Social media is full of memes and parodies inspired by Inde Navarrette's unsettling, manic performance as the cursed Nikki Freeman. But that doesn't mean that sending up a dark psychological horror movie is the right call for every brand, as golf equipment make Callaway has just discovered.

The video showing a golfer violently shove a woman to the ground after she tried to pick up his driver was intended to promote a new co-branded product launched by Callaway with the media company Good Good Golf.

If the aim was to go viral, it worked, but for all the wrong reasons. A significant backlash grew online as people accused the brands of promoting violence against women. One golfer writing on X described the video as a "generationally stupid ad.”

Good Good, whose original YouTube channel now has 2.1 million subscribers, has deleted the video. It posted an apology, saying that the ad "ultimately depicted actions that are not aligned with our values as a brand".

Callaway has also said sorry. It said in a statement: “While the video was produced by Good Good, it was approved by Callaway prior to posting. That approval should never have happened

"To be clear: We are unequivocally against discrimination, domestic violence, or threatening behavior of any kind.”

The equipment make said it's carrying out internal and external investigations and making changes to its approval processes.

But some wonder how the ad got approved by both brands in the first place. It seems it was probably a case of the kind of group think that can set in when brands applaud their own cleverness at quickly jumping on a trending topic. But not every trend is suitable for every brand, and the execution is everything.

We recently revisited the outrageous Gameboy adverts of the '90s. These are very different times. Audiences have matured, casual misogyny is no longer tolerated in mainstream advertising, and golf as a sport has been trying to become more inclusive.

“They didn’t just create an ad that makes golf non-inclusive to women... it endorses violence against women in the scariest and most threatening way,” writes the senior director of social media at golf-focused media company Pro Shop on X. “This is a horrible look for them and for Callaway. Wildly disappointing.”

When Screenbound was first announced in 2024, its 28-second trailer showing its '5D' concept of the player navigating a 3D world in first-person while also playing a 2D game of that same world in front of them on a Game Boy-like handheld immediately caught my eye. A unique dual-focused idea that blends retro and modern styles – what's not to love?

However, this teaser from indie publisher and developer Crescent Moon Games was essentially just a proof of concept rather than an actual game. While the idea of outsourced development, or co-development, is something you'd usually associate with larger AAA games, it also exists in indie development. Radical Forge is one such studio with experience in indie co-development, including work on Gang Beasts and several Vampire Survivors spin-offs, and has been responsible for turning Screenbound into a playable reality. And there was a lot of work involved, as the studio's lead tech artist, Lyra Owen, describes the game based on the original teaser as "bare bones".

"A lot of it was just mockups with very basic artwork that used a lot of asset packs," she tells me. "So when we got hold of it, we started again in a lot of respects, especially from the 3D side where we redeveloped how the terrain system works. We remade all the foliage. Back then, everything was very much just blocky and smooth."

Screenbound's 80s and 90s retro references

The original concept had a blockiness reminiscent of Minecraft that the team wanted to move away from, looking toward more modern takes like various 3D iterations of Mario, though the 3D terrain from the Mario + Rabbids games was a key inspiration to emulate. For the 2D elements of the game played on the Qboy handheld, they referenced 2D games from the '80s and '90s, though they largely entrusted the pixel art to a single pixel artist named Daniel Cossaboon.

When it came to putting the assets together, Owen says the 2D levels were built much like a "primitive" version of the level editor from Super Mario Maker, while the 3D world was created through procedural generation. "That was the best way we found that you could get parity between the two worlds," Owen explains. "So a lot of the procedural systems had to be redone and restarted."

This still, however, leaves the tricky aspect of how a 2D world can accurately represent a 3D world, which naturally has another axis. The practical way to do this was to have multiple 2D planes you can be in, depending on where you are in the 3D world.

"Essentially it's 2D, but it's got layers, and then each layer represents a track in the 3D world," Owen says. "So in the editor we can scroll in and out through the z-depth of the scene, and we basically build the level in z-layers from left, and then all the levels go from left to right like a classic Mario game."

How to make 2D work in 3D

Despite attempts at parity, there are challenges to making something 2D in 3D. One such example she gives is the height of the trees in 2D compared to their 3D iteration. "You've only got so much screen, so many pixels, and it's entirely different trying to convert that into a 3D perspective and get the composition right."

That also brings with it part of the game's twist in that only certain elements are visible in 2D or 3D, which also ensures the player's focus is switching between the two perspectives (it's also worth noting that even though the Qboy is viewed at the bottom of the screen, you can sometimes opt to hold it up closer so that you're really only focused on the 2D part).

"What we don't want is to be like a DS, where you have a map on one screen, and you're playing a 3D game, or the other way around where you could just play it in 2D and never look at the environment, so there are things that are sort of in and out of the 2D and 3D worlds," Owen explains. "There are things that can move between worlds, like enemies that disappear in one world and appear in the other world."

It arguably even breaks its own rules at times, as the Qboy isn't completely limited to 2D gameplay but can also be used as a viewer to see things hidden in 3D or even to aim and shoot at targets. But there's still more work to do to get the balance right, which seems to be why Crescent Moon Games has delayed Screenbound from its September release to a later date. More important is ensuring that the dual-focused 5D concept isn't lost while still making sense to players.

"Essentially, it's two games running on top of each other, and that was one of the challenges. There are no separate things happening; when you are running through the 3D world, you are actually also running through the 2D world. That's kind of the magic of it."

Screenbound is coming to PC and you can try the demo on Steam.

According to everyone's favourite Apple leaker, Mark Gurman, a few lucky users have already been testing the folding iPhone, and initial impressions are positive.

"People who have tried the Apple model like how it fits in a pocket, the feel and durability of the advanced hinge mechanism, and the new iPad-like app layouts that take advantage of the larger internal display," Gurman says.

But apparently there's one "significant omission", and it's one that could be a dealbreaker for creatives. The folding iPhone apparently lacks a telephoto camera, which offers the 'Pro' iPhone models incredible zoom abilities. For a device touted to cost close to £2,000, that seems like a pretty major drawback. As Gurman says, the venn diagram of people who are willing to spend £2k to become an early adopter and people who want the latest and greatest camera tech is "pretty close to a circle".

There are a couple of other expected ommissions which might test the product's rumoured 'Ultra' moniker. One of these is FaceID, with the iPhone Ultra instead rumoured to be falling back on TouchID.

Creatives may end up having to weigh up whether a larger internal display or advanced camera capabilities matter more to them. The former could provide a brilliantly pocketable canvas for digital art. But if it's the latter that matters, the iPhone 18 Pro Max might end up being the one to get – especially if it's cheaper.

Of course, with all that gothic imagery, as well as 'blood' being in the title, you’d assume it has a link to the Japanese developer’s PS4 masterpieces like Bloodborne, Elden Ring and, of course, the upcoming Switch 2 version, Elden Ring Tarnished Edition, but it’s really a different kind of beast altogether. After getting to participate in its network test over the weekend, here’s what I learned about The Duskbloods.

The Duskbloods releases on Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026.

01. The characters are a bunch of weirdos

The appeal of many popular multiplayer games usually comes from the characters you get to play as, if you think of, say, Street Fighter or Overwatch’s rosters. Typically, you create your own avatars in FromSoftware’s games, but The Duskbloods feature a playable preset of characters known as the Bloodsworn, all competing for the title of ‘First Blood’. And they’re some of the biggest weirdos I’ve played as in recent memory.

To be fair, Albert, the Bloodsworn you first see and play as for the tutorial sections, wouldn’t look out of place in Bloodborne’s Yharnam with his rugged hair and white shirt, but the others are an absolutely bonkers mishmash that the concept artists at FromSoft must’ve just had a brief to cut loose on.

There’s Sniper Layla who looks like she had come from one of Fallout’s nuclear wastelands or the skeletal-looking Senator Samir Patres who can transform into a dinosaur for some reason. The most bizarre of the bunch, though, is Zork, some kind of steampunk automaton with the kind of phallic designs that’s getting the internet’s freaks all hot and bothered. Or they might just happen to be inspired by a mecha from Gundam, according to FromSoft and Gundam aficionado Sayem Ahmed.

That’s not all though, as you can also call upon AI-controlled companions called Kin to help you during a match, and they’re a bunch of oddballs too, if not weirder. So far, I’ve had the honour of being partnered with the likes of Undead Marlowe, your stereotypical ‘yes-guv’ cockney urchin who’s also kind of immortal, Baritone, a giant opera singer belting out songs to buff you, and Valentius, a grotesque gluttonous emperor who gets around on a chariot like a wheelchair (potentially as problematic if not more so than the Duke in Resident Evil Village).

02. It’s more accessible than most of FromSoftware’s games, but just as esoteric

FromSoftware’s games have a reputation for being tough and not holding your hand, sometimes to a fault. Owing to its partnership with Nintendo, The Duskbloods does a much better job at onboarding than its previous games, including a fairly substantial set of tutorials that familiarise you with its systems that you’re unlikely to miss from the menu, certainly compared to Elden Ring’s optional tutorial cave that many players infamously missed in its launch version.

Despite the PvP element also being potentially off-putting, especially as someone who dreads being invaded, the structure actually eases you in. Sure, you could just go looking to fight other players or a boss in the first phase (though at Lv.1 it’s basically suicide and a waste of your time for the latter), but you can also get gradually stronger by picking off weaker enemies. You don’t even necessarily have to engage in melee combat (though your attacks don’t cost any stamina) as every character has a ranged weapon, but Layla is an ideal pick for beginners as her rifle packs a punch and once you’ve levelled her up she can even wield a Gatling gun to mow foes down.

This also isn’t a battle royale where death means instant elimination. Instead, surviving being culled at the end of each phase involves gaining more Virtue than other rival players. While this can include defeating other players, you can also earn Virtue through exploration, defeating certain enemies, and random objectives like racing up the clock tower to ring the bell.

To be fair, some objectives feel quite obscure, and I never quite got how or why I would suddenly earn more Virtue, or also lose it. You can even make an allegiance with another player to improve your chances, and one of the stranger options is how each character can start with a Sigil that gives them bespoke objectives, including one who can seek out their long-lost love while using an emote to propose with flowers. There are quite a few unusual ways that you can survive the dusk before being whisked away to an arena in the final phase in a fight to the death between the final three, even if I never succeeded in becoming First Blood during the network test.

03. It’s not related to Bloodborne, but it sure feels like part of the universe

While director Hidetaka Miyazaki has explicitly said in an interview that The Duskbloods is not connected to Bloodborne, perhaps for legal reasons since that is a Sony title that also had the involvement of its now-defunct Japan Studio, it doesn’t mean you can’t see some striking similarities. It’s not just that the Bloodsworn are imbued with a special kind of blood that gives them unique powers, but the network test’s map of Lowanro City seems to share similar assets.

There were more than a few times I did a double-take and thought I was back in Yharnam, especially when heading into the sewer's familiar layout, also infested with rats. For those lucky or skilled enough to make it to the final phase of a match, one of the arenas is essentially a combination of the rooftop where you fight Master Logarius and the final boss with its field of white flowers.

It’s an intriguing form of recycling assets much in the same way Elden Ring: Nightreign also happened to pull in elements from other FromSoft games. But then if The Duskbloods is supposed to be set in no specific setting, then there’s a chance that the final game pulls in more ideas that aren’t just Gothic Victorian.

04. The game runs smoothly, even though the camera is messy

A pleasant surprise is that The Duskbloods runs at 60 fps, which is important for any action-based game, all the more so when your Bloodsworn have supercharged mobility compared to other FromSoft games.

However, that does present a problem when you’re trying to fight or chase another rival Bloodsworn who can also triple jump and air dash high in the air like you can, which the lock-on camera has trouble keeping up with. And when these are fights that might involve several other players and AI-controlled enemies in the same space, it’s a recipe for chaos. At least the latter is usually in a co-op environment where you’re all working towards defeating a tougher boss.

05. The Duskbloods won’t be for everyone

Compared to Elden Ring’s critical and commercial success, The Duskbloods is an unusual and divisive proposition that’s different from what Nintendo fans may expect. Its match-based PvPvE structure may also put off FromSoft fans used to its single-player experiences you can take your time to explore and get to grips with, though they’ll at least have Elden Ring: Tarnished to look forward to very soon.

Then again, despite initial reservations, Elden Ring: Nightreign’s PvE gameplay turned out to be an unusual success in its own right, which also managed to spin out a compelling narrative through repeated runs. With Miyazaki at the helm, I imagine there could be just as much intriguing lore to tie all these seemingly disparate ideas together in a meaningful way.

Still, as a Switch 2 exclusive, I’m curious whether Nintendo, as publisher, will wield its influence on the final game in other ways - maybe not any cameos from Hyrule or the Mushroom Kingdom, but could we potentially get GameChat support as strange as Star Fox’s avatars? There's also no price confirmed, but as an online multiplayer-only title, it's likely this will be in the mid-tier price range of Splatoon Raiders rather than Mario Kart World. That’s certainly going to be a factor if Nintendo wants more Bloodsworn joining the fight to be First Blood rather than just FromSoft sickos.

Get the best Switch 2 bundles to play The Duskbloods

I am, of course, talking about the great Safari logo controversy. Beta testers of iOS 27 have noted that the new app icon for Apple's browser now features a central pin and, confusingly, what looks like two needles overlapping as if they move independently like the hands on a watch.

The initial comment in the X thread above doesn't quite hit on the real problem with the design. Compasses do have a central pin. What they don't have are separate needles, which is what the Safari icon now seems to show because of that overlap of the red over the white. Add a second hand, and the icon would be more watch than compass.

"Whoever designed this doesn't understand how a compass works. They don't know it's just a single pin," one person affirms in the comments. "If it would be like iOS 6 and just a flat line in the middle of the pin it would be fine. Hope it gets fixed before the release," someone else points out, optimistically.

"Someone drew that, and somebody approved it. Details like that give a good idea of what direction things are going. Abandon ship before it's too late. With this compass, this ship ain't sailing the right direction anyway," another person writes, fearing navigational calamities to come.

Some have gone to the trouble of drawing up possible solutions to 'fix' the glaring design error.

You might say people are making a mountain out of a 2D compass pin head, and you'd be right. But let's remember that Apple is a company that's always been about perfect aesthetics and precise attention to detail (apart from when it comes to designing mice, butterfly keyboards or AI).

Since the decline of skeuomorphism, we've come to expect a certain gap between reality and an app icon. But for some, the iOS 27 Safari icon is a new low in what's been a long decline beginning with iOS 7, right after the definitive design that was the iOS 6 iteration.

I'm surprised that nobody's said it yet, so I'll say it myself: Jony Ive wouldn't have allowed this. Jony knows navigation. He designed a sailing lantern before turning his hand to the Ferrari Luce. He would know that compasses don't have two needles.

Perhaps Apple knows something we don’t about the future of geomagnetism, one person suggests. Or of imminent changes in the infrastructure of space time. Or maybe it needs to rethink this design. And then it can tackle the issue of the "transparent metal" in the Settings icon too.

What some people finding harder to fathom is why, at the same time, other companies are willfully using AI image generation themselves, even when it produces nightmarish depictions of what they're selling.

Small restaurants, delis and food trucks seem to be particular culprits. On social media, people have been posting images of depicting bizarre, sometime downright nasty-looking menu items, and it's making people nostalgic for the days of bad amateur Photoshop jobs.

Writing on X, a technology reporter recently suggested that AI image generation is killing the great tradition of 'folk graphic design' at small eateries. He backed up that claim with photos from a deli that appears to serve instant noodles topped with a hiterto undocumented species of headless and tailless shrimp.

Amateur menu design might not always have been very good, but it had its charm. Even when the food photography wasn't the most flattering, there was something to be said for its honesty: you knew what you were getting. With AI-generated food imagery, can you demand a refund if your dish doesn't come topped with a radioactive creature?

Lots of other people have jumped on the thread to share their own evidence of AI food nightmares. A word of warning to anyone who suffers from trypophobia (disgust at clustered patterns of holes and bumps): the alien textures in some of these images may make you never want to eat out again.

Some people have the attitude that if a restaurant uses imagery like this, they're staying well away.

"This is a matter of detail orientation and quality control. If this is the level of your attention to detail and your ability to manage quality, no way am I putting anything you make in my mouth," one person writes.

"I hope all the restaurants who do this are preparing for bankruptcy within the year because nobody wants to eat radioactive food that looks like it was made by brain damaged space aliens," another person comments.

"I just don't understand what was wrong with whatever this deli already had before generative AI, only like what, two three years ago? An old photo is better than this. Written text without picture is surely better than this," someone else says.

It seems AI menus have become their own genre of AI nightmare fuel, up there with AI children's books. Many of us expected this might happen. Despite the worst fears about AI, design agencies remain in business because large companies and brands generally don't want to make their customers feel sick of associate themselves with AI slop (although Coca-Cola and Skechers have turned out to be exceptions).

But smaller businesses that might otherwise have hired an independent freelancer or handled design internally using whatever resources they had see easy access to AI image generators as a time saver. They might need to realise that the hassle of taking photos was worth the time and effort to avoid creeping out potential customers.

It seems students these days have loftier demands. Or at least the British department store chain John Lewis thinks so. Its suggested essential university packing checklist reminds me of Jony Ive's "every day" design tools.

The list includes, among other necessities, up to 40 “Standard” velvet clothes hangers, a £495 Marc Jacobs bag, a £399 desk, an £80 spice rack carousel and a £185 Ralph Lauren quarter-zip for freshers who want to look like they're working on Wall Street.

Other musts include a £50 Cole & Mason electronic pepper mill to save your hands for those late-night essay writing sessions, and, obviously, a Rose Quartz Stanley Quencher to take to the lecture theatre. Suffice it to say, the list is being roasted on TikTok.

Given that buying these "essentials" would blow most students' annual budgets, I've rounded up some thrifty dupes that will allow you to indulge the John Lewis student in you for less than half the money. They all have star ratings of at least 4.5 on Amazon, and together could save you hundreds of pounds.

That will hopefully leave you with some spare change to invest in something you actually need for uni, like one of the best student laptops or the best Android drawing tablets.

It seems we already have more evidence that this might be the case. It appears that AI was also used for concept art for Travis Knight's recent Masters of the Universe. Will fan disappointment make a difference, or are we already beyond the point of no return?

"Yes, we use AI as a tool when it speeds production up. The design work is ours," Chromatic Studio said of its costume exploration sketches for King Randor, ruler of Eternos, when asked on Instagram whether the images were made using AI.

A lot of people aren't buying that justification about speeding up the process. "AI slop + the guy who overpainted this clearly did not enjoy this, such a disappointment to see good outsourcing studios using such a disgusting method just to 'speed up their process'," one person comments.

I can see how studios justify the use of AI art for concept art, or at least I could if were were still in an era where the concept art wouldn't normally see the light of day.

By definition, concept art is exploratory, and it can be highly iterative. Using AI can allow concept artists to test out more ideas more quickly, saving time on work that isn't going to appear in the finished project anyway.

The problem is that today concept art almost always does see the light of day. It's shared in portfolios, making-of-videos and art books for fans eager to see more of the process and artistry behind the film.

In these kinds of pieces, people would previously admire the skills and craftmanship that went into the early development of a movie or game. But when AI was used heavily in the process, what are we supposed to be appreciating or admiring exactly? The idea itself, I guess, but perhaps studios will need to stop showing their working so proudly if they're going to insist on using AI.

Short history lesson: In the first part of the 1970s, new technology meant rock music had become highly produced, which meant it sounded beautifully clean and pure. Unfortunately, it also started to sound a little boring and formulaic, straying very far from its wild and controversial rock 'n' roll roots.

Well, every action has a reaction, as the saying goes. And in the late 1970s, that reaction arrived with a bang in the form of punk rock bands like The Sex Pistols, The Damned and The Clash. Yes, their outfits, lyrics, music and attitude might seem tame, almost cosy now. But back then people – especially my parents – were seriously shocked and offended. Which just made us kids love them more.

50 years on, I've long suspected a similar dynamic will play out with AI. In both cases, new technology has taken over the production of creative works (although with AI, it's not just music but a wide range of cultural products, from art to visual design and now even filmmaking.) So where will the reaction come from? Well, it's probably going to come from some unexpected places, and this Chinese movie looks like being one of them.

What's going on?

For the uninitiated, Niu Lai is an animated film made on an almost zero budget, almost entirely by a mother and son using second-hand computers. I'm not being mean, but the animation is... not high quality. Yet in their native China, it's been an absolute smash. In a world where a $300 million blockbuster like Supergirl struggles to get anyone interested, audiences are flocking to see jerky movements, crude 3D models, weird sound effects, and a plot that doesn't make a lot of sense. Why? Because, the consensus seems to say, it was so obviously, painfully, made by human hands; something that's been long missing from the kind of geometrically-precise CG animation that dominates today.

The story of how it was made reads like the plot of a movie itself. Xin Yumeng is a former interior designer with no film training, based in Dalian, a coastal city in Liaoning province, north-east China. He spent five years building Niu Lai in his spare time, handling every job himself, from modelling and animation to lighting and editing.

His mum, Sun Lifang, taught herself screenwriting and voiced the female characters. The film launched with no trailer, no publicity and a single ink-wash poster. It premiered in 245 cinemas on 5 August and took just 7,169 yuan (around $1000 / £786) in its first nine days.

Then, social media noticed it. People started sharing clips online, initially to take the mickey out of the low-rent animation. But then, as sometimes happens, "so bad" turned to "so bad it's good". People started to become fascinated with this plucky, out-of-the-ordinary movie.

Its cumulative box office has since grossed over ¥25.67 million (about $160K / £120K), putting it among the top 10 highest-grossing animated films in China this year; a staggering return on its minimal investment. It was such a hit that cinemas without official posters got their staff to draw their own by hand.

Reporting on this story last week, fellow Creative Bloq writer Joe Foley took a negative view of this whole phenomenon. But I'm afraid I have to differ. To me, it all sounds like a lot of fun. And I'd rather watch something fun than something technically perfect, but soulless and empty.

More broadly, many of the naysayers here sound eerily like the old men who once dismissed my beloved punk bands as a lot of unlistenable noise. (Well, to be fair a lot of them were. A few of the doom metal bands I saw at Bloodstock last weekend were pretty unlistenable to my ears too. But a lot of people love them, and who am I to say they're wrong?)

More broadly, the love for Niu Lai in China chimes neatly with everything I'm hearing from everyday people in my own country: they're sick of AI visuals, AI music and AI videos, and they're desperately looking for authentic alternatives. It seems that in 2026 the less digital polish there is on things, the more people are likely to like it.

That's another cultural revolution I can get behind, and this time around, there's no need for spitting or swear words. Now, where did I put that Ramones album?

In many cases, such as the recent Spider-man controversy, these concerns turn out to be legitimate. But the latest social media furore surrounding Netflix's splash page for the movie Hamnet suggests some corners of the internet might be becoming a little to quick to cry 'AI'.

"The clearly AI-generated image for HAMNET on Netflix doing some crazy things," X user Erik Anderson complained this week, along with a screenshot of the splash page, which features a close-up of a prop flyer for the first ever performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The post has received hundreds of thousands of views.

Yes, it looks a little Photoshopped. The whole thing is overly sharp and saturated in a 'product shot' kind of way, and it all looks rather twee. But that's not what users are taking umbrage with. It's the supposedly mangled text, a bonafide hallmark of an AI-generated image.

Except, the text isn't mangled. It's meant to say 'firft appearance on stage'. That 'f' is an archaic long 'S', the kind of thing that was everywhere in Shakespeare's day. Just wait until these people discover the best Old English fonts.

This might be a minor episode in the grand scheme of AI controversies, but it points to a shift in the landscape. We seem to be reaching a point where anything that looks vaguely uncanny or unfamiliar is liable to be accused of being AI-generated. Rather than seeing the confusion as an opportunity to learn something new, people are becoming increasingly willing to reject the entire thing outright.

Here, it was a simple historical tidbit that left people confused. But the idea that we're becoming increasingly conditioned to reject any visual artefact that leaves us confused or uncomfortable is an alarming one. After all, isn't some of the best art designed to make us uncomfortable?

Read on below to see all the major articles waiting for you this month.

Get yours now!

To bag your copy head over to Magazines Direct, where you can pick up a single issue, save some money on a subscription, and fill in the blanks in your collection with the latest back issues.

And don't forget, if you buy a print subscription you get access to over 150 issues of our digital back catalogue too!

Inside the latest ImagineFX

We hope you enjoy the issue!

Please note: if you have any trouble downloading the file, right-click the link and open it in a new browser window. Next, click in the URL address line to select all of the link, and press Return to start the download.

If you have any problems downloading this content, please email: rob.redman@futurenet.com.

If you've missed this issue or other editions of ImagineFX, start a subscription. As an added bonus, not only do you save money on a subscription, but you'll get digital access to our back catalogue with a print subscription too!

Yes, Nintendo's Game Boy ads from the '90s are, well, not the kind of thing we'd associate with Nintendo today. There are cuddly Pokemon or family-friendly moustachioed plumbers here. Instead, the brand seemed to be taking a leaf out of Sony's book, with a bunch of edgy ads that might as well be advertising a PlayStation.

Indeed, one of Nintendo's 1997 ads featured a lingerie-clad woman tied to a bed, alongside the tagline, "The new Game Boy pocket: seriously distracting". The implication being, of course, that her lover had become so distracted by, I don't know, Tetris, that they'd forgotten to untie her. Tsk, tsk!

That particular ad, created by Leo Burnett, was pulled after the Advertising Standards Authority received complaints. Even in 1997, it was deemed tasteless. Defending the ad's placement in the likes of FHM and Loaded, account director Crispin Reed told The Independent, "When you look at [our] ad in the context of the environment it appeared in, it's exactly in keeping with the editorial pages which, I would say, go further than we did."

But while that might have been the only Nintendo ad to get pulled, it's clear from the other examples that Nintendo was trying out a new vibe which, arguably, didn't suit it. Whereas PlayStation was explicitly targeting clubbers and rave culture with the likes of WipEout, what were the Game Boy's edgy, adult games? Kirby's Dream Land?

From starving dogs to ferrets down young men's trousers (I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting that led to that idea), Nintendo's 'lads mags' ads now look like relics of a less civilised age.

Key specifications

Design, build and display

• Big and heavy
• Beautifully made

Opening the box containing an 18in gaming laptop often feels like a kind of ceremony. The packaging for the Razer Blade 18 is festooned with logos for Intel, Thunderbolt, and THX Spatial Audio, but also manages to be slimmer than you’d imagine.

The same is true of the laptop itself – it’s not the thickest we’ve seen, though it disguises its bulk by utilising a stepped design that’s thinner at the edge for a few centimetres before becoming thicker toward the middle where you’ll also find the vents for the cooling system. There's no getting away from the laptop’s weight - it’s three times that of the Geekom X14 Pro – making this a desktop replacement rather than something truly portable.

Razer has always been consistent in its design language, pairing matte black with bright green accents, and the same look is found here, with the green flash visible inside the USB ports and on the logo on the back of the lid. Elsewhere, it’s plain black, such that the screen and keyboard blend into the chassis when it’s switched off. Hit the power switch, and you’re treated to the RGB keyboard, which can be customised per-key or just switched to plain white.

Design score: 4/5

Features

• Thunderbolt 5 (and 4)
• Surprising battery life

Thunderbolt 5 isn’t seen much in laptops outside of the MacBook Pro, but there's one on here as part of Razer’s policy of piling on the best tech available. Interestingly, if you’re using Thunderbolt to hook up to an external monitor, the TB5 port is connected to the Nvidia GPU, while the accompanying TB4 port goes to the CPU’s integrated graphics cores and you won’t like that if you’re trying to run a game. Good luck telling them apart, as while they’re on different sides of the laptop chassis, there are no symbols next to them to give a hint about which is which and it’s much easier to find the HDMI port, leaving the TB5 for something like the LaCie Rugged Pro 5 SSD.

The Blade 18 is well equipped for connectivity, with five USB ports in total including the two Thunderbolts. Charging is taken care of using a giant brick, connecting to a two-pin socket on the laptop using an L-shaped plug that you have to be careful to put in the right way around lest it partially block the Ethernet socket. Wi-Fi 7 should take care of your networking needs, and that THX logo on the box (and again on the front of the laptop) is justified by an array of six speakers that, while they do sound better than most laptop speakers, will still be overlooked in favour of a good headset.

And then there's the screen. It’s an absolute beauty, the extra size and 4K resolution afforded by the form factor making it more immersive to watch, and with over 600 nits of brightness on offer you’ll be fumbling for the Fn button (which, in a brilliant touch, dims the keyboard backlight so that only the symbols you’re controlling with it are lit when you press it) to turn it down anywhere other than in really bright environments. It’s colourful too, managing 98% of DCI-P3, 89% of Adobe RGB, and 100% of sRGB. It’s ever so slightly better here than that of the MSI Crosshair 16 HX, and also larger and with a higher resolution. Not bad for an IPS, and it’s a dual-mode one that will double the frame rate if you halve the resolution, a feature that will please a certain kind of gamer more than it will most video editors. Who needs 440Hz anyway? We’re sure there's someone.

Battery life, when playing a looping video at least, clocks in at over eight hours, which is unheard of for a gaming laptop with these kinds of processors onboard. It’s an easy assumption that during the test, which isn’t very stressful, it was only using its Efficient processor cores and probably its integrated GPU too, leaving the power-hungry Nvidia chip to bide its time. Put some pressure on the Blade 18 and you can expect that figure to drop, but until then it’s a fine example of how efficient Intel CPUs have become.

Feature score: 4/5

Benchmark scores

We test every one of our laptops using the same benchmarking software suite to give you a thorough overview of its suitability for creatives of all disciplines and levels. This includes:

• Geekbench: Tests the CPU for single-core and multi-core power, and the GPU for the system's potential for gaming, image processing, or video editing. Geekbench AI tests the CPU and GPU on a variety of AI-powered and AI-boosted tasks.
• Cinebench: Tests the CPU and GPU's ability to run Cinema 4D and Redshift.
• UL Procyon: Uses UL Solutions' Procyon software suite to test the system's ability for AI image generation in Stable Diffusion, its Microsoft Office performance and its battery life in a looping video test.
• Topaz Video AI: We use Topaz Video AI to test the system's ability to upscale video and convert video to slow-motion.
• PugetBench for Creators: We use the PugetBench for Creators benchmarking suite to test the system's ability to run several key tasks in Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as its performance when encoding/transcoding video.
• ON1 Resize AI: Tests the system's ability to resize 5 photos to 200% in a batch process. We take the total time taken to resize the images and divide by 5.

Performance

• Very fast at everything
• Gets pretty loud

As you might expect from something this highly specced, the Razer Blade 18’s performance is excellent. At the time of writing it’s the best laptop, and the second best computer overall, in Creative Bloq’s big list of Geekbench 6 GPU benchmark results, and doesn’t do too badly in the CPU results either, holding court with the likes of the Alienware 16 Area-51 and Dell Pro Max 18 Plus.

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus is a new member of the Arrow Lake family, having been launched in early 2026 just before the third-gen chips became available. It has some enhancements over the standard second-gen lineup, including increased speed in the CPU/memory controller linkage, for lower system latency, and support for Intel’s Binary Optimization Tool, which attempts to optimise workloads for the processor even if they were written with another chip in mind. These are very gaming-focused optimisations, but the laptop is excellent at creative work, whether it’s rendering in Cinebench or producing slow-motion video in Topaz Video AI. It’s better in office apps than just about any other system we’ve tested, and supplied some of the highest Photoshop scores in Pugetbench we’ve ever seen.

A lot of this must be down to the GPU, which is Nvidia’s current best mobile GeForce chip with 24GB of its own VRAM. There are a load of cooling innovations inside the Blade 18 to cope with the heat output of these processors, including a vapour chamber over the CPU and some new thermal interface gel to give a good connection between chip and cooler. What it comes down to, though, are three fans, and they run loud. You can buy a Razer cooling pad, into which the laptop slots almost as if it had been designed to perfectly fit, but it’s quite capable of dealing with the heat on its own, as long as you don’t mind the noise.

Performance score: 5/5

Price

It’s a lot of money. It starts cheaper, but at £4,999.99 or $5,399.99 for the spec we've reviewed here you’re going to need a meeting with your company accountant or bank manager if you’re considering buying this. There are few similarly specced laptops, though it’s possible to spec a Dell 18 Pro Max up to £5,809.07 with an RTX Pro 3000 GPU, which means if you want this kind of power, you’re going to have to pay Razer’s prices for it.

Value score: 3/5

Who is it for?

• Money makers

It’s an investment, but a laptop like this can make you a lot of money by speeding up your workflow and allowing you to do more in the same amount of time. Either that, or it’s something to kick back with after making your money, playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with full path-tracing enabled.

Buy it if...

• You have the cash
• You need the fastest
• And the biggest

Don't buy it if...

• Anything else will do
• You need even more power from a desktop PC
• You’d rather save money

Also consider

At the time, it felt like my whole world had collapsed. Could I ever trust tech again? I started to see everything from memory cards to hard drives in a new light. Not a guarantee, not even a promise to protect my data. More of a shrug and "Well, hopefully it won't go wrong...".

Twenty years later, my psychic wounds have healed, and I've almost forgotten the incident. But a news story this week has brought it all rushing back.

Nine PBS in St Louis, Missouri – part of the PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) network, which is roughly America's equivalent of the BBC – has spent months in a Denver courtroom trying to access 50TB of footage from its 70-year archive.

This includes historic material such as their coverage of the Great Flood of 1993 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Irreplaceable stuff, basically. And this data went missing not because a piece of technology failed, but because the company "looking after" it simply disappeared.

If a calamity like this can happen to a major national broadcaster with all their lawyers, contracts and institutional heft, how are the rest of us meant to cope in a similar situation? It's a scary thought. And the more you dig into the details of this case, the worse your nightmares will get.

Devil in the details

Nine PBS had used a storage provider called Open Source Storage for years without incident, and so it had continued renewing its contract every year. But at the start of 2026, the latter stopped responding to messages. When the contract lapsed in March, Nine PBS lost access to its data entirely. There was no warning, even though their contract stipulated that Open Source Storage needed to give the client 30 days to retrieve everything.

It later emerged that OSS had gone under as a company, and was listed as delinquent with the Colorado Secretary of State. The good news was that footage was still intact, on physical servers inside a data centre owned by Iron Mountain.

The bad news? Iron Mountain had no direct relationship to Nine PBS at all, so it refused to hand over the data. Months of legal wrangling followed, including a default judgment, a lawsuit, and eventually a court-ordered process allowing Nine PBS to retrieve its stuff.

Urgent wake-up call

Incidents like this are a wake-up call to everyone, but especially independent freelancers, who'll typically rely on a single cloud service (hands up, guilty as charged) to look after our stuff. We all go around assuming that "in the cloud" = "totally safe", when really it just means "on somebody else's computer, essentially being held hostage and subject to the whims of business, the competence of stuff, and anyone who might have a grudge against us".

The point is simple: only having one method of storage, whether that's physical (a hard drive that can fail) or cloud-based (a company that can screw you over) is kind of insane. A proper backup strategy, spreading copies across at least two different types of storage, is clearly the way to go.

No, it's not fun. Yes, it's tedious. But would you get in a car – however much you trust the driver – without putting on a seatbelt? Exactly.

Some brands have seen fit to update long-standing character designs for modern times. We've seen Kellogg's turn the Corn Flakes rooster into a kaiju and Kraft Heinz torture its Jet-Puffed marshmallows. But a classic British corn crisps brand has just proved that a great character design can stand the test of time with very little tinkering.

When I was a lad, pickled onion Monster Munch was the king of crisps, but this was in the days before we had such exotic flavours as black truffle and Thai sweet chilli on supermarket shelves.

It's an impressive sign of endurance to that Monster Munch not only still has a place in the market, but that it's using the same cast of monster characters as when Smiths launched the brand four decades ago.

Owned by PepsiCo since 1989, Monster Munch has undergone several refreshes over the years. It's always tried to avoid scaring away loyal fans, with the monsters remaining a constant, but other details had started to steal focus away from them.

The refresh turns back the clock in a sense, making the the monsters the stars again and their heritage value plain to see. The work of PepsiCo’s own European design team, it includes a tweaked logo, together with a new monogram, and updated illustrations, packaging design and photography.

Redrawn versions of the trio of monsters take things back to basics, tossing out the computer-generated 3D look and gradient backgrounds of recent years in favour of a simpler, bolder aesthetic that highlights the brand's nostalgic appeal, keeping things playful while refining well-recognised elements.

Writing on LinkedIn , Jon Bailey, senior design manager at PepsiCo, says the brand's long history required a cautious approach.

The light touch makes good sense. The monster characters have been around since the brand's launch in 1977, initially as The Prime Monster. They've endured because they're so distinct and recognisable. There's a little bit of The Muppets about them, but they're clearly their own monsters, and the unique colour and form of each one helps immediately identify each flavour of crisps, although the flavours they represent have varied over the years.

In an update back in 2019, Walkers rebranded Monster Munch at the same time as the likes of Quavers, Wotsits and Squares. A now dated-looking looking gradient was brought in, and a big Walkers logo was plonked in prime position on the front of the packaging.

That visually linked the range to a broader portfolio of brands, but, as some pointed out at the time, such a connection probably wasn't of paramount importance to customers given that these were established legacy brands in their own right. Sensibly, the latest update has reverted that move, making Monster Munch the star again, with no Walkers logo in sight on the front of the bags.

Just one question remains. Is the shape of the crisps themselves supposed to look like the monsters' paws, or the yellow pickled onion monster's single eye and lashes?

The company has also launched its new Artist Ultra 14 drawing display, an OLED tablet with impressive specs for just $699, down to $592.99 as part of the sale, running until September 15th. The standout deal seems to be on the popular Artist Pro 27 (Gen 2), which is $300 off and down to $1,599.99.

Other models are up to 50% off, like the Deco Pro S/M pen drawing tablet, and I've picked out some more sale highlights for you below. New to drawing tablets? Check out our breakdown of 11 drawing tablet specs explained.

We said in our review at the time that there was nothing to fault at the original price, so when it's reduced to just $132.53, we're talking truly exceptional value for what is the only perfect-scoring budget chair in our pick of the best office chairs for back pain.

Not in the US? See the pricing in your region below.

As we found in out in testing for our recent OoopusX Op.22 review, the profiles include a balanced neutral tuning that serves as an ideal introduction to the audiophile world for people who have only used standard mainstream headphones (you'll finally be able to hear the mid tones that have been missing all your life).

When you do want to make things more bass heavy, you just need to twist the handy dial on each earpiece for an extra sub-bass punch – great for drum 'n' bass, trip hop and EDM. Such generous versatility at this price point and makes these a shoo-in new entry to add to our guide to the best budget IEM.

Our new favourite under-$50 IEM

Our resident audiophile has reviewed headphones ranging from budget gems to $5,000 over ears, and he rates the Op.22 as a seriously good value proposition for anyone looking to make the move towards more balanced sound than what you get with mainstream earphones.

Crucially, he found that the bass dial genuinely works. Instead of just adding muddiness to the mix, it provides the option to add adjustable deep sub-bass cleanly and effectively when you want it.

Not in the US? Check below for any deals in your area.

The animator Michel Gagné has posted the first trailer for a hand-drawn movie that he began making in 2012. The Saga of Rex tells the story of a little fox who gets abducted by aliens and forms a bond with a mysterious being called Aven. And it looks extraordinary (see our guides to the best laptops for animation and the best animation software if you're inspired).

Michel Gagné's past credits include work at Sullivan Bluth Studios on iconic movies like An American Tail and at Warner Bros on the likes of Quest for Camelot and The Iron Giant. He's also worked at Disney and Pixar and designed special effects for Star Wars: the Clone Wars, and the video game Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

His short film Prelude to Eden was nominated for an Annie Award in 1996 and Sensology was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2010. The Saga of Rex is a much more ambitious project: a 60-minute feature film made almost entirely alone.

The Canadian animator raised much of the financing for the film through his freelance work on Hollywood productions. He designed and animated it using Toon Boom Harmony along with Adobe's Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop. The only other contributor to the visual side was longtime friend Seung Beom Kim, who helped with inbetweening. This assistance is allowed Michel to stick to his objective of making the film entirely hand drawn without modern digital shortcuts

The character Rex first appeared in Michel's 1998 self-published book A Search for Meaning: The Story of Rex. The artist later expanded it across six volumes of Kazu Kibuishi’s Flight anthology. Image Comics later collected the chapters into a complete graphic novel.

A 2012 Kickstarter campaign helped fund a short proof-of-concept clip for an animated movie. After that, Belgium-based GRID Animation optioned the film at one point, but Michel ultimately decided the movie had to be independent.

“I wanted to make the film that was in my soul, and to do that, I needed to completely remove the commercial and transactional aspects of the process,” he said in a recent interview with Animation Magazine.

While that meant no deadline, the director kept up a strict work ethic, committing a minimum of eight hours a day to the film, while also doing freelance work to earn a living. When he temporarily lost the use of his right hand at one point, he continued animating with his left for two months.

“I went a bit insane while making this movie," he says. "I would disconnect from reality and enter the worlds I was creating. It was intoxicating at times.”

Such an ambitious independent animation project is a once-in-a-lifetime piece of work. Michel describes it as a "journey of discovery, experimentation and revelation.”

“Would I do anything differently? Probably a thousand things along the way. But I think the film needed to take the journey it took to become what it is”.

Michel hopes to take The Saga of Rex to film festivals in 2027,

You can learn more about The Saga of Rex at sagaofrex.com.

Gamescom will take place between 26 and 30 August with, as is customary, Wednesday 26 being reserved for trade admissions only, while the public will be admitted between Thursday 27 and Sunday 30 August. If you’re going to be in the vicinity of Cologne during that time, general admission tickets are still available.

But the show’s traditional curtain-raiser, Opening Night Live – hosted by the ubiquitous American Geoff Keighley, as has been the case for the past eight years – takes place on August 25. It will kick off at 7 pm BST, with a half-hour pre-show build-up starting at 6.30 pm, and you’ll be able to stream the show.

In a pre-briefing given by Keighley and various members of the show’s top brass, Keighley confirmed that, among other games, this year’s ONL will showcase the likes of Gears of War E-Day, Final Fantasy VII Revelation (whose director, Naoki Hamaguchi, will make a stage appearance), The Witcher 3’s new Songs of the Past expansion and Metro 2039. He added that ONL will include a live performance of the music from Mewgenics, and there will no doubt be a welter of other games making their first public appearances.

Sold out for the first time

Given its modern pre-eminence in a world in which countless video game shows have fallen by the wayside, Gamescom likes to hail every new iteration as record-breaking in some way, and the 2026 show, according to Gamescom Director Tim Endres, will see a record number of exhibitors, with over 1,600 games companies booking stands -- the first time the 1,600 mark has been surpassed. Endres added that it will also be the first time the show has been completely sold out to exhibitors: it would be literally impossible to accommodate any more.

Which is a tad daunting for those of us attending – Gamescom’s venue, the Koelnmesse, is so huge that we often have to cover huge distances between meetings. According to Endres, it will occupy “Over 233,000 square metres, about the size of 33 football fields.” The show has always taken a major toll on shoe-leather.

One of the joys of Gamescom is discovering unexpected gems of games, often on the back of word- of-mouth recommendations and found on the stands of obscure publishers and developers. But for the three (inevitably gruelling) days in which I’ll be in attendance, gaps in my schedule are already more or less non-existent.

However, I’m excited about many games I have booked to either play or see for the first time. Most notably Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the third and most ambitious remade instalment of the nonpareil JRPG; Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, the second remake of Lara Croft’s original starring vehicle; Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, Turok: Origins and Stuntman: Hollywood from Saber Interactive; Microsoft’s Ontos; a new Rebellion title; and Ritual Tides, an as-yet-unannounced Wicker Man-influenced game from British developer Vertpaint.

Online presence and themes

Most of the games industry’s big guns will be at Gamescom, although one glaring absence is that of Rockstar Games, with GTA VI fast approaching. Nintendo, Microsoft, Square Enix, Sega, Bandai Namco and Electronic Arts will be there, while CD Projekt Red, of The Witcher fame, will return after a hiatus. Gamescom’s Endres said that 2026 will see 420 indie exhibitors, up 16 per cent on last year.

That plays into one of Gamescom’s two themes for this year, as described by Felix Falk, Managing Director of game, the German games industry’s official body: “Small teams having huge success.” The other theme, Falk says, is: “Saving the world through play.” A lofty ambition, but Gamescom will have a tangible strand reinforcing the idea: a series of events, watchable via the Gamescom website, in collaboration with Games Done Quick (GDQ), a charity that raises money through bonkers speedruns with all manner of handicaps, such as blindfolded participants.

Endres adds that a constant feed of news and updates (in four languages including English) will run on the website, along with the Awesome Indie show, which aims to take an in-depth look at many of the best indie games on show and the stories behind them, plus the video-based show Gamescom Studio.

And we will, of course, report back with our own personal observations and highlights after the show. Meanwhile, strap yourselves in and get ready for what is now the biggest event of the year as far as gamers – and the industry they love – are concerned.

The most surprising reveal at D23 was Disney's Clay. Slated for 2028, the animated movie will tell the story of a reluctant mentor who has to look after a newborn ball of clay called Musy. Although it will employ 3D CG animation, Disney's chief creative officer Jared Bush says the film will be designed to look as close as possible to real claymation.

For some, that makes the film's name sound like a working title as utilitarian and unimaginative as Snakes on a Plane. And there asking, again, why Disney insists on so many short, one-word titles.

In the last 16 years, Disney has given us Tangled, Frozen, Brave, Wish, Moana and Zootopia (plus sequels for three of them). Coming soon, we have Hexed. Pixar, meanwhile, has given us Cars, Coco, Soul, Onward, Elemental and Hoppers.

Not all of the studios' movies have had single-word titles, but there are a lot of them, and some fans seem to be getting tired of them.

"These simple, yet non-specific to the film, titles give me no insight or uniqueness to what the film is," one fan argues on X. “I can’t help but wonder how these films would be perceived if they received more attributable titles.”

Yet it's not really a new trend that began with Tangled. After 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney's early movies were, in order, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi, released between 1940 and 1942.

In the Disney Renaissance era, we had Aladdin, Hercules, Mulan and Tarzan.

Many of these movies were named after characters, often ones that were already well known from fairy tales, myths or existing IPs. But Disney has gradually shifted from adapting classic European fairy tales to producing more original stories and drawing from broader global folklore. Using a character's name makes less sense when nobody knows the character yet – which might be part of the reason why Pixar's Elio failed to capture the world's attention.

That means using more abstract words as titles, but continuing the trend has quite a few advantages for studio. It's often easier to create a strong brand identity around a single, punchy word, and Disney titles are brands as much as movies.

A short word is easier to turn into a logo that's immediately recognisable and fits cleanly on merchandise, theme park attractions and thumbnails on streaming platforms. This is even more important when young kids form a large part of the audience. Single, short words are more easily understood and remembered.

They also create more universal comprehension. A single conceptual word like Soul or Brave carries similar emotional weight across different cultures and languages. Minimalist titles can be easier to translate an localise, or are often simply left untranslated, avoiding clunky titles.

They're also more gender-neutral. Changing Rapunzel to Tangled and The Snow Queen to Frozen was an attempt to avoid putting off young boys that might not want to see a 'princess movie.' They titles might also make the movie sound more appealing to adults, branding Disney's movies as four-quadrant cinematic experiences rather than merely kids' animations.

They also serve as high-concept summaries of the movie. Pixar in particular tends to like titles that play on words while conveying the thematic core of the movie, like Inside Out and Elemental. I'm sorry to break it to all those Disney fans that want another The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad or The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, but I think Disney's short titles are going to be sticking around.

But the new Archery World Cup logo might be one of the few that can avoid such a fate. A sharp (last pun I promise) rebrand has completely overhauled the identity of World Archery's competition, with striking colours, dynamic motion design and a new customised typeface.

Devised by the design studio Arecibo, the Archery World Cup rebrand has been rolling out during this year's 20th anniversary competition ahead of the final in Saltillo, Mexico, taking place over 12 and 13 September.

The previous logo design with its target face-inspired tricolour rounded squares looked like a dated corporate identity beside contemporary sporting brands. The branding was also disconnected across its various expressions, and there were no system rules, leading to inconsistent application across each venue. Moreover, World Archery felt that the logo failed to communicate what was at stake in the tournament – namely, the prestige of trophy itself.

With that in mind, Arecibo set out to capture the drama of the competition. The strategy for the rebrand was synthesised in two words: “Can’t Miss”. The idea was to communicate that the archer can’t miss the shot, and the audience can’t miss the show.

"The drama and intrigue is not in the super-human skill of the archers but when a shot is missed," Arecibo's Graham Anderson writes. "So I shifted the organisation’s emphasis for the contest from pure sporting values to the spectator’s experience.

"The key move is introducing more opportunities for narrative and intrigue while still honouring the precision and skill of the sport. Narrative could be pulled from its global stages, characterful athletes, emotional intensity, and sporting excellence. Every stage, every shot, every story matters."

“Can’t Miss” isn’t just a slogan but a filter applied to every decision in the rebrand, Graham says. "Does this show what’s at stake, does it reinforce our values, does it connect this shot to the wider season and our audience to our archers?" These were questions asked of every asset designed.

The logo highlights the importance of the trophy itself – a little like the rationale for the Fifa World Cup 2026 logo, but without resorting to a literal photo of the prize. It's a stylised icon with a 45-degree angle and stepped shape at the end of the arm that are intended to create a dynamic visual device suitable for various applications.

The icon and wordmark separate when needed, and cropped icons turn the mark into a graphic device in its own right.

A customised variable typeface alteration, AWC Baikal, was commissioned from Lausanne based foundry, Newglyph, with weights running from condensed light to extended bold. An angle from the logo is integrated into the typeface for an expressive custom aesthetic that links to the brand's foundation.

As for brand colours, Arecibo went for a dual system. A core palette of blues was chosen for the main identity, while the stadium design system is broader. The brief was to create a system that would be more consistent and easier to use while still having personality.

Arecibo's solution was a modular kit that any host city can build with, including a squared grid template of scalable frames with defined brand and sponsor areas, simple rules of hierarchy, and specified sizes to ensure sponsor logos can be read on camera. Core brand elements can be recoloured but never have to be redrawn, so every stage of the competition can have its own identity while still feeling like part of a whole.

The same philosophy was applied to motion pieces. An After Effects template was built with fixed branding but editable content, making it easier to ensure pieces hit target without the need to have a designer in the room holding the bow.

Light bars clamp onto the top of your display and provide a light source that's designed to illuminate only your desk surface. This allows you to see your keyboard and other peripherals without casting glare on your monitor or into your eyes, and without taking up valuable workspace.

Many people find that this can reduce the eye fatigue that often accompanies late-night work sessions because of the harsh contrast of staring into a brightly lit screen with no ambient lighting. If you need a monitor too, see our comparisons of the best monitors for graphic artists).

• Shop monitor light bars on Amazon

Not the design you want for your setup? Check out more of the best monitor light bars below.

These games are hard. Really hard. What makes it stranger is they're hiding behind some of the most welcoming cartoon nostalgia imaginable.

The Disney Afternoon Collection brings together Capcom's six NES games based on DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck and TaleSpin, games that were already notable when they released for having unusually high production values for licensed titles. They weren't throwaway cartoon cash-ins either; Capcom built proper platformers around these characters, with DuckTales letting you tackle its five worlds in different orders, Rescue Rangers offering same-screen co-op and Darkwing Duck borrowing heavily from the Mega Man school of platforming.

• Buy Disney Afternoon Collection on Amazon: £29.99 £24.97
• Buy Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition on Amazon: £29.99 £25.99

And, bloody hell, they don't half expect you to know what you're doing. Darkwing Duck is probably the clearest example of Capcom’s 8-bit mechanics, as it looks like a children's cartoon, but the level design is often vicious, your options for dealing with enemies are limited and some sections demand timing that feels absurd when you remember the game was being marketed alongside afternoon television.

Side-scrolling shooter TaleSpin is even more demanding, because Baloo's plane has a painfully slow rate of fire at the beginning, enemies can fill the screen with shots, and some of the narrow passages to navigate leave you with barely enough room to manoeuvre. It’s one of the nastiest games here for its devotion to making life hard, but like the others in the Disney Afternoon Collection, I keep picking at it, trying again (and again) and edging just a little further, getting that tiny bit better.

Rayman returns to haunt my nightmares

It’s a similar story with Rayman, a game I remember as the beautifully animated, oddball platformer that sold a million copies and put Ubisoft on the map. I recall it being tough but fair, but I also remember the incredibly detailed pixel art, colourful atmosphere, and quirky visuals making up for it; the pull of playing an ‘actual cartoon’ had me coming back for just one more go.

The new Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition makes the whole thing even more interesting because Ubisoft has basically opened the archives: you get five versions of the original game, more than 120 additional levels, the long-lost SNES prototype and an interactive documentary with more than 50 minutes of interviews with the original developers. Basically, there’s a ton of content here to enjoy long after the game has punished you one too many times.

Although modern life is going a little easier on me here, as there are concessions to how we like games these days, including rewind, multiple save slots, infinite lives and instant level unlocks, just to make life a little easier and Rayman a bit more approachable, which tells you quite a lot about how Ubisoft expects modern players to cope with the original. And I used that rewind. A lot.

Because what I've realised playing these games again is that the difficulty isn't really about enemies having enormous health bars or bosses requiring some complicated modern combat system. It's baked into the levels and the design at a granular level. A platform is just far enough away to make you commit to the jump, an enemy is positioned where you're most likely to land, a hazard appears just as you're concentrating on something else, and suddenly you're back at the start wondering what the hell happened. In terms of how to design a solid platform game, you can’t really go wrong with either Disney Afternoon Collection or Rayman 30th Anniversary Edition.

While I fondly remember playing these games, I don’t recall them ending after two or three minutes and being sent back to restart; that’s how we played back then, and a game could last us a year and become a test of memory as much as reflexes. So while the modern rewind features feel like an admission that this old way of playing can be a bit much now, with Digital Eclipse adding rewind, save features and challenge modes to The Disney Afternoon Collection, the new Rayman goes even further with accessibility options, if you are going to buy these I’d urge you to hold off making life easy, just for a time, to play them as intended.

And perhaps that's why I'm enjoying them so much now. Under all those beautiful sprites, Disney characters and wonderfully strange Rayman animations are games that expected you to pay attention, remember things and get better through repetition. We didn't necessarily have easier games as children; we had fewer alternatives, more time and an astonishing tolerance for getting killed by colourful, kind of irritating characters that looked like they belonged on a Saturday morning cartoon.