In October, gaming history YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming reported on a failed 2004 pitch for a Zelda tactics game on the Nintendo DS called Heroes of Hyrule. Two months later, the Mario maker has now used a copyright strike to erase the video from the internet. The channel, which has made hundreds of videos about Nintendo games and their history, says it’s the first time the company has ever responded with a takedown notice.
“Nintendo has removed our Heroes of Hyrule video from YouTube,” DidYouKnowGaming tweeted late Wednesday night. “This was a journalistic video documenting a game that Retro Studios pitched to Nintendo nearly 20 years ago. This is an attempt by a large corporation to silence whatever journalism they don’t like, and a slap in the face for video game history preservation.”
The original video by channel creator Shane Gill documented the Metroid Prime developer’s decades old pitch for a Zelda game that sounded a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. A turned-based strategy game with puzzle-solving mechanics, it focused on children reading a history book about the defeat of Ganon and acting it out. The heroes would find new pages and magical objects in their world that would then affect battles that took place in the book.
DidYouKnowGaming’s report was sourced to the original 22-page pitch document for the game, as well as an interview with the Retro programmer Paul Tozour who had crafted it. While there was no game to share early build footage from, it did include some visual illustrations from the document (Kotaku included one in our previous coverage of the video and has not yet received any legal complaints). In addition to describing what the game might have been, the video also told of the studio’s burnout from Metroid Prime 2 at the time, and some staff member’s desires to take a stab at a different type of project.
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The above is one of the sample illustrations from the Heroes of Hyrule pitch document that DidYouKnowGaming used in its video. Screenshot: Retro Studios / DidYouKnowGaming
It was a perfect example of the type of qualityYouTubegaming journalism DidYouKnowGaming has become known for, and of how easily fascinating moments in the medium’s history can be lost without people putting in the time and effort to document them. But apparently, the fact that the pitch was from nearly 20 years ago and ultimately unsuccessful didn’t prevent the notoriouslylitigious Nintendo from treating it like a highly sensitive trade secret.
“The Heroes of Hyrule video was created using the same process and video editing style used for most other videos on the channel,” DidYouKnowGaming told Kotaku in an email. “What sets the video apart is that it’s one of the few videos on the channel that documents a piece of Nintendo history that was first uncovered and reported on by us.”
The group believes the coverage of the pitch falls under fair use protection, and stands by its original reporting. “We had heard from several sources during the video’s production that Nintendo were becoming upset with the amount of former Nintendo employees that were willing to talk about and share material from unreleased games, failed pitches and other canceled projects,” the channel said. “This did not deter us and will not deter us from documenting video game history.”
While the Switch manufacturer has become infamous for YouTube copyright striking everything from free fan mods toold video game soundtracks, this appears to have taken the knee-jerk pettiness to an entirely new level. “This is Nintendo trying to bully and silence independent historical researchers doing completely above board work,” tweeted Liam Robertson, who did not work on the Heroes of Hyrule video but has been a contributor to DidYouKnowGaming in the past. “They should not get to pick and choose what is said about them on YouTube.”
Nintendo and YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s been a bumper year for gaming on the go. For a spell, it kinda felt like Nintendo was the only name in town, but it’s since become one of the more exciting corners of gaming. Today, there are handheld options for everything from AAA to Indie to retro and beyond. Whatsmore, the current generation of mobile processors means we’re seeing surprisingly capable hardware. The main problem, now, is that the software side of things hasn’t quite caught up. There’s perhaps no better demonstration of this than the Ayaneo Air Pro: a stellar example of what can be done, and what needs improving, in the burgeoning handheld PC world.
If you’re not familiar with Ayaneo, that’s understandable. The company hasn’t been around all that long, but it’s already making a name for itself thanks to remarkably good hardware that brings PC gaming into the portable realm. If you imagine a Steam Deck, but with Windows and a fraction of the size, you wouldn’t be far off.
Before we dive into the gaming experience, the hardware itself is worth a closer look. The Air Pro is impressively well made. It has a similar footprint to Nintendo’s Switch Lite, but it’s thicker (.85 vs .55 inches) and heavier (.88lbs vs .55). In terms of build quality, honestly the Ayaneo feels far superior. The Hall effect analog sticks and triggers are smooth with a nice amount of travel. The D-pad is responsive and the buttons are the right kind of snappy. The centerpiece is the stunning 5.5-inch OLED display – a first on Windows gaming handheld Ayaneo is fond of reminding us. It’s a delight to hold and feels premium in almost every regard. Even the fingerprint reader in the power button somehow adds a dash of sophistication.
James Trew / Engadget
As this is basically a PC, there are quite a few different configurations available. Some using AMD’s 5560U chipset and others running the 5825U with assorted amounts of RAM and storage depending on your budget. And you will need a sizable budget as you’ll soon find out.
The Air Pro doesn’t quite have the grunt of Valve’s venerable Steam Deck, but it does run Windows 11 out of the box and can run a surprising amount of high-end games in a more-than-playable fashion. And while the Steam Deck outguns it in terms of processing power, the Air Pro is legitimately portable without too much of a performance tradeoff.
Beyond size and the internals, the other main difference is price. Valve’s handheld tops out at $650 for the 512GB version while the Air Pro starts at $699 (5560U/16GB RAM/512GB storage). You can bring that figure right up to $1,399 if you want the faster silicon, 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage – that’s obviously quite spendy. The model we tested was somewhere between middle and top with the superior processor, 16GB of RAM and 1TB storage (though all models have expandable memory via a microSD card slot).
There are other gaming handhelds that run Windows, but many are too underpowered to handle a lot of bigger games. Anbernic’s Win600, for example, runs on an older AMD Athlon Silver 3050e chipset with Radeon Vega 3 graphics. This is a significant step down, but then the Win600 only costs $375. Ayn’s Odin can also run Windows, but the ARM-based version which brings with it some compatibility issues. GPD has been in this space for a while, but its Win 3 is looking a little underpowered now (though its Win 4 is coming this month and it looks suitably beefy).
Perhaps most tellingly there are manymore handhelds in the works from companies like Ayn, the aforementioned GPD and others. There’s even a new flagship from the company itself, the Ayaneo 2, that really should cause potential Steam Deck buyers some headaches. These un-released models all have something in common: AMD’s 6800U chipset. It seems there was always an appetite for PC gaming on the go, just we didn’t quite have the required hardware to run it. Until recently.
Technical limitations are one thing, but there’s another more philosophical question that needs answering: Why make a pocketable PC when you can stream a lot of AAA games without the need for expensive, power hungry dedicated hardware? While it’s true streaming is more viable than ever, that approach requires that you have a console or gaming PC in the first place or a subscription to something like GeForce Now or Xbox Cloud which isn’t economically favorable for many folks (not to mention the libraries might not have what you want). Not to mention its dependence on a network connection – good luck with that on in-flight WiFi.
James Trew / Engadget
Which brings us back to the real issue: Windows isn’t ready to be used on tiny screens and neither are many of the games that run on it. Ayaneo has tried hard to ameliorate this issue by adding its own launcher called Ayaspace. It serves as a front-end for all your games and manages to provide a vague console-like experience. But it’s not long before the spell is broken and you find yourself using an analog stick as a mouse trying to log-in to Steam and then using a tiny onscreen keyboard to peck out your credentials.
Ayaneo has at least tried to solve some of these inevitable problems. The Air Pro, for example, has two buttons along the top (between LB and RB) that will pull up the onscreen keyboard, double for ESC and other essential Windows shortcuts to make navigating bearable. But you will likely need to plug in a mouse and keyboard at some point just to get something simple done.
It’ll also soon become apparent that AAA games weren’t necessarily made with a small screen in mind. For the most part, games look incredible on the Air Pro’s OLED display. Even when playing games at 720p (the display is 1080p) they still look incredible – but it’s often a necessary tradeoff for performance. You will likely find yourself wishing that display was just a little bit bigger. Not least to get rid of those bezels, but just for general quality of life.
Not least for games where there’s a lot of text. Titles like Disco Elysium, for example, have a lot of written dialog – and while it’s easy enough to read for the most part, it’s noticeably more fatiguing than if you were on a desktop. Thankfully, the display is sharp and the resolution is high enough that it’s all still very legible, but there’s just that vague sense of a UI that wasn’t built for a display of this size.
James Trew / Engadget
If you’re thinking “Why not just run SteamOS on it” you wouldn’t be alone. It’s been done with varying degrees of success. The bigger issue might just come down to the practicality (millions of games available, wide hardware support) and reach of Windows. There are some more mundane challenges with SteamOS that don’t make it a shoo-in replacement for these handhelds. Primarily, game compatibility. If it’s not available on Steam, you can probably still install it on SteamOS but it might involve flipping to desktop mode or other workarounds which breaks the “console” experience you might have been seeking in the first place.
More importantly, some users are actually reporting better battery life with Windows on the Steam Deck despite expecting it to be worse. The claims are that it’s broadly equivalent but in some cases even better than Valve’s native operating system thanks to a combination of factors. PC gaming has a lot of variables, so this isn’t necessarily that surprising. This isn’t always going to be the case, but it’s at least not a strong incentive for making SteamOS the go-to platform for portable PC gaming.
Battery life is especially important with a handheld and it would be a lie to say it’s something that the Ayaneo Air Pro excels at. Or even does adequately at. Depending on what you’re playing and the power drain – usually called TDP – required for it to run satisfactorily. More demanding games will need a TDP of 12 Watts or above and you can hope for about an hour and 45 minutes battery life at this intensity. Some games can run just fine at 8W which will extend play time to around 2.3 hours. You can get over three hours of life on the lowest 5W setting but this won’t be enough for anything but the lightest of games but it’s good for general setup tasks and the like.
Needless to say, this isn’t ideal for a handheld, especially as your battery pack likely won’t cut it – unless it can deliver 65W, which most can’t.
In short, the Ayaneo Air Pro represents a lot of hope and shines a light on some challenges. Hope in that true PC gaming on the go in a pocket-friendly format and on fantastic hardware, feels like it might finally be here. It’s the challenges that are a little more complicated. Windows has a lot of advantages, but also plenty of practical drawbacks. Whether it’s a case of adapting the hardware around these, or just a matter of a smart software overlay is being figured out in real time it seems.
James Trew / Engadget
Making a truly “console” experience will require some clever thinking and equally clever software. Ayaneo, for its part, is also working on its own Ayaneo OS that’s Linux-based like SteamOS. Whether this will resolve some of the challenges remains to be seen, but it’s clearly something that’s being worked on. But that just accounts for one company. With other manufacturers with ties to Windows like GPD there’s a risk of ending up with a mishmash of approaches. Hopefully, though, with more competition comes more innovation (or more ideas to be “borrowed”).
For some, the exciting part is to finally have more options to enjoy high-end gaming away from the PC. Not everyone is looking to spend more time at a desktop, or maybe you just want to scratch that Elden-itch while waiting for a flight. Whatever your preference, things are about to get a lot more interesting.
Thanks to a recent change in Android 13 for Pixel phones, when a user toggles Airplane mode, you can now have it so that your WiFi connection will stay put. Before this recent change, Airplane mode would disable your cell connection and WiFi connection, but now, you can choose what happens.
To get this up and running, simply toggle Airplane mode on your Pixel device, and then turn on WiFi. Once connected, toggle Airplane mode off and now the phone will remember your setting. It’s that easy.
This is just like Android 11’s change for Bluetooth. Before Android 11, Airplane mode would disable everything, but now, it too can be toggled on and kept on following a switch into Airplane mode.
Many have accused Toyota of dragging its feet on EVs, but the company is not treating battery electrics like a foregone conclusion. Like a college freshman who’s just dumped their high school sweetheart, it’s keeping its options open. It’s been campaigning a hydrogen combustion race car (note that it’s not a fuel cell vehicle but a conventional piston engine that burns H2), and the first road car derived from that technology has entered the prototype stage.
The Toyota Corolla Cross H2 Concept is powered by a version of the turbocharged 1.6-liter three-cylinder found in the GR Yaris and GR Corolla. That means it still has pistons, rods and a crankshaft. And instead of using hydrogen in an electrochemical process to power a car electrically, the engine employs a modified fuel delivery system, injectors and ignition setup to burn the element.
It adopts the hydrogen storage technology put forth by the Mirai, but can be built easily using traditional ICE manufacturing methods. Toyota says the system has quicker refueling times than charging a BEV and reduces dependency on precious metals like nickel and lithium, both required for electric vehicles.
In one year of campaigning what is essentially a GR Corolla that runs on hydrogen in Japan’s Super Taikyu endurance series, Toyota has been able to markedly improve efficiency of the hydrogen combustion engine. By the end of the season, Toyota says it upped horsepower by 24% and torque by 33%, putting it on par with gasoline engines. The race car didn’t have the range of an equivalent petrol car, but engineers managed to increase the distance covered on a tank of H2 by 30% over the season. Similarly, refueling time was greatly reduced, from about 5 minutes to just 90 seconds.
The race Corolla had four tanks of hydrogen stuffed in the cargo area, but the Corolla Cross H2 will test real world practicality. It can carry five occupants and their luggage. It will soon begin winter testing in Japan.
Toyota estimates that the Corolla Cross H2 is only 40% of the way to commercialization, and doesn’t yet know if it can bring it to market. The prototype’s reveal took place at the same EU conference where the company announced an EV manual transmission and an expansion to six electric vehicles in the BZ family, so Toyota isn’t under any illusions that EVs will be a big part of the future.
On the other hand, Toyota sells cars in 170 countries with very different infrastructures and driving habits. Toyota believes that with a multi-technology approach — which includes battery electrics, hybrid-electrics, plug-in hybrid electrics, hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen combustion cars — they have a better chance of achieving zero emissions.
Simultaneously Toyota is working with companies researching green hydrogen production and transport so that it has many avenues to get to carbon neutrality. The race cars are fueled with hydrogen fuel created from renewable energy. If nothing else, the firm is proving that even in a non-gasoline future, motorsports is still an important crucible for developing technology that can filter down to road cars.
DETROIT — Tesla delivered its first electric semis to PepsiCo Thursday, more than three years after Elon Musk said his company would start making the trucks.
The Austin, Texas, company formally delivered the trucks in a “delivery event” at a factory near Reno, Nevada. The event was livestreamed, including on Twitter, which Musk now owns.
Musk drove one of three Tesla Semis in front of a crowd inside the factory. One was white, one was painted with a Pepsi logo, and another with Frito-Lay colors.
PepsiCo, which is based in Purchase, New York, is taking part in a zero-emissions freight project at a Frito-Lay facility in Modesto, California. That project is being funded by a $15.4 million clean-freight technology grant from the California Air Resources Board that includes 15 Tesla battery-electric tractors and other electric- and natural-gas powered trucks.
Electric semis also would be eligible for a federal tax credit of up to $40,000.
At an event in November of 2017 unveiling the Tesla Semi, Musk said production would begin in 2019 and the trucks would be able to follow each other autonomously in a convoy. But during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings conference call in October he said the company’s “Full Self Driving” system is not quite ready to be driverless.
“It’s been a long journey, a long five years,” Musk said, “but this is going to really revolutionize the roads.”
Musk said the truck has a tri-motor powertrain, based on the same one in the Model S/X Plaid. Two of the drive units would free-spin at times on the highway for maximum efficiency, while the other two units would engage when torque and acceleration is called for, say when tackling a grade. A video clip shown during the event (above) showed the truck pulling a 6% grade on Donner Pass, and passing traffic.
The truck’s regenerative capabilities capture energy on a downhill grade, preventing the threat of brake failure and a runaway truck, Musk said — “a significant safety improvement for the truck driver and the other people on the road.”
Of the motors, Musk said, “One of them is more powerful than the diesel engine on a semi truck.” (The drive unit in a Tesla Model S Plaid has an output of 1,020 horsepower and 1,050 pound-feet of torque. A diesel semi typically has around 500-600 horsepower, but its torque can range from 1,000 to 2,000 pound-feet.)
Musk said that when the tractor is being driven without a trailer, it’s “like an elephant moving like a cheetah.”
Musk said the truck has a range per charge of 500 miles (800 kilometers) when pulling an 82,000-pound (37,000-kilo) load. The normal load limit for a semi is 80,000 pounds, but Musk said an extra 2,000 pounds is allowed for an electric truck.
Musk said the company successfully completed a 500-mile test of the Semi‘s driving range on Nov. 15 between Fremont and San Diego. The company plans to ramp up Semi production to make 50,000 trucks in 2024 in North America.
To service the Semi, Musk said Tesla has developed a “megawatt-class” V4 DC Supercharger that’s “next-generation liquid-cooled,” allowing a user to “shove a megawatt” through a typically sized charging cable — “it’s going to be used for Cybertruck, too.” The charger is promised for next year.
Competitors working on hydrogen-powered semis say battery-powered trucks won’t work for long-haul carriers because it will take too long to recharge the huge batteries. Musk said hydrogen isn’t needed for heavy trucking. Musk said Tesla’s interest in the Semi was based in the fact that commercial trucking amounts to 20% of transportation greenhouse emissions, and 33% of particulates.
Tesla said its other vehicles would used the powertrain in the Semi, and that the company will use the truck in its own supply chain to ship auto components.
As part of its goal to have zero-emission aircraft enter service by 2035, Airbus has announced the development of a hydrogen fuel cell designed for airplanes. Unlike Rolls-Royce’s recently announced jet engine that burns hydrogen directly, it would use an electric motor just like fuel-cell cars, while emitting only H2O. It could eventually be employed in commercial aircraft that could carry up to 100 passengers around 1,000 nautical miles (1,150 miles), the company said.
Airbus plans to test the engine by the middle of the decade on its A380 MSN1 aircraft, “currently being modified to carry liquid hydrogen tanks.” However, the technology appears to be designed for smaller, regional aircraft that use more efficient propeller, rather than jet, engines. As you can see on the rendering above, the fuel cell and propeller motor are attached to an A380 for testing, not necessarily as full propulsion for the large airliner.
“Fuel cells are a potential solution to help us achieve our zero-emission ambition, and we are focused on developing and testing this technology to understand if it is feasible and viable for a 2035 entry-into-service of a zero-emission aircraft,” said Airbus VP for zero-emission aircraft, Glenn Llewellyn.
The company didn’t provide any more details, but fuel cells are a well-known technology for cars. They’re far less efficient than battery electric vehicles (BEVs) if you count fuel production and conversion to electricity. However, they have more range, are faster to refuel and lighter — with the latter, of course, being essential for aircraft.
As mentioned, Rolls-Royce just announced the successful test of a jet engine powered by burning hydrogen directly, another possible technology for future air transport. The company converted a Rolls-Royce AE 2100-A, a regional aircraft engine used in turboprop commuter planes, to work with the novel fuel source. However, the tech could theoretically be scaled up for larger planes.
There are still some major hurdles to overcome before hydrogen could ever be used to power airplanes. It takes four times as much hydrogen as regular fuel by weight for the same range, and the fuel must be kept under pressure. Still, it might be the only option available for aircraft in the near future, as battery technology is still much too heavy unless used for very short flights.
Money is tight these days. Holiday shopping, ballooning inflation, and a looming recession have forced people to more carefully consider their finances. Those factors might help explain the explosion of “buy now, pay later” services. BNPL plans offered by companies like Affirm, AfterPay, and Klarna let you spread the cost of a purchase—anything from a Peloton bike to a basket of groceries—over multiple installments, without the fees or interest rates of most credit cards. Of course, free money always comes with a catch.
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This week on Gadget Lab, we dig into the buy now, pay later phenomenon and what it means for the future of shopping.
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