from the age-verification-is-another-phrase-for-privacy-breach dept
From the very beginning of this recent obsession with identifying everyone online (yes, they like to call it “age” verification, but it always ends up as identity verification), we’ve been pointing out that it was a huge privacy nightmare waiting to happen. Or maybe it wasn’t waiting. Maybe it was already happening.
This week a massive new data breach has been revealed that should put the nail in the coffin for the idea that any sort of age or identity verification could be safe. 153 million scans of drivers licenses easily available based on this breach, with more being added all the time. Literally on the day it was revealed (and right before the site was taken down) it added another 400,000 records to its available database.
There is no safe age verification. There is no age verification that doesn’t put people at risk.
Last year, Eric Goldman wrote the definitive piece on how all of these technologies — no matter what they tell you — are huge privacy risks, but people are still living in denial. This is despite the numerous examples we’ve had in just the past few years of verification providers and their customers having massive data breaches.
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The latest comes to us via Brian Krebs, who reports on a massive breach of scanned IDs — more than 153 million drivers licenses from people across the US and Canada, now for sale on the dark web:
A new identity theft service launched on the dark web this week is selling digital scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses from people in the United States and Canada. Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase on this service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely-used identity verification company based in Louisiana. KrebsOnSecurity also has learned that the New Orleans field office of theFederal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) today launched an official inquiry into the source of the images.
Krebs traces the breach back to an ID verifier that appears to be used by many companies, including Hertz, the rental car company. It appears to not be limited to them either, as he checked with a number of people who were in the database, and by looking at the date they were added alongside their calendars, found examples of other people who shared their ID at places like a pot dispensary.
That company turns out to be IDScan.net, based in Louisiana, which has contracts with thousands of dispensaries, not to mention Hertz, FedEx, and Target. And while Krebs is focused on how many of the leaked IDs are connected to real world businesses, it’s worth noting that IDScan.net is also doing age verification for a bunch of tech companies, has a page tracking state age verification laws and company implementations, and even has written positively about laws like KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, that would effectively require age verification.
So, yes, we have a company that is a big player in the age verification space, talking up age and identity verification laws, that appears to have had a long-standing ongoing leak of every ID it scanned.
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Yiiiiiikes.
And, of course, like all age and identity verification providers, IDScan has spent years talking up how secure it keeps all this data, even as every single record appeared to be leaking in realtime. Here’s their “Trust Center” page which is still up days after the hack was revealed:
That’s the company that spent over a year leaking 150 million drivers licenses in real time, explaining “how we protect data, maintain system reliability, and earn the confidence of our customers and their users.” Might be time to update that page.
But also, this should be a massive warning to everyone pushing for age verification laws. You can have a “trusted” company in the space who brags about all the certifications it has. It’s in “compliance” with the GDPR, the CCPA, and every other law. It is “transparent” about its “privacy practices” and how its “sensitive identity data is handled responsibly” and…. for over a year it’s been leaking all of those sensitive records.
And it appears no one internally at the company noticed.
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As Krebs makes clear, the breach included many, many millions of records and ID scans that were being swiped in real time by the hackers who breached the system:
The people behind Nexus claim the license images are coming from an active breach at “a major identity verification company” whose customers include multiple Fortune 500 companies.
The record totals listed by the Nexus identity theft service. The number of drivers license records increased by nearly 400,000 in the span of just 24 hours.
“We have been continuously exfiltrating new data for over a year into our private database,” the service enthused in its introductory post on Exploit. “Records are available to preview before purchase with pertinent information redacted. Customer photos are displayed if available.”
Indeed, over the past 24 hours, the number of drivers license records listed as available in Nexus has increased by nearly 400,000, suggesting that freshly stolen license data is being harvested and uploaded to this serviceon a semi-regular basis.
And the exposed records aren’t just random members of the public. Krebs found the driver’s license of the sitting Secretary of Defense sitting in there for sale:
A bargain! Only $100 to get a scan of the Secretary of Defense’s driver’s license.
Anyway, each time we highlight a breach people play it down and insist that mandating age verification is perfectly safe and nothing to worry about. Yet here’s one of the largest identity verification companies in the country, with a pipeline so wide open that hackers had a real-time feed of every government ID it scanned, for over a year, without anyone at the company noticing.
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Krebs spoke to a security researcher at Cybera, named Larry Baldwin, who talks about how this kind of data can do real damage:
Baldwin said the Nexus identity theft service presents multiple serious security and privacy threats, noting that state-issued drivers licenses are commonly used as proof of one’s identity when opening new lines of credit. Baldwin said the service could also dangerously expose many people who do not wish to be found but who cannot meaningfully change their appearance (or at least not enough to fool today’s AI-based image matching tools).
This category of people, he said, includes those fleeing domestic violence, and even people who have been assigned a whole new life and identity as part of the federal government’s witness protection program, which is generally reserved for criminal defendants in racketeering and conspiracy investigations who agree to cooperate with federal authorities.
“Just when it seems like we’re making some headway in improving authentication controls through drivers license verification systems, this happens and the very thing those improvements are dependent on are compromised,” Baldwin said.
At this point, anyone still supporting age verification requirements, especially claiming it’s for “child safety,” should have to answer for all the millions of people put needlessly at risk due to data breaches like this.
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You cannot do age or identity verification safely. It always creates some sort of record and that set of records will always become a target. That’s what happened here. And it’s what will happen with any such systems.
Set 72306 PlayStation is LEGO’s first official collaboration with Sony, revealed September 3, 2026 during PlayStation’s State of Play. Builders 18 and up get 1,911 pieces that form a near 1:1 replica of the original grey console and its first wired controller. The finished set is just over 6 cm high, 26 cm wide, and 19 cm deep, which is close enough to the 1994 hardware to let the model to sit beside a real device without appearing toy-sized. The pricing in the United States is $179.99, while in the United Kingdom it is £139.99 and Europe gets it at €159.99.
The tactile Power and Open buttons function precisely as they did on the classic machine, while the lid on top opens similarly to the original disc holder. A short wire allows you to plug the pad into a front port, just like the original 1990s models. That first-generation controller has four small plastic faces: square, triangle, circle, and cross. However, because this is the launch console rather than one of the later DualShocks, the analog sticks are not included. The vents and button layout are reminiscent of the early SCPH-style design, rather than one of the later fancier upgrades.
When you open it, you’ll notice that the case contains two small diorama scenarios that can be removed. One side features a little mini circuit from the original Gran Turismo in 1997, with tiny little vehicles simply hanging around on the track. Opposite that, you get an Ape Escape scene from 1999, with the monkey and the light-up helmet, the red light swapping with the blue light on the tiny island layout. You may keep them inside the console or move them out so they sit right next to it. Speaking of which, Sony claims that the brickwork is filled of subtle allusions to the console’s own past.
LEGO Insiders can order on October 1, 2026. The set will go on sale beginning October 4 at LEGO.com, LEGO Stores, and select merchants; PlayStation will also offer it through its own store in some regions on October 1. The LEGO Builder app supplies 3D instructions so you can rotate the model while you work. For anyone who once waited for that disc tray to close, the finished grey box now opens, accepts a plugged-in pad, and still has two games waiting inside.
Four federal agencies criticized for failing to share the framework’s details
We don’t know anything about who’s involved and how models are tested
Protect Democracy wants a court order by the end of the month
Four separate US federal agencies are being sued over the Trump administration’s secret framework for testing frontier AI models before they get released.
Protect Democracy argues that “almost no details” have been shared about how the framework works, who participates in it, how companies are selected or what legal authority underpins the reviews.
The nonprofit warns the secrecy is especially significant because the government could potentially influence which AI models can be released and who can access them.
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US government agencies sued over AI framework
This comes after weeks of battle between Claude-maker Anthropic and the US Government following revisions to the availability of Mythos 5 and an attempt by President Trump to blacklist the company.
Protect Democracy wants the government to disclose the framework’s details, its participation terms, the identities of participants, rules governing access to frontier models and the contractual arrangements. The group also wants an injunction preventing agencies from withholding records that are not classified.
The government bodies in question include the Office of the National Cyber Director, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Departments of both the Treasury and Commerce.
The White House has argued that aspects of the evaluation legitimately need to remain a secret, and national security-related tests could contain classified information.
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“Just because things are unclassified, that doesn’t mean we are going to broadcast them to everyone,” a White House spokesperson said.
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Protecting Democracy isn’t the only entity concerned about the framework. US Representative Greg Casar (D-Tx.) accused Trump of “completely failing to keep us safe from the dangers of AI” and being “too busy cashing in to protect our jobs or national security.”
With Congress also in the dark, Protect Democracy argues the details are needed for both congressional oversight and public accountability.
The group is now seeking a court order for disclosure of the non-classified framework and related details by September 30.
If you spend hours on calls every day, background noise can quickly become a problem, and Anker has a solution. At IFA 2026, the company introduced the Soundcore Space 2 Pro, the first over-ear headphones powered by its Thus AI chip.
Designed to improve voice clarity without sacrificing music quality, the new headphones combine AI-powered call processing, upgraded active noise cancellation, and long battery life in a package aimed at commuters, remote workers, and frequent travelers.
Space 2 Pro runs on Thus, Anker’s neural-net chip that fuses processing and memory together for a serious computing boost over its previous flagship earbud chip. During calls, a 6-microphone array works with Thus to separate your voice from everything happening around you, using AI trained on massive audio datasets instead of the older rule-based filtering most headphones rely on.
For noise cancellation specifically, Anker bumps that up to 8 microphones, running Adaptive ANC 3.0 and processing over 384,000 noise signals every second. Anker claims that’s 1.5 times stronger than what the Space One Pro delivered, with testing showing a 54.8% improvement in the 20Hz to 2,000Hz range – the exact frequencies covering voices, keystrokes, and general office chatter.
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Beyond calls, HearID 5.0 builds a personalized sound profile by testing your hearing directly, and you get two EQ presets to choose from, along with LDAC support for higher resolution audio.
Soundcore Space 2 Pro specs, price, and availability
Battery life comes in at 60 hours with ANC off, or 30 hours with it running. Turn on LDAC alongside ANC, and that number drops to 25 hours. But only 5 minutes of charging buys you 8 more hours of listening.
Soundcore Space 2 Pro in Midnight Grey and Linen White color optionsAnker
The headphones also support spatial audio, multipoint connections, Bluetooth 6.1, and 20 built-in voice commands, plus wear detection, a feature the Space One Pro never had. These headphones will be available on September 22 for $200 in Midnight Grey, Jet Black, and Linen White across the US, EU, and UK.
In a late-nightblog post last Friday, OpenAI said it would wind down its partnership with Cursor, the startup behind one of the most popular AI coding tools on the market. The reason OpenAI gave for the decision is effectively that it can’t trust Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX recently acquired Cursor in a $60 billion deal.
In doing so, OpenAI walked away from one of its most important customers. Cursor has long paid OpenAI fees to offer the ChatGPT-maker’s models to developers using its AI coding editor. At the start of 2026, Cursor was one of OpenAI’s top five customers in terms of revenue, people familiar with the matter tell WIRED. By the spring of this year, OpenAI estimated Cursor would bring in more than $1 billion in annualized revenue for the ChatGPT maker, based on the partnership’s performance at that time, the people said.
The figures, which have not been previously reported, indicate the financial loss OpenAI is willing to take on to avoid doing business with Musk. OpenAI declined to comment. Representatives for SpaceX and Cursor did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
“We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts,” said OpenAI in the blog post.
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As OpenAI prepares to go public next year, it’s trying to show investors a more stable business—ideally one that doesn’t rely so heavily on the goodwill of Musk. OpenAI reportedly now generates more than $40 billion in annualized revenue, drawing on several different lines of business, including subscriptions, ads in ChatGPT, and selling access to its AI coding tool, Codex.
Losing a major customer like Cursor may not hurt OpenAI financially as much as it once would have, but it was certainly a difficult decision. The company acknowledged in its blog post that ending the partnership may damage its standing with developers—a community it has spent years carefully working to win over—by cutting off a major channel they use to access OpenAI’s models.
Michael Truell, Cursor’s founder and CEO, who is now leading teams at SpaceX, responded publicly to OpenAI’s announcement hours later on Friday in a post on X, claiming that the ChatGPT-maker’s models only “serve about 5% of Cursor user traffic.” The comment seemed designed to imply that OpenAI’s models weren’t very popular with developers using Cursor, and wouldn’t meaningfully affect its business.
OpenAI’s head of core products, Thibault Sottiaux, was quick to point out that token usage is “not a proxy for revenue nor value created,” and asked Truell to “share the math” behind the 5 percent number.
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WIRED previously reported that Cursor leaders hoped to remain a platform for third-party AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic, even after the SpaceX acquisition. Some AI insiders considered that wishful thinking, assuming that Cursor and OpenAI’s breakup has long been a foregone conclusion. As OpenAI builds Codex into a large AI coding business, it increasingly finds itself competing with Cursor for customers. Nevertheless, the companies have operated relatively peacefully, as partners and competitors, for well over a year.
Evidently, that arrangement was no longer possible with Musk in control of Cursor. OpenAI may have determined that its Cursor partnership was not worth the risk that SpaceX might distill its best AI models. The company noted in its blog post that, earlier this year, Musk seemingly said that xAI—now a part of SpaceX—used OpenAI’s models to train its own. The apparent admission came during Musk’s deposition in his lawsuit against OpenAI, in which he claimed that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman had stolen a charity they created together roughly a decade ago. A federal jury dismissed the suit earlier this year.
In modern automated manufacturing, six-axis articulated robots perform high-speed, multidirectional maneuvers under demanding operational cycles. However, as robot arms swivel, rotate, and extend, the electrical cables, fiber optics, and pneumatic hoses supplying them endure severe mechanical stress. Torsional twist, rapid acceleration, and repeated contact with machine structures often lead to premature conductor fatigue, insulation breakdown, and costly unplanned production halts.
To overcome these multi-axis motion challenges, the Tsubaki KabelSchlepp Robotrax System provides a specialized three-dimensional cable carrier engineered specifically for complex robotic motion.
Managing High Tensile Forces With Central Steel Technology
Conventional cable carriers often transfer operational movement stress directly onto internal electrical lines and hoses. The Robotrax system changes this dynamic through a central steel cable that runs through the core of every chain link.
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The Robotrax system’s central steel cable absorbs the primary tensile loads and preserves conductor integrity, dramatically extending cable service life.
When robot arms undergo rapid directional shifts and accelerations up to 10 g, this internal steel cable absorbs the primary tensile loads. By isolating electrical and fluid lines from pulling forces, the design preserves conductor integrity and dramatically extends cable service life. Mechanics can easily calibrate and adjust system tension using an integrated clamping piece, ensuring consistent mechanical support throughout long operational cycles.
Spherical Link Design and Modular Cable Routing
The foundation of the Robotrax system lies in its open, single-piece plastic links featuring spherical snap-on connections on both sides. This geometry allows the carrier to flex smoothly across three axes, providing radial rotation of up to ±450 degrees per meter depending on the model size.
To optimize internal organization, carrier links contain up to three distinct chambers. This physical separation prevents signal interference and mechanical abrasion between heavy power lines, sensitive data channels, and fluid hoses. For standard models (R040 through R100), technicians can press cables directly into the carrier without tools, drastically reducing installation and maintenance time. Larger configurations, such as the R140X, incorporate swiveling crossbars with snap locks alongside vertical and horizontal dividers for customized interior partitioning.
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Active Retraction and Impact Protection
Large robot work envelopes and high-speed motion trajectories can cause loose cable carrier loops to swing and strike the robot body. To eliminate these destructive collisions, Tsubaki KabelSchlepp integrates the Pull Back Unit (PBU).
The PBU serves as an active retraction mechanism that maintains optimal tension on the cable carrier throughout the entire motion cycle. By preventing excess slack and eliminating interfering contours, the PBU minimizes collision risks across complex movement paths. The unit requires zero maintenance on its retraction element and offers standard mounting configurations for leading industrial robot platforms, including KUKA, ABB, and FANUC.
Tsubaki KabelSchlepp’s Pull Back Unit maintains optimal tension on the cable carrier and minimizes collision risks across complex movement paths.
Additionally, external protectors can be retrofitted onto individual chain links. These durable impact shields limit the minimum bending radius to prevent over-flexing while shielding the chain body from severe external abrasion. If wear occurs, technicians simply replace the modular protector rather than the entire cable carrier assembly.
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Built for Demanding Industrial Environments
From automotive welding cells to high-speed machining centers, Robotrax systems adapt to severe working conditions through tailored protective accessories:
Heat Shields: Aluminum-coated textile fiber covers protect against radiated heat, hot weld spatter, and flying sparks.
Protective Covers: Coated polyester sleeves shield sensitive lines against aggressive cutting fluids, hydraulic oils, paint overspray, and abrasive dust.
LineFix Strain Relief: Multi-layer clamping devices anchor cables securely at both ends to prevent axial displacement during intense motion.
By combining central load absorption, multi-axis flexibility, and active retraction control, the Robotrax system offers plant engineers and system integrators a reliable path toward maximizing robot uptime and reducing total operational costs.
Luka Kids has introduced the Luka Kids Drawing Projector, an AI-powered device designed to encourage creativity among children. It helps kids translate their thoughts into drawings and keeps them engaged in the creative process. This new product adds to Luka Kids’ existing lineup of AI-driven products. The company is also unveiling its new versions of the Luka Kids Reading Robot and Luka AI Cube at IFA 2026.
The Luka Kids Drawing Projector uses AI to turn children’s spoken ideas into simple outlines on paper. Children can describe a story, character, or concept and watch the projector create a starting point. They can then trace the outline, draw new details, color it, and add their own ideas. The projector will also offer 384 unfinished templates at launch for children who want ready-made starting points. These templates will include characters and stories from Luka Kids’ original Inko creative universe. AI provides the initial idea, but children decide how the final artwork looks.
How the Luka Kids Drawing Projector Uses AI for Storytelling
Children have the opportunity to influence the stories through the Luka Kids Drawing Projector and their drawings. They may make drawings of various characters, objects, or situations as the story unfolds. The AI can understand what the child has drawn and modify the story accordingly. Kids can come up with new ideas and see how they are incorporated into the ongoing story.
Luka Kids Reading Robot is a screenless device that helps children read picture books using artificial intelligence. Over 10 million devices have already been sold worldwide. As part of the IFA 2026 launch, Luka Kids has integrated language-learning models to enhance interactivity in the reading process. Now, the robot can recognize and read picture books that it has never seen before. The latest version has been created by Luka Kids utilizing information collected from over 200,000 textbooks and illustrated books.
The Luka AI Cube helps kids learn more about the world around them. The tool uses visual sensing and multimodal artificial intelligence to detect objects and understand their surroundings. Kids can pose questions about science, history, nature, and other things around us and receive answers instantly. AI characters developed by Luka Kids encourage questions. The device connects real-life experiences with digital knowledge to support learning through discovery.
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Luka Kids Drawing Projector and Other AI Devices: Availability
Luka Kids will display its three AI devices at IFA Next, Hall 25, Stand 154 in Berlin. The new Luka Kids Drawing Projector will be available for sale soon, and the enhanced version of the Luka Kids Reading Robot will go on sale from September 3, 2026. Currently, the company sells its products in the USA, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, and China. has been selling its products in the USA, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, and China.
Apple TV is betting on the Waffle House Index for a sci-fi disaster flick that takes the restaurant’s reputation for staying open to its logical extreme.
“Waffle House Index” follows a Waffle House waitress as a series of mounting disasters unfold during her night shift. First, a man with a gun, then a flood, followed by killer crocodiles, nuclear explosions, and yes: even aliens.
Inde Navarrette, known for her role as Nikki Freeman in the horror film “Obsession,” is set to star in “Waffle House Index.” And, for the first time, she’ll also serve as executive producer.
The film was part of the 2025 Black List, a survey of the most liked screenplays that have yet to be produced. According toThe Hollywood Reporter, the deal for the film was seven figures.
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Open 24/7. Mostly.
For those not in the know, the Waffle House Index is an informal metric used to determine the severity of an event, typically a storm. The index has three levels: green, yellow, and red.
A green-level event means that the Waffle House is fully operational with power, and the full menu is available. A yellow-level event means power is either unavailable or supplied by a generator, or food supplies are running low, but a limited menu is still available.
A red-level event means the restaurant has sustained severe or critical damage and is no longer open. We should hope to think that in the event of an alien invasion or a nuclear explosion, your local Waffle House would have the sensibility to close.
Epic Games is expanding its options for chatting with friends while playing its titles. A new feature called Epic Parties allowers players to enter voice chats across platforms and games. Fortnite, the Epic Games Store and the Epic Games app all support Epic Parties, and there’s also an option to transfer a voice chat between those places. In other words, you could start a chat while in Epic’s app and then seamlessly transition the call when you enter a Fortnite match.
Epic Parties is also cross-platform, so people can communicate no matter what hardware each of them are on. The chat can also continue in the background when on mobile or when playing other titles from the Epic Games Store. People who accept an Epic Party invite will automatically be placed in the same Fortnite lobby together when in-game.
The new voice chat options expand on the text chat communication options that the company began rolling out to its services last year. Players can invite each other to a party from their friends list, and there will be an option to move an existing text chat to voice with a “Start Party” button in the chat window.
The acquisition is the latest attempt by Nvidia to pull ahead in the global AI race.
Nvidia has agreed to acquire open-source AI and machine learning platform Hugging Face for $12.9bn, according to announcement released today (3 September).
In a statement, Nvidia said that as part of the acquisition, the organisation will scale Hugging Face’s platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand AI access for developers and institutions across the world.
The company also explained that Hugging Face will continue to serve as an open platform for the AI ecosystem, where developers can select their models, frameworks, cloud, inference service providers and computing platforms. Additionally, users will still be able to build or deploy via Hugging Face without Nvidia compute.
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The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approval, according to a number of outlets.
Rumours of a Hugging Face acquisition first surfaced last week, after Business Insider reported that the platform was exploring a sale.
Commenting on the announcement, Nvidia’s president and CEO Jensen Huang said: “Recently, I co-authored an open letter on the importance of open weights to the AI economy. Joined by leaders from across the industry, we made a simple point: open weights broaden access to AI and help ensure that AI leadership is distributed across companies, institutions and communities.
“Open models let start-ups, businesses, universities and public institutions build on advanced capabilities without training every model from scratch. They enable organisations to match the right model to the right job.
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“That is how AI can advance safely, strengthen cybersecurity and sovereignty, accelerate innovation, and reach factories, hospitals, farms, classrooms and main street businesses around the world.”
The incident sparked serious concerns in the tech industry around AI’s rapidly advancing ability to bypass boundaries and, effectively, go ‘rogue’.
Shortly afterwards, Nvidia formed an alliance with other companies in the technology space in the wake of the Hugging Face breach. The alliance was created in order to develop and share tools designed for enhanced AI safety and cybersecurity.
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‘Corporate scouting ground’
Commenting on today’s announcement, Forrester principal analyst Naveen Chhabra said Nvidia is “clearly on the path to vertical integration”, which he said is good for Nvidia’s business, “but not necessarily for the market overall”.
“Nvidia gains visibility into customer’s preferences and the AI models they use. They can see which models are trending, what datasets customer are downloading, and the architectures that are gaining traction weeks before they hit mainstream tech news,” said Chhabra. “It turns Hugging Face into a corporate scouting ground and an unparalleled market intelligence machine.
“Nvidia also gets data-driven foresight into what next-generation chip architectures they need to build based on developer habits.
“They are securing the software layer because hardware-only companies get commoditised over time.”
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The acquisition is Nvidia’s latest major financial investment in AI.
Earlier in the week, Nvidia announced plans to invest $3.5bn into MediaTek, a Taiwanese semiconductor company. The investment is part of a partnership designed to develop the next generation of AI computing platforms.
In late July, it was reported that Nvidia would be joining forces with Safe Superintelligence in a long-term strategic partnership to help the AI company in its growth plans. It was reported that the collaboration involves the investing of $5bn into the company.
And in August, the Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia is planning to use its $6bn deal with AI start-up Poolside to build open-weight AI models to rival those made by China’s DeepSeek and Moonshot.
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With additional reporting by Colin Ryan
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Updated, 5.13pm, 3 September 2026: This article was amended to include a comment from Forrester principal analyst Naveen Chhabra.
I first discovered New Wave Toys and this entire collecting industry in October 2020, which is when I bought my first cabinet: “Street Fighter II: Champion Edition.” The company began with “Centipede” in 2018, which was followed by “Tempest,” “Street Fighter II,” “Dragon’s Lair,” “Asteroids,” “1942 & 1943,” “Q-Bert,” “Missile Command,” “Food Fight,” “Space Ace,” “Ghosts ‘n Goblins & Ghouls ‘n Ghosts,” “Berserk & Frenzy,” “Golden Tee,” and a working “Zoltar” machine that spits out actual fortune tickets.
New Wave Toys also makes USB hubs in the form of cigarette machines, (which also come in the form of an Art-o-Matic if you’re averse to the former.) There’s also a Coke machine, which can keep a tiny can cool, two versions of coin machines, small boom boxes, and more. It also has a ton of products in development, including “Crystal Castles,” a “Skee-Ball” machine, and a “Black Hole” pinball machine, which isn’t playable, but features an “attract mode” that simulates gameplay.
Jonathan H. Kantor
One of the things I like best about New Wave Toys’ products is the attention to detail put into everything they make. You can often buy different versions of the same cabinet, including one with cigarette burns, gum stickers, and stains from use, adding a bit of authenticity to your home mini arcade.
The most recent release, as of writing, is “Golden Tee,” (pictured above, center) which comes with an optional mini DMD (dot matrix display) topper, just like it’d have in an real arcade setting. There are additional arcade sticks and controllers you can buy if you want to play your games on a TV, so there are tons of great options.
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