Retro Recap All The Classic Gaming News From The Past Week (May 3rd 2026)

Welcome to Retro Recap, a regular feature we run each and every weekend which rounds up all of the best retro gaming news and content of the past week in one place.

Godzilla Minus One Director Puts Star Fox Puppet Mystery To Bed, Once & For All

When looking at videos and photos from the marketing campaign for the 1993 SNES classic Star Fox, one question comes up time and again: "What happened to the puppets used in the game's marketing?"

It's a question, we admit, we've been curious about here at Time Extension for a while now, and one we've always wanted to set out to answer.

The Revived Commodore Just Announced Its Next FPGA Recreation, "Complete With The Original 1986 Imperfections"

Commodore International has just announced its next product, which follows in the footsteps of last year's Commodore 64 Ultimate.

The Commodore 64C Ultimate is based on the 1986 original, which took the C64's internals and placed them in a case design closer to that of 1985's Commodore 128.

"The slimline Commodore 64C Ultimate trades the breadbin appearance of 1982 for the Commodore 64’s sleeker 1986-1994 look that helped define the form factor of personal computers well into the future," says the company.

Pixel FX Announces The $200 'Morph 2K' Upscaler

Pixel FX recently announced the $199.99 Morph 2K, a new upscaler that's squarely aimed at those who don't want to break the bank to get razor-sharp visuals from their retro hardware.

Unlike the pricey (but amazing) RetroTINK 4K, the Morph 2K's HDMI output tops out at 1080p / 60Hz, so if you're not concerned about getting a 4K signal, this could be a decent option.

The C64 And ZX Spectrum Are Being Reimagined As Nintendo-Style Clamshell Handhelds

Evercade maker Blaze has confirmed that it is teaming up with Retro Games Ltd to produce two new clamshell handhelds based on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64.

Entitled THEC64 Handheld and The Spectrum Handheld, each unit boasts 25 preloaded games, a 4.3-inch IPS display, simplified controls to compensate for the lack of a keyboard, and the ability to load your own games via MicroSD. You can also connect a USB keyboard using a USB-A I/O port.

'100% AI-Generated' Smash Bros. PC Port Comes Under Fire

Super Smash Bros. just got a native PC port, but the news hasn't gone over all that well with many members of the retro community, thanks to the tools used to achieve it.

TheWizWiki has been very open and transparent that the port is "100% Al-generated" and says that, as a result, it took "a little over 25 days, with me, Opus 4.6, Opus 4.7, and GPT 5.5 as the only contributors... At many points, agents were dispatched and worked to build and test autonomously while I did other things."

Legendary Castlevania Composer Confirms She's Not Working On Belmont's Curse Or Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement

The Castlevania series is home to some of the greatest video game music ever composed, and many of the franchise's aural highlights can be attributed to Michiru Yamane.

Yamane has recently revealed that she's sadly not involved with Castlevania: Belmont's Curse or Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement.

She does, however, confirm that she's attending Retro Barcelona alongside fellow video game composer Yoko Shimomura (Final Fight, Street Fighter II, Kingdom Hearts).

Xbox Co-Founder Ed Fries On The Deal That Shook The Industry

Most people today will largely associate Ed Fries with his role as an Xbox co-founder and Microsoft's vice president of gaming in the late '90s and early 2000s, but his career in games actually dates back a lot further than that.

We recently had the chance to speak with Fries about his career in the games industry, paying particular focus to his role in assisting with Microsoft's acquisition of Rare.

Capcom Japan's First Localisation Lead Talks Marvel, Resident Evil, & Working With Shinji Mikami

If you happened to play a lot of Capcom games in the '90s and early 2000s, there's a high probability you may have seen Takuya "Tom" Shiraiwa's name scroll across your screen at some point in the past. Though we're willing to bet that you never really paid it much attention.

We were lucky to sit down with Shiraiwa for a chat about his career.