{"id":745577,"date":"2026-08-21T23:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T23:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/745577\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T23:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T23:14:11","slug":"people-with-eyes-accuse-system-3-devs-of-using-gen-ai-on-its-james-pond-reboot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/745577\/","title":{"rendered":"People With Eyes Accuse System 3 Devs Of Using Gen AI On Its James Pond Reboot"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Pond, a quirky platformer series from the early 1990s, is getting a big re-release for its 35th anniversary. The James Pond Legacy: The Pond Is Not Enough collects 12 games from across the Amiga, Genesis, Commodore 64, and SNES, and updates them for current platforms. System 3 Software is handling the collection and has made a trailer to announce the\u2014the fuck?<\/p>\n

Sometimes genAI slop in a game is subtle, requiring eagle eyes and fine-toothed combs to spot and identify. Other times it just hits you over the head with a fucking baseball bat, screaming all the while. Like, what happened here if not the genAI hand goblins striking yet again?<\/p>\n

\"James\u00a9 System 3 \/ Kotaku <\/p>\n

Every 3D render in the trailer is permeated with the stink of genAI\u2019s telltale matte finish that evens everything into a dull same-ishness.\u00a0 Even the song used in the trailer is suspected of being genAI. The errors were so glaringly obvious, System 3 temporarily shut down comments on the video to stop the flood of slop accusations.<\/p>\n

\"James<\/p>\n

System 3 later made a statement in the comments section of the trailer. \u201cTo be absolutely clear, no generative AI was used in the James Pond Legacy trailer or character artwork,\u201d System 3 wrote. The comment also pointed to a blog post on System 3\u2019s website<\/a> that it says \u201creveals the painstaking, human-led process behind the transformation of an original James Pond character from retro pixels into a modern 3D creation.\u201d Let\u2019s take a look. Oh no.<\/p>\n

\"The\u00a9System 3 <\/p>\n

The blog goes into detail about how the Bovine Bomber character was transformed from its original pixel art to a 3D render, affirming that a human was involved in the process every step of the way. It doesn\u2019t seem like anybody on Reddit<\/a> or elsewhere<\/a> is buying it, though, pointing out how, among many other errors, the \u201cmanually redrawn\u201d cow has had its obvious milk-jug arm cannon turned into a generic Mega Man-esque blaster.<\/p>\n

Once the comment section under the trailer was reopened, the flood of genAI accusations continued, this time with more anger at System 3 for thinking its explanation would be enough to prove no genAI was used, forgetting that some of us have eyes that can see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Pond, a quirky platformer series from the early 1990s, is getting a big re-release for its 35th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4327,59,21855,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-745577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ai-slop","tag-gb","tag-james-pond","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}