Battleground

With projects like Donkey Kong 64 Recompiled, human programmers stake a claim on the art and science of retro game recompilation.

IGN snootily turned down an offer to review the Nex Playground around its 2023 release. And why not? It’s a casual games console from a company with no cachet in the space – a colorful little cube whose primary input method is your own body, via an ultra-wide camera lens on the front of the system. And yet, like the Wii before it, this underestimated machine (scoffed by elite gaming media types everywhere!) managed to outsell Microsoft’s Xbox consoles over the 2025 holidays. Were we, the gaming media, wrong? So now, here I am as one of IGN’s child-having freelance writers, with a review of the