🎭 Hello and welcome to another edition of The Memory Core newsletter! Last week, I mentioned that I’d only be writing roundups on Fridays, but a major story broke today that I want to at least attempt to highlight.

You may have already guessed, but it’s about the departure of iiSU’s founder, UsagiShade, from the project, and what’s next. The story is still developing, which is why this newsletter is late. Sorry!

Also, stay tuned for another newsletter over the weekend featuring an interview with the developer of another exciting emulation frontend. No drama with that one, I promise.

There was a lot of news this week, so let’s get started.

P.S. If you haven't already, consider signing up to get every new edition in your inbox, free of charge.

A crazy week for iiSU

This week, the long-awaited iiSU Direct dropped, highlighting tons of new features for the upcoming frontend. These included a shop, social aspects, and more. There were immediate concerns of feature creep, but the overall vibe was hype.

But all of that went out the window just a few days later, when old messages surfaced that proved damaging to founder UsagiShade’s reputation. It turns out that the official server for the project was repurposed from an old friend server, with all of the old messages left intact.

The content of some messages, most of which were made by other members of the server and not Usagi himself, could be considered homophobic, transphobic, or racist. These kinds of comments are unfortunately very common in gaming group chats, most of which aren’t made public to tens of thousands of fans.

Other accusations, mostly misguided, were levied against the development team. SapphireRhodonite, whom I’ve interviewed a few times on this newsletter, uses an AI-generated profile picture on his Patreon and relies partially on ChatGPT to write his Patreon posts.

That got conflated with the design team, with claims that the entirety of iiSU was AI slop. As far as I’ve seen, no part of the UX design of iiSU uses AI. On the coding side, SapphireRhodonite responded directly to this question on a Patreon post, writing:

In any case, harassment of Usagi intensified, with more accusations flying on social media. After his first apology announcement failed to appease the community, he decided to step away from the project this morning. His videos, including the announcement video from earlier this week, have been removed from YouTube.

So where are things now?

The good news is that development will continue. SapphireRhodonite has continued to forge ahead with development, with the third alpha build coming in the next 24 hours. What’s more, it will be available to everyone, not just Patreon members, which should help quell rumors that it’s all vaporware.

On the design side, iiSU’s co-designer Nathan Lohnes (AKA Elder Monkey) will now take control of the project. The rest of the dev team, both on the front-end and back-end, remains in place.

The team held an emergency Q&A this morning to answer a few concerns, which just finished as I write this. At the moment, it seems that some of the social elements will be scaled back, with focus shifting to the core frontend experience.

Interestingly, Lohnes also indicated that he would be more open to certain parts of iiSU going open-source, but stay tuned for more info on that as time goes on.

For now, the team is going to take a well-deserved rest after all the drama. Invitations to the Discord server have been locked to prevent further harassment, but hopefully we see more transparency as things calm down.

Handheld highlights

😓 The ANBERNIC RG DS is finally arriving to reviewers, and it’s not looking great. I have one in front of me to review (eventually), so I’ll let you know my thoughts when I have them. A rep did tell me that the company is working on a fix for the 40Hz dip on the upper screen, so things aren’t looking entirely dire. [RetroGameCorps] [The Phawx]

💧 This week, another ANBERNIC device leaked that might be more promising. The RG 477V is set to be the company’s largest and most powerful vertical handheld yet. It’s essentially a vertical version of the RG 477M, without the metal shell. Expect an official announcement very soon. [Reddit]

🙅 The Odin 2 Mini has been discontinued. It’s bad news for fans of the PSP Vita-inspired handheld, but hopefully AYN fills the gap in its lineup with another small handheld sometime next year. [Discord]

🆕 AYANEO has announced more details about the Pocket VERT, including the chipset: Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. This is the first time the company has used this chipset, but it should be more than capable of handling the types of games that play well on a small, square screen. The Indiegogo page is now up, but the launch date and pricing haven’t been announced yet. [Indiegogo]

FPGA Focus

📦 Analogue 3D pre-orders finally arrived this week, and sales were opened once again on Monday. If you were hoping to grab one, I have some bad news, because it sold out in less than 10 minutes. It’s entirely possible that these were cancelled pre-orders, and there’s no telling when it will be coming back. [Analogue]

🛠️ There’s some good news, however, as the EverDrive-64 X flashcart has now been patched by Krizz to improve compatibility with the Analogue 3D. [Krizz]

🌈 Continuing with N64 FPGA, the ModRetro M64 will get a full design reveal later today. The announcement of the announcement already showed the console, though, so we know that it’s much, much more colorful than the Analogue 3D. Stay tuned for a controller reveal in the coming hours. [X]

🪦 MARS, which had the potential to rival MiSTer if it ever came to fruition, is now officially dead. It’s been dormant for months, but it seems like the final nail is now in the coffin. [Time Extension]

🍓 There’s a new, open-source flash cart for the Nintendo DS and DSi called DSpico. Everything from the software to the box art is open-source, so go download the files and make your own flash cart today! [DSpico]

The Emulator Report

🐬 The Android version of Dolphin finally supports RetroAchievements! For now, you have to download one of the latest dev builds, and a few features are missing, but it’s great news for cheevo hunters. Full support is planned in the next stable build. [Dolphin]

🌐 ARMSX2 released update 1.0.6, which adds online multiplayer and turnip driver support. Neither of these features are available on AetherSX2/NetherSX2, although in-game performance may still be worse on ARMSX2. Regardless, it’s great to see progress. [ARMSX2]

🛰️ NeoStation, a new frontend for Windows and Android, just added support for standalone Switch emulators. Previously, it was limited to RetroArch, but development has been moving fast. Remember that interview I mentioned in the intro? Spoiler: It’s the NeoStation dev. [NeoStation]

🫚 Official Turnip drivers for the Snapdragon 8 Elite are coming! Announced via the GameHub Discord, the Mesa team is currently working on Turnip drivers for A8xx GPUs, which is great news for anyone who has pre-ordered an Odin 3 or Pocket FIT Elite. [Discord]

Retro archives

👸 The Twilight Princess decomp has reached a 99% match with the original code. While it may be some time before we see a port of any kind, it could lead to new insights into the codebase that reveal game-breaking bugs for speedrunners and others. [GitHub]

🪠 Speaking of decomps, the Mario 64 decomp has been ported to the PS1. Is this heresy? Maybe, but it’s a fun proof of concept. [GitHub]

🐲 On the flip side, Spyro the Dragon has been ported to the N64. OK, so not the full game, but the demo video is enough to make me want to dig out some old jewel cases… [YouTube]

👟 In totally dumb news, there’s now a pair of sneakers that can play SNES games. There’s a Raspberry Pi Zero W in the tongue of one of the shoes, but you’ll have to connect a TV to see what you’re playing. And no, you can’t buy them. [The Verge]