“My mind is still sharp and my hands work just fine, so I have no interest in getting help from AI to draw or write stories,” says Lee Hyun-se, a legendary South Korean cartoonist best known for his seminal series A Daunting Team, a 1983 manhwa about the coming-of-age of heroic underdog baseball players. “Still, I’ve joined hands with AI to immortalize my characters Kkachi, Umji, and Ma Dong-tak.” By embracing generative AI, Lee is charting a new creative frontier in South Korea’s web comics industry. Since comics magazines faded at the turn of the century, web comics—serialized comics that read from top to bottom on digital platforms—have gone from niche subculture to global entertainment powerhouse, drawing in hundreds of millions of readers around the world. Lee has long been at its forefront, pushing the boundaries of his craft. Lee drew inspiration for his renegade baseball avengers from the Sammi Superstars, one of South Korea’s first professional baseball teams, whose journey of perseverance captivated a country stifled by military dictatorship. The series gained a cult following among readers seeking a creative escape from political repression, mesmerized by his bold brushstrokes and cinematic compositions that defied the conventions of cartoons.  Kkachi, the rebellious protagonist in A Daunting Team, is an alter ego of Lee himself. A scrappy outcast with untamed, spiky hair, he is a fan favorite who challenges the world with unrelenting passion and a brave conscience. He has reappeared throughout Lee’s signature works, painted with a new layer of pathos each time—a supernatural warrior who saves Earth from an alien attack in Armageddon and a rogue police officer battling a powerful criminal syndicate in Karon’s Dawn. Over decades, Kkachi has become a cultural icon in South Korea.  But Lee worries about Kkachi’s future. “In South Korea, when an author dies, his characters also get buried in his grave,” he says, drawing contrasts with enduring American comic characters like Superman and Spider-Man. Lee craves artistic immortality. He wants his characters to stay alive not just in the memories of readers, but also on their web comic platforms. “Even after I die, I want my worldviews and characters to communicate and resonate with the people of a new era,” he says. “That’s the kind of immortality I want.” Lee believes that AI can help him realize his vision. In partnership with Jaedam Media, a web comics production company based in Seoul, he developed the “Lee Hyun-se AI model” by fine-tuning the open-source AI art generator Stable Diffusion, created by the UK-based startup Stability AI. Using a data set of 5,000 volumes of comics that he has published over 46 years, the resulting model generates comics in his signature style.  This year, Lee is preparing to publish his first AI-assisted web comic, a remake of his 1994 manhwa Karon’s Dawn. Writers at Jaedam Media are adapting the story into a modernized crime drama starring Kkachi as a police officer in present-day Seoul and his love interest Umji as a daring prosecutor. Students at Sejong University, where Lee teaches comics, are creating the artwork using his AI model.  The creative process unfolds in several stages. First, Lee’s AI model generates illustrations based on text prompts and reference images, like 3D anatomy models and hand-drawn sketches that provide cues for different movements and gestures. Lee’s students then curate and edit the illustrations, adjusting the characters’ poses, tailoring their facial expressions, and integrating them into cartoonish compositions that AI can’t engineer. After many rounds of refinement and regeneration, Lee steps in to orchestrate the final product, adding his distinct artistic edge. AI companies envision that artists could automate the grunt work of drawing and channel their creative energy into storytelling and art direction. “Under my direction, a character might glare with sad eyes even when they’re angry or ferocious eyes when they’re happy,” he says. “It’s a subversive expression, a nuance that AI struggles to capture. Those delicate details I need to direct myself.” Ultimately, Lee wants to build an AI system that embodies his meticulous approach to human expressions. The grand vision of his experimental AI project is to create a “Lee Hyun-se simulation agent”—an advanced generation of his AI model that replicates his creative mind. The model would be trained on digital archives of Lee’s essays, interviews, and texts from his comics—the subject of an exhibit at the National Library of Korea last year—to encode his philosophy, personality, and values. “It’s going to take a long time for AI to learn my myriad worldviews because I’ve published so much work,” he says. The digital clone of Lee would generate new comics with his artistic intuition, perceiving its environment and making creative choices as he would—perhaps even publishing a series far in the future starring Kkachi as a post-human protagonist. “Fifty years from now, what kinds of comics would Lee Hyun-se create if he saw the world then?” Lee asks. “The question fascinates me.” Lee’s quest for a lasting artistic legacy is part of a broader creative evolution driven by technology. In the decades since their emergence, web comics have transformed the art of storytelling, offering an infinite digital canvas that integrates music, animation, and interactive visuals with the effects of new tools like automated coloring programs. The addition of AI is spurring the next wave of innovation. But even as it unlocks new creative possibilities, it is fueling anxieties over artistic agency and authorship. Last year the South Korean startup Onoma AI, named after the Greek word for “name” (a signal of its ambition to redefine creative storytelling), launched an AI-powered web comic generator called TooToon. The software allows users to create synopses, characters, and storyboards with simple text prompts and convert rough sketches into polished illustrations that reflect their personal artistic style. TooToon claims to streamline the labor-­intensive creative process by cutting down the production time between concept development and line art from six months to just two weeks. Companies like Onoma AI champion the idea that AI can help anyone be an artist—even if you can’t draw or afford to hire an army of assistants to keep up with the industry’s insane production demands. In their vision, artists would emerge as directors of their own AI-powered solo studios, automating the grunt work of drawing and channeling their creative energy into storytelling and art direction. The productivity breakthrough, they say, would help artists brainstorm more experimental ideas, take on big-scale productions, and disrupt the studio monopolies that dominate the market. Oh Hye-seong is the protagonist of “Karon’s Dawn,” an AI-assisted web comic series by the South Korean cartoonist Lee Hyun-se, which will be released later this year.COURTESY OF THE PUBLISHER “AI would expand the web comic ecosystem,” says Song Min, the founder and CEO of Onoma AI. Song describes the industry in South Korea as a “pyramid”—powerhouse platforms like Naver Webtoon and Kakao Webtoon at the top, followed by big-shot studios, where artists collaborate to mass-produce web comics. “The rest of the artists, those outside the studio system, can’t create alone,” he explains. “AI would empower more artists to emerge as independent artists.” Last year, Onoma AI partnered with a group of young web comic artists to create Tarot: A Tale of Seven Pages, a mystery thriller unraveling the twisted fates of strangers cursed by a hand of tarot cards. Through these collaborations, Song uses the artists’ feedback to refine TooToon. Still, even as a champion of AI-generated art, he questions whether it’s “a good thing for AI to be perfect.” Just as engineers need to keep coding to hone their skills, he wonders if AI should leave room for artists to keep drawing to nurture their craft. “AI is an inevitable tour de force, but for now, the big hurdles lie in artists’ perception and copyright,” he says. Onoma AI built Illustrious, the large language model powering TooToon, by fine-tuning Stable Diffusion on the Danbooru2023 data set, a public image bank of anime-style illustrations. But Stable Diffusion, along with other popular image generators built on the model, has come under fire for indiscriminately scraping images from the internet, sparking a barrage of lawsuits over copyright infringement. In turn, web comic generators are facing intense backlash from artists who fear that the programs are being trained on their art without their consent. "Can you create without a soul? Who knows?” As companies silo their training data, artists and readers have launched a digital campaign to boycott AI-generated web comics. In May 2023, readers bombarded The Knight King Returns with the Gods on Naver Webtoon with blazingly low ratings after discovering that AI had been used to refine portions of the artwork. The following month, artists flooded the platform with anonymous posts protesting “AI web comics created from theft,” sharply criticizing Naver’s contract policy requiring artists who publish on the platform to consent to having their works used as AI training data. To settle the standoff, the Korea Copyright Commission issued a set of guidelines in December 2023, urging AI developers to obtain permission from copyright holders before using their works as training data; articulate the purpose, scope, and duration of use; and provide fair compensation. A year later, amid growing calls from AI companies for access to more data, the South Korean government proposed carving out an exemption to copyright laws that would allow AI models to be trained on copyrighted works under the doctrine of fair use. But no legislation or regulation has yet established a clear legal framework, leaving artists in limbo. While seasoned artists like Lee embrace the technology as a tool to expand their legacy, wholeheartedly licensing their intellectual property to AI, younger artists see it as a threat. They fear that AI will steal their artwork and, more important, their identity as artists. “Drawing is the most difficult and the most fun part of making comics,” says Park So-won, a young web comic artist based in Seoul. Park grew up dreaming of becoming a cartoonist, watching her mother, an animator, bring characters to life. After years of juggling gigs as an artist assistant at a web comics studio, interrupted by a brief creative hiatus, she made her breakthrough on the platform Lezhin Comics with Legs That Won’t Walk, a queer romance noir about a boxer who falls in love with a loan shark chasing after him over his alcoholic father’s debt. As an independent artist, Park is constantly at work. She publishes a new episode every 10 days, often pulling all-nighters to produce up to 80 cuts of drawing, even with the help of assistants handling background art and coloring. Occasionally she finds herself in a flow state, working 30 hours straight without a break. Still, Park can’t imagine outsourcing her drawings, which she sees as the heart of her comics, to AI. “The crux of a comic, however important the story, is the drawing. If the story were written in words, people wouldn’t have read it, would they? The story is just a thought—the execution is the drawing,” she says. “The grammar of comics is the drawing.” Handing over her drawing would mean surrendering her artistic agency. A strip from ”A Daunting Team,” a 1983 baseball manhwa made by Lee Hyun-se.COURTESY OF THE PUBLISHER Park thinks algorithmic art lacks soul—like “objects that exist in a void”—and isn’t worried about whether AI can draw better than she does. Her drawings have evolved over the years, shaped by her shifting outlook on the world and breaking new creative ground over time—an artistic progression that she thinks an algorithm trained to emulate existing works could never make. “I’ll keep charting new territory as an artist, while AI will stay the same,” she says. To Park, art is supreme indulgence: “I’ve come this far because I love to draw. If AI takes away my favorite thing to do in the world, what would I do?” But other comic artists, whose strengths lie in storytelling, welcome the innovation. Bae Jin-soo was an aspiring screenwriter before debuting as an artist on Naver Webtoon’s amateur comics page in 2010. To turn his screenplay into a comic, Bae taught himself to draw by photographing different compositions and tracing them on paper. “I can’t draw, so I’ll bet on my writing,” he thought. After his debut seriesFriday: Forbidden Tales took off, Bae rose to stardom with his three-part series Money Game, Pie Game, and Funny Game—brainy psychological thrillers packed with plot twists and witty, thought-provoking narratives about a group of contestants playing eccentric games to win a cash prize. They have even inspired a popular Netflix adaptation, The 8 Show.  “I still have so many more stories I want to tell,” Bae says. A prolific writer, he keeps a running list of new ideas in a pocket notepad, the genre-bending plots spanning horror, politics, and black comedy. But with his mind racing ahead of his hand, breathing life into all his ideas would require commissioning a studio to execute the illustrations. For Bae, an AI-powered web comic generator could be a game changer. “If AI could handle my artwork, I would create an endless stream of new comics,” he says. Bae is also eager to explore AI as a “backup battery for story ideas,” like a writer’s assistant. Even so, to hold his ground as an artist, he plans to dig deeper into his imagination to generate original and experimental ideas that could be found nowhere else. “That’s the domain of [human] creators,” he says. Still, Bae wonders if his own creative edge would slowly erode through extensive collaboration with AI: “Would my own colors start to fade?” Meanwhile, comics students at Sejong University in Seoul are learning to integrate AI into their tool kits. The budding artists are being trained as “creative coders,” turning strips of comics into data sets by meticulously annotating their content, and as prompt engineers who can guide AI to produce characters that align with their aesthetic sensibilities. “Creativity takes time—to reflect and contemplate on your work,” says Han Chang-wan, a professor of comics and animation at Sejong University, who teaches a class on AI-generated web comics. Han says that’s what AI will buy for his students: the time to “create more diverse characters, more kaleidoscopic plots, and more eclectic genres” that challenge the formulaic comics mass-produced by studios. Ultimately, he hopes, they’ll “tap into an entirely new readership.” As artists navigate this uncharted future, generative AI is raising profound questions about what powers creativity. “AI could be a technical assistant to artists,” says Shin Il-sook, the president of the Korea Cartoonist Association and the renowned cartoonist behind the historical fantasy romance The Four Daughters of Armian, which follows a brave-hearted princess exiled from a matriarchal kingdom as she embarks on a journey of survival and self-discovery through war, love, and political power battles. Still, she wonders if AI can really be a creative companion.  “Creativity is about making something never seen before, driven by a desire to share it with other people,” Shin says. “It’s deeply intertwined with the human experience and its afflictions. That’s why an artist who has walked through life’s suffering and honed their craft produces remarkable art,” she says. “Can you create without a soul? Who knows?”  Michelle Kim is a freelance journalist and lawyer based in Seoul.

The competition – now in its seventh year – sought proposals for an installation on the roof of the north-west corner of the Hoxton Docks complex on the Regent’s Canal. The overall winner has been named as Moonument, by George Gil in collaboration with the Redundant Architects Recreation Association. The other finalists were: Red Tape by Luke Lupton; Resonant Nest by Robin Sparkes at Bodyclock; Sisyphus by Carlos Tolosa Tejedor and Kilian Schellenberger Of 8-Parenthesis; and The Last Straw by Chao Gao at Ciaociao Design.Advertisement Last year’s edition of the annual £25,000 project, backed by historic regeneration specialist Shiva, focused on transforming land formerly occupied by a Soviet T-34 tank in Southwark. It was won by Good Shape. This year’s Antepavilion returns to its original home following a legal battle between the client and Hackney Council. The council had previously won an injunction requiring the removal of 2020’s winning scheme, a series of floating sharks by architect Jaimie Shorten. This year’s shortlist was picked from 111 applications by a jury which included Hannah Sheerin and Lioba Pflaum of Good Shape, the artist Helen Marten, Shiva director Russell Gray and Ed Moseley – co-founder and director of London Structures Lab. Commenting on the winning scheme, the jury said: ‘Moonument’s entry presentation made it clear favourite among this year’s shortlisted entries for its aesthetic ambition.  The jury were also persuaded that the construction process and budgeting were capable of being effectively managed by George Gil and RARA.’ Antepavilion described the 2025 brief as ‘open to broad interpretation. Entrants need have regard only to the location where their proposal is to be realised and the platform, podium or plinth as its base’.Advertisement The two-storey 1960s Columbia Wharf and its neighbour Brunswick Wharf stand on a canalside site that was originally home to the Gas Light and Coke Company. It was transformed into the Hoxton Docks artist studios almost 30 years ago. The complex, at 53-55 Laburnum Street, overlooks Haggerston Baths and BDP’s 2008 Bridge Academy. Previous Antepavilion installations to occupy the site include Flood House by Matthew Butcher, Potemkin Theatre by Maich Swift Architects, and All Along the Watchtower by Project Bunny Rabbit. The latest brief challenged participants to respond to the unique site and its planning history. The reuse of existing construction materials stored on the site was encouraged. The overall winner will receive a prize fund of up to £25,000, of which at least 60 per cent is to be spent on materials and labour and the remainder taken as prize money.  The installation is to be completed by 1 August. The shortlist Shortlisted: Moonument by George Gil Moonument by George Gil [WINNER] Moonument is a celebration of Antepavilion’s recent triumphs. It fundamentally questions Hackney’s definition of development through three facets: permanence, size, and attachment. It is an animated symbol of contradiction: bold yet subtle, large yet light, shallow yet deep, familiar yet unrecognisable. Shortlisted: Red Tape by Luke Lupton Red Tape by Luke Lupton Red Tape proposes two big rolls of rep tape (1) that sit on the pavilion plinth … (2) insidiously weaving its way around the plinth and its building … (3) crossing roads and climbing walls … Red Tape puts the ridiculousness and reach of our planning system plain sight … Shortlisted: Resonant Nest by Robin Sparkes at Bodyclock Resonant Nest by Robin Sparkes at Bodyclock Reinterpreting the historic sound mirrors of Dungeness, UK, Resonant Nest: An Amphitheatre for Birds fosters stronger relationships between urban and avian ecosystems along the waterways of Hoxton. The design adapts boat-building methodologies to bend wood into a parabolic curve, focusing sound to extend the reach of high-frequency avian calls over greater distances from within the cone. Shortlisted: Sisyphus by Carlos Tolosa Tejedor And Kilian Schellenberger of 8-parenthesis Sisyphus by Carlos Tolosa Tejedor and Kilian Schellenberger of 8-parenthesis Sisyphus, from Greek mythology, is a figure defined not by heroism, but by selfishness, cunning, and an almost absurd disregard for the natural order. Our proposal for the Antepavilion takes inspiration from this myth, exploring the absurdity of striving against impossible odds, and the bottles errands ran by police and planning authorities when it serves no real purpose. As the brief suggests, this year’s Antepavilion will offer three distinct experiences in three dedicated spaces: Platform/Podium/Plinth, The Pyramid, and The Water Jet. Shortlisted: The Last Straw by Chao Gao at Ciaociao Design The Last Straw by Chao Gao at Ciaociao Design Beyond the final installation, The Last Straw is a movement – reviving craftsmanship, fostering play, and driving education. Built from raw, honest materials like mud and straw, The Last Straw embrace simplicity to ensure inclusivity and engagement. Rooted in the form of the traditional bee skep, crafted in a natural setting, they blur the boundaries between art, craft, and architecture – demanding the preservation of these threatened traditions in an increasingly controlled urban world.

If the economic headlines have you reeling, a CD can provide some much-needed peace of mind.

Nintendo is on the warpath after last year's massive leak of Pokémon game data, dubbed the "Teraleak". Read more

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Marvel Rivals Season 2, the Hellfire Gala, premiered on April 11, 2025, transforming the mutant island of Krakoa into a thriving battleground. Beginning with the psychic Vanguard Emma Frost, the season has already pleased fans with a new map, team-up abilities, and a Battle Pass packed with mutant-inspired cosmetics. NetEase Games is keeping the pace going, promising a mid-season update, Season 2.5, featuring one of Marvel’s most notorious villains: Ultron. The AI threat, who has been teased as the season’s key opponent, is set to shake up the lineup with his distinctive playstyle. Following a successful Season 1 that introduced the Fantastic Four, Season 2 continues to extend the 6v6 hero shooter’s dynamic gameplay, with NetEase announcing shorter two-month seasons beginning with Season 3, ensuring a new hero every month. Although Ultron’s arrival has been a hot topic since datamined leaks emerged in December 2024, hinting at his unexpected role. Fans have speculated wildly about his abilities, fuelled by his cinematic appearance in the Hellfire Gala trailer, in which he threatens to usher in the “Age of Ultron.” A fresh teaser in NetEase’s most recent Art Vision video has provided the clearest look yet at Ultron’s design, confirming long-held speculation regarding his role. Marvel Rivals’ latest Art Dev video confirms Ultron will be a Strategist in Season 2.5 NetEase’s new Art Vision video for Marvel Rivals has sparked excitement among fans, revealing the look of Ultron, who is now confirmed as a Strategist, as seen on the hero select screen, which corresponds to rumors from as early as December 2024. Ultron is confirmed to be a Strategist in Season 2.5. Image by VideoGamer. This reveal, made during a UI design section, cements Ultron’s place as a support character, a surprise shift for the intimidating robot known for his destructive aspirations in the MCU film Avengers: Age of Ultron. The clip, albeit brief, featured his sleek, black-armored design with a bright orange core, merging his cinematic terror with Marvel Rivals’ vibrant art style. Fans are excited about how Ultron’s Strategist role will alter team dynamics in the 6v6 hero shooter. According to leaked abilities, Ultron is a hybrid support with offensive flair. His Encephalo-Ray deals damage with a scorching energy beam, whereas Imperative: Patch summons a drone to heal teammates in a radius, with an additional heal for a targeted team member. Firewall provides additional health to surrounding friends, while Dynamic Flight enables aerial mobility, a first for Strategists. His ultimate, Rage of Ultron, causes drones to shoot Encephalo-Rays, harming enemies while healing friends. These skills indicate that Ultron will excel in backline support, deploying drones and flight to outmanoeuvre enemies while increasing team resilience, making him a game changer in Marvel Rivals’ meta. Marvel Rivals Platform(s): macOS, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X Genre(s): Fighting, Shooter Related Topics Marvel Rivals Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share

Olivier Dangla Giuliano da Empoli : « La formule des ingénieurs du chaos est toujours la même : la colère et la frustration, démultipliées par l’algorithme » Publié aujourd’hui à 17h00, modifié à 17h10 Article réservé aux abonnés EntretienAuteur de « L’Heure des prédateurs », l’écrivain italo-suisse analyse, dans un entretien au « Monde », la responsabilité des progressistes dans l’avènement de dirigeants autoritaires armés par les potentats du numérique. Professeur à Sciences Po et auteur du Mage du Kremlin (Gallimard, 2022), Giuliano da Empoli vient de publier L’Heure des prédateurs (Gallimard, 160 pages, 19 euros), une réflexion sur l’ère des nouveaux autocrates alliés aux magnats de la tech. Il faut dire que Giuliano da Empoli est un ancien converti, depuis repenti, de la tech : au début des années 2000, il croit que le numérique va changer la vie démocratique et balayer le vieux monde hiérarchique. Lire aussi | Article réservé à nos abonnés Dans « L’Heure des prédateurs », Giuliano da Empoli analyse le fonctionnement des « seigneurs de la tech » Séduit par la rhétorique de la « start-up nation », il s’engage alors auprès d’un politicien italien « disruptif », Matteo Renzi : il devient son adjoint aux affaires culturelles à Florence, puis son conseiller politique lors de sa présidence du Conseil italien (2014-2016) – une expérience relatée dans Le Florentin (Grasset, 2016). A l’image des militants communistes au XXe siècle, il a suivi, dit-il aujourd’hui, « le parcours classique et initiatique du désenchantement » en une croyance politique. A partir de la réélection de Barack Obama à la présidence des Etats-Unis, en 2012, Giuliano da Empoli prend la mesure de la puissance des big data qui se niche derrière le populisme autoritaire de Donald Trump, de Jair Bolsanaro ou de Matteo Salvini : il en décrira les arcanes dans Les Ingénieurs du chaos Féru de Goethe comme de séries, européen convaincu, président du think tank Volta, et « vieil oncle » ou parrain de la revue Le Grand Continent, cet intellectuel italo-suisse apprécie les va-et-vient entre l’écriture et la politique. Il a découvert le versant tragique de cette dernière dès l’âge de 12 ans, en 1986, lorsque son père, l’économiste Antonio da Empoli, fut blessé lors d’un attentat perpétré par une organisation armée d’extrême gauche. Sans doute est-ce à ce moment que Giuliano da Empoli a compris qu’« on souffre tout le temps en politique ». Il vous reste 88.84% de cet article à lire. La suite est réservée aux abonnés.

Bayroom Broom Classic SEGA racer OutRun is suddenly getting the Michael Bay movie treatment, just like we all expected Madame Web star Sydney Sweeney's also reportedly involved on the production side, which is cool. Image credit: Nintendo News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on April 22, 2025 Remember OutRun? Well, if you don't you'd better ask an older relative or mate, because the classic SEGA racing series is now reportedly getting a movie adaptation driven by Sydney Sweeney and notorious explosion connoisseur Michael Bay. Yep, Mario, Minecraft, Sonic - all big hitters on the big screen after making the jump from the world of video games - and now OutRun, a series that hasn't had a new entry since 2009. Any chance of a Burnout movie if you're doing beloved arcade racing series that're kinda dormant now? Come on Mike, You know you want to. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. According to Deadline, this OutRun movie is in the works at Universal. Bay's set to direct it, with Sweeney aboard to produce rather than star, and Jayson Rothwell of Polar, Silent Night, and Zemanovaload fame will write the script. There aren't any details as to what the plot'll look like yet, but one would assume plenty of Fast and Furious-style car chases involving 80s Ferraris which are blasting funky electronic tunes. Nyoooms and big booms all but guaranteed if Bay's previous work like Transformers and The Rock is anything to go by, with the director also producing the adaptation alongside partner Brad Fuller and Sweeney. On the SEGA side, Toru Nakahara - veteran of Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3, Knuckles, and Golden Axe - has been brought in to produce, and company president/COO Shuji Utsumi will be helping oversee the project. While this news is a bit surprising, SEGA has been doing some stuff to help revive and take advatage of its beloved back catalogue lately, bringing back the likes of Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, and Virtua Fighter via fresh entries. Nostalgia, we do all love a bit of it. Are you excited to see how this OutRun movie turns out? Let us know below!

Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo LifeFor all the Switch 1 Pro Controller's good points (and there are a lot of them), it can take its sweet time getting to a full charge. Fortunately, the Switch 2 Pro Controller seems to be speeding things along in this department. Nintendo has revealed the technical specifications for the upcoming console's official controller, claiming that it will take approximately 3.5 hours for a full charge — when charged with the right cables, of course. For comparison's sake, the original Pro Controller took almost twice as long for a full charge, with Nintendo estimating a whopping six hours to take it to 100%. Both controllers have an estimated 40-hour battery life, too, so you'll need to give the Pro Controller 2 a full charge just as infrequently as its predecessor. Aside from charging twice as fast, the Pro Controller 2 also boasts a handful of console-specific additions like the new C Button, HD Rumble 2 and two bonus GL/GR buttons on the back. It's also marginally smaller and lighter, measuring in at 105mm x 148mm x 60.2mm and weighing 235g (compared to the original controller's 106mm x 152mm x 60mm, 246g). Oh, and it also has a headphone jack now, which we're still amazed its predecessor missed out on. Other than that, it's much the same as what we've seen before. The Pro Controller 2 has the same gyro and NFC capabilities as the 'Pro Controller 1', and comes packed with a USB-C charging cable. For those not sold on the new features, you'll still be able to use your original Pro Controller on Switch 2, you just won't be able to wake the console by pressing the controller's home button. Nintendo thought instant input was the "better option" Could it really be the "pinnacle of all controllers"? So smooth What do you make of the Switch 2 Pro Controller? Let us know in the comments. [source nintendo.com] See Also Share:0 1 Jim came to Nintendo Life in 2022 and, despite his insistence that The Minish Cap is the best Zelda game and his unwavering love for the Star Wars prequels (yes, really), he has continued to write news and features on the site ever since. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment... Related Articles Switch 2's Backwards Compatibility List Provides Updates On Two Titles Here's what you can expect 126 Games You Should Pick Up In Nintendo's 'Partner Spotlight' eShop Sale (North America) Every game we scored 9/10 or higher Paul Rudd Returns In An Awesome SNES-Style Switch 2 Commercial Super together! 123 Games You Should Pick Up In Nintendo's 'Save & Play' eShop Sale (Europe) Every game we scored 9/10 or higher