The controller body/face were opaque, so the synthwave backdrop only peeked out above/below the controller. Make the DARK palette surfaces translucent (body/face/inlay) and drop the opaque shadow platform + the gradient's forced 0.95 alpha, so the backdrop reads through the controller as glass. CLASSIC palette stays solid. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>