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Tim Biggs

@timbiggs.bsky.social
205 followers 110 following 101 posts

Writer. Video games and consumer tech. Retro enthusiast. Previously @ The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. linktr.ee/timbiggs

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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 6h
Nintendo invited me and @alicedkc.bsky.social to play Ocarina of Time on Switch 2! I had an amazing time of course, but I do have some questions in terms of how this 30-year-old design will land for players who only know Zelda's open-air era. Read here: pressanybutton.substack.com/p/weve-playe...
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It's newsletter time! This one featuring: -Classic Zelda -Fire Emblem -Government meddling in what games adults can and can't access. AKA the original ancient triforce! pressanybutton.substack.com/p/is-fortune...
A preview image for the Press Any Button newsletter, with the text: Is Fortune’s Weave the best Fire Emblem? Plus what’s going on with Steam in Australia, top five Zeldas of NSO, and Brick Like This.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I can't believe how crappily Steam has enforced age verification in Australia. This is the platform I go to for games that aren't exclusive to other platforms, and now it won't even let me look at Resident Evil or Cyberpunk because I don't have a credit card? Absolutely wild.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
In my mind the list is: Wind Waker Twilight Princess Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy Beyond Good and Evil Star Fox
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Excellent game. Easily in the top five Zelda-likes on GameCube. Top three exclusive Zelda-likes! Don't listen to the haters.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Smart bed is confused about the meaning of the word "biological". If you could just keep my side at 25° and my wife's side at 60° and keep the science to yourself please.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
It's an iPhone day, and for the first time in a decade I'm not doing anything about it. Instead, it's all Nintendo thoughts! Read our special edition of PAB: pressanybutton.substack.com/p/does-ocari...
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
EB Games has them now for preorder, if you also sign up to their weird paid membership.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
It's happened before, but Nintendo doesn't usually communicate if or when more stock is open. I get demand is higher than stock, but it feels bad when you don't even have a chance to buy! I feel like some other companies are better about this, especially when they have an Australian retail presence.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
At this point I can't even be excited about the Zelda concert, because I know my life can't revolve around being alert for on-sale times. But at least that will likely come with a heads up before orders begin in the middle of the night! Very excited for the game though.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The Zelda Direct was incredible, but at this point my immediate reaction to limited Nintendo stuff is to be immediately heartbroken rather than excited. The console and controller were announced at midnight, sold out by 7.30am when I watched the show. I'm sure many were snapped up by scalpers.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Me: burgers for dinner tonight. Woolies: we've made some substitutions to your order. Me: hope you kids like fish cubes on hot dog rolls.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
After 15 years, today's my last day at The Age / Sydney Morning Herald. I'm probably going to rest a moment before I'm actively looking for work, but do keep me in mind if you happen to be in need of a very experienced video games / consumer tech writer. I'm extremely not done having things to say!
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Huh. I knew I could. I just didn’t realise I wanted to until now.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
What about Cool Dog? I hear he’s making a cameo in the mid credits.
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Reposted by Tim Biggs
Alice Clarke @alicedkc.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
It's time for @timbiggs.bsky.social's and my GOTFHOTY (games of the first half of the year)! Here are our picks:
open.substack.com
Games of (the first half of) the year
Cosy and comforting familiarity win the day
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
It’s one of my favourites. I think it’s been treated pretty harshly in the internet’s collective memory, where it’s “too slow, too brown, too much wolf”. It’s also wonderfully kooky, got some all-time dungeons and gear, and great characters. Have you hit the snow mansion yet?
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Making my kids their own homebrew machines for their birthdays, which of course need instruction manuals. Realising I may have subconsciously named them with these logos in mind.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
Happy 40th to a real one. Probably the most consistently influential and imaginative of any 80s-era franchise that’s still going. I replayed this recently but I might get stuck into Oracle of Ages today to celebrate.
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Reposted by Tim Biggs
Alice Clarke @alicedkc.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
Press Any Button is back for 2026! You should read and subscribe if you like it. @timbiggs.bsky.social and I have a lot of fun writing it each week.
open.substack.com
2026 is going to be a year
Maybe it will be good! Plus the year of the PC, hands on with the Lego Smart Brick, and the Nintendo consoles with lower back pain
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Happy holidays everybody. Please be kind to each other, as well as to yourself, and also to strangers. Resist authoritarianism. Also, here are my and @alicedkc.bsky.social ‘s favourite video games for H2 2025. open.substack.com/pub/pressany...
open.substack.com
The best games of the second half of 2025
It's been a good one
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
I know we just had big commercial Game Awards, but don’t you also want the picks of a random person with no responsibility to consider outside opinion and no desire to categorise? There are games here TGAs didn’t mention, and games they mentioned 1000 times are absent. www.smh.com.au/technology/v...
smh.com.au
The best video games of 2025, from Ghost of Yotei to Hades 2
There were hundreds of great games released this year, but these are my favourite 15.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Same! And I’ve been actively trying to provoke it! Which now that I think about it is probably the ultimate tell.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
I’ve been making a bunch of new accounts on apps to see if I can tell how they’re trying to verify my age. But as an aside, a brand new profile on X . com is serving me nothing but violently anti-Somali content, violently anti-Afghan content and cringey sex pranks. Who would want to stay there?
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
The Metroid Prime morph ball is a lot bigger than I thought, now that I can see it next to regular humans (in powered suits of their own). Also when Samus is in ball mode she becomes a real jerk.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
I’m getting old and irrelevant because looking at the Keighley Awards list I’d only played like two of those games. But also I know I missed 100 indies :(. This year I really liked: Avowed South of Midnight Kulebra Shantae Risky Revolution Sword of the Sea Ruffy and the Riverside Wheel World Hades
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
“In the pink” is one of those phrases I only ever see in newspaper headlines, used as a pun because something is literally pink (and figuratively in the pink, which is a posh British phrase from hundreds of years ago meaning “winning”). Nobody ever says it in any other context. It should be banned.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
Well-meaning normies who know I’m into video games: “Are you jumping into Call of Duty this week?” Me: “Good heavens no. I’m playing the one where you’re a rural mouse and you have to survive the winter. And I still have to play the webcam psychic baby simulator”.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
This entire summary and judgement is very funny. I feel like people would care about it, if it could be packaged up as some kind of dramatised recreation.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
I got to talk to the creators of Celeste — one of my all-time favourite games — recently for this article. It was such a great convo I wish I had somewhere to post the whole thing, but enjoy this snippet! www.theage.com.au/technology/v...
theage.com.au
‘Full circle’: The Australian video game showing why indies are back
From Celeste to Silksong, indie games have become big business as they take on the goliaths of the industry.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Finally I can retire the YouTube Music app, where I uploaded my CD of this OST like a decade ago, and just get my regular fix of Yoshi Star Galaxy direct from the source.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Proud that our state's the first in Australia to introduce legislation for a treaty, not that it should have taken anywhere near this long. Huge congratulations to everyone who's been pushing it for more than a decade. firstpeoplesvic.org/treaty/
firstpeoplesvic.org
About TREATY for Victoria | The First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria
Treaty is our opportunity to make sure we – the Traditional Owners of these lands – always have the freedom and power to make the decisions that affect our communities, our culture, and our Country.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Samus the cat does not think I should be allowed to work.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
But the extra cool thing is you can control the scale in the settings. If it's on a huge TV or you're close to your monitor it's a bit much to look at, so you can make it smaller. And if you're playing in 1080p, since 7x is only 1008 high, you can choose to stretch full screen or leave it sharp.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
Played Mina the Hollower demo over lunch. First impression was to nerd out about video settings. The game's running at 256x144, so GBC but wider, and uses a perfect integer scale: 15x for 4K, 10x for 1440p, 7x for 1080p, 5x for 720p. Looks amazing, and on Switch 2 it runs 120Hz handheld and docked.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
Fun fact: my copy of Final Fantasy has pen writing I've never thought to translate until now. The bit at the bottom says the game was completed on 31/1/89, which rules. But I have no hope of translating the upper message. I wonder what this RPG-beating badass was writing on their games 35 years ago?
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
We’ve adopted a kitten. The home said she was rescued off the road at five weeks old, having fallen out the back of a moving ute. But she’s tough. I’ve called her Samus.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
It's our twice-annual Games of the Half Year special! Come get your recommendations for things to play that released between January 1 and now! pressanybutton.substack.com/p/our-favour...
pressanybutton.substack.com
Our favourite games of 2025 so far
Ten great games that you can play right now.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
I've been v impressed with a lot of Nintendo's free upgrades, including fixing the frame rate on Echoes of Wisdom and removing interlacing on Odyssey. But it's cool to see DF break it all down. Splatoon 3 being 4K 60 is wild, and Bowser's Fury look's so good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L8G...
youtube.com
Switch 2 Free Upgrades For Switch 1 Games Tested: Link's Awakening, Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 3 +More!
YouTube video by Digital Foundry
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
I reviewed Mario Kart last week, and today put the link in my spreadsheet of reviews, finding I've now covered more than 300 games for Age / SMH over around 11 years. My dream is to one day fill in the (substantial) gaps and put out a Leonard Maltin style review book. Could cover a whole decade!
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
My verdict after a week of Switch 2 is up, though I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you it rules. www.theage.com.au/technology/v...
theage.com.au
Nintendo enters the 4K era with a straightforward Switch successor
The Switch 2 is better in every way with more power, better controls and expanded platform features. But it’s a revision rather than a revolution.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
In California last week I took a rare media tour of Apple’s durability labs in Sunnyvale, and it was legitimately very interesting. Come read about the several rooms and tests I observed, three of which I was even permitted to take pictures of! www.theage.com.au/technology/i...
theage.com.au
Inside the secretive labs where Apple’s torturers put iPhones to the test
At an unmarked facility in California, tens of thousands of devices a year are dropped, dunked and dismantled.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
Can confirm my favourite modern cube controller, the BattlerGC Pro, works great with Switch 2! Perfect in the GameCube app, but also any time you don’t mind octagonal gates and a big ol’ primary face button.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Halfway is pretty damn optimistic tbh.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Update: now that I believe I’ve seen all the clips, it’s a much better concept than my original theory of an alien transmission interrupting weird Earthlings. I love this campy 90s-style FMV game. Can’t wait for the update.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Crops are the real water hogs! I love the implication that we should consider eating less before we complain about AI energy efficiency. Also, I don't think we need AI to tell us how we can turn plants into food without giving it to cows first :D.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
This week on Press Any Button, at the eve of not-E3, we’re wondering how Big Hype Sony became One Game Per Year Sony, as well as talking Playdate, Pride month, Switch 2 games and Perfect Dark! pressanybutton.substack.com/p/playstatio...
pressanybutton.substack.com
PlayStation's summer of tumbleweeds
Plus Playdate, pride month, Switch 2 games and Perfect Dark.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Such a vibe. I love how gold that game is. It will never age.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Oh shit, Confetti Cowboys is on.
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Tim Biggs @timbiggs.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
The first download of Playdate Season 2 came with an absolutely cooked “live broadcast” service called Blippo+. There’s heaps of stuff on but it all seems to be degrading and interrupted by an alien transmission. I love it.
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