Chris Kerr, Senior Editor, NewsJune 5, 20252 Min ReadSwitch 2 promotional photo via NintendoMultiple consumers on social media claim GameStop employees who chose to staple receipts to the packaging of Switch 2 hardware have inadvertently caused screen punctures.As clocked by IGN, a number of Switch 2 owners who managed to secure a device on launch day say they began unboxing their device only to find the display sported puncture wounds.The culprit, it seems, were receipts that had been stapled to the cardboard packaging by retail workers. "My Switch 2 has staple holes in the screen. They stapled the receipt to the box," wrote one X user, who also posted pictures of the damage."GameStop stapled the receipt for me and my friends Switch 2s to the box. FML," said another person on X before sharing similar images. "Genuinely insane now I’m gonna have to wait 3 months for the restock. And yes we were there for the midnight release so I bet everyone in this line is gonna have this same issue."There have also been similar posts on Reddit, where multiple users claim to have encountered the same issue and suggested the problem might be widespread. It seems many of those impacted picked up their console from GameStop's Staten Island branch."Me and my homie here (we never met before) were unfortunately at the same GameStop and this happened to me and another buddy! Think the entire pre-order batch is completely fucked," they wrote in a thread.Related:Who decided to package Switch 2 consoles with the screens facing outward?It's an issue that raises questions about the decision to package the Switch 2 with the screen facing outward. As shown by the images being shared on social media and multiple unboxing videos (like this one posted by CNET), the console's 7.9 inch display is visible as soon as the box is opened and is only protected by a plastic wrap and the cardboard lid of the box itself.Game Developer has reached out to Nintendo for comment. Read more about:Nintendo Switch 2Top StoriesAbout the AuthorChris KerrSenior Editor, News, GameDeveloper.comGame Developer news editor Chris Kerr is an award-winning journalist and reporter with over a decade of experience in the game industry. His byline has appeared in notable print and digital publications including Edge, Stuff, Wireframe, International Business Times, and PocketGamer.biz. Throughout his career, Chris has covered major industry events including GDC, PAX Australia, Gamescom, Paris Games Week, and Develop Brighton. He has featured on the judging panel at The Develop Star Awards on multiple occasions and appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live to discuss breaking news.See more from Chris KerrDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

“Everything I did and wrote was based in love and my desire to entertain and bring glee and creativity to young people and to everyone,” Paul Reubens says in the newly released Max docuseries, Pee-wee As Himself. Reubens ascended to cultural ubiquity in the 1980s with his smash hit character, Pee-wee Herman. First as a live show, then in the Tim Burton film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and perhaps most lastingly, in the television series Pee-wee’s Playhouse that ran for five seasons, Reubens undeniably did just what he set out to. Visually, the show conveyed an off the wall giddiness that didn’t confine itself to typical television set design rules.The jagged-edged red door, the wagging-armed chair named Chairry, the beatnik jazz band’s brick wall alcove—an entire bustling world was contained in the walls of Pee-wee’s playhouse, from the very first episode. The walls and floor were painted with abstract patterns in a variety of colors, and tchotchkes abounded. From Chairry to the three flowers in the flowerbed to Magic Screen, the decorations were his friends and his friends were his decorations. His space was very much alive. “He’s a really imaginative person who doesn’t let other people make rules for him, so naturally his place would reflect his personality,’” Gary Panter, the show’s lead production designer, told the New York Times in a 1987 interview.Chairry (right of centre) and other Pee-wee’s Playhouse staples including Dirty Dog, Chicky Baby, and Cool Cat in the background. Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesPanter was an alt comic artist who’d designed the original stage sets for Reubens before Pee-wee made his jump to the screen. He worked with two other then-comic artists, Wayne White and Ric Heitzman, to flesh out the world further for the television series. While in retrospect, people might lump the Playhouse in with the rest of the ’80s postmodern milieu, the team had rules to avoid fitting too cleanly into that aesthetic. “Jokingly, we said, ‘Okay, no more ’80s new wavy stuff,” White says. “No flying triangles and squiggly lines.” The result was a surrealist explosion of color and pattern, a Pop Art take on a ’50s sitcom set.Laurence Fishburne appeared as Cowboy Curtis on the show. Photo: John Kisch Archive/Getty ImagesGiven their punk-leaning backgrounds, their approach to creating the sets had a DIY sensibility. The first season of the show was filmed in a loft in SoHo, rather than on a soundstage in Los Angeles, and the team got crafty figuring out how to create the things they’d drawn up, rather than passing the designs off to fabricators to see them through. “We were downtown New York artists struggling to build the stuff in our apartments and little studios here and there,” White tells AD. “It was mostly sculptors and painters and cartoonists [working on the show]. It didn’t have that institutional network of showbiz builders like LA has, there were no scenic artists, no guys that build props, things like that.”This fact is surely part of what gives Pee-wee’s Playhouse its art-school-project sheen: despite its success, it truly was a passion project for those that worked on it. “Being trusted to do this stuff gave me just so much confidence and drive. It really supercharged my sense of being an artist,” says White. “I was 28 years old, and I was willing to do anything. We burned very brightly that first year.”Paul Reubens filming an episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Photo: John Kisch Archive/Getty ImagesFrom the start, Reubens let the production design team explore their wildest ideas. White’s comic strips (like Miss Car, which was published in the East Village Eye prior to Pee-wee’s Playhouse) featured anthropomorphized items, making the jump to Chairry and co. not too far of a leap. “I didn’t have to change [my style] at all,” White says. “I stepped right into another medium and it was a big lesson for me. You could take a vision or an idea or your imagination through all these different mediums, and they’re all really just the same.”Gary Panter and Paul Reubens. Courtesy of HBOPanter, White, and Heitzman didn’t worry about notes or being penned in by the network or anyone else. They were free to explore, to create as many drawings and iterations of items as were needed, from which Reubens would pick the option that he thought worked best. Reubens was already a major star by the time that the show was picked up, so it was intimidating to work with him so loosely at first. Still, “Paul was so interested in what we're doing that he quickly just became a friend,” White explains. “It was easy to go along with quickly, because he was a weirdo artist like me.” Reubens’s comfortability with his own oddity is what made the show so spellbinding, even for the adults who were well outside of the target demographic. Each episode presented an opportunity to disappear into a world where strangeness was not only expected, but celebrated too. “I do remember being on set and that it was the most exciting thing I’d ever done,” Natasha Lyonne, who was in six episodes of the show as a child, says in the docuseries. “I think it felt like permission to be myself.”Paul Reubens and Chairry. Courtesy of HBOFor much of Pee-wee Herman’s heyday, Reubens exclusively gave interviews in character. Though the new documentary thoroughly punctures that facade, the glimpses it offers into the Hollywood home that Reubens lived in from the mid-80s onward show that his personal taste wasn’t all that distant from the wacky world of Pee-wee. There were certainly no talking chairs, but still, the space was filled with color, pattern, and oodles of nostalgic memorabilia. Reubens also nurtured the wildlife that lived in the hills surrounding his house, spreading seeds for deer and crows, growing plenty of plants, and welcoming even the coyotes, wolves, and skunks of the area too. Though Pee-wee’s open door policy with his neighbors is a stretch further than Reubens’s, the nurturing relationship with these creatures certainly feels Pee-wee-esque.The Pee-wee’s Playhouse set. Courtesy of HBODecades after the final episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse aired, White cites the lasting brilliance of the sets to Reubens himself. “He is the nuclear reactor core of it all. Without him, none of this would have had the magic that it had,” White says. “The character of Pee-wee was so resonant with people and then it just radiated out from there. I give him most of the credit for creating the magic, and we just kind of floated along on it. It was such a strong character and such an enchanted world that it couldn't help and bring out the best of any artist.”

Casa Sofia | © Zaickz Moz Casa Sofia, a recent project by AMASA Estudio, addresses the layered complexities of architectural intervention within Mexico City’s Colonia Roma, a neighborhood celebrated for its early 20th-century character but increasingly shaped by speculative pressures and fragmented land use. Just six blocks from Parque México, the house occupies a site caught between cultural significance and economic inertia. Originally built in the 1940s, the building underwent a series of unsympathetic interventions over the decades, most notably its conversion into office space. By the time AMASA Estudio began its work, the house had stood empty for over a decade. Casa Sofia Technical Information Architects1-7: AMASA Estudio Location: Colonia Roma, Mexico City, Mexico Area: 215 m2 | 2,315 Sq. Ft. Completion Year: 2024 Photographs: © Zaickz Moz, © Gerardo Reyes Bustamante The integration of contemporary elements can return life and functionality to the historic constructions of the area. – AMASA Estudio Architects Casa Sofia Photographs © Zaickz Moz © Zaickz Moz © Zaickz Moz © Zaickz Moz © Zaickz Moz © Zaickz Moz © Zaickz Moz © Zaickz Moz © Zaickz Moz © Zaickz Moz © Gerardo Reyes Bustamante © Zaickz Moz © Zaickz Moz Contextual Framework: Urban Fabric, Zoning, and Speculative Vacancy The architects were tasked with renovating and negotiating the tensions between preservation and contemporary inhabitation. Zoning restrictions in the area often preclude new development, inadvertently incentivizing abandonment and deterioration. Within this context, AMASA’s approach reclaims architectural value by demonstrating how adaptive reuse, when carefully considered, can simultaneously address housing shortages and preserve urban identity. Rather than erasing the building’s history, the project adopts a regenerative approach, rethinking the building’s typology and embedding flexibility into the spatial program. In doing so, Casa Sofia becomes a case study of how small-scale interventions can challenge speculative dormancy and reintroduce vibrancy to historic neighborhoods. Architectural Strategy: Inversion, Layering, and Programmatic Flexibility The architectural response centers on spatial inversion and vertical stratification. While the original commission envisioned a straightforward single-family restoration, AMASA Estudio identified the need for a more complex program to ensure viability and relevance. The result is a tripartite configuration: a ground-floor apartment, a flexible garage/commercial unit, and a redefined primary residence beginning on the first floor. This inversion of the conventional domestic hierarchy, placing private spaces on the middle floor and public functions at the top, is more than a pragmatic solution. It reflects a critical rethinking of domestic routines in dense urban contexts. The reallocation of living functions enables three degrees of occupancy: short-term rental, residential use, and commercial potential, each with independent access. At ground level, the vestibule becomes a threshold of coexistence. To the left is a compact yet complete one-bedroom apartment; to the right is a hybrid space adaptable as a garage or storefront; and ahead is the entrance to the main dwelling. The logic of flexibility is woven into every decision, resisting fixed-use zoning and instead proposing an architecture open to evolving modes of urban living. On the second floor, the public realm unfolds in an open-plan configuration that deliberately contrasts the spatial enclosure below. A continuous space integrates living, kitchen, and dining functions, culminating in a terrace that extends the domestic interior outward. This gesture, a horizontal void defined by operable walls, foregrounds the importance of architectural porosity in temperate climates. Light, Circulation, and Spatial Atmosphere Natural light is not merely admitted but orchestrated. A circular skylight punctures the ceiling above the staircase, casting vertical illumination along the building’s spine and subtly guiding the eye upward. It introduces a moment of tectonic tension, where the logic of light meets the logic of circulation. This vertical axis becomes the fulcrum of the spatial experience. The spiral staircase, painted in a distinct green hue, is not hidden but celebrated as an expressive sculptural form. It mediates the transition from compression to expansion, from the seclusion of bedrooms to the openness of the social level. Light enters primarily from above and laterally through folding window panels that open completely to the terrace. The absence of interior partitions on the upper floor allows light to wash uninterrupted across surfaces, emphasizing material textures and the gradient between inside and outside. In contrast, the lower levels, shaded and defined, offer a more intimate atmosphere, underscoring the designers’ sensitivity to light as both a spatial and emotional element. Casa Sofia Restoration Ethos Rather than defaulting to nostalgic restoration, the architects embrace a contemporary material palette rooted in coherence and restraint. The project does not attempt to replicate the past but defines a new architectural narrative grounded in contrast and continuity. The use of a singular green tone for all metalwork, staircases, doors, railings, and furniture introduces a unifying chromatic identity. This bold yet controlled gesture resonates against the subdued gray plaster walls, creating a dynamic interplay between reflection and shadow. The palette is neither flashy nor muted; it is precise, allowing light to animate its surfaces without overwhelming the space. Importantly, the intervention avoids decorative mimicry. Structural upgrades, new spatial logic, and minimalist detailing coexist with the building’s historical shell. This architectural restraint makes the original form legible while enabling new uses to emerge organically. AMASA Estudio’s broader practice often grapples with similar conditions: the friction between permanence and transformation, especially in urban areas burdened by regulatory inertia and socio-economic flux. Casa Sofia embodies this approach, presenting architecture not as a static form but as a series of spatial and material negotiations between past and present, regulation and imagination, economy, and poetics. Casa Sofia Plans Ground Floor | © AMASA Estudio First Floor | © AMASA Estudio Second Floor | © AMASA Estudio Section | © AMASA Estudio Isometric View | © AMASA Estudio Casa Sofia Image Gallery About AMASA Estudio Credits and Additional Notes Lead Architects: Andrea López, Agustín Pereyra Design Team: Cesar Huerta, Gerardo Reyes Client: ECOBIART Inmobiliaria Construction: Erik Cortés Ortega Structural Engineering: Juan Felipe Heredia Installations Engineering: Germán Muñoz Lighting Design: Andrea López, Agustín Pereyra