There was a time when movies based on video games tried to distance themselves from their source material. "This ain't no game," bragged the poster for the 1993's live-action Super Mario Bros. film. Times have changed: The final trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie by Illumination leans hard into its origins. This is absolutely a game, it says. See? Here's a scene that looks like New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, and another one that looks just like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

If you were hoping to hear more of Chris Pratt's Mario voice, you won't find it here — but the final trailer does give viewers a clear look at the tone the movie is going for. We watch Bowser list off an army of familiar video game enemies. We watch Mario and Donkey Kong use power mushrooms and fire flowers as they run through a training course that looks like a traditional Mario level. We see Mario and Peach race through a brightly rendered Rainbow Road. It looks familiar. It looks fun. And it looks like a game, but with better graphics.

That's no surprise. According to directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, Illumination has worked closely with Nintendo to make sure the film feels right. The directors also say that Illumination has improved its lighting and rendering technology to help push Super Mario Bros. Movie to the next level "beyond anything Illumination has ever done."

As for that Mario voice? You'll finally be able to hear the full performance when the film hits theaters next month. The Super Mario Bros. Moviereleases on April 5, 2023.

Amazon has reportedly picked up Batman: Caped Crusader, the animated series Warner Bros. developed for HBO Max but scrapped last August to cut costs. Despite also drawing interest from Netflix, Apple and Hulu, the upcoming show will have a home on Amazon Prime.

First announced in May 2021, Batman: Caped Crusader sounds like a spiritual successor to Batman: The Animated Series, the beloved 1990s weekday afternoon staple. The upcoming show was created by executive producers JJ Abrams, Matt Reeves and Batman: The Animated Series developer Bruce Timm. In addition, celebrated comic-book writer Ed Brubaker is on the creative team for the 10-episode first season.

The Amazon sale was part of Warner Bros. Discovery’s plans to monetize content by selling it to third parties. The studio will now focus on the Batman IP as part of a 10-year DC Comics meta-story spanning film, TV, gaming and animated series. In addition, a sequel to Reeves’s 2022 film The Batman and spin-off series The Penguin on HBO Max are in the works.

“We are beyond excited to be working together to bring this character back, to tell engrossing new stories in Gotham City,” Abrams and Reeves said when Batman: Caped Crusader was announced. “The series will be thrilling, cinematic and evocative of Batman’s noir roots, while diving deeper into the psychology of these iconic characters. We cannot wait to share this new world.”

NBC News has discovered that Pinterest's recommendation algorithms are making it easier for pedophiles to create boards full of images of underage girls. After an initial search, Pinterest will start suggesting related searches that can easily be misused. The images themselves sometimes receive sexual comments.

NBC notes that it didn't find child sexual abuse material (CSAM) during its investigation. However, the people creating the creepy boards sometimes had collections containing porn despite Pinterest's ban on that content. The social site also hasn't had direct ways to report attempts to sexualize content featuring minors. While Pinterest’s policies forbid the practice, users have had to rely on ill-fitting reporting categories (such as “nudity or pornography”) and haven’t had the option to report whole boards.

Pinterest tells Engadget that it takes this content "very seriously" and is taking multiple actions that could help. It will start rolling out a board reporting option next week, and will soon offer expanded profile reporting tools that include minor-related content. In a response to NBC, spokesperson Crystal Espinosa says the company also plans to bolster its AI moderation (it also uses human moderators) to catch some offenders automatically, and will add new age verification systems.

The revelations are significant in part because of Pinterest's aggressive stance toward moderation compared to other platforms — it's one of the few to place outright bans on misinformation. At the same time, the findings underscore shortcomings in the company's reporting tools and recommendation engine. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all have ways to directly report content involving kids.

There's political pressure to act, too. President Biden recently called for Congress and tech giants to improve kids' online safety. The Senate's Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, held a hearing echoing those calls. Pinterest isn't in immediate danger of a regulatory crackdown (it's legal to create these collections), but it's also not guaranteed to avoid scrutiny.

Warner Bros. has reportedly delayed Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice Leagueyet again. Rocksteady’s long-awaited spinoff / sequel to the Batman: Arkham series was most recently slated to launch on May 26th; it’s now coming “later this year.”

It was allegedly delayed “to fix bugs and improve aspects of the game that were lagging behind,” although Bloomberg’s source adds that the changes “won’t overhaul many of the core gameplay that had led to the backlash” it received at a February PlayStation event. Fans’ criticisms were directed mainly toward the game’s online requirement and purchasable cosmetic items.

The multiplayer shooter stars a group of villains tasked with stopping an out-of-control Justice League, which has fallen under the spell of the supervillain Brainiac. You can switch in the middle of the action between the four playable characters: Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang and King Shark. Unlike Warner Bros.’s most recent superhero game, the lackluster Gotham Knights, the upcoming title is set in the same universe as the Batman: Arkham series, the last standard installment of which launched nearly eight years ago.

The game will mark one of the last appearances of Kevin Conroy, the celebrated voice actor who died last year at 66. He will reprise his role of Batman, who appears (but not as a playable character) in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. In addition to voicing the Dark Knight in Batman: The Animated Series, he returned to the part in Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum, Arkham City and Arkham Knight. (Roger Craig Smith voiced Batman in Arkham Origins and Arkham Origins: Blackgate, which different developers handled under the Warner Bros. Interactive masthead.)

When it finally arrives, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will be available for PS5, Xbox Series X / S and PC.

The small development studio behind mobile standouts Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey is teasing its next game. Laya’s Horizon will be a Netflix Games title from indie studio Snowman, known for the satisfyingly addictive gameplay of the Alto series.

The brief trailer showcases a game world on a seaside landscape. The scenery could easily be a lower-poly version of Breath of the Wild, as the camera pans back to reveal windmills, hot-air balloons and jagged cliffs. Ultimately, we glimpse a person in a cape or flying suit perched atop the landscape who we can only assume is the playable protagonist.

The trailer doesn’t reveal anything about Laya’s Horizon gameplay or its release date. However, a description reads, “A whole new world is just beyond the horizon…” In addition, a representative for Snowman told Engadget, “While we’re not quite ready to share details about the game yet, we can say that it’s an entirely new IP and something we’ve been working on for a long time.”

Netflix’s unconventional move into mobile gaming has spawned a quality library of over 40 Android and iOS games, none including ads or microtransactions. The games are all free to download and play for subscribers.

Following a beta that saw just 5,000 people get a chance to use the software, Aimi’s iOS and Android app is now available to all. The release brings the company’s generative music platform to mobile, where it was not available previously. Engadget’s James Trew has been using the app since January. Since then, Aimi has made a few user interface tweaks.

What hasn’t changed is the premise of the app. As before, Aimi is built around continuous music “experiences” you can subtly tweak by interacting with a handful of interface elements. If you're familiar with platforms like Endel and Brain.fm, you probably know what you're getting into. As a free user, you can tap the thumbs-up and down buttons to guide Aimi’s algorithm. There’s also a shuffle button if a section comes on that you don’t like at all. With today’s release, Aimi will also prompt you to indicate if you want to hear a section more or less frequently, as well as for longer or shorter periods of time.

Users who pay $10 per month gain access to additional controls. First, a “Section” view allows you to isolate individual elements of a musical composition, including parts like the harmony and melody, and adjust the gain and tell Aimi whether you like what you’re hearing. An additional “Composition” interface allows you to shape what you’re hearing by adjusting a set of four sliders. For instance, by moving the “Progression” slider, you can instruct Aimi to modify the experience you’re listening to more or less often. Meanwhile, the “Intensity” and “Texture” sliders allow you to control the number of effects Aimi employs and whether a composition sounds organic or synthetic. Last but not least, there’s a self-explanatory Vocals slider.

The release of a mobile app is part of a broader plan by Aimi to bring more people into the world of generative music. Later this year, the company plans to release Aimi Studio, which will allow users to take a more hands-on approach to craft their own compositions. “One of the strengths of generative music is that we can use it to attract casual listeners with continuous music experiences and then introduce them to interactive music by letting them take ownership of their music experience,” Aimi CEO Edward Balassanian told Engadget at the start of the year. 

Spoiler warning: The following article discusses the Star Trek: Picard episodes “Seventeen Seconds” and “No Win Scenario.”

I was away last week and so didn’t write up last week’s utterly inessential episode of Picard, although if you’re curious, Darren Mooney at The Escapist’s feelings mirror my own. The whole affair only makes sense if you assume the whole crew had taken a big dose of idiot pills an hour before the episode began, and wish you’d had some as well. This week, there’s a lot more to say, especially since it’s the first episode this season that feels even remotely fun. And while the setup for all of these conflicts was pretty flimsy, their resolutions are all very enjoyable to watch.

After the Shrike uses its Portal gun to encourage the Titan to shoot itself in the back, the ship drifts into a gravity well and certain doom. It’s here we get one of the worst tell-not-show moments in the series so far as the bridge crew state, and then restate (and then re-restate) the situation the ship finds itself in. Loss of power, is it? Sinking into a gravity well, is it? We don’t have enough power to get out of the gravity well, is it? Is that because we’ve not got much power, is it? And because of the gravity well? Sorry, not following, can you explain it to me like I’m five, please? It doesn’t help that while the decision to take the shields offline is set up as some big, dangerous decision, it’s never mentioned again.

It’s here that Picard, opting to get his affairs in order, chooses to sit down for a touching moment with Jack. And they choose to do so on the holodeck, in the Ten Forward bar that’s been turning up time and again this run. Picard says that holodecks are hooked up to their own power supply because it’s better to die in comfort than use that power to survive. I think we can all tell that it’s a cover for either a production or a budget issue that meant they had to re-use the set. (Picard’s first season did the same, endlessly going back to the chateau office on La Sirena’s holodeck.) And, again, the two-hander between Patrick Stewart and Ed Speelers is great.

Also, remember when a broken leg wouldn’t require much more than a quick waft of a med bay doodad and you’d be good as new? Not in Picard, where Shaw storms into Picard’s heart to heart, apparently full of painkillers, and reveals why he’s so angry at both Seven and Picard. It turns out that, like a big chunk of Starfleet, he’s a survivor from Wolf 359! And if this wasn’t another thing that was explored pretty well by Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, it might carry a bit more dramatic weight. It also feels like the start of a pre-ordained redemption arc for Todd Stashwick’s Captain Shaw as the powers that be use Picard as a way to backdoor pilot a Titan-A spin-off series. (You can imagine the pitch: We’ve got the cast, and the sets are already built, it’s practically free content if you greenlight another ten!) And, to be fair, Todd Stashwick’s such a charismatic actor that you could feel him straining to play someone more unlikeable at the start of the series.

From here until the conclusion, however, the tone starts to lighten, and Beverley’s realization that the nebula is a space lifeform gives everyone a sense of purpose. You see, the nebula is undergoing the exact same contractions that a pregnant person would when they’re in labor. The moment that Riker stops pointlessly objecting to the plan of riding the contractions out of the gravity well, it suddenly feels like we’re watching Star Trek again. The gang works together, Seven and Shaw successfully lure out the changeling infiltrator, and they even have a nice spot of payback for the Shrike as Riker orders the Titan to lock onto a massive asteroid, dragging it behind long enough for it to smash the enemy vessel out of contention long enough for them to escape.

And that’s not even the best bit, because there’s also the wonderful B-Story of Picard dealing with his adoring fans while in (the real) Ten Forward five years previously. Patrick Stewart Picard is accosted by a bunch of fans cadets who ask him to regale them with stories of his time on Star Trek the Enterprise. All the while, unseen, Jack lingers in the background, listening to Picard as he builds out his myth and his legacy while minimizing any reference to his own family. When Picard closes the gathering by saying that Starfleet is his family, it’s both an unwittingly hollow indictment of Picard’s own life (his co-workers are his only friends, oof) and an unwitting rejection of the son he could have grown to know years previously. This, my friends, is a great moment, full of depth and pathos and I just wish that it hadn’t taken this long to get here.

Speaking of which, Paramount recently punted Star Trek: Discovery’s fifth season to 2024, adding it would now be that show’s final run. With news that the studio is looking to tighten its belt in order to milk some actual profit from its streaming service, fans are feeling antsy. After all, Trek shows aren’t cheap to make, and it’s not clear how much crossover appeal these shows have. Despite David Stapf’s 2018 promise that we’d have “a Star Trek something on all the time,” there’s a worry that it’s closing time at the all-you-can-eat buffet. With Discovery and Picard on the outs, and no sign (yet) that Lower Decks and Prodigy will get renewals, we could go from five shows to three, or one, in no time at all. But, based on the merits of some of what’s been released under the Trek brand of late, would that really be such a bad thing?

After all, these four episodes of Picard form little more than an extended prologue for the rest of the run. It’s taken the better part of four hours to establish the broad outline of the plot as well as the main antagonists, and the stakes at hand. Even then, we’ve still not encountered more than half of the Next Generation returnees who formed such a key part of the marketing. A prologue that I would have enjoyed a hell of a lot more if it had been compressed down to closer to ninety minutes. Imagine if, rather than filling out a corporate-mandated ten-week block each year, the format was designed to suit the story being told at each time. On the merits of the last four weeks alone, fewer episodes of higher quality Trek would be infinitely preferable.

If you want to change the appearance of subtitles and closed captions on Netflix — perhaps to switch font sizes or to add a shadow that would make them more readable — you'd have to access your account on a browser. The process is a lot more complicated than it needs to be if you primarily stream on TV. In fact, I've never changed what mine looks like all these years, even if I had previously wanted to. Now, according to TechCrunch, the streaming giant has finally started rolling out the capability to customize subtitle and closed caption text within the TV app itself.

Based on the publication's report, the feature looks and works similar to Amazon Prime Video TV app's subtitle adjuster. It allows you to choose between small, medium and large text, as well as between four styles with and without drop shadows. One option is yellow text on a black background for greater contrast if you need it. On the service's updated help page, it said you can access those controls by going to Settings at the bottom of the screen while a show is playing and then choosing subtitle Size and Style. Take note that it's not possible to change text appearance for Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Romanian, Thai and Traditional Chinese at the moment. 

More and more people are using subtitles in recent years to hear dialogue when sounds are unbalanced and voices seem to be lower in volume than the background, or to watch shows in a foreign language. It's not just viewers with hard of hearing that use them anymore. And while the controls for the TV app offer fewer customization options than Netflix's website, they make changing up subtitles' appearance a lot more accessible. 

After a lengthy drought, Advance Wars-style strategy games are enjoying something of a resurgence. On April 21st, Nintendo will release Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp, a remake of the two Game Boy Advance games that started the series. It turns out strategy fans can also look forward to a new Wargroove title, with publisher Chucklefish announcing a sequel to the Advance Wars-inspired game from 2019.

Wargroove 2 doesn’t have a release date yet, but when the game is ready, it will be available on Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam. This time around, Robotality, a studio best known for its work on 2019’s Pathway, is handling development duties. According to the Wargroove 2’s Steam page, the sequel will feature new factions and units for players to command, as well as three single-player campaigns to complete. Chucklefish is also promising a roguelike mode. Additionally, the game will ship with an enhanced level editor that will allow players to create their own maps, cutscenes and campaigns.

If you haven’t played the original game yet, Wargroove is currently 70 percent off on Steam. That’s the largest discount Chucklefish has ever offered on the game.

The Microsoft-Activision Blizzard saga is still trundling on. As the companies try to push through Microsoft's proposed $68.7 billion takeover, some fascinating details are spilling out of documents that various parties are submitting to regulators. The latest is an intriguing update about the future of Call of Duty on mobile.

In a written response to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which recently suggested that the planned merger could lead to a "substantial lessening of competition in gaming consoles," Microsoft says that "Call of Duty: Mobile is expected to be phased out over time (outside of China) with the launch of Warzone Mobile." The letter (PDF) notes that Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studios developed and owns the current game.

Warzone Mobile is slated for release later this year. As GamesRadar points out, Call of Duty: Mobile has its own distinct seasons and battle pass. Warzone Mobile will hook into the cross-progression system of the PC and console versions of the battle royale game. There won't be cross-play between Warzone Mobile and the other versions.

It makes sense for Activision to want to unify the Call of Duty ecosystem, but it's unclear exactly what phasing out CoD: Mobile will mean for players and all the stuff they unlock in that game. Engadget has contacted Activision Blizzard for comment.