📰 New article from RetroRGB

Weekly Roundup #494

https://retrorgb.com/week494.html

You know you’re living in the golden age of retro when your gaming setup includes a CRT beam emulator, a NES-style Raspberry Pi case, and fuzzy bear slippers. RetroRGB’s latest Roundup is basically a love letter to nostalgia—with a side of obsessive tinkering.

First up: Krikzz dropped the Everdrive GBA Pro, a sleek little device that lets you play every GBA game without cart swapping. Meanwhile, Tito rebuilt his Virtual Boy—yes, that gloriously painful 3D console—and made it look like a prop from a sci-fi movie. And if you’ve ever wondered how the NES changed gaming history, there’s a deep dive on its untold story that’ll make you see those 8-bit pixels in a whole new light.

But wait—there’s more. Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation spilled tea on preservation efforts, Sega Channel is now playable on MiSTer (yes, Sega Channel), and Duckstation added a GPU toggle so you can tweak your PS1’s visuals like a pixel wizard. Oh, and there’s now an app that simulates the glow of old CRT TVs on Windows. Because why just play games when you can feel the vibe?

And yes, they made fuzzy bear slippers. You’ll thank us later.

Support RetroRGB if you love this stuff—your wallet won’t miss it, but your retro soul will.

📰 New article from TorrentFreak

2025: Two Decades of Piracy Reporting: TorrentFreak’s Retrospective

https://torrentfreak.com/2025-two-decades-of-piracy-reporting-torrentfreaks-retrospective/

20 Years of Piracy: From Torrents to AI, We’ve Come a Long Way

Remember when downloading a movie meant wrestling with eXeem’s adware and praying your ISP didn’t throttle you? Fast forward to 2025, and now AI models are trained on pirated books—and the RIAA is suing Spotify scrapers.

The early 2000s were wild: The Pirate Bay rose like a digital Robin Hood, Comcast sabotaged uploads with fake network signals, and the “Mega Song” featuring P. Diddy somehow got made (and then vanished). By 2016, giants like KickassTorrents and ExtraTorrent fell one by one—not because people stopped pirating, but because the legal hammer got heavier.

Then came 2020: lockdowns sent piracy soaring 40%, YouTube-dl got yanked from GitHub, and the world realized: we don’t need torrents anymore—we just need a shady app that says “stream for free.”

Now? AI companies are quietly slurping up pirate archives like Books3. Z-Library’s seizure felt like the end of an era—until Anna’s Archive scraped 86 million Spotify tracks. Cue a 750-million URL takedown campaign. Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers are reviving SOPA-style site blocks like it’s 2012.

The lesson? Piracy didn’t die. It evolved—into algorithms, shadow libraries, and corporate paranoia. The war’s not over. It just got weirder.

And we’re still here to report it.

📰 New article from Wololo.net

Homebrew Release: Warnel Chawpiovs (PC, Nintendo Switch)

https://wololo.net/2025/12/31/homebrew-release-warnel-chawpiovs-pc-nintendo-switch/

🎉 New Year’s Eve gift? Meet Warnel Chawpiovs—a homebrew Marvel Champions digital clone that’s equal parts brilliant and chaotic.

If you’ve ever stared at a board game rulebook like it was ancient hieroglyphs, this is your lifeline. Warnel Chawpiovs (yes, that’s the real name—no typos) automates the nightmare of Marvel Champions’ card mechanics so you can focus on punching Loki in the face instead of counting action points. Works on PC, Switch (if you’ve hacked it), Mac, Linux—even Android if you’re brave enough to tap with your thumb.

But here’s the twist: it doesn’t hold your hand. You still need to know how the game works. No baby steps—just pure, unfiltered card chaos.

Switch version? Slow. Like “please overclock your console or risk falling asleep mid-turn” slow. Multiplayer? Broken. But hey—it’s a labor of love from one fan to another. And if you really want to play with friends? There’s already a better digital version out there. The dev admits it. With a grin.

Download it, tinker with it, report bugs (gently), and maybe—just maybe—help make multiplayer work. Or just enjoy soloing Galactus on your Switch while sipping eggnog.

🎮 Free. Open-source. Slightly unhinged. Perfect for 2025.

📰 New article from Wololo.net

Wololo, did you leave the scene ?

https://wololo.net/2025/12/31/wololo-did-you-leave-the-scene/

Wololo’s gone quiet—but he hasn’t vanished.

The man who once ruled PlayStation hacking blogs with PSP Go exploits and Vita hacks is stepping back, not out. After 20 years of being the go-to source for console secrets, he admits: “I just can’t git gud anymore.” Modern PS4/PS5 exploits? Too complex. Time? Too scarce. And when top hackers gently told him he didn’t get it… well, that stung.

But here’s the twist: he’s not quitting the scene—he’s pivoting. No more technical deep dives. No more blog posts drowned in AI crawlers sucking his content dry while killing his site’s speed. Instead? He’s working on a homebrew game—for PC and Nintendo Switch. Yes, really. The granpa who started it all is still tinkering in the basement.

The internet he loved? Dead, he says—replaced by AI-generated noise and Discord echo chambers. And honestly? We get it. But Wololo’s legacy isn’t in blog traffic stats—it’s in every kid who downloaded Wagic back in 2007 and thought, “Wait… I can make my own games?”

So no, he didn’t leave the scene.

He just swapped his keyboard for a joystick.

And we’ll be waiting for that Switch game.

📰 New article from Retro Handhelds

GAMEMT E3 Vigor Pre-Orders Open, Starting at Just $45

https://retrohandhelds.gg/gamemt-e3-vigor-pre-orders-open-starting-at-just-45/

Let’s be real—another retro handheld? Again? But wait… this one costs $45.

Enter the GAMEMT E3 Vigor: a cute, pill-shaped pocket beast that looks like a cross between a PSP and a tiny unicorn (yes, really). For under $50 with the code ROYIBEILA02, you get a 3.95-inch 720×720 screen, 1GB RAM, and a MediaTek MT6592 chip—possibly the first handheld to use it. That’s… weirdly exciting? Or terrifying? Maybe both.

It’s not a powerhouse, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s designed for PSP and PS1 gems, with a clean launcher, microSD support, and a 5,000mAh battery that’ll outlive your willpower to stop playing Metal Gear Solid. The design? Sleek, flat-backed, and available in Purple/White or Black—because nothing says “I’m a 2005 kid trapped in 2025” like pastel electronics.

No gameplay footage yet (just a demo of the menu—yawn), but if it runs Gran Turismo like a dream and doesn’t melt in your pocket, this could be the sleeper hit of 2026. Pre-orders are live. Shipping in 10–15 days. Or earlier, if the universe feels generous.

$45 for nostalgia? Sign me up. 🎮💜

📰 New article from RetroRGB

NES-Style Raspberry Pi 5 Case w/ Heatsink & Fans

https://retrorgb.com/nes-style-raspberry-pi-5-case-w-heatsink-fans.html

You know what’s better than a Raspberry Pi 5? A Raspberry Pi 5 that looks like it stepped out of your childhood NES closet.

Enter the Geeek Pi NES-style case — under $20, packed with a heatsink, fans, and enough thermal pads to soothe your Pi’s post-workout soreness. It’s sleek, retro-futuristic, and somehow makes your $35 computer feel like a collector’s item. Bonus: it even comes with a rear power button… which, let’s be honest, no one ever uses. (We all just yank the plug like it’s 1998.)

The case says it’s only for Pi 5s, but we’re pretty sure a Pi 4 could sneak in too — if it’s willing to risk the fan connector drama. And that mysterious front hole? Still unconfirmed. Alien communication port? Dust trap? Secret snack compartment? We may never know.

What we do know: it’s functional, affordable, and gorgeous. Pair it with a right-angle USB-C cable (because cables that stick out like awkward elbows are a crime), slap on your favorite OS, and suddenly your living room looks like it’s hosting the 1987 Nintendo World Championships.

TL;DR: If you love retro vibes and don’t want your Pi to look like a lab experiment — this case is your new best friend.

📰 New article from TorrentFreak

Premier League Targets Dozens of Pirate Streaming Sites through Cloudflare Subpoena

https://torrentfreak.com/premier-league-targets-dozens-of-pirate-streaming-sites-through-cloudflare-subpoena/

The Premier League isn’t just chasing fans with pirated streams—it’s going after the invisible middlemen behind them.

Football fans might think they’re just clicking a link to watch Manchester City live for free, but behind every sketchy stream is a web of redirect chains, CDN tricks, and anonymized hosting—courtesy of services like Cloudflare. And now, the PL is turning up the heat.

In a bold legal move, the league filed for a DMCA subpoena in California, demanding Cloudflare hand over identities of operators behind 20+ pirate sites like dooball345.com and yallalshoot.com. These aren’t just random blogs—they’re slick operations using m3u8 playlists, tokenized streams, and layered redirects to serve live matches to millions. One site? Three domain hops before you even see the feed.

Cloudflare doesn’t host the piracy—it just hides where it’s hosted. So the PL is asking: Who’s really pulling the strings? Payment info, IP logs, email addresses—all on the table. Even if some operators use fake data, the financial trail could lead somewhere.

This isn’t about stopping one site. It’s about dismantling the whole ecosystem—one subpoena at a time. And if they find even one operator with a real address and credit card? That’s the kind of win that makes piracy less “free” and more… risky.

Bottom line: If you’re watching illegally, someone’s getting paid. The PL wants to know who.

📰 New article from Retro Handhelds

JarPlay Brings J2ME Emulation to the iPhone and iPad

https://retrohandhelds.gg/jarplay-brings-j2me-emulation-to-the-iphone-and-ipad/

Remember when your phone could only do calls, texts, and Doom RPG? Yeah, those were the days. Now, thanks to JarPlay, you can relive them—on your iPhone.

Launched quietly on the App Store, JarPlay is a J2ME emulator that lets you run early-2000s Java mobile games like Harry Potter 7, Asphalt 4, and even lost gems like the Tony Hawk mobile series. No bundled games—you bring your own .jar files—but it’s got slick on-screen keypads, controller support, and optional visual filters to make your old games look like they’re still stuck in 2003. The free version works fine; $3.99 unlocks unlimited imports, skins, and shaders—no ads, no tracking. Just pure nostalgia.

Not everything runs perfectly—N.O.V.A.? Nope. Gangstar Rio? Barely. But for the dozens of forgotten mobile classics that vanished when Java died, this is a miracle. Think of it as digital archaeology with a touch screen.

In an age where games vanish when servers shut down, JarPlay is quietly saving gaming’s forgotten past—one .jar file at a time.

Now if only we could emulate that Nokia ringer…

📰 New article from Retro Handhelds

AYANEO Releases Screen Details and a Kickstarter Page for the Pocket Play

https://retrohandhelds.gg/ayaneo-releases-screen-details-and-a-kickstarter-page-for-the-pocket-play/

Meet the AYANEO Pocket Play: a gaming phone that looks like your childhood Xperia Play’s cooler, more ambitious cousin.

Forget punch-hole cameras—AYANEO went full retro-futurist with a clean, bezel-heavy 6.8″ OLED screen (165Hz, because why not?) and a slide-out physical control panel. Yes, you read that right. No thumb-stick fatigue here. Just pure tactile bliss for gamers who miss the days of buttons you could actually feel.

It’s not just a phone with game mode turned up—it’s a handheld in disguise. Competitors like the ROG Phone and RedMagic might have higher refresh rates or pixel counts, but none offer a built-in D-pad. That’s the secret sauce.

No price tag yet. No confirmed Snapdragon 8 Elite (though we’re betting $700+). And the Kickstarter page? Still in “coming soon” purgatory. But if AYANEO’s track record is any indicator, this’ll be a premium, love-it-or-hate-it device—with a cult following already forming.

Keep your eyes peeled. 2026 might just be the year gaming phones got a soul again. 🎮

📰 New article from Retro Handhelds

Lost NES RPG Resurfaces In Seven Minute Video

https://retrohandhelds.gg/lost-nes-rpg-resurfaces-in-seven-minute-video/

Remember when you lost your favorite toy and spent years wondering what happened to it? Well, imagine that—but it’s a video game… and it’s 30 years old.

Meet Indy The Magical Kid, a lost NES RPG that vanished in 1993 after being 90% done. Promos flew, fans dreamed, and then—poof. Corporate silence. A single ROM auctioned for $9,600 in 2019? The buyer swore it’d stay hidden. Game over, right?

Not quite.

A grainy, seven-minute VHS gameplay video just dropped on YouTube. No title screen. No story. Just pixelated magic, wild enemy designs, and the faint hum of 90s hope. And get this—it’s official. The original devs gave permission. Not just footage—they’ve got concept art, soundtracks, even doujinshi (yes, fan comics made by the devs). They’re crowdfunding a full-color book to resurrect this ghost of gaming history.

This isn’t just nostalgia. It’s archaeology with heart. A game that never got to see the light of day? Now it’s getting a second life—on paper, in print, and in the hands of those who never stopped wondering: What if Indy had been real?

Spoiler: It was. And now, so are we.