Over the last few months, every phone maker under the sun has refreshed its lineups, especially at the affordable end, with no major budget phone launches now expected until next year. That made it the perfect time to go back and reassess The Verge's recommendations for the best budget phones you can buy right now. […]
The rules of Exit 8 , both the cult indie game and the recent film adaptation, are simple: You're stuck in a subway station that loops around endlessly. If you notice any anomalies on your current loop, you turn around. If everything is the same, you keep going forward. Each successful guess takes you to a new entrance where the loop recurs, until you reach the end of the labyrinth, Exit 8 itself. It's a setup that perfectly suits a first-person video game, where you can fully control where your character looks and moves. And it's also something director Genki Kawamura deftly replicates in the film through long tracking shots and sweeping camera movements. Even without a controller, or a keyboard and mouse, the viewer remains immersed, looking and listening for any minor changes. Within just a few minutes, the film makes it clear it's not just another thoughtless video game adaptation like The Mario Galaxy Movie — it's an attempt to translate the experience of the game to an entirely new medium. That's a daunting challenge for most artists, but Kawamura is no stranger to jumping between formats. He's known for producing popular anime films from the likes of Makoto Shinkai and Mamoru Hosoda, including Your Name and Belle . He's also made a name for himself as a best-selling author, with books including the novelization of Exit 8 . Kawamura's perspective for the film came from a conversation with Nintendo's legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, who had mentioned that the greatest games are both fun for the players and people watching them. "So what I tried to do in the film is to really place the audience in the shoes of the player in certain shots... almost like they were watching a live stream of a video game in other scenes," he said in an interview with Engadget (via a translator). "That's kind of structurally the through-line of the film." The Exit 8 adaptation balances that sense of immersion with a more traditional narrative structure, something the game lacked entirely. As the film begins, we're introduced to a young man standing in a crowded train. A drunken businessman shouts at a mother to quiet crying baby down. Instead of telling the belligerent salaryman to fuck off, the young man plugs in his earbuds and tries to ignore the situation, just like everyone else. He eventually steps off, while the tearful mother suffers through the verbal assault. It's a scene that anyone who's lived in a crowded city can relate to — the moments where you know you should try to help a stranger, but fear, cowardice or embarrassment hold you back. Exit 8 NEON Shortly after receiving a call from his ex-girlfriend, who reveals that she's pregnant, the young man stumbles into the Exit 8 loop. At first, it's just a normal subway station, with large poster ads, a photo booth and random maintenance doors. But he quickly notices that the room repeats itself. Thanks to a helpful set of instructions on the wall, he learns that his only way out is to start tracking anomalies, like slight changes in text, or the way a robotic businessman walks past him. And yes, things get freaky quickly. Kawamura points to his experience working in animation as a major influence for Exit 8 . In particular, the works of Satoshi Kon and Katsuhiro Otomo influenced how he externalized what characters were thinking and feeling, as well as how he depicted the interaction of dream and real worlds. " When we were filming, I told my DP [director of photography] that the main character of this film is the corridor," he said. "And all of our human characters, they have no names, so therefore they're NPCs in this corridor, which is the main character. So I wanted the corridor to almost evoke this feeling in the audience that it has a will of its own. And this yellow Exit 8 sign is almost like this divine God-like being." Kawamura says he personally views it as the corridor challenging humans who have a guilty conscience, but you can easily read in other meanings. More importantly, Exit 8 isn't merely a faithful recreation of the source material — it adds enough to make a case for existing a separate medium, a challenge many video game adaptations fumble. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/exit-8-is-cinema-for-the-livestreaming-era-151112907.html?src=rss
NASA has confirmed the pending launch of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover, which is being sent to Mars. The current plan is to launch via a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center. The timing is still being worked out, but the space agency says this won't happen until at least 2028. This is a partnership between NASA and the ESA, with the European agency providing the rover, the spacecraft and the lander. The US will provide braking engines for the lander, heater units for the rover's internal systems and, of course, assistance with the actual launch. The rover will be outfitted with scientific instruments to look for signs of ancient life on the red planet. These include a state-of-the-art mass spectrometer and an organic molecule analyzer, which will come in handy as the vehicle collects samples at the Oxia Planum landing site. This is a mission that has suffered years of delays for all kinds of wild reasons. It was actually first conceived all the way back in 2001 . The rover mission was originally scheduled for 2009, after NASA came on board. Budget constraints forced NASA to drop out in 2012, so Russia signed on as the ESA's launch partner. During this period, the mission experienced technical malfunctions which forced additional delays . The ESA suspended its partnership with Russia in 2022 after the country invaded Ukraine. This left the mission in doubt until 2024, when NASA came back into the fold . In the middle of a historic mission back to the Moon, this Administration is proposing to a 47% cut to NASA science and a 23% cut to NASA’s budget overall. Last week’s launch showed our country and world what we’re capable of when we work together toward a common goal. None of… pic.twitter.com/zW3i3iFaEQ — Senator Mark Kelly (@SenMarkKelly) April 10, 2026 However, the setbacks didn't even end there. The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to end NASA's involvement with the project, and many others, via stark budget cuts . The current proposal was made while the Artemis II crew was on their mission around the Moon, according to a report by The Register . Here's hoping the launch actually happens in 2028. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasa-restarts-work-to-support-europes-uncrewed-trip-to-mars-after-years-of-setbacks-161524488.html?src=rss
Panic, the company behind the tiny and excellent Playdate console, is taking a stand on generative AI. The company has published an AI disclosure that says as of this month, the Playdate Catalog “will no longer accept titles that use ‘Generative AI’ for art, audio, music, text, or dialog.” Panic does allow for developers to use AI assistance for coding, but also says that “we will flag any title as such and specify the extent that it was used (for example, “Lua debugging”) so the customer can decide whether to support it or not.” This comes a day after Panic announced that Playdate season three was happening and would arrive later this year. For those who don’t recall, the Playdate includes a “season” worth of games when you buy it, 24 titles in total with two revealed every week. Season two came out last year with 12 games — but, as Game Developer notes , one of those games used generative AI for writing and coding. On Bluesky, someone asked Panic if it would disclose what games in season three used AI, and the company confirmed that it was a requirement for season three that developers not use AI for art, music, writing or coding. Specifically, Panic says you can’t use large language models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini, AI image generators like Stable Diffusion or audio generators like MuseNet and Suno. Previously-approved games with generative AI will be allowed to stay on the catalog with a disclosure that indicates what exactly AI was used for. The company says these guidelines are “under constant discussion and is subject to change at any time.” I recall seeing AI disclosures on games in the Playdate Catalog in the past, but it makes sense to be up-front and clear on exactly what Panic allows and what it will reject. That said, it’s fairly easy to sideload games onto a Playdate, so anyone who wants to use generative AI to make a game isn’t entirely out of luck — though distribution and discovery for Playdate owners will obviously be harder. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/panic-says-the-playdate-catalog-wont-accept-games-made-with-generative-ai-160615022.html?src=rss
