US on the case, although they didn’t go into specifics.

Billed as a stablecoin, TerraUSD isn’t backed by real-world assets or fiat currency. Instead, it’s supported by Luna, the native cryptocurrency of the Terra blockchain, that supposedly had a mechanism to restore its value to $1 if its value ever failed. In addition, investors saw it as an alluring money-making opportunity because of its Anchor lending program, which promised annual yields of 20 percent for coin deposits.

However, prosecutors allege the Terra blockchain was a “fabrication” from the get-go, with the entire system essentially built on a house of cards. They claim the blockchain’s algorithm that kept TerraUSD at a stable price was “impossible to get right.” Its value collapsed in May 2022, when depositors lost confidence in the platform and simultaneously tried to sell off their investments. At the time of publication, Terra has a value of less than two cents.

Before the collapse, the defendants took 463 billion won (nearly $346 million) in profit. In addition, prosecutors claim they illegally exposed clients’ payment details and embezzled funds. Authorities say those charged caused “astronomical damage” to global investors as the crash also played a role in the collapse of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and the broader $2 trillion decline in the cryptocurrency market.

“Shin has nothing to do with the Terra, Luna collapse as he left the [company] two years before the fallout,” said Shin’s lawyer, Kim Ki-dong, in a statement. “He voluntarily returned to South Korea immediately after the collapse, and has been faithfully cooperating with the probe for over 10 months, hoping to contribute to fact finding.”

In September, Korean authorities issued an arrest warrant for Shin’s co-founder, Do Kwon, who was also placed on an Interpol "red notice" list at South Korea’s request. He was finally arrested last month in Montenegro on capital markets law and fraud charges. The US Securities and Exchange Commission also charged Do Kwon and Terraform Labs in February.

Microsoft has agreed to stop bundling its Teams remote collaboration software with its Office productivity suite, according toFinancial Times. The company’s move attempts to head off an official EU antitrust investigation as it deals with its most significant regulatory concerns in over a decade.

FT’s sources say companies will eventually be able to buy Office with or without Teams installed, “but the mechanism on how to do this remains unclear.” Talks with EU regulators are reportedly ongoing, and “a deal is not certain.” Microsoft told FT, “We are mindful of our responsibilities in the EU as a major technology company. We continue to engage cooperatively with the commission in its investigation and are open to pragmatic solutions that address its concerns and serve customers well.”

Competing remote-work platform Slack, now owned by Salesforce, complained to EU regulators in 2020, asking officials to make Microsoft sell Teams separately from its ubiquitous Office suite. Slack’s general counsel said at the time, “We’re asking the EU to be a neutral referee, examine the facts and enforce the law.”

Microsoft is facing its first regulatory issues in a decade. The company agreed to a settlement with the European Commission in 2009, agreeing to offer European customers a choice of web browsers; it was then fined €561 million in 2013 for failing to adhere to that consistently. Of course, its most famous antitrust shakeup came around the turn of the millennium when it was initially forced to break up into two companies, a ruling later overturned by an appeals court. Microsoft and the DOJ settled in 2001, agreeing to restrictions like sharing APIs with third-party developers and letting PC manufacturers install non-Microsoft software on their products.

In recent months, the company has been scrambling to receive regulatory approval for its planned $69 billion purchase of game publisher Activision Blizzard. The company is reportedly expected to receive a green light from the EU and UK, and it has until July to appease the US Federal Trade Commission. Microsoft offered 10-year legal agreements to provide Call of Duty on Nintendo consoles and cloud-streaming platform Boosteroid to help ease those concerns. Sony reportedly declined a similar offer.

Canadian synth-pop artist Grimes says AI artists can use her voice without worrying about copyright or legal enforcement. “I’ll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with,” she tweeted on Sunday. “Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings.”

The musician’s declaration comes in the wake of streaming platforms removing an AI-generated song using simulated voices of Drake and The Weeknd. Universal Music Group (UMG), which represents both artists, called for the purge after “Heart on My Sleeve” garnered over 15 million listens on TikTok and 600,000 on Spotify. UMG argued that publishing a song trained on its artists’ voices was “a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law.”

Grimes takes a considerably more open approach, adding that she has no label or legal bindings. “I think it’s cool to be fused [with] a machine and I like the idea of open sourcing all art and killing copyright,” she added.

This isn’t Grimes’ first time weighing in on AI. The artist collaborated with mood music startup Endel to launch an AI-generated lullaby app in 2020. She was inspired to create “a better baby sleeping situation” for her son, X Æ A-XII. In addition, she predicted in 2019 that generative AI could mean “the end of art, human art,” continuing by saying, “Once there’s actually AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), they’re gonna be so much better at making art than us... once AI can totally master science and art, which could happen in the next 10 years, probably more like 20 or 30 years.”

In addition to music, generative AI is already disrupting numerous industries, including visual art, writing, online media and voiceover work. After its sudden arrival — and rapid improvements — within the past year, AI content creation has set off numerous legal, ethical and copyright firestorms. Unfortunately, it will likely worsen before society and copyright laws settle on any consensus. In March, the US Copyright Office said AI art, including music, stemming from a text prompt couldn’t be copyrighted. But it left the issue far from settled as it left the door open to granting copyright protections to works with AI-generated elements.

Grimes’ offer to split royalties says it would apply to any “successful” AI song using her voice, leaving some confusion over where that cutoff is. Either way, she sounds ready to back up the offer with tools artists can use, promising, “We’re making a program that should simulate my voice well but we could also upload stems and samples for ppl to train their own.”

The iRobot Roomba S9+ premium robot vacuum is currently on sale for $250 off at Wellbots. Typically costing $999, ordering with the coupon code 200ENGDT will bring its price down to $749 — still very expensive, but a good value for this advanced cleaning machine. And if that’s more than you want to pay for a vacuum cleaner, you can save on cheaper models too.

The S9 series of Roomba vacuums build on the best qualities of the Roomba i7 line while adding some enticing extras. First, they offer 40 times the suction power of other robot vacuums while trapping mold and pollen allergens. It also has a different shape: Instead of being completely circular, it has two squared edges, which help it to clean more thoroughly around corners.

If you’re eyeing models from the j7 series, you can take $200 off several other iRobot vacuums with the same coupon code (200ENGDT), including the Roomba j7, Roomba j7+ and Roomba j7+ Robot Vacuum & Mop. The j7 series uses AI-driven navigation for enhanced obstacle avoidance — including pet poop. Of course, it also has powerful suction, precise mapping and an easy-to-use app. The j7 is one of Engadget’s top midrange picks for the best robot vacuums.

The standard model gets you the vacuum itself, the j7+ adds a self-emptying cleaning station and the j7+ with vacuum and mop includes the station and wet-mopping capabilities. The 200ENGDT coupon cuts the j7 (usually $599) down to $399 and the j7+ ($799 MSRP) to $599. and the j7+ with mop ($1,099 MSP) is only $899. Finally, you get free shipping on your order.

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Blizzard is giving gamers another chance to try Diablo IV before its official arrival. The game’s Server Slam will give console and PC players 48 hours to explore the prologue and Act I as the publisher prepares its infrastructure for the dungeon crawler’s highly anticipated June 6th launch.

The Server Slam will take place from May 12th at 12 PM to May 14th at 12 PM PDT. It will be open to players on Windows PC, PS5 / 4, Xbox Series X / S or Xbox One. The event will support couch co-op, cross-play and cross-progression, and you can play as all five character classes, including Barbarian, Druid, Sorcerer, Rogue and Necromancer.

The two-day event will limit character progression to Level 20, after which you’ll no longer receive Ability Points (but you can still earn new gear). In addition, if you played during the game’s Early Access or Open Beta periods, your progress won’t carry over to Server Slam — nor will progress from the Server Slam transfer to the game’s launch.

Blizzard is giving Server Slam participants a challenging boss fight in Ashava, described as “one of the Burning Hells’ most fowl machinations.” The monster with “two razor-sharp arm blades, scales stronger than plate mail, and hell-bent on ripping through all who interrupt her quest to bathe Sanctuary in poisonous bile” should present a formidable challenge for Level 20 and under players. However, anyone taking her down will seize the Cry of Ashava Mount Trophy, which will roll over to the final launch. Additionally, you’ll get another chance to earn the trophies from the first two beta weekends, including the Initial Casualty Title (reach Kyovashad with one character), the Early Voyager Title and Beta Wolf Pack Cosmetic Item (both requiring reaching Level 20 on one character).

Blizzard is opening pre-downloads for Server Slam two days before the event, on May 10th at 12 PM PDT. You can read the full installation instructions here, and if you participated in the earlier betas (and didn’t uninstall it), you’ll see an update for Server Slam available to download.

Engadget’s Igor Bonifacic tried Diablo IV during a December preview and the more recent betas and was left cautiously optimistic. It revealed impressive attention to story and gameplay detail as the upcoming title slows its pace while still adhering to the franchise’s familiar roots. However, we’ll have to wait and see if Blizzard can “stick the landing,” given the publisher’s hit-or-miss record in recent years — and memories of the fiasco that was Diablo III’s 2012 launch.