* Fixed 'Seconds to run' text box allowing blank entry to save (0 is the default).
* Fixed 'Seconds to run' text box allowing non numeric values.
* Fixed options dialog showing gamename.ini name when confirming a drivername.ini deletion.
* Fixed bug in show available/unavailable/fav menu items becoming wrongly checked.
* Added 'Game speed' slider to default options...advanced.
* Fixed main application caption not updating to new mame version, when changing a rom path (if your mame.exe has changed).
* Added a scrollbar (end of toolbar) to select up/down the setlist. (same as keyboard up/down and joy select).
Version 1.58 (February 1, 2008) - "The complete series"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is more of a bugfix release. It does not implement any new features besides the inclusion of Zaccaria's "Ski Jump", which makes this series complete (with the exception of sound).
The first and probably most important issue is the bug fix for the PPS-4/2 CPU used on Gottlieb System 1 games. Version 1.57 had a bug left that kept the bonus from accumulating properly (or counting down, for that matter), and another "bug" that kept the game diagnostics / adjustment menu from progressing through its items. Actually if you look at the data sheets for the PPS-4, it seems the emulation was *correct* in 1.57 and now we had to deliberately introduce a bug so it works!? Well, never mind now - as long as it plays fine. smile.gif
Next, we are quite worried by the fact that many Gottlieb / Premier games have sounds missing, so some effort was put into getting these to work. Most notably, all of the drum sounds were missing from System80B games of the first generation. Well, not anymore now! wink.gif Also, the general output volume of the SP0250 sound/speech chip was too low so far, making most bass sounds almost inaudible, so we cranked that up!
Finally, Gerrit turned off the channel suppression feature of the OKI6295 ADPCM chip, so now essentially every started sound will play until it ends, or until it's cut short by another sound playing on the same voice channel. This, of course, is a step back in terms of hardware accuracy, so it won't last long... it was done as a quick fix to show the hardware is capable of producing more sounds than in did in previous releases, and maybe to find a way of getting it right someday.
For all 6-digit display haters out there, we added support for Oliver's 7-digit Gottlieb conversion roms. Doing so, Gerrit also extended the "bios" system to these games: you can now keep the System80/A system roms common to all of those games in the gts80 / gts80a sets, without the need to copy them into each and every Gottlieb rom set. Same goes for the sound PROM used on early System80 and late System80A games: these may go into gts80s / gts80as, who in turn inherit from gts80 / gts80a. Sounds complicated? Well - it's not.
However, as MAME architecture does not support multiple inheritance for games, this produces one little problem: some Gottlieb games (using the sound and speech board) have sound-only clones with completely different roms. These three games (Volcano, Black Hole, and Devil's Dare) need to be split into different sets now, as they don't have a single rom file in common. Also, the new 7-digit common roms must go into their own sets (eg. spiderm7) because those games already inherit from their 6-digit parents, and thus can't inherit from a common set with support for the 7-digit system roms anymore. This sounds even more complicated? Erm - well, maybe a little. wink.gif
So, have fun now and enjoy the most finite state of PinMAME there ever was.
Changes:
*** CORE/CPU ***
* Fixed two bugs in PPS-4 emulation (corrects Gottlieb System 1 games)
* Enabled missing drum sounds on Gottlieb System 80B games
* Increased general output volume of the SP0250 sound/speech chip
* Disabled muting option for OKI 6295 chip to produce more output in GTS3 games
* Fixed GI support for all five GI strings on Who Dunnit and JackBot
* Enabled sound solenoid outputs on Gottlieb System 1
* Removed tones from Cleopatra, Sinbad, and Joker Poker (those use chimes)
*** ROM SUPPORT ***
* Added Zaccaria Ski Jump
* Added Okaegi's 7-digit conversions of Gottlieb System80 games
* Added the "machinaZOIS" clone of ShaqAttaq, created by a Czech programmer team
Nintendo's Wii Fit is the best-selling console game in Japan for the fourth week running.
The game has sold an estimated 1,283,000 units since it was released on December 1, 2007.
According to data from Media Create, the highest new entry in the Japanese charts for the week ended Jan 27 is Konami's World Soccer Winning Eleven: Ubiquitous Evolution 2008 for the PSP, at number two.
Electronic Arts has announced it plans to make the components of The Orange Box available separately.
The Orange Box, you will recall, was originally released for PC and Xbox 360 in October, and PS3 a bit later. It was comprised of Half Life: Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress. Kristan thought it was marvellous.
The three components have been available separately via Steam for some time, but now EA boss John Ricitiello has said individual box copies are also on the way.
Speaking in a conference all he said, "We are unbundling Orange Box and releasing separate PC SKUs, Half Life 2: Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress." Nice one John, one wonders if your hair is made of real silver.
No word on a price or date yet, but we'll keep you posted.
The PC game may not be out till the autumn, but Gas Powered Games is already thinking about doing a console version of Space Siege.
The news emerged on our old friend Pat's spanky new website, Videogaming247.
"We're talking with them about it," said Shawn Green, associate producer of Space Siege for SEGA.
"We don't want to let any cats out of the bag too early but definitely a console version is something that's being considered right now. But currently it's not confirmed."
Space Siege is an action RPG promising multiple gameplay paths, a robotic partner you can customise and online co-op for up to four players. If you like Dungeon Siege and Babylon 5, you'll like this. GPG's Chris Taylor, the man who also oversaw Supreme Commander, is heading up the project.
"We're seeing on console that a lot of gamers are appreciating the short and sweet experience, where you can play through and really like it and enjoy it," Green added.
"I think that's where a lot of Chris motivation comes from, taking that to the PC and creating a game that you can beat."
According to Green, Space Siege PC is out this September.
EA has said Will Wright's Spore will definitely be out before Christmas, in the wake of analyst speculation that the game will be delayed to autumn/winter '08.
"We're very, very bullish", said EA CEO John Riccitiello about this during some financial conference call thing yesterday - but at this stage that's as much as the publisher is willing to divulge on release timings.
"We're not announcing dates for any of our titles", Riccitiello teasingly added.
Last year Riccitiello gave an expected "March, April, May" 2008 launch timeframe for Spore, but explained that it won't ship until it's ready.
Earlier this week an industry analyst speculated that EA may delay the game to autumn/winter following underperformance of the publisher's shares.
As the latest game from design genius Will Wright, Spore is understandably surrounded by Godzilla-sized anticipation. Read all about the title on our gamepage.
GAME CRITICS: GAME OF THE YEAR AWARDS ANNOUNCED
BioShock Takes Top Honors as Game of the Year
The full list of the 2007 Game Critics Awards: Game of the Year winners is now posted on the Game Critics Awards website. You can see the full list of winners at http://www.gamecriticsawards.com/goty.html.
Top 10 Games of 2007:
1.) BioShock
2.) The Orange Box
3.) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
4.) Rock Band
5.) Super Mario Galaxy
6.) Halo 3
7.) Mass Effect
8.) God of War II
9.) Assassin's Creed
10.) Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
- The function to convert a "bad 3Mbit Rom-image file (overdumped with specific dump machine)" was added. Operating a "bad Rom-image file" troubles other PCE/TG16 emulators. The converted "just proper" image file can be used with a lot of other Free PCE/TG16 emulators, too. This is a "fair" method for the "PC Engine & TurboGrafx16" emulator and the PCE/TG16's fan.
- When setting it to "BigAudioBuffer Mode", the amount of the buffer was increased. As a result, tone quality has improved.
- "FullScreen Customize" menu was added to "Screen" menu. It is possible to use it by an arbitrary display resolution at full-screen. And, when the check is put on "FullScreen ResolutionAuto Change" of "FullScreen Customize" menu, "display resolution" can be automatically switched by "resolution of the game (width 256,336,512)". It is a function to use it on the display such as 15kHz cathode-ray tubes.
- In the SuperGrafx's game with black belt display right and left, the bug to which garbage had been ultra uncommonly displayed was corrected.
- Additionally, a detailed part has been improved and corrected.
Details are still fuzzy at this point, but according to an e-mail received by numerous tipsters, Microsoft is indeed offering up a free copy of Vista in exchange for their privacy. Yeah, even though it claimed otherwise late last year. According to the note, Redmond is viewing these folks as "registered members" of the Windows Feedback Program, and if they keep their guard down for the remainder of a three month period, they will seemingly receive a copy of its latest OS gratis. So, any others out there finding an unexpected message from the Big M regarding said offer? Let us know in comments below, particularly if you get any free wares or previously analyzed keylogging reports.
Several readers have written to tell us about one users rant in which he tells the story of being so frustrated with gaming on Windows Vista that he tried comparing gaming on Vista to that on Linux using Wine, with surprising results.
"This post is clearly a bit biased. What shocked me though was how easy it was to find games that didn't run under Vista but did in Linux by using Wine or DOSBox. I'm not a huge gamer, so I don't have a huge collection of games to try out, but even still with just a few hours of frustrating work, I have been able to show that not only is Linux a reasonable alternative to Vista for gaming (XP is still king though), but also that Linux handles application failures more gracefully than Vista. Every game but Blackthorne crashed my Vista box, this didn't happen a single time under Linux."
Maintenance on the English PC/PS2 servers is complete, however the update for the Xbox 360 servers has been delayed due to an unforeseen issue with the scheduled title update. SEGA will announce a new date for the content delivery as soon as possible. In the meantime, here is a rundown of what new content to expect.
New story mission
"Restorations," the second chapter of Episode 3 has been released. Take a trip to Moatoob with Laia as you try to assist the Trade Union in their recovery following the SEED attack.
Item exchange mission
"The Collector" is now available at Melton's Shop in Holtes City. This mission lets you trade various items to Yokus Melton for new room decorations and more. Ms. Melton will also share with you any information she has on where certain items drop across Gurhal.
New items
Five new color combinations have been added to the Waiwad and Hanaura sets of clothing while the Musagante and Valatines parts sets have both received their CV versions. Also check out the offertory box at Shitenkaku, as new items have been added to the lineup of possible gifts for your donations.
System updates
Meseta drop rules have been adjusted making it where party members must be in the mission field to receive Meseta that is picked up mid-mission. Anyone in a lobby will not receive Meseta during that time. Furthermore, numerous adjustments have been made to item drops across the board. All original PSU missions have received adjustments to increase their drop rates to those of the AotI missions. Also, the drop rate for rare materials from containers has been increased in missions with enemies over LV125.
Please stay tuned for further information on the Xbox 360 update.
1.4.6 will be the last version that runs on Windows 98/ME. Following versions will require Windows 2000 or newer.
1.4.5 problems fixed:
- Mouse never capturing. (Windows 98/ME, rarely on W2K/XP)
- Some games crashing.
- Broken sprite outside playfields-feature and SWIV score information.
- Fullscreen mode with non-default refresh rate fallback problem.
Other bugs fixed:
- A600/A1200/A4000 IDE emulation freeze if >2G drive/HDF.
- CDTV E.S.S. Mega "semi-hidden" track now loads properly on W2K/XP.
- Crash when switching between <=2MB Chip + Fast and >2MB Chip setting.
- Sound emulation tweak. (Dungeon Master II, perhaps some others)
- Unstable NMI (IRQ7) option in cycle-exact and more-compatible modes.
- "Full-window" mode didn't always allow Windows desktop RTG resolution.
New features:
- Inverted mouse and analog joystick input sources.
- Input device (USB joystick, mouse etc..) on the fly insertions and removals supported. Device names saved to configuration file.
- Automatic joystick switching, firebutton 'inserts' any non-selected joystick to Amiga joystick port, mouse port selected if second button pressed or there is already other joystick in joystick port with firebutton pressed.
- Dynamic JIT direct memory allocation. Increased Z3 and RTG maximum sizes to 1G and 512M. (If at least 2G physical RAM)
- A3000 confirmed 2.04 ROM added to ROM scanner.
- CD32 FMV cartridge ROM added to ROM scanner. ROM and autoconfig emulated. Overlay and video/audio decoder chips not emulated.
- Directory filesystem ACTION_EXAMINE_ALL implementation is now more compatible with buggy programs.
- CIA/Gayle overlay emulation setting added to advanced chipset.
- Original early A1000 non-EHB Denise added to advanced chipset.
- Original A1000 (and early A2000) Agnus blitter busy bug added.
- Keyboard reset warning emulated and added to advanced chipset.
- Debugger improvements, hex/dec/bin converter, all commands that accept numeric parameters also accept register names (RAx,RDx,PC,USP,VBR,..), number prefixes supported, hex = 0x or $, bin = %, dec = !.
- 1M (both 0xe0/0xf8 and 0xf0/0xf8) and 2M (0xa8/0xb0/0xe0/0xf8) ROM image support.
- Implemented "stretch to fullscreen" filtering option.
Again we have a new version of FreeRA. This will probably be the last update for some time. Next to lots of improvements it is now possible to play against more than 1 computer player in skirmish mode. It now can be quite difficult to win
Enjoy!
Welcome to the Spring Project. This is an open source project developing a new realtime strategy game.
A bit late for a christmas present, but here it is anyway: Spring 0.76b1
An incredible amount of changes made it's way into this release of Spring. To name just one, the installer now allows you to download various mods and maps during the install process. Because of this, there also is no updating installer available anymore: you can use the same installer to upgrade your 0.75b2 install or to do a fresh full install.
Please thank all people who have contributed to this Spring release:
Betalord, LordMatt (pimped the installer), Auswaschbar (full network code rewrite!), koshi (new settings.exe), KDR_11k, Satirik (TASClient), Kloot, Victor, trepan (our LUA master), submarine (AAI), lurker, Belmakor, tombom (changelog guru), imbaczek, FLOZi, ILM_Titan, Exit_Wound, tc-, jcnossen, yuritch, jK, BrainDamage, qknight, rattle, AF, malric, pbrook, wcspxyz and semi.
Additionally thanks to everyone who helped with the (not so) weekly testing! Especially the last week this was really necessary to get rid of the last major bugs.
As always, source code is available too, either in a .tar.bz2 (for Linux users only) or in a .zip (for Windows users only). It is, however, recommended to check out the source from our SVN repository if you want to do any serious development on it.
Notes:
- When using the new settings.exe (possibly from the installer), it may ask you a question about where to find unitsync.dll. In this case, browse to your Spring folder and select unitsync.dll. After that, I will work (and keep working).
- By selecting the mods XTA or BA in the installer you are legally required to own the original total annihilation game. The other mods are free of such content, and can be selected any time.
- If you get error: missing default cursor after you downloaded a mod from Unknown Files, download this archive, unzip it, and put the 3 files inside in C:\Program Files\base\ (or wherever you installed Spring). Remember that you may only legally do this if you own the original total annihilation game. If you don't own it, you have to play only mods that don't give this error.
- settings.exe simple mode sets ground decals to insanely high values. Use only expert mode, and make sure Ground decals on the Render details tab is set to 1. Anything higher will just cost you (a huge amount) of frames per second.
We're not sure that you'd want to do it, but it's nice to know that you can do it. If you're really sick of the native OS that came with your Eee -- or you're trying to feel out what a Cloudbook would be like if you could buy one -- you can now install Everex's Google-centric gOS onto your system with little-to-no effort, simply by following this ten point breakdown. You'll need an external optical drive, a wired internet connection, and probably an hour or so, but once all is said and done, you can break free of Xandros and roll deep with the Ubuntu-based gOS. How the software performs on the miniscule laptop we couldn't say, but at least now you can show your friends how truly unique you are.
Bugs fixed:
- Added icons in treeview
- Full sample handling (3 modes: split/merge/unmerge)
- New database node grouped by main/clones
- Background color for merged roms
- Move document folder to windows AppData location
- Possibility to change AppData path (path in startup.ini)
- 'Reload path': unload and reload a rom path
- Add some infos from dat header in database
- Save screen position, size and toolbar
- 'Auto resize' option to automaticaly adjust columns width
- Choice to move delete files/roms in recycler or folder
- Delete file and roms (shell option)
- Change location of statistics colored bar
- 'Rezip' added in contextual menu
- Add more infos in status bar
- Log for rezip
- Miss/have games report
- Miss roms report with separated bios, disks, samples, roms
- Caesar info page link
- Autodetect devices (detect a new drive is avail) option
- Improve read only device detection
- File extensions calculated by plugins are handled
Features added:
- Sometimes unable to run mame games (-rp param)
- Change sort order when sorting columns
- Speed up 'refresh db status'
- Wrong number of files displayed in log when refreshing a path
- Rezip bug with non-zipped files
- Attempt to fix a read only device
- Clear log button
- 'run game' shortcut (enter)
- Delete file from treeview
- Fixed an odd compiling bug that prevents proper work.
- Sprite core rewritten to match the hardware procedure.
- Fixed 2004h reads, somewhat better.
- Fixed wave recording to avoid sound skipping.
- Fixed program running in background.
- Added a new blitter, double-sized scanlined.
- Removed confirmation window when exitting program (quit to OS).
- Program window title changed into "RockNES/Win32".
- The close (X) button is enabled during the emulation.
- Keys Alt+ENTER switches between windowed/fullscreen modes during the emulation.
- Mapper 4 (MMC3) is enabled again, but since IRQs are disabled, most of the games are unplayable.
- Updated to Allegro 4.3.10 library.
- More debug stuff removed, plus internal changes and minor fixes.
- In the battle scene of "Tengai Makyou II", etc. when it passed time, the bug that the CDDA music was played (repeat play bug. generated from v1.32) was corrected.
- When using Ootake with "Windows 98/Me", after it had returned from full-screen, the problem that the resolution doesn't return (generation from v1.35) was corrected.
* Operation with "Windows 98/Me" is not tested.
* the full speed mode (Alt+W) now restores the original speed setting when turned off
* added a "go to program counter" button to the disassembler in the debugger
* some new utilities have been added
* a few minor bugs have been fixed
New version of the SNES emulator for Windows and Linux.
Changelog:
bsnes v0.028 has been released. The major focus of this release was cleaning up the code even more, and greatly enhancing the Linux port to be an equal with the Windows port.
For Linux users, please note that the safest drivers were chosen by default, rather than the most full-featured drivers. The active driver can be changed by editing settings->configuration->advanced->system.(video, audio, input), and then restarting bsnes. You can also edit the drivers by hand, by editing ~/.bsnes/bsnes.cfg
Available Linux drivers are: video ("opengl", "xv", "sdl" (default)), audio ("openal", "oss", "ao" (default)), input ("sdl" (default), "x"). In particular, the SDL video driver and libao audio driver are very poor performers. The SDL video driver lacks hardware accelerated scaling, and runs tremendously slow. The libao audio driver has horrendous, ~150ms+ latency.
OpenGL is the best video driver, but it requires OpenGL graphics libraries to be installed to use. These do not typically come with open-source video drivers. The Xv driver will at least allow hardware accelerated scaling, offering a tremendous speedup, but some ATI drivers have poor (or even missing) X-Video implementations.
OpenAL is the best audio driver, but ALSA works very poorly with it. OSS4 works far better with the OpenAL driver. The OSS driver has the lowest latency (~15-20ms), but requires the most CPU power. It too has problems when using the ALSA emulation layer.
While the SDL input driver is superior to the X driver (and is the default), if your joypad fails to work correctly and prevents you from mapping any keys (highly unlikely), you can always revert to the keyboard-only X driver.
At any rate, I strongly encourage you to try out each driver and choose the ones that work best for you.
Changelog:
* OpenGL (with hardware filter mode support) and SDL video drivers added to Linux port
* OpenAL (with speed regulation disable support) and OSS audio drivers added to Linux port [Nach]
* SDL input driver (with joypad support) added to Linux port
* Emulator pause option added
* Added option to select behavior of bsnes when idle: allow input, ignore input or pause emulator
* Added support to remap common GUI actions to key/joypad presses on the "Input Configuration" screen
* bsnes will now clamp the video output size when it is larger than the screen resolution
* GUI library has been enhanced, and renamed to hiro
* Fullscreen mode now always centers video, rather than approximates
* Fullscreen mode now works correctly on Linux/Openbox
* Extra layer of abstraction in src/ui has been removed, as GUI lib unifies all ports anyway
* Video, audio and input drivers unified into standard library, named ruby
* All custom headers have been merged into a new template library, named nall
* Makefile rewritten, vastly improved. Allows quick toggling of compiled-in drivers
* Makefile: all object files now placed in /src/obj, binary placed in /
* libco greatly enhanced, no longer requires an assembler to build [byuu, blargg, Nach]
* libco SJLJ driver added; bsnes should now build on any Unix-derivative now (Solaris, OS X, PS3, etc) [Nach]
* Fixed register $213e.d4 PPU1 open bus behavior [zones]
* Windows port will not activate screensaver while bsnes is running [Nightcrawler]
* Visual C++ target no longer requires stdint.h
* And lots more -- mostly code refactoring related
A few months ago, we had reported that Sega was coming up with a new game for the PC called Space Siege. The action role-playing game, it seems, could find its way on the consoles also! Now VG247 is reporting that publisher Sega is considering bringing Space Siege to the consoles.
Shawn Green is the associate producer of Space Siege at Sega. He said, “We are talking with them about it. We don’t want to let any cats out of the bag too early but definitely a console version is something that’s being considered right now. But currently it’s not confirmed.”
Green also said that console gamers like the short and sweet experience. Space Siege was showcased at the Consumer Electronic Show 2008 in Las Vegas last month. The game is being developed by Gas Powered Games. The RPG was expected to be out in the first quarter of 2008 but now it looks like the game will release for the PC in September 2008.
EA's Burnout Paradise is the first title of the new year to hold on to the number one spot in the UK all formats charts, despite a drop in sales of 13 per cent.
Spending its second week at the top of the charts, sales of the Xbox 360 sku have dropped 16 per cent, with PS3 sales down 9 per cent.
It's much better news for Nintendo, where replenished stocks of Wii Play have seen the game benefit from a massive rise in sales of 87 per cent, according to data from Chart Track, putting it at number two.
Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is at three this week, while sales of Sega's Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games are down 46 per cent as it sits at number four.
DS title Dr Kawashima's Brain Training is at five this week, EA's FIFA 08 is at six and More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima is at seven.
THQ's WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2008 is at number eight this week, with Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed at nine and The Simpsons Game at ten.
The only new release to enter the UK charts this week is Microsoft's Kingdom of Fire: Circle of Doom for the Xbox 360, entering the charts at number 33.
Electronic Arts estimates that Sony's PS3 will outsell Microsoft's Xbox 360 during 2008, while the Wii will remain the clear frontrunner in the home console market.
While Sony has cut its internal PS3 sales target for the current fiscal year, and EA has admitted that PS3 development hurdles have not yet quite been cleared, the mega-publisher behind the Madden and FIFA franchises expects Sony's next-gen console to sell up to 5.5 million units more than Microsoft's Xbox 360 across Europe and the US during 2008.
According to EA's internal estimates, Sony will sell between 4.5 and 5.5 million PS3s in the US and 5 to 6 million PS3s in Europe during 2008 - that's 9.5 to 11.5 million units in total.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is expected to sell 4.5 to 5.5 million Xbox 360s in the US, but only 1.5 to 2.5 million units in Europe, so between 6 million and 8 million units altogether.
EA also forecast that Nintendo's Wii will outsell both rival systems, shifting between 5.5 and 6.5 million units in the US and 6.5 to 7.5 million units in Europe, totalling between 12-14 million units.
US and European PS2 sales estimates range between 3.9 and 4.9 million units in total.
EA therefore estimates that total home console sales for the two regions during 2008 will range between 31.4 and 38.4 million units.
The company also expects Nintendo's DS to dominate the handheld market, shifting between 14 and 16 million units, in comparison to PSP sales of between 6 and 8 million units. Combined handheld unit sales would therefore total between 20 and 24 million.
EA stresses that its estimates may not reflect the views of the hardware manufacturers, and that its predictions are subject to alterations.
Last week Codemasters' CEO Rod Cousens told Next-Gen that he also expects Sony's PlayStation 3 to gather sales momentum over the coming years.
After a week of women name-calling guys who play games Man-teens and Child Men, Amanda Marcotte has proposed a radical idea: A woman can play video games, and can even spend that time with the man in her life. Marcotte's article responds to a piece written by Kathryn Jean Lopez, Arrested Development, on how Jason Bateman's character in Juno is nothing more than your typical immature husband, opting out of adulthood for an idealized adolescent lifestyle. Marcotte isn't having any of it. She sounds as tired of this whole "manboy" thing as the rest of us, and is stepping up to the table to say what all these angry women seem to be missing:
Women play video games. Our vaginas, surprisingly, do not stop us from using a controller.
The Xbox is not a widow maker. No matter how many TV specials say otherwise, men can be happy, productive individuals - both as part of a couple and a part of society - while still playing video games.
Movies are not the ideal place to be developing deep psychoanalytical theories about men.
Finally, a woman who isn't cursing all things video game related.
Empire and Bugbear have announced plans to release FlatOut Ultimate Carnage worldwide for PC in June.
Yes, that does mean that it will be arriving almost exactly one year after its well-regarded Xbox 360 counterpart. But I know you are so what am I?
Sadly the publisher's representatives couldn't be more specific than that when we rang up to pester them for more information.
We were also told that while the game would be "high spec" visually, it would struggle to match the 360 version's HD output frame for frame, so we'll have to wait and see on that front.
(Update: The publisher's rep has since been in touch to retract this. "I have double checked with Empire and they have confirmed that FlatOut Ultimate Carnage will be visually comparable to Xbox 360 HD," he said.)
Other differences, if any, are still shrouded in mystery. Which is to say we've asked and hopefully we'll hear more soon.
Empire CEO Ian Higgins lasted two paragraphs of the press release before shouting about how "very excited" he was at some nearby quote marks.
"Research suggests that arcade racers are becoming ever more popular on the PC, with the Xbox 360 controller providing the perfect way to enjoy the genre," he said, cryptically.
Nothing whatsoever to do with people shoving said pad lazily down PC gamers' throats, obviously. Save our keyboards!
We've been hearing rumors all morning that Microsoft would release Vista SP1 this week. Now, according to Reuters, Microsoft has just sent Vista SP1 to manufacturing. In the same presentation to investors, Steve Ballmer said that Microsoft has released Windows Server 2008 to manufacturing as well. However, the server software won't formally launch until February 27th. Now we're just waiting for the SP1 download link and/or Windows Update package. Twiddle, twiddle... ah hell, we'll just update you when we get it -- this could take a few days.
Update: Hands off the F5 key kids, Microsoft says SP1 won't be available to customers until March, starting with Microsoft Volume Licensing customers. Server 2008 will be available for purchase on March 1st.
Friday's edition of Minnesotan local rag, the Pioneer Press, carried this heart-rending report of one massive multiplayer's quest for justice.
20-year-old Final Fantasy XI player Geoff Luurs had his account broken into. All the items and currency collected by his character Sots (a "tiny magician", according to the paper) over four years of play were looted. He suspected a fellow player, but local police declined his request to look into it.
Luurs says the items were worth 75 million Gil, which according to current exchange rates, is about USD 3800 in real money (that's GBP 1924 in even more real money). He argued that 'Ayri' - the player he suspected of the theft, and a former friend - could easily sell them through a site like ige.com.
But despite grey markets in the sale of high-level characters, currency and items being common with popular MMOs, police claimed that game points were "devoid of monetary value", therefore no theft had taken place.
Associate professor of law Joshua Fairfield disagrees. "What happened here is somebody stole almost USD 4000 and got away cold," he said. "This is just a matter of zeros. The first time IBM loses USD 10 million, we're going to see some police action. The argument that a magic sword isn't real, that doesn't make sense to me. You can ask the question, why would somebody buy that? But you can't say it's not worth real money."
Theft of virtual items is already a crime in MMO-mad South Korea, but at present, no legislation exists in the US or EU to help Luurs and others in similar boats. With the increasing popularity of these games worldwide, it's surely only a matter of time.
However, the suggestion is that Luurs gave 'Ayri' his account details, in which case he probably violated the terms and conditions of his account. Also, you could argue he got what was coming to him. Is it a burglary when you hand the robber your house keys?
We've got loads of new screens and renders for the latest Sims package to come the way of EA's primary (females over 18) and secondary (females over 13) targets.
Calling them 'targets' seems a bit wrong somehow, but that's advertising and marketing for you.
RuneScape content boss Imre Jele says that those of you buying MMO currency are effectively funding digital organised crime, not to mention cheating and ruining the experience for everyone else.
Speaking exclusively to Eurogamer about the growing problem of illegal real-world trading, Jele said, "The biggest concern about illegal real-world trading is - sorry for this example as I know it's not politically correct - it's a bit like prostitution.
"It's not necessarily the prostitution which is a problem, although you might have moral problems with it. The real problem is the organised crime that's built around prostitution; the human trafficking, the drugs, etc.
"And that's the same with illegal real-world trading. The problem comes in when they start doing other illegal activities. One of the biggest is the use of stolen credit cards," he added.
Apparently players can make more in-game gold if they shell out for a GBP 3.20 monthly subscription. This puts a huge financial burden on developer Jagex and carries significant legal ramifications as well.
RuneScape is a web-based massively-multiplayer online role-playing game that boasts around 6 million active players around the world. It recently took measures to stamp out real-world trading by banning unbalanced trades where one person typically gives another a pile of gold or a valuable item for nothing in return - because they have paid for it in real-life.
The results have been very positive, according to Imre Jele, but he is at a loss as to why more do not follow his example but continue to provide a breeding ground for the multi-million-pound illegal real-world trading business.
"I have friends all over the industry and I know they don't try do anything about this, which to me is shocking," continued Jele. "It seems to me that the bigger half of the MMO industry puts their heads under the sand and pretends like it is not happening."
He feels real-world trading is out of control, and that even the likes of Blizzard with World of Warcraft will get to a point where it cannot control the amounts of money changing hands illegally.
To beat it, the nature of MMOs will have to change. Imre Jele believes new persistent worlds will be designed with real-world trading in mind. And one option available is to simply make your experience so much fun that no one feels the need to "cheat" the grind in the first place.
"To be honest, I think instead of real-world trading, games have to be designed in a way that they provide enough fun while you are getting somewhere; if I am incapable of providing you with enough fun while you collect that 1000 gold for a steed, then the game is not good enough," concluded Jele.
Look out for our full interview with Imre Jele soon.
microSDHC Features/Benefits
Compliant: with the SD Association Specification, Version 2.00
Versatile: can be used as full-size SDHC or miniSDHC card with appropriate adapter
Compatible: with microSDHC-enabled devices/readers only
File Format: FAT 32
Reliable: lifetime warranty
GameTap has announced that it is to close down the Cyan Worlds-developed Myst Online: Uru Live because it's no longer financially viable.
"The decision was a very difficult one and was made for business reasons rather than due to any issues regarding the design and vision of the amazing world that Cyan Worlds and Rand Miller have brought to us," said GameTap's VP of content and creative director Ricardo Sanchez in a statement on the company's forums.
The game was originally signed for a release under Ubisoft but was cancelled and the developer then linked up with the Turner-backed GameTap portal.
However, the game doesn't seem to have captured enough of the public's imagination, particularly in the face of ever-growing competition in the MMO space.
The servers will remain live for the next 60 days after which time they will shut down, although the game's Myst Online web site will remain open for the foreseeable future.
There is no indication as to where this leaves the Cyan Worlds team as yet, and whether they will seek a new partner for the title.
Graphics whiz buys physics boffin news now, with the announcement of graphics card designer Nvidia's "definitive agreement" to purchase Ageia, developer of the PhysX middleware and corresponding PPU (physics processing unit) hardware accelerators. Ageia's PhysX solution is reportedly in use by over 140 shipping or in-development games across a range of platforms, including the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and PC.
The purchase reflects both companies' shared goal of "creating the most amazing and captivating game experiences," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia. "By combining the teams that created the world's most pervasive GPU and physics engine brands, we can now bring GeForce-accelerated PhysX to hundreds of millions of gamers around the world."
The press release makes no mention of the acquisition cost nor specific products those millions of gamers around the world can expect in the future, but the first benefits of the agreement are sure to be seen in precariously stacked, stunningly rendered crates.
Today Konami confirmed to IGN that the franchise formerly titled Winning Eleven Soccer in the United States will now be known as Pro Evolution Soccer 2008. This in no way affects the title in Europe where it will stay known as Pro Evolution Soccer.
While we lament North America's loss of the Winning Eleven brand name (especially this year, of all years -- if Konami had stuck with the name, the game could have been called "Winning Eleven 11", and now the world will never know how awesome the world's greatest game name could have been), the change does make the series easier to talk about. Winning Eleven has always been known as "Pro Evolution Soccer (PES)" in Europe for years, while the US branch of Konami struggled with a number of names for the soccer series. Finally with the 2007 edition, Konami set up this change-over with the first step of a hybrid name, "Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer." Having both names in the game was a bold, pan-global compromise uniting all PES/W11 fans under one banner in the great land of America, but it was also an unwieldy name sure to collapse under the weight of two titanic titles clashing as one. This year, there is no conciliation in the name -- outside of Japan, Winning Eleven will now only be known as Pro Evolution Soccer. A sad day for fans of the "Winning Eleven" denomination dynasty? Perhaps. But with the grand "Pro Evolution Soccer" monogram emblazoned across the newly-christened package, Konami's winning eleventh soccer game promises to take the series to new heights of glory.
Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 is scheduled to ship on March 11, 2008.
DCEmu Coder Notaz has today released a major breakthrough for the Whole Emulation scene ( Major Breakthroughs are always great) and thats the emulation of the SVP Chip on the Megadrive Game Virtua racing.
At the moment this runs only on Windows but what a great breakthrough for the Emulation scene
Asustek Computer has revised its Eee PC shipments forecast for the first quarter of 2008 dropping to around 700,000 units from the originally estimated one million, according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report citing sources at the company.
Although orders in the first quarter of 2008 have already surpassed one million units, problems with 8GB Eee PCs mean that shipments of that model will be delayed to the second quarter, added the paper.
Asustek recently admitted that it had discovered some minor hardware issues relating to the flash-based storage in the 8GB Eee PC, therefore the company was forced to delay shipments to the market.
- Small updates
- Updated the language files for the 0.9.6 release.
- Added the right MD5 hash file for the 0.9.6 release.
- Enabled the PHP extension 'php_mbsting' to be loaded.
- Updated DAT files
- CPS-1: v2006.07.24 to v2007.09.22
- CPS-2: v2007.06.11 to v2007.11.19
- MAME: v0.117 to v0.122
- Neo-Geo: v2007.07.10 to v2008.01.01
- Model2: v2007.05.31 to v2008.01.03
- ECC Startup
v2.1.2.6:
- Fixed error message 'could not find ecc-core\php-win.exe'. Some users experienced that 'ecc-core\php-win.exe' could not be found, this can happen because of foreign language sets, now using full paths instead of relative paths.
v2.1.2.5:
- Adjusted to look in the ECC rootfolder for ECC error.log.
v2.1.2.4:
- ECC Startup is now hailing PHP to determine on what OS it runs, the output syntax from PHP is different then Autoit, so this is only to adjust things to the feature, because we want to let ECC run on linux/apple/mac systems later-on wink.gif
- ECC Bugreport
v2.2.0.1
- Adjusted to look in the ECC rootfolder for ECC error.log.
v2.2.0.0:
- Now uses the PHP extension 'php_zip.dll' to pack the htm file
- Now the thirdparty tool RAR.EXE isn't needed for this anymore.
- Improved the way the bugreport is stored on our server, to give us a much better overview, so we can fix bugs faster!
- Not using the TEMP folder anymore, the temp file is created in the ecc-tools folder.
- This because on a NON writable disc, the PHP error.log can't be created!
- Images updates
- Bally Astrocade
- Fixed the dropshadow (5 pix)
- Move the 'Bally' logo a bit
- Matra Alice
- Added dropshadow
- Removed lost pixels on top of the console
- Mattel Aquarius
- Added dropshadow
- Capcom Play System 3
- Added dropshadow
- Tatung Einstein
- Added dropshadow
- Mattel Intellivision
- Added dropshadow
- Interton VC-4000
- Added dropshadow
- Atari Lynx
- Updated the console picture
- Panasonic 3DO
- Made console picture smaller to fit better
- Adobe Flash
- Removed some lost pixels on top of the logo
- Atari Jaguar
- Removed the '64-bit' line
- Centered the console picture
- Nintendo DS
- Moved the logo on left-top
- Moved the console picture
- NEC PC-FX
- Fixed the dropshadow (5 pix)
- Philips VG-5000
- Fixed the dropshadow (5 pix)
- Nintendo Super Nintendo
- Added Nintendo logo
- Moved console picture to middle
- Moved 'Super Nintendo' logo to right-under
- Bandai Wonderswan
- Removed some lost pixels on top of the console
- Sharp X68000
- Updated the console picture
- Updated the nav picture
- Namco System 11
- Updated the nav picture (red text)
- Namco System 22
- Updated the nav picture (red text)
- Sega System 16
- Updated the nav picture (purple text)
- Sega System 18
- Updated the nav picture (purple text)
- Sony ZiNc
- Updated the nav picture (blue text)
- Emerson Arcadia
- Added Emerson logo
- Removed little Emerson logo from the console logo
- Centered the console
- Sharp MZ-700
- Added dropshadow
- Atari ST
- Made the white screen black
- Centered the console
- Core components
- ECC Core degrade to v2.10.11a
Using the old core again due to troubleshooting on some systems, we now have a 'testchamber' in our development section to make feature (core)updates more stable before releasing, for now we are using the the old 2.10.11 engine from march 28 2007.
Note:
This also brings back the drivescanning problem of usb drives ect. (for now)
- Due to feature multiplatform support, we have to alter some settings, one of these is the error.log output, this will be in the ECC root folder again.
- 3rd party tool updates
- Notepad++ v4.7.2
- ECC Installer
v1.3.0.1 (ECC v0.9.6.R1):
- Compiled with NSIS v2.34.
- Fixed the checkboxes on the 'extra feature page' to handle ccorrect.
- Altered some of the text being displayed on the 'extra feature page'.
- Added the writing of the instal INI.
* XML gamelist data cache to speed up loading of -listxml output from MAME
* Removal of obsolete samples & image files through external tools (rm, zip)
* Added Home, End & Esc to the list of remappable GUI control keys
* Improved about dialog with a new QMC2 logo and a system-information summary screen.
Garland-based video games developer 3D Realms has confirmed Duke Nukem Forever, the highly anticipated sequel to its revolutionary 1996 PC game Duke Nukem 3D, is headed for retail release in late 2008, and will be coming to Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 home video game consoles, as well as the PC.
"We haven't formally announced any platforms for DNF," wrote 3D Realms President Scott Miller in an e-mail exchange. "But, of course hitting the big three makes the most sense (PC, PS3, 360)."
Miller added a note of caution on the 12-years-coming sequel and its release window, claiming, "we may miss the mark by a month or two, but I feel very confident that we're on target this time."
Duke Nukem Forever is not the only 3D Realms title coming to home video game consoles in 2008. Miller also confirmed the existence of a downloadable Xbox Live Arcade version of Duke Nukem 3D, which will feature on-line multiplayer support, Xbox Live achievements, on-line score boards, and a co-op mode.
"We're really excited about bringing classic Duke to the 360," said Miller during an interview. "We're talking to Microsoft about getting a release slot sometime this year."
Today Ubisoft, one of the world's largest video game publishers, unveiled Assassin's Creed for PC will be available at retailers end of March.
Following in the wake of the critically acclaimed and worldwide console hit Assassin's Creed, the PC version entitled "Assassin's Creed, Director's cut edition" will feature four brand new exclusive types of investigations, thus providing even more ways for players to explore the various locations of the Third Crusade.
Players will assume the role of the main character, Altair, and will work to stop hostilities by suppressing both sides of the conflict and experience the art of a master assassin. With more than 5 million units of the console versions sold to date worldwide since its mid-November 2007 launch, Assassin's Creed PC is set to expand upon this success.
"We are thrilled to bring Assassin's Creed to an eager PC audience and we anticipate the game will resonate with them just has it has across the other platforms," said John Parkes, EMEA Marketing Director at Ubisoft. "Assassin's Creed is a game that must be experienced firsthand to fully understand how dynamic and meaningful this title has become for video game fans worldwide."
The source code of the SNES emulator for PC was released. This source code is only for Linux.
Info:
While v0.028's release went a lot better than expected, there was one significant problem: it appears that the Linux OpenGL renderer did not work correctly on any of the four ATI graphics card drivers. It seems to be related to partial implementations of GLX v1.3 (you know, the ten year old Xlib interface for OpenGL?)
Rather than continue fighting these drivers, I instead opted to backport the driver to use GLX v1.2 instead. This seems to work on the fglrx, ati and radeon drivers. I don't know much of the radeonhd drivers, but I believe they lack 3D acceleration anyway.
sinamas also came up with an ingenius trick to work around the X Visual problem: that is to say, a GLX rendering context requires a window with the same X Visual as itself. But it's not possible to change the Visual of the existing window that is passed to the GLX driver. sinamas suggested creating this new window as a child window, and embedding that within the rendering window. This worked wonderfully, and eliminates the need for enumerating all available GLX contexts, which is why I needed the GLX 1.3 API in the first place. bsnes now uses the GLX-recommended Visual, which also eliminates a color problem that existed on the fglrx driver when using the default X11 visual.
I also removed the glClear command inside refresh(), as it was redundant and caused flickering on non-buffered visuals. It might even give a slight speed increase on some cards.
Lastly, [vEX] pointed out that I should use the -D flag for the install command in the Makefile. This has been fixed.
I'm not updating the Windows binary to v0.028.01, as absolutely nothing has changed in the Windows port yet. I'll update again when the Debian repository is synced with the new version.
Usually with SanDisk flash announcements we just list a new higher capacity and post a shot of a memory card with the new number on it, but this time around the announcements are little deeper: two new memory technologies.
The first, which will go into production in March, is a 16-gigbit flash chip that contains three bits per cell, based on Toshiba's "3D" flash tech we heard about over the summer. The chip offers 8MB/sec write performance, but is much smaller than conventional MLC chips. Speaking of MLC, SanDisk also announced that it's moving forward on 43nm MLC fabrication, which will allow it to ship 32 gigabit flash chips in the latter half of the year.
Either way, it looks like we're going to have a lot of memory cards with bigger numbers on them to post up soon, eh?
SonicTeam have resubmitted their title update for the Xbox 360 servers and are awaiting certification. However, it will not make it in time for this Friday's update, but it may be ready for the following maintenance period on February 15th. In the meantime, the 360 servers will receive part of last week's originally scheduled update along with the Valentine's lobby scheduled for this week. SonicTeam deeply apologize for the inconvenience, and hope to have everything sorted out soon.
PC/PS2 players can expect the following content this Friday:
Seasonal lobby
Love is in the air as cities across Gurhal will be celebrating Valentine's Day. Check out the decorations and be on the lookout for the rare Rappy Amure!
GUARDIANS Boost Road
GBR kicks off on Moatoob! Run through the five assigned missions to earn points toward a ranking which will increase drop rates in these particular missions. This applies to System Defense, Desert Terror, Tunnel Recapture, Caves of Ice and Awoken Serpent.
New S2 missions
Two missions will be receiving the S2 difficulty level: Caves of Ice and Awoken Serpent.
New items, clothes
Tons of new items are being added such as the Casino Voloyal costume for all women and a plethora of new PM evolution devices including two which can transform your partner machine into completely new forms!
Please note that the rare free mission Forest of Illusion was planned to be released this week, however it has been rescheduled for the February 22nd update which should introduce even more new missions. We'll keep you updated as information surfaces.
Hard times are falling on the arcade scene in Japan. Thanks to a combination of high oil prices - keeping families away from shopping malls - and the continual inroads of home console gaming, two of Japan's biggest gaming names have announced they're closing down huge numbers of their branded arcades. Namco Bandai have announced they're closing 50-60 of their Namcoland centres (around 20% of their total), news which comes not long after Sega also announced closures, planning to shutter around 100 of their own arcades.
Not content with its hefty info splurge on Crysis patch 1.2 last week, Crytek's gone and provided an ever bigger update on what's in the pipe.
Amidst bullet-point lists detailing game balancing, tweaks and bug fixes is word from the developer that its own anti-cheat solution for multiplayer is debuting in patch 1.2.
"Punkbuster and the anti-cheat solution are able to run in conjunction on one game server, but also can be used separately if needed. Still Crytek recommends having Punkbuster as well as the internal solution from Crytek running on a server in order to reach the maximum possible cheat protection", it says.
A second new addition worthy of note is the Crysis Mod Loader, which will allow players and mod creators to manage mods through the first-person shooter's main menu.
In a nutshell, a new "Mods" option features in the menu and clicking on this will whisk you away to a mod interface which displays the Crysis mods you have installed on your hard drive.
And, "By selecting a mod you will see the respective splash screen and some more detailed information. All these things can be easily adjusted and set via an XML-file in the respective mods folder. It will allow each modder to add their personal logo and detailed information to their modification."
Crytek's full new update on Crysis patch 1.2 can be read here.
The latest Japanese software sales chart has been released showing seven new entries in the top ten, including solid performances from the Wii, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Super Smash Bros Brawl knocked out the opposition in first place, outselling its nearest rival 4-to-1 on its debut, and shifting 820,000 units across the week ending February 3, according to data compiled by Media Create.
Devil May Cry 4 for the PS3 was in second place, selling 205,000 copies, while PlayStation 2 pair Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut and Haruhi Suzumiya's Wonderment were third and fourth respectively.
The first non-new entry was Wii Fit in fifth place, with Disgaea 3 and the Xbox 360 edition of Devil May Cry 4 close behind.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympics for the Nintendo DS, Assassin's Creed for the PS3 and the latest Winning Eleven title for the PlayStation Portable rounded off the top ten.
That means that in the top ten there were six different platforms represented, and only three titles were Nintendo-based games - a turnaround from the beginning of the year as new games begin to hit the market.
The full top ten is as follows:
1. Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii)
2. Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)
3. Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut (PS2)
4. Haruhi Suzumiya's Wonderment (PS2)
5. Wii Fit (Wii)
6. Disgaea 3 (PS3)
7. Devil May Cry 4 (360)
8. Mario & Sonic at the Olympics (DS)
9. Assassin's Creed (PS3)
10. World Soccer Winning Eleven: Ubiquitous Evolution 2008 (PSP)
The Entertainment Software Rating Board says that the percentage of Mature-rated games released halved from 2005 to 2007.
In a winter newsletter, Patricia Vance, president of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), said that the amount of Mature-rated titles is declining each year despite the fact that more and more games are being released.
"The ESRB also had the biggest year ever in 2007, having assigned 1,563 ratings, a 22% increase over the prior year. And, as you'll see below, 94% of the ratings we assigned were for games appropriate for ages 13 or younger. It's never been easier to find family-friendly games that everyone can play together.
"While a handful of M-rated titles tend to garner a majority of media attention, the E (Everyone 6+) rating category continues to dominate. The E category saw the largest increase over last year, accounting for nearly 60% of ratings assigned overall.
"The M (Mature 17+) category represented 6% of the overall ratings assigned, down from 8% in 2006 and 12% in 2005.
"The E10+ (Everyone 10 and older) and T (Teen 13+) categories accounted for 15% and 20% respectively."
It's no secret that there's quite a few folks hesitant (to say the least) to upgrade to Windows Vista, and Microsoft has somewhat accommodated them by extending sales of the tried-and-true Windows XP until June of 2008. That has unsurprisingly done little to satisfy most people, however, and some 75,000 of 'em have even signed a petition started by Infoworld that's attempting to "Save XP."
After a couple of weeks, that now seems to have caught Microsoft's attention, although the company's response likely isn't what they were looking for. As Computerworld Australia reports, Microsoft says it's aware of the petition but that it's "listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs."
As Slashdot points out, that statement's a little odd considering that most of the folks signing the petition are Microsoft customers, but either way it seems pretty clear that Microsoft is intent on showing XP the door as soon as possible.
Time to fire up uTorrent, Vista users, the RTM version of SP1 has been leaked to the Pirate Bay and other major torrent trackers. The torrent appears to be a complete Vista install, not just an upgrade, so be careful and back up your files before you proceed—or else, wait until mid-March when it's a free system upgrade. Let us know how it goes.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun notes that in Blizzard's never-ending quest for perfect balance, they've added a handy feature for still-dedicated Warcraft players. Players will no longer need to have the disc in the drive in order to conquer Azeroth. This kicks off a discussion by blogger Alec Meer about the role of copy protection and anti-piracy in PC gaming:
"I don't need the Paint Shop Pro disc in my DVD drive whenever I want to butcher my holiday photos, after all. It was always doubly unnecessary for a game like W3, which also employs serial number checks if you want to play it online. Having the CD check as well seems like leaving a polite post-it note on the windscreen of a driver prone to double-parking. Don't bother. Just wheel-clamp the bastard. While there're still some reasons to be circumspect about online distribution systems, they do spell an end to miserably sorting through quivering towers of plastic discs or popup-heavy crack websites. This brave new world, in which the data already installed upon my hard drive is all that's required to play a game I've paid for, is one I know I want to live in."
Welcome to this week's Games & Toys update, our weekly summary featuring all new product arrivals from the last seven days.
It's been a bit calmer in terms of new releases compared to previous week. Nevertheless, we've got a couple of highlights worth checking out. Please be reminded that Play-Asia.com is closed from February 7th until February 10th due to Chinese New Year holidays. Some preorders will ship late when we reopen on Monday, February 11th.
Popular new arrivals have been the US Xbox360™ version of Devil May Cry 4, Disney's Turok (PlayStation3™ / Xbox360™) and Oneechanbara Revolution for next gen consoles.
Interesting handheld releases have been L: The Prologue to Death Note - Rasen no Wana for Nintendo DS™ and Mobile Suit Gundam: Giren no Yabou - Axis no Kyoui (Asia / Japanese / Special Pack) for PSP™.
Here is a summary of all new releases from this week, followed by a quick preview of what is expected to be hot next week.
Xbox360™:
Battlestations: Midway JPN US$ 64.90
Devil May Cry 4 US US$ 59.90
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (Platinum Hits) ASIA US$ 29.90
Turok US US$ 64.90
PlayStation3™:
Transformers: The Game JPN US$ 64.90
Turok US US$ 64.90
Nintendo Wii™:
BomberMan Land US US$ 34.90
Major Wii Nagero! Gyroball JPN US$ 64.90
Oneechanbara Revolution JPN US$ 59.90
PlayStation2™:
Choro Q HG 3 (Atlus Best Collection) JPN US$ 19.90
Dengeki SP: Shakugan no Shana JPN US$ 29.90
Momotarou Densetsu 15 (PlayStation2 the Best) JPN US$ 39.90
NBA Live 07 (EA Best Hits) JPN US$ 34.90
Princess Maker 5 JPN US$ 64.90
Princess Maker 5 [Limited Edition] JPN US$ 89.90
Sanyo Pachinko Paradise 13 (Irem Collection) JPN US$ 19.90
Transformers: The Game JPN US$ 64.90
Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 2: Itetsuita Kioku Tachi (Irem Collection) JPN US$ 34.90
Nintendo DS™:
Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles ASIA US$ 32.90
BomberMan Land Touch! 2 US US$ 34.90
L: The Prologue to Death Note - Rasen no Wana JPN US$ 48.90
L: The Prologue to Death Note - Rasen no Wana (Konamistyle Special Edition) JPN US$ 89.90
My French Coach Level 2: Intermediate ASIA N/A
Patto Tokueru: Indo Suugaku Drill JPN US$ 39.90
Touch! Bomberman Land (Hudson the Best) JPN US$ 29.90
Sony PSP™:
BomberMan Land US US$ 34.90
Bomberman Land Portable (Hudson the Best) JPN US$ 29.90
Capcom Classics Collection Remixed (Reprint) ASIA US$ 14.90
Coded Soul: Uke Keigareshi Idea JPN US$ 48.90
Mobile Suit Gundam: Giren no Yabou - Axis no Kyoui JPN US$ 58.90
Mobile Suit Gundam: Giren no Yabou - Axis no Kyoui ASIA US$ 54.90
Mobile Suit Gundam: Giren no Yabou - Axis no Kyoui (Special Packing w/ PSP-2000 Console) JPN US$ 389.90
NBA Live 07 (EA Best Hits) JPN US$ 29.90
No Reservations JPN US$ 14.90
PC Games:
SEGA Rally Revo JPN US$ 64.90
Game Guides:
Devil May Cry 4: Prima Official Game Guide US US$ 19.90
Turok Official Strategy Guide US US$ 16.90
Toys & More:
C.I. Boys Chinese Horoscope Racing Team ASIA US$ 4.90
Dragon Ball Z DX Vol.3 Pre-Painted Figure: Super Saiyan Gokou JPN US$ 19.90
Dragon Ball Z DX Vol.3 Pre-Painted Figure: Super Saiyan Vegeta JPN US$ 19.90
Fate/hollow ataraxia Collection Vol.1 Non Scale Pre-Painted PVC Trading Figure JPN US$ 4.90
Fraulein Revoltech Series No. 002 - Fate/Hollow Ataraxia Pre-Painted Figure: Rin Tohsaka JPN US$ 24.90
Infinity Blade Sexy Girl Pre-Painted Polystone Figure: Mahosenshi Ruru JPN US$ 144.90
Magic the Gathering Morningtide Booster Pack JPN US$ 5.49
Magic the Gathering Morningtide Theme Deck JPN US$ 14.90
One Piece Neo-3 - Portraits of Pirates P.O.P. Excellent Model 1/8 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Mr.2 Bon Kurei JPN US$ 49.90
One Piece Neo-3 - Portraits of Pirates P.O.P. Excellent Model 1/8 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Roronoa Zoro JPN N/A
SIF EX Pia Carrot Go 1/6 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Kinoshita Rumi (Devil Type) JPN US$ 59.90
Samurai Showdown 1/4 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Majikina Mina (White Skin Version) JPN N/A
Screen Battles SB-01 Transformers Movie First Encounter Figure set JPN US$ 29.90
Screen Battles SB-02 Transformers Movie Final Stand Figure set JPN US$ 29.90
Shakugan no Shana 2 1/8 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Shana (Candy Bikini Version) JPN N/A
Shin Getter Robo Non Scale Pre-Painted Figure: Neo Getter (Black Version) JPN N/A
The Movie All Spark Power - Transformers Pre-Painted Figure: MA-19 Landmine JPN US$ 24.90
The Movie All Spark Power - Transformers Pre-Painted Figure: MD-22 Incinerator JPN N/A
Xenosaga 3 1/8 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: T-elos JPN N/A
Yamadaya 1/6 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Kenshi san JPN US$ 74.90
ef - a fairy tale of the two Non Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Miyamura Miyako JPN US$ 59.90
Video Game Soundtracks:
Halo 3 Original Soundtrack (Import Version) JPN US$ 22.90
Muchi Muchi Pork Original Soundtrack JPN US$ 39.90
Neo Angelique - Akatsuki No Tenshi JPN US$ 23.90
The Idolm@aster Master Box 1 & 2 Encore [Limited Edition] JPN US$ 76.90
Here is a quick outlook what's expected to be hot next week.
PlayStation3™:
Devil May Cry 4 US US$ 64.90
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue ASIA US$ 49.90
PlayStation2™:
Kyou Kara Maou! Shin Ma-Kuni no Kyuujitsu JPN US$ 59.90
Poison Pink JPN US$ 64.90
Nintendo DS™:
Digimon Championship JPN US$ 48.90
Hokuto no Ken: Hokuto Kami Denshoumono no Michi JPN US$ 48.90
Naruto Shippuuden: Dairansen! Kage Bunsen Emaki JPN US$ 48.90
Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2nd Season JPN US$ 48.90
Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2nd Season [Konamistyle Special Edition Complete Set] JPN US$ 99.90
We always hate having to report this kind of news, but it must be done. Less than four hours before maintenance begins, SonicTeam have reported that tonight's originally scheduled update for the PC/PS2 servers has been delayed due to a critical bug arising which cannot be fixed in time. On the bright side, the content announced for the Xbox 360 servers will still be delivered.
No word yet on when to expect this update, but we'll keep you posted as any information becomes available. Special thanks to Obsidian_Knight for bringing this to our attention.
Update! It seems that part of the update went through, anyway. According to the official site, the Valentine's lobby was released for all servers and the two new S2 missions were added to the PC/PS2 servers. On a side note, multiple reports have come in revealing that the rare free mission "Forest of Illusion" has been released on the PC/PS2 servers. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have made it to the 360 just yet.
The latest Japanesse console hardware figures are in with a change in positions as follows:
Nintendo Wii: 94,473
Playstation Portable: 72,528
Nintendo DS Lite: 67,472
Playstation 3: 41,796
Playstation 2: 12,115
Xbox 360: 6,060
Nintendo Wii swaps places with the DS lite, whose now behind the PSP by roughly 6,000 units. Playstation 3 gets an increase from last weeks' reading too while the PS2 and Xbox 360 stay about the same.
The story in Spain and Germany for the most recent software sales charts is once again firmly focused on the continuing success of Nintendo, with five of the six top three positions in both countries playing on a Wii or DS.
In Germany Brain Training continued to sell well in first place, followed by Wii Play and Pokemon Diamond, according to information from Media-Control GfK International for the week ending February 3.
PC shooter Crysis was fourth, with Super Mario Galaxy and Call of Duty 4 in fifth and sixth.
Burnout Paradise, Eye Training, New Super Mario Bros and World of Warcraft finished off the top ten list, giving Nintendo six of the best-selling games last week.
In Spain Wii Play topped the list, although Burnout Paradise for the PlayStation 3 - one of three titles for that platform - sold well in second, pushing various Brain and Training titles down to take up the third to sixth places.
Mario Party 8, Pro Evolution Soccer 2008, WWE Smackdown! vs Raw 2008 and Assassin's Creed were the rest of the entries at the chart's summit.
The full charts are as follows:
Germany
1. More Brain Training (DS)
2. Wii Play (Wii)
3. Pokemon Diamond (DS)
4. Crysis (PC)
5. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
6. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC)
7. Burnout Paradise (PS3)
8. Eye Training (DS)
9. New Super Mario Bros (DS)
10. World of Warcraft (PC)
Spain
1. Wii Play (Wii)
2. Burnout Paradise (PS3)
3. More Brain Training (DS)
4. Big Brain Academy (Wii)
5. Brain Training (DS)
6. Link's Crossbow Training (Wii)
7. Mario Party 8 (Wii)
8. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 (PS3) 9. WWE Smackdown! vs Raw 2008 (PSP)
10. Assassin's Creed (PS3)
Gamers in Omaha have stood up to yet another pile of papers claiming videogames make teenagers violent.
Researchers this time claimed that games about violence increase aggressive thoughts and desensitise you to real-life violence.
The argument is fairly simple. Clever people (who went to university to learn this, remember) used brain scans to prove that a game about violence - presumably something like a gory shooter - causes more arousal than a non-violent game - presumably something like a role-playing or adventure game.
Which is quite true, unless it's a lesbian alien sex scene.
"Exposure to violent video games, even E rated video games, increases aggressive thoughts, increases pro-social behaviour and increases general arousal," Dr. Greg Snyder told KETV7.
The man in the white coat went on to use more graphs to prove that gamers playing these games react less to real-world violence than their pacifist counterparts.
"The more normal it is, the more likely it is they're going to activate or engage in those behaviours when provoked or even unprovoked," added Snyder.
But local teenagers said that was a load of old rubbish, backed by comments from both parents and a weird Gamers in Omaha group.
"Just like any new media, it gets attacked," said Ryan Miller from the Gamers in Omaha group. "When any new genre of music comes out, it gets attacked. TV will, of course, get attacked. I'm sure, way back when, books got attacked."
We're fed up. But we know how much you like this sort of thing. Would you be more likely to kill us before or after you played a game?
The Swedish flash game developer Muskedunder Interactive today announced it has acquired the independent game developer Free Lunch Design. Founded in 1998 by Johan Peitz, Free Lunch Design has since enjoyed a steadily growing fan base for its free casual games. The smash hit Icy Tower boasts over 20,000,000 downloads and over 100 weeks on the Top Ten most popular downloads list on download.com.
Muskedunder Interactive has made a reputation of developing successful advergames and serious games played by millions worldwide for clients like Doritos, Paramount Home Entertainment and Red Cross. The company will continue its business with Johan Peitz as shareholder and new Lead Programmer.
"We will not be leaving the advergame space, but rather expand our development profile" says Magnus Alm, CEO of Muskedunder Interactive. "To the fans of Free Lunch Design I would like to emphasize that we are committed to the brands built by Johan, and we will make sure they stay 100% free and coming at a steady pace."
Today a new webpage for Free Lunch Design was released, making the current portfolio of free games even more accessible to loyal fans and new audiences.
"This is a great injection, taking Free Lunch Design to new heights. The popularity of our games combined with the excellent business side of Muskedunder will create awesome synergetic effects" says Johan Peitz.
Videogame script writer Tom Jubert has drawn a parallel between the state of videogame storylines and cinema and reckons game plot is still in the black and white era.
"It seems contradictory to suggest film is capable of doing just that, but that gaming is somehow different - there's not a leg to stand on", Jubert told CVG when asked if he views videogames as a palatable medium through which to offer commentary on topical issues.
"Gaming's an unfortunate term we've been saddled with", Jubert, who has worked on the Penbumra horror adventures and Black & White 2, added.
He says that a lot of games, especially those of a few years ago, are intellectually akin to a game of tennis, or Snakes & Ladders, but these days that's not really a fair appraisal as interactive entertainment is better.
"Of course," Jubert continued, "topical relevance being palatable and it actually occurring is a different story.
"Blacksite gets a lot of flak for its botched political message - but at least they gave it a shot. Bioshock was altogether less ambitious. But it's early days - in cinematic history we'd still be in black and white".
Upper Deck has decided to make a tabletop version of World of Warcraft, where you play with little lead figures that you paint up in your attic.
It will be the first time Upper Deck - which makes the trading card game - has entered the market, which has been dominated by Games Workshop for so long.
Which should result in a little more rivalry between World of Warcraft and upcoming EA Mythic game Warhammer Online.
Characters range from orc boss Thrall to community favourite Leeroy Jenkins, and each will be created by industry veteran Studio McVey.
The rules are just like its virtual counterpart, too - you tackle dungeons in groups of five and fill action bars with skills and abilities.
You can even buy raid sets to team up with your friends to conquer. Onyxia is the first of these, and she will behave either automatically - presumably going through her three phases (impressed with my knowledge) - or you can pilot her and mix things up a bit.
Upper Deck has plans to do big events like a Darkmoon Faire tournament, as well as both National and World Championship competitions.
The sun just refuses to shine on AMD -- according to several Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, AMD is saying that the quad-core Phenom 9700 and 9900 are going to be delayed yet again, this time to the end of Q3.
Apparently there's a buffer-related glitch in the original design, so AMD is actually "canceling" the two chips and "reintroducing" the revised versions in Q3 as the 9750 and 9950 to "improve consumer confidence." That's certainly an interesting tactic for a chip that's never seen the light of day -- but we'd say that the best thing AMD could do to improve consumer confidence is stop talking and start shipping, no?
Everybody's ritual when they get a new computer is different: some people start installing their favorite programs, some people set their desktop picture to Pushing Daisies (not us, other people... who aren't us), and others check for vulnerable processes that might allow hackers to gain root access. RISE Security falls into that latter category, and spotted a vulnerable version of Samba on a virgin Xandros Eee PC. They ran a pre-built exploit they had for just an occasion, and found that they can indeed root the system through ill-gotten means. No word if there's an update available to patch this hole, but in the interim keep an eye out for scruffy-looking men wearing skull and crossbone paraphernalia snooping around your network.
I came across a post on thekindle pointing to a forum post on eeeph where one of the users shows how he uses FBReader to make his Eee PC go into ‘Kindle’ mode. For those unaware, the Kindle is Amazon’s recently released e-book reader that’s almost impossible to find in stock these days.
While the Kindle and Eee PC are definitely two separate beasts, the Eee PC can actually emulate some of the Kindle’s main features. If you use FBReader, it lets you rotate the Eee PC’s screen to read e-books in portrait mode, and you can assign keys to use for turning the pages- giving you this ‘Kindle’ style mode. You won’t have the paper like screen or EVDO of the Kindle, but you will have a solid 7″ color screen and the ability to other things then simply read.
A legally enforceable cinema-style classification system is to be introduced for video games in an effort to keep children from playing damaging games unsuitable for their age, the Guardian has learned. Under the proposals, it would be illegal for shops to sell classified games to a child below the recommended age.
At present only games showing sex or "gross" violence to humans or animals require age limits. That leaves up to 90% of games on the market , many of which portray weapons, martial arts and extreme combat, free from statutory labelling.
Ministers are also expected to advise parents to keep computers and games consoles away from children's bedrooms as much as possible, and ask them to play games in living rooms or kitchens facing outward so carers can see what is being played.
Ministers are also expected to recommend blocking mechanisms to protect children from seeing unsuitable games, emails or internet sites. Discussions have already been held with internet service providers to see if an agreement on a standardised filter can be reached.
A review of violence and video games has been commissioned by Gordon Brown from the former television psychologist Tanya Byron. She is officially due to report next month, but education and culture ministers have a sense of the report's direction. She has previously said she would examine the current classification system to see if it is confusing for parents.
The report's contents, which include a lengthy review of the literature on the impact of video games on children, has been discussed between the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Ministers are anxious to strike a balance between the entertainment, knowledge and pleasure children gain from highly profitable internet and computer games, as well as the dangers inherent in the unregulated world of the net and its overuse by children.
Under the Video Recordings Act, most games are exempt from the British Board of Film Classification and only lose this exemption if they depict, to any significant extent, gross violence against humans or animals. Other games can be classified by a separate, entirely voluntary pan-European scheme administered by the Video Standards Council.
Policing such regimes is difficult as it is possible to buy games over the net and simply tick the box stating the purchaser is over 18.
A new British Standards Institution specification proposed by Ofcom, the communications regulator, and the industry is expected to allow the developers of filtering products to test them against the standard designed to protect children and other users from illegal or unsuitable content. Companies that pass the test will be able to display a child safety online kitemark.
Ministers hope the Byron review will act as a way of calming the debate about video games which has become increasingly polarised and based on prejudice. They say they are also willing to examine proposals made by a Tory MP earlier this week for an internet standards authority to be set up to ensure that service providers offer a two-tier system with users able to pick content suitable for adults or children.
In a further sign of Tory concern, Julian Brazier will bring forward a private member's bill this month giving powers for a new body to appeal against decisions of the BBFC in its classification of video games and DVDs.
Hugo Swire, a former shadow culture secretary, has suggested that the default setting for internet content would be for children, with a password or pin needed for unfiltered material.
NetDevil is planning to launch persistent online space game Jumpgate: Evolution in the second half of 2008.
So said lead producer Hermann Peterscheck, who had a chat with videogaming247 about how it was a different kettle of fish to EVE Online.
"There are many differences between the two games," began Peterscheck. "Obviously the big difference is that in Jumpgate you fly the ship in a sort of action way, whereas EVE is much more of a strategy type game.
"It's also not a combat, quest, advance centric game. I would say we are much closer to Freelancer or Wing Commander with an online component than that we are EVE with an action component, if that makes sense."
Jumpgate: Evolution was picked up by Codemasters Online Gaming to sit alongside fantasy stalwart Lord of the Rings Online in its meaty MMOG catalogue.
And while EVE marks itself out as an obvious competitor, Peterscheck believes everything potentially blocks its path, although he feels there is a more casual and action-focused audience lurking in wait.
"I think that because we are seen as having good graphics and are focusing on a more action-friendly, low time-commitment gameplay, we hit a nerve with a lot of players," continued Peterscheck.
"There's also a much bigger ex-Wing Commander, ex-Privateer community out there than people would think - and these people tend to say things like, 'It's about time someone made a good space combat game again.' Well, we think so too.
He added: "If we make an exceptional game we will get people from all over and some whom have never played an online game. I sincerely hope we can make one of those exceptional games."
That right kids, it's everyone's wildest dream come to fruition: Vista SP1 is now officially available for your beta testing pleasure. According to a report from Geekzone in New Zealand, the update is now making its way into the hands of beta testers, with a broad rollout planned sometime in March.
Apparently, those desperate to get with the newness will have to use a standalone installer as opposed to the updater, and there are some minor issues with driver compatibility -- but we're pretty sure that won't stop you from going to town on this baby. Get it now if you're a beta tester... or have a BitTorrent client.
From the beloved best-selling series of books and upcoming film adaptation, comes The Spiderwick Chronicles, a fantasy adventure for children and adults alike. Like the movie, the game recreates the adventures of Jared, Simon, Mallory and the mysterious book that offers them entrance into the unseen universe of faeries, goblins, pixies, elves, ogres and other extraordinary and enchanted creatures who have lived among people for centuries but are invisible to the human eye.
Players can take the role of all three Grace siblings, each with unique abilities, along with Thimbletack the Brownie, whose small size allows players to discover the inner passages of the enchanted Spiderwick home. Featuring several areas from the film to explore, gamers must solve quests by engaging in kid-friendly combat, while capturing and cataloging all the creatures they find along the way.
features
Pages: 400
Platform: PC
BradyGames' World of Warcraft Bestiary features statistical information on the denizens of the World of Warcraft Universe-including HPS, Armor, Damage, Resistances, and Abilities.
Over 6,000 monsters filtered through over 2,000 categories.
Every entry will be indexed for ease of use.
World of Warcraft has over 9 million subscribers worldwide.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the trade group representing the videogame industry, filed a "Special 301" report to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) today pleading for help battling software piracy. The report singles out Canada, China, Malaysia, Russia, and parts of Europe as being extreme problem areas where piracy runs rampant.
"Countries that support computer and videogame piracy discourage publishers from establishing viable and legitimate markets," said Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the ESA. "The Special 301 process sends a strong message to them to clean up their act to avoid damaging trade sanctions.
"In 2007, our industry had a record-breaking year with receipts totaling $18.85 billion, but piracy closes off promising markets, artificially limiting our industry's ability to contribute even more economic growth to the American high-tech economy and economies of our trading partners."
The many forms of piracy cited in the report include online file swapping, CD-R and DVD-R burning, the factory production of new discs, cartridge counterfeiting, and "Internet café piracy." The ESA says parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central/South America have videogame markets made up of 80 to 90 percent pirated software.
The Special 301 report asks for government help dealing with the following specific problems:
Legal and enforcement deficiencies in Canada. Pirated copies of games and circumvention devices have permeated retail markets in Canada, due to legal deficiencies and that IPR enforcement remains a low priority for public officials.
Pirate production for export in China and Malaysia. Pirated optical discs and cartridge games manufactured in China stunt legitimate game sales in many foreign markets. Pirated optical discs produced in and exported from Malaysia produce similar problems.
Impediments to growth in the Chinese market. Excessive bureaucratic delays in title approval, coupled with easy access to pirated copies and a ban on the sale of home consoles artificially constrain industry growth in China.
Saturation of Russian market. Factory production of pirated games in Russia has saturated what should otherwise be a rich market, particularly for PC game product.
Online piracy explosion in Europe. Italy, Spain, Poland and Sweden are among the most problematic countries with respect to online piracy, particularly through the use of P-2-P protocols. Online piracy growth is not confined to Europe, with extraordinarily high online piracy noted in Brazil, Canada and China.
Paraguay as pirate hub for Latin America. Paraguay continues to serve as a major transshipment point for pirated and counterfeit games from Asia, affecting many South American markets, including Brazil.
Market access in Brazil and India. Legitimate game sales are virtually non-existent in Brazil and India, owing to high tariffs and additional taxes.
"This year our Special 301 filing highlights countries that urgently need to begin backing up their commitment to creativity and innovation," said Gallagher. "We look forward to working with USTR and other supporting government agencies to achieve tangible results and hopefully succeed in lowering piracy in these key countries," said Gallagher. "Freeing these markets from the pirates' stranglehold will also help empower a local video game economy."
The latest title in the former Sony exclusive franchise Devil May Cry has debuted in the UK's All Formats charts at number one, with the lion's share of sales on the Xbox 360.
Sixty one per cent of sales were on the Microsoft console, with the rest on Sony's PlayStation 3 and PC. The game is number one in the All Formats charts but also the individual format charts as well.
Sega's success with Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games continues as the release of the DS version sees sales jump 85 per cent as it climbs to number two, while Propaganda Games scores an impressive debut at number three with the latest in the Turok series.
Previous number one Burnout Paradise is pushed to number four, with Wii Play at number five.
A Wii release to accompany the PC and PS2 versions of Oxygen's PDC World Championship Darts 08 helps it break into the top ten at six, while Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is at seven.
Dr Kawashima's Brain Training is at eight this week, with Sega's new IP The Club debuting in the top ten at nine, just ahead of FIFA 08 at ten.
Other new releases in the top forty this week include Eidos' Conflict: Denied Ops at 11 and DS title Professor Kageyama's Maths Training at 16.
Microsoft Game Studios boss Shane Kim has confirmed that the Marvel Universe MMO has been canned.
He believes most games based on the subscription-based business model it was following do not make enough money to be deemed commercially successful. It was too late for Marvel Universe to begin exploring other possibilities - especially with many other titles taking higher priority on the list.
"I'll confirm. Marvel and we have agreed to end development on the MMO. It was an amicable decision," Shane Kim told MTV Multiplayer.
"When we first entered into the development and agreement of the development of Marvel Universe Online, we thought we would create another subscription-based MMO. And if you really look at the data there's basically one [game] that's successful and everything else wouldn't meet our level or definition of commercial success.
"And then you have to look [and say]: Can we change the business model for that? Is that really viable given how far we are in development? And so forth. Does Marvel want to do that? There's a whole bunch of factors," he added.
Marvel Universe Online was in development for Xbox 360 and PC, and announced to the public at Microsoft event X06. Cryptic Studios of City of Heroes fame was developing, having finally got the Marvel licence under its belt.
Last month Marvel and Electronic Arts terminated a development deal that saw the two companies co-create intellectual property.
NovaLogic has put a teaser on its website advertising a previously unheard of Delta Force game for release this year.
It goes by the name of Delta Force: Angel Falls, although some have seen it as Black Ops, bizarrely.
Underneath the image is a message suggesting more information is coming soon.
No other details have been given at present, but it will be the first new NovaLogic release in the series since Delta Force: Xtreme in 2005.
Delta Force is a tactical first-person shooter that appeared originally in 1998, and introduced a more realistic hide-and-shoot style of gun play. Was terrifically good fun in multiplayer.
Its popularity was evident and it has spawned a further nine follow-up titles since.
May 2008? Crikey, we never expected BioWare's 360 RPG Mass Effect wouldn't release on PC, but we're a little surprised that it'll be with us so soon.
BioWare's a developer that doesn't mess around when it comes to ports - look at Jade Empire for evidence - and so it's taking pains to optimise the game for the PC platform .
It's not rocket science, with optimised controls and higher-resolution visuals and textures on the cards, but on top of that the studio's talking about "Run & Gun Control" ("Players can assign biotic powers or skills to 'hot keys' allowing them to play Mass Effect with a heavier focus on action"), a new decryption mini-game and a revamped inventory system and user interface.
The plot:
Mass Effect invites players to take the role of Commander Shepard as they set out on an adventure to save the galaxy from imminent destruction. Wrought with treachery, heroism, difficult decisions and a universe filled with unique and colorful species, Mass Effect delivers a truly compelling storyline.
Optimized for the PC, Mass Effect for the PC
incorporates the following features:
Optimized controls designed specifically for the PC.
High resolution visuals - Mass Effect for the PC features highly detailed textures, characters and environments.
Fully customizable controls - PC gamers can re-map the control scheme any way they like.
Run & Gun Control - Players can assign biotic powers or skills to 'hot keys' allowing them to play Mass Effect with a heavier focus on action.
New decryption mini-game.
New inventory screen GUI and functionality - The enhanced inventory system makes it easier for players to equip and modify their weapons and armor.
Mass Effect combines a deep story with intense combat and challenges the player to make difficult decisions that can significantly impact the course of events. An innovative conversation system allows for lifelike interaction with some of the most realistic digital actors, voiced by Hollywood actors such as Seth Green, Marina Sirtis, Lance Henriksen and Keith David.
The PC version is being published by EA as opposed to Microsoft, and the former will now handle publication of Mass Effect products going forward.
Spore will be released here for PC on 5th September 2008 and in the US two days later on 7th September, EA has confirmed to Eurogamer. Europe first! Woo!
EA's since confirmed that Mac, DS and mobile versions will both arrive on that date too.
"We're in our final stages of testing and polish with Spore, and the team at Maxis can't wait to see the cosmos of content created by the community later this year," Will Wright said in the obligatory release quote.
The Maxis-developed game is a kind of sandbox life simulation where players control the evolution of a species throughout its history across various phases, eventually colonising outer space.
Providing it doesn't get derailed by fossil fuel shortages, global terrorism or watching Record Breakers.
An article from last week runs down the new mass audience for gaming among families, women and older people. The importance of the mass audience in gaming's spectacular growth is seen most clearly in the success of Nintendo's Wii, which is far outselling its more technically advanced hardware competitors, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and PlayStation 3 from Sony. Wii Play was the No. 2-selling game of last year even though it received an abysmal score of 58 out of 100 at Metacritic, which aggregates reviews. The Times says that as video games become more popular hard-core gamers are becoming an ever smaller part of the audience. 'Paradoxically, at a moment when technology allows designers to create ever more complex and realistic single-player fantasies, the growth in the now $18 billion gaming market is in simple, user-friendly experiences that families and friends can enjoy together.
Region accounts for around 60 per cent of PC sales
Speaking exclusively to our sister site Eurogamer.net, Maxis's Patrick Buechner has explained why Spore is to be released in Europe on September 5, two days earlier than in the US.
Asked if Maxis was always aiming for a simultaneous release Buechner said, "Oh, absolutely. Europe probably represents about 60 per cent or more of our PC business, so getting it right in Europe is going to be a real focus over the next few months."
"Getting the launch right, getting the game working right here, getting those online features working in Europe... Europe is the priority for Spore," he continued.
Spore has been delayed several times since the original projected release of 2006, and more recent launch windows of late 2007 and spring 2008. September 5 is the first official date given and Buechner is confident it won't change.
"We wanted to be able to give a date that we knew that we could stick to," he said, explaining the long wait for release date confirmation. "And we're really confident that we're going to be able to make this date."
"It is a little bit later and some people are sad," he confessed, but added that public reaction has mostly been positive. "Most of the fansites that I was reading, and most of the forum posts that I was reading, they're just really happy to have an actual date that's official."
At a preview event earlier this week, Buechner had said that Spore was "almost done".
"We're spending a lot of time doing usability testing, and there's a lot of polishing and tuning that needs to be done," he explained. The online content-sharing features of the Sporepedia, which will also be available on the Spore.com website, are a particular challenge, he noted.
"Anything online is a challenge to get right and make sure that it's operating smoothly. We're doing load-testing over the next several months just to make sure that all those systems work, so that when you turn it on in September it doesn't have any major issues." However, he stated that there wouldn't be a public beta test before launch.
"Also... It's just a really big game," he said. "Anything from the microbial level up to travelling through space; the sheer scale of it is pretty mind-boggling."
Buechner confirmed the Mac and DS versions of Spore will launch simultaneously with the PC game, although the release date for the mobile phone game "may be just a little bit different".
Commenting on the unusual simultaneous release for the Mac port he said, "I think Spore really fits with the Mac audience. We know we can reach out to the gamers, they're already pretty excited, but the creativity elements of Spore will really appeal to that Macintosh user mentality. They probably think of themselves as creative folks on the cutting edge of technology, and Spore fits in with that."
Finally, Buechner confirmed that a Wii version of Spore is in the works at Maxis, but "it'll be some time". Asked if it would be close to the scope of the PC and Mac game, or a more limited spin-off like the DS version, he would only say, "We're not porting it over. You know, we're still so early in design and prototyping that I don't know where we're going to end up, so I don't want to lead you down one path. But suffice to say that it's being developed with the Wii controls and technology in mind."
In terms of other formats, Buechner simply said that "nothing has been announced" - so we would suggest PS3 and 360 owners don't hold their collective breath.
When using the words "Korea" and "StarCraft" in the same sentence, it's no time to make jokes. So, when The Korea Times says Starcraft II is "expected to begin service this year," we wonder if it knows something the rest of us don't. The idea of StarCraft II coming out this year is possible, but Blizzard hasn't given the slightest indication for us to assume such a thing. We're glad The Korea Times thinks Starcraft II is on its way (and we hope its right!), but if there's anything we've learned its that Blizzard uses BlizzCon or its World Wide Invitational later in the year for big announcements.
The Korea Times' actual story isn't about a Starcraft II release, but about foreign titles cutting into the "long-run popularity of locally made games." The piece says Lord of the Rings Online plans to start in Korea this year and games like World of Warcraft and Hellgate:London are already incredibly popular. It's interesting to note -- although completely logical given the way StarCraft is played in Korea -- that The Korea Times treats Starcraft II as more of an MMO than a single-player game with multiplayer component.
EA's Casual Entertainment division is ready to dilute expand the Sim franchise with a plethora of new titles over the next three years. The company also stated it plans to develop the "next generation" version of The Sims within three years. The MySims franchise -- after selling 3 million units for $100 million in revenue -- will receive two more titles in MySims Kingdom (Q4 '08) and MySims Party (Q1 '09).
More Sims-branded games include SimAnimals and SimCity Creator. SimAnimals is expected by March '09 and SimCity Creator is part of EA's fiscal year 2011, meaning between March 2010 and February 2011. We doubt this is even the end of Sim announcements for this year -- gotta save something
An EA analyst report and meeting (via ShackNews) has revealed that Pandemic Studios is developing a new Lord of the Rings title. The studio, which was recently acquired by EA along with BioWare, continues to work on the twice-delayed destruction-fest, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.
Little is known about Pandemic's journey to Middle-Earth, save for EA CEO John Riccitiello's announcement that it will release during the publisher's 2009 fiscal year -- somewhere between April 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009. You'll know more when we know more.
EA is clearly no longer interested in keeping the development of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 a secret, what with the forthcoming title appearing rather prominently on the cover of PC Gamer's April 2008 issue. Though details are currently scarce, Red Alert 3 is likely to provide another strategic romp through an alternate history that began when a time-traveling Albert Einstein erased Hitler from the history books. The unfortunate side-effect, of course, was the rise of Soviet power and stylized, AK-wielding ladies (pictured).
The game's intended platforms have yet to be revealed, though our keen journalistic sense tells us that the PC Gamer cover hints at an appearance on the ... Gizmondo? No, that can't be right. If only EA would quit Stalin and give us some more info!
10Tacle Entertainment has said adventure game Jack Keane will be out here on 7th March.
A demo has been released today so you can give four of the game's levels a try. Just pop over to the official website for that.
Jack Keane is a swashbuckling tale of a man desperate for money. He charters a ship and gets mixed up in a plot involving a mad scientist, man-eating plants and evil plots to overthrow the British Empire.
It appears to bear more than a passing resemblance to the golden days of Monkey Island and parodies many films and games along the way.
Deck13 is developing the game. You might remember its work on fellow adventure title Ankh.
Quest over to our Jack Keane gallery to see what it looks like, or just download the demo and try it for yourself.
Eurogamer Germany gave the game 8/10, if you need a little enticing.
Yesterday BioWare didn't surprise us at all by revealing Mass Effect was coming PC. But it did surprise us by giving out a release date of as soon as May.
You can read yesterday's news here, along with details on how the game will be enhanced for its PC outing.
Industry analysts Pacific Crest Securities believe that successors to Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii should be on the market in two year's time.
The firm expects the industry to see peak sales in 2010, as the two companies roll-out new hardware and the current leaders in the handheld space also come to the end of their cycles.
"We believe that peak industry sales will occur in 2010, given that Microsoft will likely introduce its next console that year and Nintendo will likely launch before then," said Evan Wilson, reports GameSpot.
"Further, 2010 is also likely to coincide with the end of the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP cycles," he said.
Sony has always said that its latest console, the PlayStation 3, will have a ten year life cycle.
SCEE president David Reeves told GamesIndustry.biz last year that the the company hopes the PS3 will remain on the market for ten year's due to the built-in hard drive and the ability to upgrade the console firmware.
The Dallas Business Journal has vehemently defended itself against accusations of inaccurate reporting regarding a 2008 release date for Duke Nukem Forever.
A simple story about a highly-anticipated (for over a decade now) piece of gaming software turned into quite the reporting fiasco over the past days.
About a week ago, the Dallas Business Journal ran a story stating that Garland, Tex.-based Duke Nukem Forever developer 3D Realms had "confirmed" a late 2008 release for Duke's next long-delayed adventure.
Following the report, Next-Gen contacted 3D Realms' boss Scott Miller promptly for confirmation. What we got was a one-line e-mail from the always-outspoken Miller:
"Quite simply, they are lying b******s and they know it."
During the course of the day, the DBJ updated its story, removing the "confirmed" line and scaled back the statement, saying Duke Nukem Forever is "possible" in 2008, and noted the story's update.
But being called a "lying b*****d" stings for any publication, particularly for DBJ Web editor Stephen Webster, who wrote the original piece after an interview with Miller.
Webster contacted Next-Gen following Miller's remarks, saying that he stood by his report, as did the entire 41-paper American City Business Journals Network.
A self-professed fan of Miller and 3D Realms, Webster was disappointed with the turn the Duke story took. "We are not liars," Webster said.
3D Realms' George Broussard eventually posted a message on the developer's official forums regarding the DBJ piece that said, "In what appears to be an unfortunate turn of events, there seems to have been some confusion between what was 'off the record' and what was not. I suppose we're used to dealing with gaming press and not mainstream press. Lesson learned."
So what was really said during the interview between Miller and the DBJ? The DBJ website posted the audio clip (mp3) in question in direct response to Miller's comments to Next-Gen:
Webster: Ideally, we'd like to spotlight some of the projects coming out in 2008: Ghostbusters, Rage, Borderlands, and maybe it's just hopeful on my part, Duke Forever. Of course, you don't have to tell me when it's coming out. I know how...
Miller: It might make this year. We can't make any sort of official announcement. We're pushing for this year. Frankly, I think we're going to miss it by just a by a few months, but it's definitely an internal push.
Webster: That's good to hear.
Miller clearly said Duke "might make this year," a sentiment that was reflected in the DBJ's updated story (an update that Miller probably didn't see before his "lying b*****d" remark). There was nothing anywhere near a confirmation of anything, so DBJ was right to update the story. An "internal push" in Duke Nukem's case could put the game on shelves sometime between this holiday and the advent of cyborg butlers.
And could we expect anything else than vagueness regarding Duke Nukem Forever's release date? This is a game that's been in development in some shape or form since 1997, and 3D Realms is known as one of those "when it's done, it's done" game makers.
The DBJ plans to run a print story this Friday on the North Texas videogames industry, including Webster's full report on 3D Realms and Duke Nukem Forever. Editor-in-chief Kevin Bumgarner will be examining the Duke Nukem reporting fiasco in his weekly column.
Next-Gen expects to receive a scan of the DBJ piece this week.
Our insightful conclusion? We still have no damn clue when Duke Nukem Forever is coming out.
The Mythos team can't get enough of us. Well, either that or the back-handers are finally starting to bear fruit?
Anyway, having already graced us with exclusive Mythos gameplay footage earlier in the month, it's now sent us a second exclusive movie.
It runs for just under 60 seconds, and as per usual you can watch it via our video player on the right.
Mythos is a hack 'n' slash fantasy MMO very much in the Diablo mould, and will be free to download and play when it's released, sometime in the next few months.
We won't ramble on any more, but instead point you in the direction of this recent preview for further details.
NCsoft has said it plans to launch promising massively-multiplayer online role-playing game Aion - Tower of Eternity this year.
European boss Geoff Heath aired the news to videogaming247, after releasing a solid and positive set of financial results.
"We've got Aion coming out later this year, which we feel could be our most successful product to date," said Heath.
It certainly looked the part when we played it at the beginning of 2007 which, admittedly, is rather a long time ago. However, given its Lineage-like skew towards hardcore grinding, it might alienate a western audience.
One of the stand-out titles in the financial results was Tabula Rasa, the Richard Garriott-designed online space action game that earned an admirable 8/10 from us and USD 5 million from you, apparently.
"It's always difficult launching an MMO that's different," continued Heath. "We did it with Guild Wars and it worked, although it took a little while, and I think it's the same with Tabula Rasa.
"We try to keep doing different things. With TR, it launched, and it attracted a lot of interest, and it's building very nicely. We'll have regular updates on it throughout the year, and we feel confident that we're going to grow the player base."
Aside from Guild Wars and City of Heroes which, incidentally, will continue to expand for at least two years to come, Heath outlined the first real fruits of the deal with Sony to produce content for PS3.
"We've got an absolute wealth of product in development at the moment," boasted Heath. "We're beginning to really get some traction now on what we're doing on PS3."
Unfortunately he was unable to spill any beans, but said we should see some "stuff" on PS3 later this year. Perhaps at E3, then - a year on from the partnership announcement.
Or at the Game Developers Conference next week. We can but hope.
Super Smash Bros Brawl, which burst through the 1 million mark after just 11 days, is top of the software sales chart in Japan for the second week, according to Media Create data for the week ending February 10.
The game sold another 252,000 copies last week to bring its total to 1,071,000, making it one of Nintendo's fastest-selling titles for the Wii.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Gihren's Ambition, The Axis' Threat was a new entry in second place for the PlayStation Portable, selling 123,000 copies, while Wii Fit was third selling 65,000.
The rest of the top ten showed signs of returning to its Nintendo-dominated state, following some variety in last week's chart, with seven of the top ten games - and 22 of the top 30 - selling for the Wii or DS platforms.
Devil May Cry 4 dropped a couple of places to fourth while Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games was fifth and Wii Sports sixth.
The only other new entry was L, the Prologue to Death Note: Rasen's Trap for the DS in seventh, with Family Ski, Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut and Mario Party DS finished the top ten list.
The full chart is as follows:
1. Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii)
2. Mobile Suit Gundam: Gihren's Ambition, The Axis' Threat (PSP)
3. Wii Fit (Wii)
4. Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)
5. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS)
6. Wii Sports (Wii)
7. L, the Prologue to Death Note: Rasen's Trap (DS)
8. Family Ski (Wii)
9. Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut (PS2)
10. Mario Party DS (DS)
SEGA has told Eurogamer that SEGA Superstars Tennis will be out for PS3, 360, PS2, Wii and DS on 28th March.
Ellie radioed in from a press event to tell us, confirming the date listed on the mysterious Nintendo Germany schedule unearthed yesterday.
Our roving reporter in the field also confirmed that the PS3 and 360 versions will have online support, which is broken down into 9-player tournaments, friendlies, being a spectator, watching highlights and generally doing other Virtua Tennis things. Yes there is voice chat, too.
However, the Wii offering will not support online play.
The publisher also told us it was making the game with SEGA fans in mind, which accounts for it having 80 songs in from titles in its past catalogue, as well as character-themed levels like one for Alex Kidd and another for Puyo Pop.
There's a House of the Dead level as well, except its name has been changed to Curien Mansion so it can be sold in Germany, where zombies have green blood.
Ellie seemed to like what she saw, and you can have a look for yourself in our SEGA Superstars Tennis gamepage.
Welcome to this week's Games & Toys update, our weekly summary featuring all new product arrivals from the last seven days.
First and foremost, a Happy Chinese New Year to all our readers. Releases have been calm directly after the holidays, nonetheless, we bring you some hot picks that just came in this week. This include the US version of the much awaited PlayStation3™ release of Devil May Cry 4! Test out the graphic capabilities of your PlayStation3™ console, and not to mention, enjoy some exciting game play. Another game for fans out there is the Asian version of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, which offers Chinese language support. Experience adrenaline running through your veins as you race through the course from the comfort of your home!
Some interesting games that came out this week for the Xbox360™ console include Disney's Turok and Conflict: Denied Ops.
For handheld consoles, we have Naruto Shippuuden: Dairansen! Kage Bunsen Emaki where you can adventure with Naruto and experiment with his fascinating ninja techniques on your Nintendo DS™.
If you feel lost in Lost Odyssey we can provide you with some directions through this week's guide book release: We are bringing you Lost Odyssey: Prima Official Game Guide.
And last, but not least, we have the plush dolls of the beloved healer of many peoples' favorite series, One Piece! In two different postures too! One Piece 10th Anniversary Super DX Plush Doll: Chopper Type A and One Piece 10th Anniversary Super DX Plush Doll: Chopper Type B.
Here is a summary of all new releases from this week, followed by a quick preview of what is expected to be hot next week.
Xbox360™:
Conflict: Denied Ops ASIA US$ 49.90
Culdcept Saga US US$ 44.90
Dark Messiah Might & Magic Elements ASIA US$ 49.90
Karaoke Revolution: American Idol Encore Bundle US US$ 69.90
The Spiderwick Chronicles US US$ 54.90
The Spiderwick Chronicles ASIA US$ 44.90
Turok ASIA US$ 49.90
WWE Smackdown Vs. RAW 2008 JPN US$ 64.90
PlayStation3™:
Devil May Cry 4 US US$ 64.90
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue ASIA US$ 49.90
WWE Smackdown Vs. RAW 2008 JPN US$ 64.90
Nintendo Wii™:
Karaoke Revolution: American Idol Encore Bundle US US$ 69.90
Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 JPN US$ 59.90
Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 (w/ Wii Zapper) JPN N/A
My Horse & Me US US$ 49.90
The Spiderwick Chronicles US US$ 49.90
WWE Smackdown Vs. RAW 2008 JPN US$ 59.90
PlayStation2™:
D.C. Da Capo The Origin JPN US$ 64.90
D.C. Da Capo The Origin [Limited Edition] JPN US$ 89.90
Jissen Pachi-Slot Hisshouhou! Selection: Salaryman Kintarou - Slotter Kintarou - Ore no Sora JPN US$ 34.90
Karaoke Revolution: American Idol Encore US US$ 44.90
Karaoke Revolution: American Idol Encore Bundle US US$ 59.90
KimiKiss (ebKore+) JPN US$ 39.90
Kyou Kara Maou! Shin Ma-Kuni no Kyuujitsu JPN US$ 59.90
Nobunaga's Ambition: Rise to Power US US$ 44.90
Poison Pink JPN US$ 64.90
The Spiderwick Chronicles US US$ 44.90
Twisted Metal: Head On, Extra Twisted Edition US US$ 24.90
WWE Smackdown Vs. RAW 2008 JPN US$ 59.90
Wrestle Angels: Survivor (Good Price) JPN US$ 34.90
Nintendo DS™:
Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles US US$ 34.90
Dekiru Otoko no Motel Life: Hiru no Mote Kouza Hen JPN US$ 39.90
Dekiru Otoko no Motel Life: Yoru no Mote Jissen Hen JPN US$ 39.90
Digimon Championship JPN US$ 48.90
Happy Happy Clover JPN US$ 34.90
Hokuto no Ken: Hokuto Kami Denshoumono no Michi JPN US$ 48.90
Indo Shiki Keisan Drill DS (Zennou Series Vol. 02) JPN US$ 39.90
Koinu Dekururin JPN US$ 19.90
Miyamoto Sansuu Kyoushitsu no Kyouzai: Kenkunaru Puzzle DS-Han JPN US$ 39.90
My Horse & Me US US$ 34.90
Naruto Shippuuden: Dairansen! Kage Bunsen Emaki JPN US$ 48.90
Nintendo DS Lite (Cobalt/Black) - 110V US US$ 189.90
Otometeki Koi Kakumei * Love Revo!! DS JPN US$ 48.90
Paws & Claws: Pet Resort US US$ 34.90
Pet Pals: Animal Doctor US US$ 24.90
Professor Layton and The Curious Villiage US US$ 39.90
Puppy Palace US US$ 34.90
The Spiderwick Chronicles US US$ 34.90
Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2nd Season JPN US$ 48.90
Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2nd Season [Konamistyle Special Edition Complete Set] JPN N/A
Zoo Tycoon 2 DS US US$ 34.90
Sony PSP™:
Downstream Panic! US US$ 34.90
Medal of Honor Heroes (EA Best Hits) JPN US$ 29.90
Mobile Suit Gundam: Giren no Yabou - Axis no Kyoui KOR US$ 49.90
No Reservations JPN US$ 11.90
Power Cover US$ 9.90
Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice US US$ 34.90
PC Games:
The Spiderwick Chronicles (DVD-ROM) US US$ 24.90
Winning Post 7 Maximum 2008 JPN US$ 69.90
Game Guides:
Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom Prima Official Game Guide US US$ 19.90
Lost Odyssey: Prima Official Game Guide US US$ 19.90
The Club Official Strategy Guide US US$ 16.90
World of Warcraft Bestiary US US$ 24.90
Toys & More:
Art of Shunya Yamashita Series 2 Funny Knights 1/7 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Petra No.1 JPN N/A
Art of Shunya Yamashita Series 2 Funny Knights 1/7 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Petra No.2 (Milestone Limited Edition) JPN N/A
Excellent Modell One Piece Neo-EX Tony 1/8 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Tony Chopper JPN N/A
Kamen Rider Den-O Pre-Painted Figure: Type A JPN US$ 12.90
Kamen Rider Den-O Pre-Painted Figure: Type B JPN US$ 9.90
Kamen Rider Den-O Pre-Painted Figure: Type C JPN US$ 9.90
Kamen Rider Den-O Pre-Painted Figure: Type D JPN US$ 9.90
Kirby Adventure DX Super Kirby Plush Doll: Type A JPN US$ 14.90
Kirby Adventure DX Super Kirby Plush Doll: Type B JPN US$ 14.90
One Piece 10th Anniversary Super DX Plush Doll: Chopper Type A JPN US$ 14.90
One Piece 10th Anniversary Super DX Plush Doll: Chopper Type B JPN US$ 14.90
Sengoku Basara 2 Chara Fortune Key Chain Trading Figure JPN US$ 3.49
Stuffed Collection Tales of Agriculture Plush Doll: Aspergillus Oryzae JPN N/A
Stuffed Collection Tales of Agriculture Plush Doll: Cladosporium trichoides JPN N/A
Stuffed Collection Tales of Agriculture Plush Doll: Lactobacillus yogurti JPN N/A
Stuffed Collection Tales of Agriculture Plush Doll: Penicillium chrysogenum JPN N/A
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu 1/8 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Metamo Haruhi Suzumiya (Bunny Version) JPN US$ 39.90
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu Figma 001 Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Yuki Nagato (School Uniform Version) JPN N/A
Tezuka Moderno Labo No.006 Black Jack Non Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Black Jack JPN N/A
Witchblade Fine Scenery 1/8 Scale Pre-painted PVC Figure: Amaha Masane & Amaha Rihoko (Swimsuit version) JPN US$ 59.90
Video Game Soundtracks:
Start JPN US$ 29.90
The Idolm@ster Master Live 00 [CD+DVD Limited Edition] JPN US$ 17.90
Here is a quick outlook what's expected to be hot next week.
PlayStation3™:
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition ASIA US$ 49.90
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition JPN US$ 59.90
Xbox360™:
Lost Odyssey US US$ 64.90
Nintendo Wii™:
Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008 JPN US$ 64.90
PlayStation2™:
NiGHTS into Dreams... JPN US$ 39.90
NiGHTS into Dreams... (Nightopia Dream Pack) JPN US$ 49.90
Nintendo DS™:
Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice US US$ 29.90
Bokujou Monogatari: Kira Kira Taiyou to Nakama Tachi JPN US$ 48.90
Populous DS JPN US$ 48.90
Sekaiju no Meikyuu 2: Shoou no Seihai JPN US$ 48.90
Space Invaders Extreme JPN US$ 39.90
Sony PSP™:
Musou Orochi JPN US$ 52.90
Space Invaders Extreme ASIA US$ 42.90
Space Invaders Extreme JPN US$ 39.90
Microsoft Corp. today announced the results of a new survey that found teenagers between seventh and 10th grades are less likely to illegally download content from the Internet when they know the laws for downloading and sharing content online.
About half of those teens, however, said they were not familiar with these laws, and only 11 percent of them clearly understood the current rules for downloading images, literature, music, movies and software. Teens who were familiar with downloading rules credited their parents, TV or stories in magazines and newspapers, and Web sites -- more so than their schools -- as resources for information about illegal downloading.
Following are additional key findings from the survey:
-- A lack of familiarity with the rules and guidelines for downloading from the Internet contributes to teen opinions that punishment is unnecessary.
-- Almost half of the teenagers surveyed (49 percent) said they are not familiar with the rules and guidelines for downloading images, literature, music, movies and software from the Internet. Only one in 10 (11 percent) said they understood the rules "very well."
-- Among teenagers who said they were familiar with the laws, more than eight in 10 (82 percent) said illegal downloaders should be punished. In contrast, slightly more than half (57 percent) of those unfamiliar with the laws said violators should be punished.
-- In general, teenagers regard illegal downloading over the Internet as less offensive than other forms of stealing.
-- Less than half of the teens surveyed (48 percent) indicated punishment was appropriate for illegal downloading, while 90 percent indicated punishment was appropriate for stealing a bike.
-- Teens rely on parents for rules on downloading.
-- Teens report that their parents are their main source of information about what they can and cannot do online. Reinforcing the role of parents is the finding that some of the strongest deterrents to stealing and illegally sharing content are the prospective consequences.
-- Among teens who download or share content online, boys are more likely than girls to say that they would not continue after being told the rules* to download or share content over the Internet without paying for it or gaining the owner's permission (76 percent vs. 68 percent respectively).
-- Teens are challenged by peer pressure and their wallets.
-- Among teens, peer pressure and cost also have a strong influence on attitudes toward illegal downloading.
In Japan, console sale positions stay the same like last weeks reading but console figures take a hit as follows below:
Nintendo Wii: 81,737
Playstation Portable: 75,912
Nintendo DS Lite: 60,464
Playstation 3 : 23,985
Playstation 2: 11,038
Xbox 360 : 3,615
Wii takes roughly a 12,700 drop, DS Lite down by 7,000, PS3 drops about 18,000, PS2 down 1,000 and Xbox down by 2,400. Only the PSP sees an increase by about 3,000 units.
New NPD figures reported by MarketWatch have revealed PlayStation 3 outsold in Xbox 360 in the US last month, with 269,000 Sony machines shifted compared to 230,000 MS consoles.
Nintendo is still sitting on thebiggest pile of gold though; Americans snapped up 274,000 Wiis in January. The DS beat the PSP, too, with 251,000 units sold versus 230,000 for Sony's handheld.
Microsoft said the lower Xbox 360 sales were due to temporary stock shortages. The company assured shopkeepers it is working hard to churn out more consoles as fast as possible.
Call of Duty 4 was the best-selling game of the month, with 330,000 copies shifted. Wii Play came in second, followed by Guitar Hero III for Wii and Rock Band for Xbox 360. Other top sellers included Super Mario Galaxy, Burnout Paradise and Mario Party DS.
City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios is working on brand new superhero MMO named Champions Online.
Initial details state that the game is in development for PC and console, with a full reveal due shortly.
However, we're assuming it's based on superhero pen and paper RPG Champions, which sad geeks like yours truly will know featured an incredibly clever and flexible points-based character creation system that required a maths degree to understand.
EA has confirmed to CVG that it plans to release a separate product that features just the creature creation part of Spore.
Presumably it'll arrive before Spore in September, because with the separate product you'll be able to create creatures using the extremely flexible toolset designed by Maxis and then port them into the full game.
EA, however, was unable to give us a concrete release date. We hope it's free too.
Spore's the latest sandbox-'em-up from Will Wright and focuses on evolution. We won't babble on, but instead point you in the direction of this preview published yesterday to get details.
GSC's released two new screenshots from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, and very tasty it's all looking too.
A number of the developer's planned features for Shadow of Chernobyl that were eventually dropped are returning in this prequel, so we're expecting a game far closer to its original vision for the first outing in the Zone. Not that Shadow of was a pile of pap, mind, but Clear Sky in theory should be wowzers.
A new trailer for the movie adaptation of PC shooter Far Cry has popped up on YouTube.
It's well worth watching. There's a joke about a gun being a bit like a penis! Or possibly a penis being a bit like a gun, it's very subtle.
Far Cry is being directed by Uwe Boll. He's no stranger to films based on games, of course, having previously brought us Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne and Postal amongst others.
But perhaps this one will be his last, as Boll revealed way back in February 2006. "I won't say that I won't acquire another videogame licence in the future. But I'm not so eager to do it any more, to be honest," he told us.
"After Far Cry, maybe I'll go away from videogame-based movies. And everybody can be really happy about it." That means you, Boll-hating Internetster!
Greetings, desktop generals. A new gameplay trailer from forthcoming PC RTS Codename Panzers: Cold War is standing at attention in our video player on the right.
The trailer focuses specifically on battlefield reinforcements. In Cold War, new troops and vehicles are brought in via helipads, train stations, harbours or factories, but these strategic locations must be captured before they can be used for re-supply.
Units are 'bought' with Prestige Points - the only resource in the game - which are acquired by defeating enemy troops, capturing Prestige locations and completing missions.
Now you know all that, go read our recent interview for more details on the title.
Following yesterday's unveiling in PC Gamer, Electronic Arts has sent us a press release providing more details on the upcoming Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. Like C&C3: Tiberium Wars, the game will come out for consoles as well, announced for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
In Red Alert 3, the Soviets have been toying with time travel to try and save "Mother Russia," only to inadvertently cause a third world power, The Empire of the Rising Sun. In this alternate timeline, World War III has started between the Allies, Soviets and Empire. The game will feature a co-operative campaign mode.
EA also announced a PC-only beta of RA3 for anyone with a copy of C&C3: Kane's Wrath; details of the beta are expected this summer. Red Alert 3 is being developed by EA Los Angeles (Tiberium Wars, Battle for Middle-Earth). No release date was announced. While we applaud Tiberium Wars' gamepad-friendly controls, we're still crossing our fingers that the PS3 version supports keyboard and mouse.
Leading scientists are turning to the extraordinary power of games consoles to do their sums and simulate everything from colliding black holes to the effects of drugs.
Supercomputer 'virtual human' to help fight disease
Doctors use Nintendo Wii in therapy treatment
PlayStation3 Gravity Grid
Reprogram a PlayStation and it will perform feats that would be unthinkable on an ordinary PC because the kinds of calculations required to produce the realistic graphics now seen in sophisticated video games are similar to those used by chemists and physicists as they simulate the interactions between particles ranging from the molecular to the astronomical.
advertisementSuch simulations are usually carried out on a supercomputer, but time on these machines is expensive and in short supply. By comparison, games consoles are cheap and easily available, says New Scientist.
"There is no doubt that the entertainment industry is helping to drive the direction of high performance computational science - exploiting the power available to the masses will lead to many research breakthroughs in the future," comments Prof Peter Coveney of University College London, who uses supercomputing in chemistry.
Prof Gaurav Khanna at the University of Massachusetts has used an array of 16 PS3s to calculate what will happen when two black holes merge.
According to Prof Khanna, the PS3 has unique features that make it suitable for scientific computations, namely, the Cell processor dubbed a "supercomputer-on-a-chip." And it runs on Linux, "so it does not limit what you can do."
"A single high-precision simulation can sometimes cost more than 5,000 hours on the TeraGrid supercomputers. For the same cost, you can build your own supercomputer using PS3s. It works just as well, has no long wait times and can be used over and over again, indefinitely," Prof Khanna says.
And Todd Martínez has persuaded the supercomputing centre at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, to buy eight computers each driven by two of the specialised chips that are at the heart of Sony's PlayStation 3 console.
Together with his student Benjamin Levine he is using them to simulate the interactions between the electrons in atoms, as part of work to see how proteins in the body dovetail with drug molecules.
He was inspired while browsing through his son's games console's technical specification "I noticed that the architecture looked a lot like high performance supercomputers I had seen before," he says. "That's when I thought about getting one for myself."
The Wii, made by Nintendo, has a motion tracking remote control unit that is cheaper than a comparable device built from scratch. The device recently emerged as a tool to help surgeons to improve their technique.
Meanwhile, neurologist Thomas Davis at the Vanderbilt Medical Centre in Nashville, Tennessee, is using it to measure movement deficiencies in Parkinson's patients to assess how well a patient can move when they take part in drug trials.
So analysts at research firm iSuppli are projecting that the Wii will overtake the 360 as the dominant current-gen console this year, as projected sales would put Nintendo at over 30m units, compared to Microsoft's expected 26m. The PS3 is also mentioned as having the greatest growth potential if it hits projections of 25.7m total units sold this year, but that seems a little optimistic if you ask us. Sony fans might have the last laugh though, as ultimately iSuppli sees the PS3 as the market leader as we enter the next decade. Hey, who knows, Sony might just catch up and recapture that crown -- anything's possible.
Everybody and their mother's got a super-budget laptop these days (see: OLPC, Eee PC, Cloudbook, Pixel Qi, etc.), and next at the table will apparently be Elonex, which intends to introduce the £100 (~$200) One on February 28th at The Education Show in Birmingham, England. Obviously the intention here is to sell to education markets, but the One is also going to be up for grabs for "adult learners, business users, people who are constantly mobile, elderly people and first time internet users." We don't have any better shots of the thing, but apparently this One (not that One, or the other One) will weigh "less than a kilo" (2.2 pounds), has a 7-inch screen, three hour battery, 1GB of flash memory, and runs on Linux. Apparently there's also a more expensive £120 model that has double the memory (2GB) and Bluetooth, to boot. Both will also have access to a service called ONEunion, which will "feature artwork and music for download, opportunities to get your own content added to the club as well as a range of competitions," presumably for the kids. More on this thing later this month, aye guv'na?
All versions due for early June release, won't include new movie content
The forthcoming LEGO: Indiana Jones game from Traveller's Tales will apparently feature a four-player online co-operative mode, although puzzles for the multiplayer content have been designed to work with just two people if necessary.
That's according to a report on MTV Multiplayer, which also states a release date in the US of June 3 for all PC, handheld and console editions of the game.
The report also notes that although the game will ship close to the release of the new Indiana Jones movie, the videogame will only feature content from the original trilogy of films.
Additionally, while Traveller's Tales has admitted that the game's antagonists won't feature Indy's traditional enemies, the Nazis, the plot lines will remain intact and the changes will be cosmetic only.
Traveller's Tales, also responsible for the hugely successful LEGO: Star Wars titles and working on a LEGO: Batman game, was acquired by Warner Bros last November in a deal thought to be worth in excess of GBP 100 million.
Halifax Bank of Scotland reports "significant number of fraudulent transactions"
Major UK bank Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) has apparently stopped automatic payments to California-based game operator Blizzard, on the grounds that World of Warcraft is at the centre of an unusually high incidence of credit card fraud.
The bank isn't citing Blizzard as the cause, but says the frequent use of stolen credit cards to pay for WOW subscriptions and fees is enough to warrant caution.
The block applies to Halifax customers, as well as those of its subsidiary, the Bank of Scotland, and legitimate subscribers will need to contact their bank to authorise future payments.
"We have seen a significant number of fraudulent transactions through Blizzard's gaming sites. We have, therefore, blocked the majority of Visa/Mastercard transactions we receive from there in order to combat this," the bank told The Register.
"We do not believe the fraud is anything to do with Blizzard themselves, their sites or the integrity of their billing systems, rather it is site users utilising stolen credit card details to pay for subscriptions," the Halifax spokesman said.
"If a customer does want to subscribe to a game site operated by Blizzard, using a Halifax or Bank of Scotland credit card, we can arrange for the payments to be processed for them if they contact us."
The Entertainment Consumers Association on Friday responded to allegations from that day that video games were somehow connected to the shootings at Northern Illinois University, where 27-year old Steven P. Kazmierczak killed five students in a lecture hall. Said the response, "Blaming video games for the behavior of the mentally-challenged is vile on many levels. And, as Generations X and Y mature, it is extremely likely that just about all of us have played at least one video game at some point in our lives."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the origin of the video game link can be traced to Jack Thompson, who was on Fox News the morning of the incident. The New York Post also quickly joined the chorus in blaming video games -- specifically Counter-Strike -- as a contributing factor to the shooting. Kudos to the ECA for being timely in their response, making a concerted effort to prepare against a chance backlash and sensationalism.
Another solid week of releases in Australia. The PS3 gets its copy of Unreal Tournament III, the Wii sees the fantastic and under-appreciated Zack and Wiki, the DS gets new Advance Wars (always a reason to break open the piggy bank) and there's a trio of Conflict: Denied Ops on the way too. The PS2 also has two releases this week – albeit very low key; so low key that we don't even have a listing for them. Heck, if you see them on the shelf and are feeing proactive, take a punt. Look out for reviews of this week's major releases in the coming days!
Wii
February 21 - King of Clubs
February 21 - The Destiny of Zorro
February 21 - Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
February 22 - Jenga: World Tour
DS
February 21 - Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
February 21 - Brain Challenge
February 21 - Cooking Mama 2: Dinner With Friends
February 21 - Paint by DS
Xbox 360
February 21 - Conflict: Denied Ops
February 22 - Jumper: Griffin's Story
PlayStation 3
February 21 - Conflict: Denied Ops
February 21 - Unreal Tournament III
PSP
February 21 - King of Clubs
February 21 - Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition
February 21 - Final Fantasy II: Anniversary Edition
By now you know that Dylan Fitterer's Audiosurf, a fancy mixture of rhythm-response and puzzle that feeds off your own MP3 collection, is out on Steam. But perhaps you didn't know there was a demo. There is.
You can grab it from Valve's Steam website, and the full game costs USD 9.95. Look out for a review pretty soon.
Other details about Audiosurf on Steam that we learned last week include the fact that it's one of the first non-Valve games to include Steam Achievements, thanks to Steamworks, and that it ships with a copy of The Orange Box soundtrack to play along to, including "Still Alive".
As Fitterer put it when we spoke to him the other day, "This has turned into one crazy ride." It was already pretty crazy, Dylan - we're completing puzzles built around Girls Aloud and Alcazar.
To find out more about Audiosurf, play it, obviously. Or read our first impressions. It's up for some gongs in the Independent Games Festival Awards on Wednesday this week, too, so wish it well.
Mtron's 128GB SSD drive isn't the highest capacity SSD around, but a quick google shows it to be the largest 1.8-incher. That's the same size drive in many MP3 players and Apple's new Macbook Air. They're expecting nice 120MB/second reads and 100MB/second writes. Production will start in April, but as with all SSDs of this size, don't expect them to be affordable for the little people for awhile.
features
Two-Man Tactics – Switch between team members at any time in single-player mode for maximum control, or have a friend join your game through either online, system link or split-screen.
Explode Your Enemies – Levels are built around massive fire fights with a continuous stream of enemies, and tons of exploding objects littered around the level to help your cause.
Destroy Everything – Obliterate your enemies with explosions, demolish buildings, blow through walls and destroy almost anything in the environment.
Accessible Action – In single-player mode, give commands to your team mate simply by pressing or holding a single button. Concentrate on the action, not complicated menus or control schemes.
Puncture-Tech™ – Utilize strategic destruction made possible with new Puncture-Tech™ technology developed by Pivotal Studios. Blast open new pathways, shoot unaware enemies through walls, or create holes in your cover to generate firing paths.
description
Venezuela is left in a state of civil war after the government was brutally overthrown by a military coup. With factions fighting to reinstate democracy, the U.S. government has offered their assistance, though the new government regime has threatened to deploy nuclear weapons if the U.S. meddles in Venezuelan affairs. The threat needs to be neutralized, and the U.S can't risk nuclear war.
The CIA Special Activities Division operates in isolation and secrecy. If captured, any link with the U.S. Government will be denied.
Conflict: Denied Ops is a highly accessible co-op FPS featuring massive, extremely explosive firefights across destructible environments. Work as a team to utilize the specific skills of each operative and experience the ultimate in destructive satisfaction with tons of exploding objects and an endless barrage of terrorists who are begging to be blown to hell.
Tokyo show reveals 2008 theme, aims to bring all kinds of gamers together
The Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association has revealed new details about the plans for this year's Tokyo Games Show, taking place from October 9-12 at the Makuhari Messe.
The theme for the event this year is "Ready for Game Time!" and reflects the show's aim of bringing different types of gamers and developers together for an event that's expected to attract 180,000 attendees.
"Let both experienced players and first-time users get even more enjoyment from games – the aspiration has led to creation of a variety of new content and driven astonishing growth of the computer entertainment industry," read a statement.
The show will also feature new exhibition areas designed to support "full coverage of all forms of entertainment", additional business facilities and promotions targeting families and casual gamers.
Olympics game spurred on by continued high DS sales
Mario & Sonic at the Olympics has replaced Devil May Cry 4 at the top of the UK all-formats chart, according to the latest information from Chart Track.
The title, selling extremely well thanks to the DS version of the game, was one of six Nintendo titles to top the sales-by-volume chart for the week ending February 16.
Meanwhile in the main chart Disney's latest release, Turok, remained third, while Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare went back up to fourth and Wii Play remained in fifth.
Other well-established titles still selling well include FIFA 08 in sixth, Dr Kawashima's Brain Training in seventh, Burnout Paradise in eighth, The Simpsons Game in ninth, while The Club dropped one place to tenth.
A new free download game for PC and Mac looks to inform people of US immigration practices targeting legal permanent residents, asylum seekers, students and undocumented immigrants. GameDaily explains that ICED (I Can End Deportation), by international human rights organization Breakthough, seeks to give players another perspective on the immigration debate. Playing as one of five characters with different backgrounds the player can end up being deported, incarcerated, voluntarily deported or become a citizen.
The game's designer, Heidi Boisvert, says the game was created to show people what happens to thousands of immigrants on a daily basis. She hopes that people will become more aware of the scope of the situation through the game and take action. The download is less than 100 MB and takes 15-45 minutes to play. At least this game is a little more sensitive and culturally relevant than Border Patrol.
NCsoft has moved to calm fears that it will pull support for its science-fiction MMO Tabula Rasa after a report in the Korea Times claimed that the game was a "financial disaster".
"Please take any Korea Times articles about NCsoft with a grain of salt," said community manager Amy Crider in this forum post. "Unfortunately, their writer has been responsible for several inflammatory articles containing sloppy reporting and erroneous content in the past year. They are by no means an 'official' source of information."
The Korea Times report was based on a conference call between NCsoft's chief financial officer Lee Jae-ho and investors which took place last Thursday. The newspaper quoted Lee as saying "because of this disappointing result, some downsizing... is inevitable" at the Austin studio which developed Tabula Rasa.
We would love to be able to confirm or deny this, but the conference call is only available as a large audio file on NCsoft's Korean website, and it's downloading very, very slowly. Only 27 hours to go.
An NCsoft spokesman declined to comment. However, MMO blog Massively has run a rebuttal from an NCsoft source. It says the Tabula Rasa development team will indeed be downsized, but that the company will continue to invest in the game, including a Japanese launch later this year.
The cost of Tabula Rasa's development as quoted by the Korea Times - 100 billion won, which is roughly 100 million US dollars - is thought to be wildly inaccurate.
NCsoft announced last week that Tabula Rasa had recorded sales of KRW 5 billion (USD 5.4 million). "I think Tabula Rasa did what we expected it to do," European MD Geoff Heath told GamesIndustry.biz. "It is yet another genre that we've gone into, with our portfolio approach," he added.
The Korea Times has had run-ins with NCsoft before - notably when the same reporter claimed last year that the MMO giant was looking to expand beyond its games.
Funcom's showering us with new screenshots from Age of Conan today, because GDC has just kicked off in San Francisco.
No less than 14 shots have whizzed down our internet pipe and back up again to the site. Don't be shy - take a look.
Age of Conan is due out in May on PC (an in-development Xbox 360 version has yet to be dated) and aims to shake up the MMO genre with the introduction of real-time combat not at all far removed from what you'd expect from a single-player fantasy action-adventure.
In the wake of the NIU shooting and various pundits finding ways to link violent video games to the tragedy, MSNBC has decided to defend video games, specifically calling out infamous attorney Jack Thompson for his self promotion during school shootings. (They have done this once before during the Virginia Tech massacre.)
In a piece entitled "Playing the blame game: Why search our souls when video games make such an easy scapegoat?" MSNBC's Winda Benedetti writes, "Faster than you can say wild speculation and reckless sensationalism, [Thompson] leapt in front of Fox News cameras and suggested that video games were to blame." Later, Benedetti adds, "The fact is, one would be hard pressed to find a young man of Kazmierczak's age who has not played video games."
Thompson is, unsurprisingly, a bit put out. In an email to MSNBC legal department forwarded to us by Thompson, the Miami attorney asserted his intention to "bring a civil action in state court in Flordia for libel." Thompson further called the two articles "hit pieces" and "crazed and libelous screed" and mentions that NBC did not mind having him on the Today Show / NBC Nightly news about ten times.
"But once my criticism began to inconvenience Bill Gates' NBC partner, Microsoft, (MSNBC.com is a 50/50 partnership) then all of a sudden I'm the Anti-Christ," said Thompson.
Sales of liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions have outperformed those of cathode-ray tubes (CRT) globally for the first time, it has been reported.
According to TG Daily, market research firm Displaysearch has estimated that of the global TV market - which hit 60.8 million units in the last quarter of 2007 - LCD screens now account for 47 per cent.
That compares to a 46 per cent share for CRT screens, while rear projection (RPTV) sets and plasma display panels (PDP) take the remaining 7 per cent.
The research indicated that most LCD units were shipped in Western Europe, accounting for 32 per cent, followed by North America in 31 per cent.
The LCD screen share of the 40 inch-plus size market increased to 65 per cent, while the average screen size of units sold rose above 32 inches for the first time.
1080p-capable TVs now account for 17 per cent of sets overall, and 57 per cent of the over 40 inch market.
The rise of high definition sets is good news for both Sony and Microsoft, who both use high definition entertainment as a selling point for their consoles.
Microsoft's Robin Burrowes, marketing manager for Xbox Live in the UK, yesterday told GamesIndustry.biz that the majority of Video Store content downloaded skewed in favour of HD, and that at least 60 per cent of its users must have HDTVs.
The PC Gaming Alliance has officially revealed itself at GDC in San Francisco and has expressed confidence in the future of the platform.
Founding companies Epic, Microsoft, Activision, Intel, AMD, nVidia, Dell, Alienware, Razer and Gateway have united "with the common purpose of advancing the PC as a worldwide gaming platform", PCGA has said.
As such, they'll be aiming to drive and accelerate innovation in PC gaming and to improve the gaming experience overall for us lot, while at the same time filtering their passion and knowledge of the platform down through to developers and publishers.
PCGA's added it "will focus on driving coordinated marketing and promotion of PC gaming, consistent and accurate reporting of PC gaming market sizing and research, and creating forums for member companies to cooperate on solutions to challenges facing the PC gaming industry, such as hardware requirements, anti-piracy, and more".
"Working together, we have an exponentially greater opportunity to propel the PC gaming experience to new heights", Kevin Unangst, senior global director of Games for Windows at Microsoft, has said.
Randy Stude, director of the Gaming Program Office at Intel, added, "PCGA members believe that we are stronger and more effective together than any member company is alone, and that our shared vision and group effort will improve PC gaming worldwide".
Home Office report on violence references games, pledges "proportionate" response
The Home Office has released its extensive review into the issues and effects of violence in society with its Violent Crime Action Plan, and while it references the possible effects of violent videogames, according to ELSPA it represents a shift in attitude towards the subject.
The report states in its New Challenges section that: "There are concerns that the way in which violence can be presented in popular culture, for example in music, television, films, videos, computer games and on the internet, may attribute towards a general atmosphere in which violence is tolerated and even glorified.
"Some individuals may be more influenced by this than others and we are considering this issue in particular with respect to children and young children."
While the effects of videogame violence is a hot topic in the national press, as is speculation about the results of the Byron Review, due at the end of March and the CMS Select Committee, which will start hearing oral evidence later this month, ELSPA has released a statement welcoming the wording of the Home Office document.
"ELSPA had been very concerned about the content of this document as much has previously been made by the media and Parliament of a link between violent video games and violent crime," it read.
"To their credit they appear to have listened to what we have had to say, as while the document does express concern over the way violence can be presented in popular culture, it doesn't single out games and goes on to state that government 'will work with relevant industries and regulators to ensure that any response is proportionate and evidence based'.
"This is a marked change in government thinking on this issue which, while we remain cautious, we warmly applaud. We look forward to meeting with government to discuss this issue further in due course."
The plethora of government reports and reviews come against a backdrop of concern over the level to which virtual violence can affect gamers, the ongoing dispute between the BBFC and Rockstar over Manhunt 2, and the prospect of videogame versions of extreme violence (but legal) movies - such as Saw - in the works.
Why moving away from animated routines is important for GTA and Indiana Jones
The CEO of development tools company Natural Motion has told GamesIndustry.biz that the future for creating realism in videogames lies not with lots of animated routines, but with CPU synthesis.
Torsten Reil, speaking in an interview at GDC, believes that in order to capture the imagination of the pubic moving forwards it's important to provide "unique gaming moments" - in other words that 'never the same twice' feeling.
His company is working with the likes of LucasArts on Indiana Jones and Star Wars titles, and with Rockstar on Grand Theft Auto IV, and of the latter title explained:
"There is a drinking mini-game in very detailed form where you can get drunk and he can actually then stumble around and you have to get home," he said. "But all of that is fully simulated.
"So, it is not based on animation any more. It is actually all synthesized on the CPU. Which means that it has a completely different outcome every time you play."
Crucially, providing those different outcomes enables developers to "actually create a live world" and draw on the much-improved power of modern CPUs.
"The big thing for us, the core mission that we've always had behind this, is the quality of unique gaming moments," he added. "So, rather than really treating it as a nice cosmetic effect where the animation looks slightly nicer – which you could do – we want people to use it in a way that actually opens up the game.
"So that every time you play the game something different happens. And that's obviously much more like real life than playing just back pre-existing assets."
Warcraft, The Sims "sucking the air out of PC market," says Lionhead boss
Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux has said that the PC gaming market is in a tragic state, with two blockbusters hogging sales and stagnation in the casual market.
Speaking in an interview to our sister site Eurogamer.net, to be published later this week, Molyneux was sharing his views on the current PC market following comments made by Epic's Cliff Bleszinski that it is in “disarray”.
"I think it's a huge tragedy. I mean, you might as well say PC gaming is World of Warcraft and The Sims... The weird thing is everyone's got a PC, they're just not buying software for it," commented Molyneux.
And while many developers are chasing the casual PC gaming market as the next big thing, Molyneux believes it's already suffering from repetition and a lack of imagination.
"There's an enormous amount of gaming happening with PopCap, Big Fish and Reflective.
"The fascinating thing is when they first started, all these games came out like Peggle and Mystery Files and Alice Greensleeves and Diner Dash, and it felt quite exciting. There was a lot of innovation going on. Okay, there weren't great graphics, but there was innovation.
"In my view, that has completely stopped. They're doing the same game over and over again with a different wrapper. It's like a mini-universe in itself which is emulating what's happening in our industry," he added.
"The second thing is, you've got The Sims and World of Warcraft sucking all the air out of the PC market. It's just incredible," he said.
WildTangent announced today Orb, a new PC service aimed to give a game console experience. Orb will act as a portal for "console games," defined here as games designed for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and let you download and play games in its entirety or in play sessions, which will cost you via tokens or free through watching advertisements. THQ and Sierra have signed on, with Sierra promising to bring titles to the service "day and date" with console launches, according to WildTangent CEO Alex St. John.
In an interview with Joystiq, St. John explained how the cost per play session will depend on the game, but that it would be priced "fairly" based on statistics they derive in testing. That said, he presumes most will opt for the advertiser route. (In their casual portal, he said, 98% of the users opt for watching advertisements and playing for free.)
Games can be queued up for download in the background, but there's also an option for taking the games you want to play and having them sent to you for the cost of burning the DVD and shipping. The program will be offered in eight languages, including Chinese and Korean. No community features will included at launch, but St. John said he'd consider it in the future. It's a shame, too, because we think it's a key reason that programs like Steam and GameTap thrive.
The developer version will launch this week, with a consumer version poised for tomorrow. For users of the current WildTangent portal, which largely consists of what St. John calls casual gamers, they will be offered the client free for download when it launches. Orb will also be packaged with Dell and HP computers. Orb will be officially unveiled during a session tomorrow at GDC. We'll have more from our interview with St. John later this week.
features
Drive 8 great trains of today and yesteryear in this customizable railway simulation
Travel over 1900 km of track on faithfully reproduced UK and continental routes
Create and share new content with powerful, user-friendly editors
Expand your rail world with a range of professional add-ons
Simple, family-friendly interface delivers an authentic railway experience
description
A big welcome to our new friends in North America! Welcome to the Rail Simulator community! Here's some catch-up info on the game, the website and an upcoming upgrade.
features
Featuring simple shortcuts and an all-new auto-pause that lets you start and stop easily when opening/closing your laptop
Easily stay in touch with friends by using your own IM & email while playing the game in its own window.
Play exciting new story adventures as a castaway on a desert island who needs to survive and thrive.
All-new directed Story mode and classic Freeplay mode.
The Sims Stories line also includes The Sims Life Stories and The Sims Pet Stories.
description
Following the theme of the console-only The Sims 2 Castaway series, The Sims Castaway Stories is a game for the PC users and is the third release in The Sims Stories product line. Help your Sims thrive and survive as they have washed ashore to an uncharted island. Count on many unexpected twists and turns in this easy-to-play, laptop-friendly version of The Sims. Guide your Sim through the much-longer directed Story mode, taking on a variety of challenges as you build your new life from scratch, meet the natives, and discover the hidden mysteries of the island. Unlock rewards as you achieve set goals for your Sim. In open-ended Freeplay mode, create your Sims, design their shelters, and explore the island. It's a whole new way to play the Sims - you decide how their stories unfold
Look, we sense the Vista hate out there, but frankly we think it's your own dang business what OS you choose to run. If Vista SP1 is rocking your world right now, we say more power to you, if XP is more your pace then you're certainly not alone, and if you're still trying to install Firefox on Haiku we feel your pain. That said, XP users are getting a bit of love this week, since Microsoft just made Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 publicly available via Windows Update. You have to download a little registry key to help Windows Update know you're RC2 fodder, and remove any previous version of SP3 from your machine, but it should be smooth sailing from there. How do you like them apples, Vista SP1?
LOTRO developer to continue Hobbit/LOTR-related titles until at least 2014
Turbine Inc has announced it will be continuing its partnership with Tolkien Enterprises to continue working on videogames relating to The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings titles until at least 2014.
The developer, currently supporting its MMO Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) with a series of free content updates and additions, also has an option to extend the deal further until 2017.
Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, expressed his delight with the performance of the title so far, and that the company was looking forward to continued success as new movies based on The Hobbit - as well as a sequel - were released in the next few years.
LOTRO is currently available in five key regions globally, and is set during the events of the Tolkien trilogy, although while players will encounter various characters from the books, the overall world situation must remain static in order to maintain the persistent setting.
If you’ve been waiting for the Eee PC 8G to become available, It looks like it’s just about here. Over at Amazon, they have a new page up for what appears to be a Black ASUS Eee PC 8G. It’s listed as a 4G, but the description says that it has 8GB of storage and 1GB of RAM. It is listed for $542.99 and ships within 3-6 weeks- this could be the timeframe we’re looking at.
It looks like at least some of those that got their hands on the Vista SP1 update one way or another got a bit more than they bargained for, with DailyTech reporting that the update process wreaked some considerable havoc on some users' PCs. Specifically, the SP1 update process took it upon itself to automatically a prerequisite Windows Update, which apparently caused some folks' PCs to dive into an "unbootable loop," the only solution to which is a complete system restore. For its part, Microsoft has now pulled the prerequisite update in question (which apparently means it wasn't much of a "prerequisite"), although that'll likely be of little consolation to those that have already seen their PC put through the ringer.
The 8th annual Game Developers Choice Awards were announced this evening at GDC in San Francisco, with Valve's Portal taking the highest honour.
Portal also received awards for Best Game Design and Innovation.
2K's Bioshock, nominated in five categories, won awards for Best Audio, Best Visual Arts and Best Writing.
A Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Sid Meier who began his career as a founding partner of MicroProse Software in the early 1980s and who created such classics as F-19, Civilization, Railroad Tycoon and Pirates!
Al Alcorn, who created Pong for Atari, was on hand to present the Pioneer Award to Ralph Baer for his groundbreaking work in creating the first commercial home videogame system.
IGDA executive director Jason Della Roca was presented with the Ambassador Award in recognition of his efforts to advance the industry.
Earlier in the evening, the Independent Games Festival Best Student Game award went to Synaesthete, with the Seumas McNally Grand Prize awarded to Crayon Physics Deluxe. World of Goo also received two IGF awards for Technical Excellence and Design Innovation.
The full list of Game Developers Choice Awards nominees, with winners denoted by an asterisk, is as follows:
Best Game Design:
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Mass Effect
*Portal
Super Mario Galaxy
Best Debut Game:
*Crackdown
flOw
The Witcher
Everyday Shooter
Aquaria
Best Audio:
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Everyday Shooter
*Bioshock
God of War II
Mass Effect
Best Downloadable Game:
Pac-Man Championship Edition
Everyday Shooter
Peggle
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
*flOw
Best Technology:
Halo 3
*Crysis
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Portal
Assassin's Creed
Innovation Award:
Rock Band
*Portal
flOw
Peggle
Mass Effect
Best Visual Arts:
Assassin's Creed
Team Fortress 2
Crysis
*Bioshock
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Best Handheld Game:
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
*The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Phase
Contra 4
Peggle
Best Writing:
Portal
God of War II
Mass Effect
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
*Bioshock
Game of the Year:
Bioshock
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
*Portal
Rock Band
Super Mario Galaxy
European publisher clears up confusion over release date
Following previous reports that MMO Warhammer Online had disappeared from EA's release schedule, Eurogamer has learned that the game is still on course to be released in the second quarter of this year.
Developer EA Mythic announced a delay from the first to the second quarter of this year back in November. According to GOA, which is taking publishing duties off EA's hands in Europe, this position hasn't changed.
"Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is still planned for a Q2 2008 release," European product manager Rahim Attaba told us. "The beta is doing well, and the feedback we have from the testers is really good," he added.
A spring release would put Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning in a head-to-head fantasy MMO clash with Funcom's Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, due on May 20.
According to Blizzard senior VP they'll have no place in World of Warcraft
Blizzard's senior vice president of game design, Rob Pardo, has said players would feel "betrayed" if a micro-transaction system, of the sort common in free-to-play MMO games, was implemented in World of Warcraft.
After his talk on multiplayer game design at GDC, as reported by WOWInsider, Pardo was asked if the company had considered introducing the fashionable payment model to its smash hit MMO, but Pardo argued that any use of outside cash resources unbalances the game, and likened micro-transactions to sanctioning gold-buying.
"We've taken the approach that we want players to feel like it's a level playing field once they're in WoW." he said. "Outside resources don't play into it - no gold buying, etcetera. We take a hard line stance against it. What you get out of micro-transactions is kind of the same thing and I think our player base would feel betrayed by it."
Asked if the ability to buy powerful items might not help casual players with less time to invest in the game catch up with the hardcore, Pardo said: "They aren't going to be the ones spending the money".
World of Warcraft has revolutionised the MMO market in the West, and now boasts an active player base of 10 million across the world, playing on hundreds of different servers - and the game added USD 1 billion to publisher Vivendi's revenues last year.
Wii titles lead the way, while four new entries mix it up
Super Smash Bros Brawl has spent another week at the top of the Japanese software sales chart, according to the latest data from Media Create.
The title sold another 142,000 copies last week, while Wii Fit moved back up to second after shifting 63,000 more units - leaving it set to break through the 1.5 million barrier in Japan any day now.
New entries packed out the rest of the top five, with DS title Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's Side 2nd Season selling 56,000 copies in third, and PlayStation 2 pair Poison Pink and Ebi Kore+ Kimi Kiss in fourth and fifth respectively.
Wii Sports held steady in sixth as it edges ever closer to the 3 million sales mark, while Mobile Suit Gundam: Gihren's Ambition, The Axis' Threat took seventh and the DS edition of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games was eighth.
The PlayStation 3 version of Devil May Cry 4 dropped five places to ninth, just breaking the 250,000 mark, while a new entry for the DS - Naruto: Shippuuden Dairansen! Kage Bunshin Emaki - finished off the top ten.
In all that means there were three Wii titles, three DS titles, two PS2 games, and a PS3 and PlayStation Portable title each - giving Nintendo platforms a 60 per cent share and Sony platforms the remaining 40 per cent.
There were no Xbox 360 titles in the top 30 based on last week's sales, and the full top ten is as follows:
1. Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii)
2. Wii Fit (Wii)
3. Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's Side 2nd Season (DS)
4. Poison Pink (PS2)
5. Ebi Kore+ Kimi Kiss (PS2)
6. Wii Sports (Wii)
7. Mobile Suit Gundam: Gihren's Ambition, The Axis' Threat (PSP)
8. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS)
9. Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)
10. Naruto: Shippuuden Dairansen! Kage Bunshin Emaki (DS)
Welcome to this week's Games & Toys update, our weekly summary featuring all new product arrivals from the last seven days.
After several calm weeks, plenty of exciting games have been published this week. Hot products include the US version of Lost Odyssey and Dark Messiah Might & Magic Elements for Xbox360™.
Also featured this week is the Rock Band Drum Set, which is compatible with both the PlayStation3™ and Playstation2™ games of the same title.
The Japanese version of the most popular soccer game Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008 is out on Wii. So get ready for some action.
It has also been a strong week for the PlayStation2™ with the release of NiGHTS [Standard/Limited], the revival of a fondly remembered Sega Saturn title.
Fun games for portable consoles that came out this week include the critically acclaimed Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice and the hilarious Barnyard Blast on Nintendo DS™. As for Sony PSP™, Musou Orochi, a crossover between two of Koei's best selling series came out along with the exhilarating racing game, Wipeout Pulse.
Last but not least, Art of Shunya Yamashita Series 2 Funny Knights 1/7 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Petra No.1 (International Version), designed by the famous illustrator has been released. Also available on Play-Asia.com from the series are the regular edition and Petra No.2 (Milestone Limited Edition).
As usually, here's a summary of all new releases from this week
Xbox360™:
BioShock JPN US$ 68.90
Burnout: Paradise JPN US$ 64.90
Conflict: Denied Ops US US$ 59.90
Dark Messiah Might & Magic Elements US US$ 64.90
FIFA Street 3 ASIA US$ 44.90
Jumper: Griffin's Story US US$ 64.90
Lost Odyssey US US$ 64.90
PlayStation3™:
Burnout: Paradise JPN US$ 64.90
Conflict: Denied Ops US US$ 59.90
FIFA Street 3 ASIA US$ 49.90
History Channel: Battle for the Pacific US US$ 49.90
Logicool Wireless Headset JPN US$ 99.90
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition ASIA US$ 49.90
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition JPN US$ 59.90
Rock Band Drum Set US US$ 129.90
Stuntman: Ignition JPN US$ 64.90
Nintendo Wii™:
Go Diego Go: Safari Rescue US US$ 49.90
Jumper: Griffin's Story US US$ 59.90
Miburi & Teburi JPN US$ 49.90
Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008 JPN US$ 64.90
PlayStation2™:
Dance Dance Revolution SuperNOVA 2 JPN US$ 64.90
Go Diego Go: Safari Rescue US US$ 34.90
Jumper: Griffin's Story US US$ 44.90
Last Escort 2: Shiya no Amai Ira JPN US$ 59.90
Last Escort 2: Shiya no Amai Ira (Gorgeous Version) JPN N/A
NiGHTS into Dreams... JPN US$ 39.90
NiGHTS into Dreams... (Nightopia Dream Pack) JPN US$ 49.90
Pachinko Kamen Rider: Shocker Zenmetsu Daisakusen JPN US$ 64.90
Stuntman Ignition JPN US$ 59.90
Nintendo DS™:
Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice US US$ 29.90
Barnyard Blast US US$ 24.90
Bokujou Monogatari: Kira Kira Taiyou to Nakama Tachi JPN US$ 48.90
Brain Challenge ASIA US$ 32.90
Command and Destroy US US$ 24.90
Hisshou Pachinko*Pachi-Slot Kouryoku Series DS Vol. 1: Shinseiki Evangelion - Magokoro o, Kimi ni JPN US$ 48.90
Keiji J.B. Harold no Jikenbo: Satsujin Club JPN US$ 39.90
Miami Nights: Singles in the City ASIA US$ 32.90
New Zealand Story: Revolution US US$ 24.90
Populous DS JPN US$ 48.90
Sekaiju no Meikyuu 2: Shoou no Seihai JPN US$ 48.90
Space Invaders Extreme JPN US$ 39.90
SuperLite 2500 Tokyo Odaiba Casino JPN US$ 25.90
Sony PSP™:
Antenna Cable Portable JPN US$ 12.90
Idol Yakyuuken DX Portable JPN US$ 37.90
Musou Orochi JPN US$ 52.90
Need for Speed: Pro Street ASIA US$ 42.90
Soreiyu: Me, Myself & Master JPN US$ 41.90
Space Invaders Extreme JPN US$ 39.90
Space Invaders Extreme ASIA US$ 29.90
Wipeout Pulse US US$ 34.90
PC & MAC™
Conflict: Denied Ops (DVD-ROM) US US$ 44.90
Rail Simulator (DVD-ROM) ASIA US$ 29.90
The Sims: Castaway Stories (DVD-ROM) ASIA US$ 29.90
Toys & More:
Art of Shunya Yamashita Series 2 Funny Knights 1/7 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Petra No.1 (International Version) JPN US$ 64.90
Artworks Collection Ultraman Battle EX Edition Part 2 Non Scale Pre-Painted PVC Trading Figure JPN US$ 7.49
Bad Boys Glare of Eyes Vol.3 Non Scale Pre-Painted Trading Figure JPN US$ 5.90
Code Geass Lelouch of the Rebellion - 1/8 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Kallen (Alpha Omega Ver.) JPN N/A
Code Geass Lelouch of the Rebellion 1/8 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: C.C. Alpha Omega Ver. JPN N/A
Diamond & Pearl Pokemon Mini Car Candy Toy JPN US$ 3.90
Diamond & Pearl Pokemon Picture Book with Mascot Key Chain Toy JPN US$ 2.49
Dragon Ball Z Super Saiyan 3 Pre-Painted Figure: Broly JPN US$ 19.90
Dragon Ball Z Super Saiyan 3 Pre-Painted Figure: Gogeta JPN US$ 19.90
Dragon Ball Z Super Saiyan 3 Pre-Painted Figure: Son Gokou JPN US$ 19.90
Dragon Ball Z Super Saiyan 3 Pre-Painted Figure: Trunks JPN US$ 19.90
Encore Transformers 07 Pre-Painted Figure: Sky Lynx JPN N/A
Excellent Model Core Queens Blade Non Scale Pre-Painted Figure: P-5 Weapon Shop Cattleya & Rana JPN N/A
Gunyu Hagane Chogokin Groizer X Non Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Groizer X (Manga Version) JPN US$ 129.90
Macross Zero 1/60 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Perfect Transformation SV-51a (Mass Production Type) JPN US$ 189.90
Neon Genesis Evangelion HG Bunny Figure: Sohryu Asuka Langley (Red Version) JPN US$ 17.90
Neon Genesis Evangelion HG Bunny Figure: Sohryu Asuka Langley (Red and Black Version) JPN US$ 17.90
Potemayo 1/1 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Mini Figure: Potemayo JPN US$ 69.90
Queens Blade Busts Statue Vol. 1 Pre-Painted Trading Figure JPN US$ 12.90
Real Art Work Series Devil May Cry 3 Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Dante 3D Poster JPN US$ 154.90
Revoltech Series No. 044 - Tetsujin 28 Non Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Black OX JPN N/A
Revoltech Series No. 045 - The Mobile Police Patlabor Non Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Griffon with Aqua Unit JPN N/A
Saint Seiya Figure II Non Scale Pre-Painted PVC Trading Figure JPN US$ 6.49
Shakugan no Shana: Nanatsuiro Drops - Meister Noizi Ito Collection Red Non Scale Pre-Painted Trading Figure JPN US$ 7.90
Shakugan no Shana:Nanatsuiro Drops - Q-joy Noizi Ito Non Scale Pre-Painted Trading Figure JPN US$ 7.90
Shooting Game Historica - Classic Game Fighting Planes: Trading Figure JPN N/A
Shunya Yamashita Collection Dead or Alive Pre-Painted Figure: Kasumi (Blue Version) JPN US$ 39.90
Shunya Yamashita Collection Dead or Alive Pre-Painted Figure: Kasumi (White Version) JPN US$ 39.90
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu 1/4 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Asahina Mikuru (Bunny Version) JPN N/A
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu 1/4 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Kyon's Sister (Bunny Version) JPN N/A
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu 1/4 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Suzumiya Haruhi (Bunny Version) JPN N/A
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu 1/8 Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Metamo Nagato Yuki (Cat Version) JPN N/A
Yuria Hyaku-shiki Non Scale Pre-Painted PVC Figure: Yuria on Lighting base JPN US$ 79.90
Video Game Soundtracks:
CD Drama Collections Kiniro No Corda 2 - Yukidoke No Yoko JPN US$ 26.90
Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova 2 Original Soundtrack JPN US$ 38.90
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Original Game Soundtrack JPN US$ 21.90
Naruto Narutimate Hero Best Sound [CD+DVD Limited Edition] JPN US$ 28.90
NiGHTS into Dreams... Original Soundtrack JPN US$ 44.90
Radio DJCD Bleach B Station Second Season Vol.6 JPN US$ 24.90
Uh-oh -- it looks like the nasty Windows Home Server bug that corrupts data affects quite a few more apps than Microsoft initially let on.
The company's just updated the WHS support note to include reports of data corruption when using iTunes, the Zune software, WinAmp, WMP 11, Photoshop, and a host of other applications -- and the problem's expanded in scope as well, now affecting files saved to the server in addition to files edited on the server.
That basically makes WHS useless as of right now -- if you can't trust your data on it, there's no point -- so let's hope there's a fix on the way.
It's been a long time coming, but it looks like the GPU industry finally figured out the fact that most consumers don't want to blow a couple grand on an SLI setup, they just want to play Crysis debt-free. The new GeForce 9600 GT from NVIDIA is an answer to those prayers, offering solid performance ratings nearly in line with last-gen's 8800 GT, at a completely lovable $199 [£101.50] -and-under pricepoint.
For now the top of the performance charts is still the 8800 Ultra -- as NVIDIA will readily admit -- but the 9600 GT is just the first of NVIDIA's GeForce 9 series, and while it's sure to be followed by bigger, badder and more expensive versions, it's refreshing to see the 9600 hitting the market first.
The latest consoles hardware sales from the land of Japan is in show below as follows:
Nintendo Wii: 78,583
Nintendo DS Lite: 62,362
Playstation Portable: 59,654
Playstation 3 : 17,637
Playstation 2: 11,266
Xbox 360 : 2,198
Wii stays on top, takes roughly a 3,000 unit drop. DS replaces the PSP in secound place, increase 2,000 while the latter experiences a 15,500 decrease. PS3 goes down 6,000, PS2 200 up and Xbox 360 dips by extactly 417.
Lego bigwig Mark Hansen has provided fresh details on forthcoming PC MMO Lego Universe at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
In his speech, titled 'Bringing the brick online', Hansen said there are three pillars to the game. The first is building - but you won't have to do too much of that if you don't want to. "Not everybody is a digital builder but people still like Lego. You'll be building to some level, but you're not forced," he explained. You'll have the capability "to build anything you want, within some constraints" - you won't be able to build a giant model made out of a million bricks, for example.
"Netdevil is developing this game, so it's not about user-generated content where you build whatever. We're trying to come up with tools for directed content development for a community," Hansen added.
He confirmed all the models players create will be moderated, so you can't go round constructing giant Lego winkies all over the place. You'll have the option to lock your creations to protect them, or leave them unlocked so other players can come along and smash them to bits.
The second pillar is socialising. "It's about the emotion of [your mini-figure]," said Hansen. "It can smile, it can wave, it can lay down, it can kick. It's about bringing that alive."
And finally - playing. "This is not just a social world. It is a game of play. You will be going for land, you will be competing, doing challenges, doing missions, getting coins, smashing things, building things." Put simply, if obviously, "It is a game."
There's a role-playing element so as you progress through the Lego Universe your character will advance and you'll get more accessories, weapons and tools. You can customise your Lego man or woman, choosing how both their face and body look. "You will not be able to change the shape of the basic elements, but there are infinite possibilities," apparently. You'll be able to design customised pets to follow you around, too.
There will be options to form or join guilds and teams, and there will be special events and structures to build for both solo and group players. "You don't have to be on a team, you could go it alone, but in teams you'll probably advance much faster," Hansen said.
He confirmed there will be storylines in the game - "There will always be a good side and a bad side" - and many different zones, or 'Planets', to explore. They will be based on existing and forthcoming Lego products, such as the pirate, city, castle, underwater, space and mech-themed lines. However, "It's not all going to be there on launch day." The world of Lego Universe will grow and expand as new content is added over time.
There's even a chance licensed IP could make an appearance. "There is no Batman or Star Wars IP in the game, but that doesn't mean it's not going to come," stated Hansen.
The game is aimed at kids aged eight to 12 but Hansen reckons everyone will enjoy it in the same way people of all ages play Lego Star Wars, and indeed ye olde bricks. "How many people here played with Lego on the floor when they were a child?" he asked the audience. Everyone raised a hand. "Lego Universe is exactly what you saw on the floor when you were a child... It's about that dream."
You will have to pay a subscription fee to play the game, but Hansen didn't say how much it will be. When asked by a member of the audience when the game is out he confirmed, "We're hoping to get the game out in the next couple of years." You funny old Dane. Seriously now: "It will be coming soon, I can say that."
But he can't say much more for the moment, it seems. Hansen didn't show anything of the game either, other than the Lego Universe trailer that's been kicking around the Internet for ages. If you haven't seen it, why not take a look.
Concorde, schmoncorde. At least that's what we assume Reaction Engines' A2 would utter if it could in fact speak. The supersonic jet, designed by Oxfordshire's own Reaction Engines, could one day shuttle passengers from Europe to Down Under in less than five hours, cruising at up to 4,000 miles-per-hour along the way. Granted, the aircraft is still in concept mode at the moment, but if all goes to plan, it could be operational "within 25 years."
Reportedly, the 156-yard long jet could maintain a speed of 3,800 miles-per-hour -- over twice that of the famed Concorde -- and could carry 300 guests on each trip. Who knows how much a seat would cost, but we're guessing the sky's the limit.
* Direct3D improvements, including driver version emulation.
* Beginnings of support for OLE objects in Richedit.
* Several fixes to the animation control.
* A bunch of fixes for regression test failures.
* Lots of bug fixes.
* Improved thread termination handling
* Added fatal error detection
* Added previous instance location check
* Fixed some bugs where white screens/freezes could occur
* Fixed a bug where selecting a controller button in controller settings window triggered profile change
* Fixed some help text bugs (thanks to Terence & Sophie)
If you experience white screens/freezes with this version:
1) Please let me know (via email or forum)
2) Download v2007.12a (uses the old mega-stable core.
- The volume balance of ADPCM voice was elaborately brought close to a real machine.
- The interrupt processing of the CD-ROM access was modeled on a real machine.
- In "Neo Nectaris" and "Macross - Eien no Love Song", the saving to backup-RAM became possible. Note: In "Neo Nectaris", when the state saving before v1.36 is loaded, the backup-RAM-saving might not be able to be done normally. At that time, please advance to the next stage, and it is possible to save normally.
- When using Ootake with "Windows 98/Me", the bug that the error goes out when becoming full-screen (generated by v1.36) was corrected. Note: Operation with "Windows 98/Me" is not tested.
- Additionally, a detailed part has been improved and corrected.
- [NASCOM] Improved keyboard layout, added natural keyboard support (not working 100%), changed RAM size configuration to use the standard method instead of dip switches and updated it to use the default black and white palette. [Dirk Best]
- [NASCOM] Added snapshot loading support (.nas files) [Dirk Best]
- [TI99/GENEVE] More floppy cleanups; fixed TI99_8 regression and made the floppy drive usable. (bug #1450) [Michael Zapf]
User Interface Changes:
--------------------------------
- [Windows] Fixed bug in state saving and loading. (bug #1494) [Nate Woods]
Imgtool Changes:
--------------------------
- [Windows Imgtool] Fixed a bug that could cause filenames to get mangled when inserting files onto images with a directory structure. (bug #1458) [Nate Woods]
Source Changes:
----------------------
- The core is based on MAME 0.123. This incorporates all features of the update to this core. [MAME team]
- Major CPU fixes (timing and opcodes).
- Some PPU fixes, corrected VBlank flag behaviour.
- Some APU fixes, corrected frame IRQ timing.
- Fixed a bug in the sprite I/O register.
- Tweaked joypads polling/control and setup.
- Updated config file with the new blitter option 5.
- Binaries are no more compiled under Dev-C++ due to some annoyances.
- Usual tweaks, cleanups and debug code left removed.
* After a long pause, finally updated fMSX-Unix port. fMSX-Unix source code is once again available as part of the core source code distribution. It has been debugged on the Ubuntu Linux. Let me know of any incompatibilities with other Unix flavors.
* Extended fMSX-Symbian port to support UIQ3 phones from Sony Ericsson and Motorola. As I only have key-operated Motorola Z8, testers with pen-based SE phones are badly needed.
* Added run-time compatibility with 8bpp, 16bpp, 24bpp (32bit pixels) and 32bpp screen depths to fMSX-Unix. IMPORTANT: At this moment, built-in config menu, debugger, and NetPlay dialog will only work at X11 screen depth that matches your compile-time setting (i.e. -DBPPxx) in Makefile. Make sure you always compile fMSX-Unix for your default screen depth.
* Disabled secondary slots for primary slot #0 in MSX1 mode. DiskROM boots in MSX1 mode again.
* Now syncing all sound channels after loading state, sound does not get "stuck" any more.
* Renamed command line option -zoom/-nozoom into -soft/-nosoft.
* Moved a few key definitions, so that "!@#$%^..." characters can now be used as indices into Keys[]. This is done for compatibility with GDK key events.
* Renamed KeyMap[] to KeyState[] to avoid name clash with MacOSX system API.
* ALT swaps joysticks 1/2 on all platforms where applicable.
* CONTROL/SHIFT keys now act as FIRE-A/FIRE-B joystick buttons on all platforms.
* Improved fMSX-Symbian sound code, although sound problems still persist on some UIQ3 phones.
* Split fMSX-Symbian/S60 configuration menu into four tabs, making "Video" and "Audio" settings separate.
* Added "Audio Latency", "Skip Frames", and "Sync Updates" settings to fMSX-Symbian.
* Added to fMSX-Symbian ability to use Nokia E61/E62 [FUNC] key in the built-in menu.
* Fixed an fMSX-Symbian bug where pieces of virtual keyboard remained on screen after closing it.
* Pressing [8] key on fMSX-Symbian now invokes virtual keyboard, if enabled, for the phones which do not have the [EDIT] key.
New version of the multi-system emulator for PC. It emulates the Emerson Arcadia 2001 (Bandai, Emerson, Grandstand, Intervision, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, MPT-03, Ormatu, Palladium, Poppy, Robdajet, Tele-Fever, Tempest, Tryom, Tunix, etc.) and Interton VC 4000 (Acetronic, Fountain, Interton, Prinztronic, Rowtron, Voltmace, Waddington, etc.) console families, and the Elektor TV Games Computer.
Changelog:
. Real-time controls display (AmiArcadia).
. New ARexx commands: GETMACHINE, VIEW (AmiArcadia only).
. Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.
* Removed "Add Root" from Paths/Directories dialog.
* Fixed: "." can no longer be deleted or changed from inipath.
* Added a check for "." within inipath (".;" will be prefixed if not found).
* Fixed joystick select becoming disabled after showing the about dialog.
* Added: the picture area now shows snapshot_directory\setname\0000.png by default, unless you are showing pictures like flyers, then pictures will take precedence over snaps.
* Added: scroll buttons to the picture area to allow scrolling through snaps for given set.
* Added: Delete and Rename snapshot menu items to the picture area's context menu.
* Screenshots alpha blend was disabled
* Crash when scanning ZiNc and Daphne games lists
* Games with multiple controls were not being properly filtered when using "Control Type" filters (main menu "Games Filters")
Changed
* Files renamed/moved:
-> from "\ini_files\favorites\default.ico" to "\resources\main_icons\favorite_user.ico"
-> from "\resources\tray_icons\el_icon1.ico" to "\resources\main_icons\trayicon.ico"
Improved
* "Bad Dump" / "No Dump" info in scan results screen for each ROM/CHD
* Display screenshots is a lot faster
* The "no snaphshot" image is shown only when the first screenshot is missing. When using previous/next buttons, if screenshot is not found, the last one loaded is not removed
* Hint for previous/next screenshot buttons
* Even more source code cleanup and optimizations
Removed
* URL label link on top of game documents window/panel
Files deleted:
-> Folder: "\resources\main_icons\" "leftpanel_root.ico"
Folder and all its files "\resources\tray_icons\" deleted
New MAME snaps filename format. Only the old "fullgamename0000.ext" is supported from now on (use the new "Convert Snapshots" feature to avoid renaming all files manually)
Icon files from favorites feature. No more custom favorites icons
Added
* Multi-screenshots layouts!!!!!!!!! View up to 3 screenshots at the same time
-> Features:
- set what image types to use for each layout using the "Customize" menu item in the new "layouts" tool bar button
- switch layouts easily using the new "layout" tool bar button
- resize each image using the splitters
- settings are saved in the new "[front-end]\ini_files\screenshot_layouts.ini" file
- each image panel use the background color configured in preferences screen
- each image panel have a hint with its type description so you know what is being shown (just pass the mouse thru the image)
- features disabled multi-screenshots is enabled: "filename / resolution label"; "change image types"
- use the new "Reset Screenshots Sizes" menu item (images popup menu) to center the splitters into the screenshots preview area (current layout only!)
- use the same image type in more than one place
* New Delphi component, "RichEditURL". URL detection is within the game document text now smile.gif No HTML tags support though.
* New setting: "Set All Games as Available (Scan Games)" (preferences screen) See the help button next to this setting for more info...
* New feature: "convert snapshots from MAME to EL format" (main menu "Images")
- Use this to convert all your "gamename\0000.png" snapshots to "fullgamename0000.png"
* Added the "Screen Resolution" column back (1st screen only). You need to re-create your games lists again. I will not add refresh rate though
* Warning: you must delete all your games lists and columns profiles before using this new build if you are upgrading from v5.3 or EL will crash!
* New button in screenshots tool bar to resize its area so only description column is visible
* Driver "m52.c" into the "Irem Old School" filter for "Moon Patrol" game
The latest version is 0.123. Note that this fully-packaged version is deprecated due to the fast-moving nature of MESS development, but I’ll update it on integer MESS releases.
New in this version:
* all the stuff from SDLMAME 0.123 plus some nice core updates.
* Fixed a stupid bug with the cache, never use xor to see if a memory area was changed. The + I now use is still not perfect, but it's much better, and it should be enough for what it's used for.
* Fixed a possible crash when loading a savegame because I had forgotten to turn the cd music off before restoring a savegame...
* Add a "turbo" key : the default is del, you can change it in the gui, it just toggles the limit speed setting. If you are not limited by vsync, you can reach 700 fps in neoraine with yuv overlays when disabling the speed limitation with this key!
New version of the multi-system emulator for PC. it emulates the Emerson Arcadia 2001 (Bandai, Emerson, Grandstand,
Intervision, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, MPT-03, Ormatu, Palladium, Poppy,
Robdajet, Tele-Fever, Tempest, Tryom, Tunix, etc.) and Interton VC 4000
(Acetronic, Fountain, Interton, Prinztronic, Rowtron, Voltmace,
Waddington, etc.) console families, and the Elektor TV Games Computer.
Changelog:
. Network play (AmiArcadia).
. Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.
Source Changes
--------------
Removed 'type' parameter from tilemap_create. [Zsolt Vasvari]
audio/dkong.c: [couriersud]
* fix dkong audio over-modulation issue with DAC sound
* surround the fix with a DK_REVIEW define for later review.
Changed the use of machine->remapped_colortable to machine->pens where
the drivers weren't using color tables. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Corrected the clocks on the following pcbs: Formation Z, MagMax,
SlapFight and Tiger Heli. Changed Oki m6295 pin 7 to "high" on Toki
and Blood Bros. [Corrado Tomaselli]
Improve build independence for CPU/sound cores. Rescued the M65CE02
core from bitrot hell, and fixed some MESS cores that were broken by
the deprecat.h changes. [Atari Ace]
Corrected the initial detection of extended INP files.
[Barry Rodewald]
Moved Galaxy Games emulation to tmaster.c. [Luca Elia]
makefile/build updates: [couriersud, Aaron Giles]
* moved verinfo.c to src/build
* moved rules for verinfo to src/build/build.mak
* removed osdcore.h from file2str.c, verinfo.c, png2bdc.c
Simplfied Mag Max background drawing code. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Further altered the Exidy 440 code in preparation for moving to proper
sound chip emulation. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Unified transparency handling between scotrsht, shaolins, tp84.
[Zsolt Vasvari]
Split timer_adjust() into timer_adjust_oneshot() and
timer_adjust_periodic(). Updated all call sites. [Aaron Giles]
Fixed some arkanoid clones INPUT_PORTS definitions that were curiously
using PORT_START_TAG("DSW") instead of PORT_MODIFY("DSW"). [stephh]
Fixed DIP switches and inputs for all games in cvs.c. [stephh]
Added HOTD2-specific BIOSes. [Arzeno Fabrice]
Added more accurate emulation of the priority system and the beam
logic in stactics. Removed color table. Centered crosshair. Used
proper game orientation. Unified memory maps. Switched game to use the
artwork system. Set GAME_IMPERFECT_GRAPHICS until artwork is created.
[Zsolt Vasvari]
Added sound support to Champion Skill. Removed GAME_NO_SOUND flags.
Increased interrupts per frame, music was too slow. Minor comments
adjustment. [Mirko Buffoni]
Used PORT_SERVICE and PORT_SERVICE_NO_TOGGLE macros when it was
possible. [stephh]
In the cps2 driver, Changed the GAME definitions to reflect how many
players and how many buttons there are for each game. Rewrote the
INPUT_PORTS definitions to use PORT_INCLUDE, PORT_MODIFY and
PORT_CUSTOM macros. Added a few notes about the inputs when I thought
they were needed to avoid wrong bug reports. Started to clean the
driver. [stephh]
Added PCB and/or chip docs updates for Blaze On (kaneko16.c),
Sand Scorpion (sandscrp.c), Flash Point (segas16b.c). [Brian Troha]
Fixed kangaroo colors by assuming an inversion not present in the
schematics. [Nicola Salmoria]
Added the ability to pass absolute paths to mame_schedule_save() and
mame_schedule_load(). [Nathan Woods]
Naomi/DC updates: [Samuele Zannoli]
- Add SH4 I/O ports
- Connected the 93C46 of the naomi and the x76f100 of the rom board
and filled them with dummy data to satisfy the BIOS
- Implemented some of the JVS transfers that will be needed to use
the controls
- Implemented ROM board DMA
- Set proper NAOMI RAM sizes (32 MB main, 8 MB for AICA)
- Improved PVR-TA graphics emulation
Set proper ARM7 clock for Naomi. [Deunan Knute]
ARM7 updates: [Anonymous]
- correct mode at reset (it's always 0b1....)
- HandlePSRTransfer: remove wrong code, correct detection of
privileged mode
- correct carry output for ROR
- Thumb ASR Rd,Rs: correct carry computation
- Thumb ldmia/stmia: correct value for writeback when the writeback
reg is in the list
- ARM ldm/stm ignore lower bits of the address
- most of the exceptions force the I bit
- ignore some flag bits in the CPSR
Some improvements to the Funworld driver and new games added.
[Roberto Fresca]
- Switched to XTAL def.
- Fixed Magic Card II graphics issues.
- Fixed Magic Card II inputs.
- Fixed screen and visible area to snooker10.
- Renamed set monglfir to mongolnw.
- Renamed sets description based on languages instead of countries.
- Fixed some years and manufacturers.
- Updated technical notes.
- Cleaned up the driver.
Did some cleanup of the 'special case' mess that the rallyx driver
has become. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Removed no longer used TRANSPARENCY_COLOR. [Zsolt Vasvari]
MC6845 updates: [Zsolt Vasvari]
- changed the 6845 to be handle based -- adjusted all drivers
- renamed crtc6845 to mc6845
- allow reading registers 12 and 13
- reading write-only registers return 0
- updated comments in header
Changed qix.c to RGB32 mode and made its videoram_w do the partial
updating instead of a per scanline timer. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Fixed 'mario' and 'masao' memory maps to match the Dip Switches port
name. [stephh]
Fixed pooyan transparency. Updated to use resnet code. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Changed ZN2 clock speed to 100MHz to match board notes. [smf]
Added DIP locations for sitv, sicv, invadpt2, lrescue, invasion. Fixed
coin2 for superinv & invasion. [RansAckeR]
Added initialization to machine/nmk112.c. This resolves a multi-
session audio problem reported for donpachi. Also added some variable
initialization to machine/n64.c to fix running starsldr multi-session.
[Atari Ace]
Added diplocations to policetr and marked some as unused based on
manual and schematics. [Mike Ellery]
Fixed fatal error in the maxaflex, mf_bdash and mf_achas drivers.
[Atari Ace]
Several more risky challenge opcodes. You can now see "gameplay".
[robiza]
New games added or promoted from NOT_WORKING status
---------------------------------------------------
Galaxy Games (BIOS v1.90) [Luca Elia]
Royal Vegas Joker Card [Roberto Fresca]
New clones added
----------------
Contra (US, Set 2) [Brian Troha]
Zero Wing (2 player simultaneous ver.) [Brian Troha]
Sand Scorpion (Revised Hardware) [Stefan Lindberg]
Galaxian (Taito) [Stefan Lindberg]
Jolly Card (3x3 deal) [Roberto Fresca]
Jolly Card Professional 2.0 [Roberto Fresca]
Lucky Lady (3x3 deal) [Roberto Fresca]
Lucky Lady (4x1 aces) [Roberto Fresca]
New games marked as GAME_NOT_WORKING
------------------------------------
World PK Soccer V2 (ver 1.1) [David Haywood]
* fixed the intro graphics bug in 'Chip-chan Kick'
* increased the number of screen resolutions supported by the video driver
* added a triple buffering option '[video] triple_buffer' in the pce.ini file (DirectX only feature)
* added new options in the pce.ini file to filter screen resolutions based on size and depth
* added two sets of video settings, one for windowed mode, and one for fullscreen modes
Download the demo and/or buy the full version and give feedback via comments
- Updated RESOURCE.ML file with all updated/added information needed for the major emulators (MAME 0.123u1, MESS 0.123, PinMAME 1.58).
- Added brackets to the left/right of the currently selected item on screen.
- In an effort give more ability to customize your experience, you can now use a background image (PNG format). This image will be displayed behind your current list display. All that is needed is to have a PNG named "bground" located in the same folder as ML.EXE.
- The access processing to the ADPCM memory was modeled on a real machine. "Tengai Makyou - ZIRIA" came to operate.
In "Kagami no Kuni no Legend", Nori-P came to talk when the name was input.
- The timing of the CD-DA sound processing was elaborately brought close to a real machine. Moreover, the error margin by the PC environment was shortened.
- The processing speed and timing were elaborately brought close to a real machine. In "Cosmic Fantasy 2", the problem that the screen had shaken by one frame was solved.
- Additionally, a detailed part has been improved and corrected.
1. Fixed ReMem emulation in both Normal and MMU modes. Memory mapping now consistent with an actual ReMem. Emulation supports only the latest ReMem FW version (64, 65, 66). In MMU mode, both sector access and direct memory access work properly. Also fixed some bugs with the the Rampac emulation.
2. Added configuration page for ReMem Map display and setup.
3. Added support for M10 Emulation.
4. Added breakpoint capability to CPURegs window. Up to 4 breakpoints can be specified and enabled or disabled.
5. Added Remote control interface via sockets. The socket interface is enabled via a command line switch to specify the socket port, such as "virtualt -p 20000". The protocol is simple text command and response with async text messages sent for breakpoint and otional screen output messages. See Help for full details.
6. Added serial I/O support under Linux. The current implementation has a few "hard coded" port names in the port list, but allows the user to specify an "Other Host Port" name to specify the serial device.
7. Modified the main emulatin loop so it uses fewer CPU cycles. Previous versions consumed up to 100% CPU cycles causing heat issues and reduced battery life on laptops. Added new Speed menu selections to allow finer setting of emulation speed vs. CPU utilization.
8. Fixed a bug with the emulation of interrupts and with the extended opcode DSUB flags.
9. Added a vt_client project / application to communicate with VirtualT socket interface using a very simple command line interface.
10. Added a "Cold Boot" option to the Emulation menu.
11. Added content to the Help system.
12. Transitioned the Windows development environment to Visual Studio 2005. The project files are no longer compatible with Visual Studio 6.
13. Added a feature to patch the ROM on load to show VirtualT version in the MENU. This can be disabled in the "Memory Options" menu.
14. Added auto detection and creation of missing emulation directories. For new installations, all emulation directories will be created and ROM images copied from the ROMs directory.
New update of the multi-system emulator for PC. It emulates the Emerson Arcadia 2001 (Bandai, Emerson, Grandstand,
Intervision, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, MPT-03, Ormatu, Palladium, Poppy,
Robdajet, Tele-Fever, Tempest, Tryom, Tunix, etc.) and Interton VC 4000
(Acetronic, Fountain, Interton, Prinztronic, Rowtron, Voltmace,
Waddington, etc.) console families, and the Elektor TV Games Computer.
Changelog:
. Real-time CPU/UVI/PVI/PSG/RAM monitor (AmiArcadia).
. Locale support (AmiArcadia only).
. New ARexx commands: OPENCONTROLS, CLOSECONTROLS, OPENMONITOR, CLOSEMONITOR (AmiArcadia only).
. Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.
Version 1.59 (February 17th, 2008)
----------------------------------
- HSTD displayed in all player panels for GTS1 games
- Sound support for Zaccaria prototype games (strike, skijump, spacecty)
Version 1.59 (February 17, 2008) - "The lost sounds"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And yet another bugfix release - just a little more than two weeks later!
Gottlieb's System 3 has now access to all of the content of the OKI chip's speech & sound roms, enabling some long-lost quotes like "Jackpot!" on Stargate, or "You need another coin" on Barb Wire. At the same time the sampling speed was adjusted, for it was playing too fast before, and made some game soundtack sound real bad (eg. Wipeout)!
Some preliminary sound was added for the Zaccaria 1-player games. It probably sounds nothing like the original, for lack of comparison sound clips mostly!
A few clones and new games were added, for instance the "Addams Family Values" coin dropper, and the newly-found Rock Encore. So nothing spectacular here. wink.gif
Changes:
*** CORE/CPU ***
Full OKI 6295 rom support for Gottlieb System 3 games
Decreased sampling frequency by 5.6% for games using the OKI 6295 chip
HSTD flashing in all player score panels for Gottlieb System 1 games
Preliminary sound support for Zaccaria prototype machines
*** ROM SUPPORT ***
Added Addams Family Values (coin dropping game)
Added Rock Encore (different sound version for Premier's "Rock")
Added NBA Fastbreak U2 sound version 0.4 (gives a warning but still plays)
Added Baby Pacman home roms by Okaegi
- misc: several internal 64bit updates
- misc: 64bit clrmamepro exe available as separate download
- misc: updated updateprogram to pick correct 32/64bit package
- misc: updated to latest fully licenced ziparchive non-mfc version & new 64bit unrar dll
- misc: remove-rebuilt-source files now works for all parts of a split-rar too
- misc: more detailed parse error messages showing the last successfully parsed set
- misc: some small internal preparations for upcoming new xml datheaders
- fixed: negative windows positions lead to not visible windows
- fixed: wrong parser error message when no setformat.xml is available
- fixed: new rebuilder destination folder isn't removed when stopping at rebuilder warning prompts
New version of the multi-system emulator for PC. AmiArcadia emulates the Emerson Arcadia 2001 (Bandai, Emerson, Grandstand,
Intervision, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, MPT-03, Ormatu, Palladium, Poppy,
Robdajet, Tele-Fever, Tempest, Tryom, Tunix, etc.) and Interton VC 4000
(Acetronic, Fountain, Interton, Prinztronic, Rowtron, Voltmace,
Waddington, etc.) console families, and the Elektor TV Games Computer.
Changelog:
. Elektor: Improved sound emulation (improves ESS-010-C: Für Elise, Wedding March, etc.) (AmiArcadia).
. Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.
New for this release:
* LibDsk has been added allowing direct floppy access, various disk image formats DSK, EDSK, TD0, CopyQM, etc. Other disk drivers under Windows and Unices are also possible.
* Added --side1as0 option to allow disks in LibDsk to correctly read side 1 when the sector header contains side 0. Microbee DS80 and DS40 formats can have this problem depending on the format program that was used.
* Added a sector size probing option --psec to access protected floppy disks and edsk images.
* Added emulation of the FDC write track command. Format and Init programs now work when using LibDsk.
* Added +fdc_wtd and +fdc_wth write track debug output options.
* Model information and drive status now appears in the program's title bar.
* Added A libdskrc file containing common Microbee formats for LibDsk.
* Re-instated the alpha+ --vdu option functionality. Default is 2K for VDU memory (no banking), 8K banked can be selected.
* Re-instated the paging of the text output for the --help option in Windows as default buffers in the console are not large enough.
Fixed:
* Alpha+ VDU colour bank selection issue resolved by defaulting to 2K of VDU RAM instead of 8K.
* FDC status results.
Well I bought a MacBook, and it seems I can still build G4 SDLMAME builds just fine on it (it runs on rosetta) so I'm assuming it runs on a G4 also. Posting a up to date binary here, along with a updated Intel binary, since the guy over at mametesters hasn't updated his build in quite some time. Enjoy.
Source Changes
-----------------------------
csk.c driver improvements: [Mirko Buffoni]
* Added DIPLOCATION macros to all Dip Switches. All DSW are verified through test mode.
* Fixed custom_io_r which is used for protection but also for keyboard input.
Fixed build with external zlib. [R. Belmont]
Completed old-style colortable removal. Removed MDRV_COLORTABLE_LENGTH macro. Updated uigfx to display new-style color tables if present. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Reorganized/minor clean-ups to Mad Alien driver. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Converted SNES (except debug code) to RGB32 as it was a serious abuser of the palette system. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Added colortable_palette_get_size() to emupal. Added some more asserts to catch errors. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Fixed Dip Switches (especially coinage) and inputs for 'mpatrol' and 'troangl' (and their clones). Tried to "unify" the two drivers (I still think that some things can be merged). Added iremipt.h source file (same purpose as taitoipt.h). Fixed Dip Switches and inputs for 'alpha1v'. The game is now more playable to me but I left the GAME_NOT_WORKING flag as I think there are still some things to look at). [stephh]
Changed IREM cpu decryption to be 'real-time' (it's a feature of the CPU). Moved decryption table setup to 'config' struct for the CPU. Added latest tables from robiza, making Risky Challenge playable, promoted it to working. Told CPU core to not decrypt code after brkn instruction, enabling it again on iret, allowing me to remove several 'don't decrypt range' hacks in the code. Updated all drivers accordingly. Currently the disassembly is a bit weird now, this will need looking at. [David Haywood, robiza]
Added and hooked up AICA (Naomi sound chip). Naomi boot sounds now play. Since it's an SCSPx2 with ADPCM instead of FM it's already feature-complete except filter envelopes. A bug in the ARM7 core causes incorrect pan/level values to be computed in e.g. the Naomi SOUND TEST menu. This is not a defect in the AICA. [ElSemi, Deunan Knute, kingshriek, R. Belmont]
Fixed Dip Switches (especially coinage) and inputs for '10yard' (and its clones). Tried to "unify" the driver with m52 and m57 drivers (I still think that some things can be merged). [stephh]
Fixed unaligned 32-bit reads in the ARM7 core. [R. Belmont]
Fixed misaligned backgrounds in mpatrol caused by recent changes. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Minor code cleanups. Added static/const where appropriate, plus some include fixes. Reverted some of the changes to build.mak from u1 which made some MSVC builds fail, and adjusted/optimized an m10.c gfx_layout. Added some missing cores to cpuintrf.c, sndintrf.c and added some missing #if's to 5220intf.c. [Atari Ace]
Fixed one or two dips in the mirage.c driver and found the "service" switch and likely start of inputs. [Brian Troha]
Removed expand_machine_driver(). Replaced with machine_config_alloc() and machine_config_free(). Updated all call sites. Normalized info.c style and simplified some of the code. [Aaron Giles]
Renamed machine->drv to machine->config to reduce overloading of the term "driver". [Aaron Giles]
Simplified collision detection in taitosj and tank8. [Zsolt Vasvari]
New module: devintrf.c/.h. Implements a generic device interface similar to the sound and CPU interfaces. [Aaron Giles]
New module: mconfig.c/.h. Moved all machine_config and MDRV_* macros here, out of driver.c/.h. Added MDRV macros for adding/removing/configuring devices. [Aaron Giles]
Deprecated the following constants because global constants that pretend to document things but which are only guesses are dumb:
- DEFAULT_60HZ_VBLANK_DURATION
- DEFAULT_30HZ_VBLANK_DURATION
- DEFAULT_REAL_60HZ_VBLANK_DURATION
- DEFAULT_REAL_30HZ_VBLANK_DURATION
- DEFAULT_60HZ_3S_VBLANK_WATCHDOG
- DEFAULT_30HZ_3S_VBLANK_WATCHDOG
Updated all drivers to explicitly specify the equivalent bogus times. Added comments for the "REAL" VBLANK durations to indicate that they are not accurate. [Aaron Giles]
Improved some DIP switches, added some DIP locations, replaced IPT_COINx with IPT_SERVICE1 where appropiate, and simplified some control definitions in the following drivers: alpha68k.c, actfancr.c, aeroboto.c, aerofgt.c, aliens.c, ambush.c, amidar.c, amspdwy.c, angelkds.c, appoooh.c, arabian.c, argus.c, arkanoid.c. [RansAckeR]
Connected the Shadow Warriors buttons like they are wired on the original pcb (which is jamma). [Corrado Tomaselli]
Fixed multi-session crash with Namco System 2 games. [Atari Ace]
Improved Print Club DIP switches. [Edward Swiftwood]
Fixed a few corner cases in the 6840 emulation based on running the MPU4 test ROMs, and added the ability to dynamically alter the external clock frequencies in game. [James Wallace]
Changed the 6850 core to allow dynamic RX and TX clock alteration, to at least try to remove a few of the MPU4 timing problems. [James Wallace]
Updated documentation of the MPU4 Video board. Added documentation of the Cosmic Chasm crystals, and merged the memory maps. [James Wallace]
Fixed validation fail of '_mul_32x32_hi()' and '_mulu_32x32_hi()' inline function when compiled GCC v3.3.5 with I686 optimization. [KO Myung-Hun]
Verified clocks on Rainbow Islands and Rambo 3 and Raiden 2. Reverted sound OSC of Truxton 2 to 27mhz/8 since the original OST runs at this speed. The pcb I measured the previous clock was 28mhz/8 and it's a different pcb version from the common one. Since mame doesn't support multiple OSC I prefer to use the 27mhz one. [Corrado Tomaselli]
Fixed some incorrect rom dumps for Double Dragon 3 (Some of the dumps were based of the bootleg and not the original.) and updated the name and location to actually match that of a real board. [Kevin Eshbach]
Added DIP locations to Combatribes and Battletoads. [Kevin Eshbach]
Added video_screen_update_now(int scrnum) to force a screen update up to the current beam position. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Pulled remaining vestiges of old-style colortables: [Aaron Giles]
* PALETTE_INIT no longer has a colortable parameter
* removed game_colortable and remapped_colortable from machine_config
* updated a few stragglers that still referenced these fields
* removed tile_draw_colortable from tilemap.c
Changed the input port tokens to use a union instead of casting everything to FPTR. In the future, C99-enabled compilers will be able to achieve type safety with designated initializers. [Aaron Giles]
Added i8749 CPU variant for MESS. [Curt Coder]
Added missing SH4 instructions and bugfixed the FPU. Improved Naomi I/O board emulation and added working controls. [Samuele Zannoli]
jedi.c improvements: [Zsolt Vasvari]
- Complete memory map
- Crystals
- Driver state structure
- Text layer is rendered at the same time as the background
Changed all drivers using the MC6845 chip to use the new device interface. Removed mc6845_config. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Reorganized Gameplan driver. Changed Trivia Quest use the Gameplan video code. Added crystal for Gameplan pixel clock. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Removed the unnecessary pen array lookup from some INDEXED16 drivers. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Removed the per-screen palette_base. This was an idea that never really worked out, nor have we really needed it. [Aaron Giles]
Defined a new device type VIDEO_SCREEN. Currently this has no live functionality, but merely serves as a placeholder/identifier for video screens. Eventually some of the screen management code may move into the start/stop/reset functions. [Aaron Giles]
Changed MDRV_SCREEN_ADD to specify a screen type (RASTER, VECTOR, LCD for the moment). Removed the older VIDEO_TYPE_RASTER and VIDEO_TYPE_VECTOR; this information is now determined by walking the screen list. [Aaron Giles]
Changed MDRV_SCREEN_* macros to build up VIDEO_SCREEN devices rather than storing values in the screen[] array. Removed the screen[] array from machine_config. Modified all code referencing Machine->config->screen[] and changed it to iterate over the devices using the new video_screen_first() and video_screen_next() functions. [Aaron Giles]
Removed implicit screen #0. This means that ALL DRIVERS MUST EXPLICITLY DECLARE THEIR SCREENS. Updated all drivers to do so. While there, grouped all MDRV_SCREEN_* parameters together. Also removed unnecessary VIDEO_TYPE_RASTER and VIDEO_TYPE_VECTOR. Also removed VBLANK and bitmap format information from vector games. This was painful and very tedious. [Aaron Giles]
Changed game information to display info about all screens. [Aaron Giles]
Changed Beathead driver to use partial updates instead of caching scanline level information. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Added state_save_combine_module_and_tag(). Its purpose is to create a unique name for state saving purposes in modules that are tag based (no index). [Zsolt Vasvari]
New games added or promoted from NOT_WORKING status
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Champion Poker [Mirko Buffoni]
Risky Challenge [robiza]
New clones added
------------------------------
Fighting Soccer (Japan) [Yasuhiro Ogawa]
Red Hawk (Excellent Co., Ltd) [Brian Troha]
New games marked as GAME_NOT_WORKING
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Toy Fighter [Corrado Tomaselli]
- Added a generic tiles decoding routine and updated various drivers to use it
- Added support for 32x32 tiles in the generic tile rendering module
- Added support for multiple YM2203s to the YM2203 interface
- Updated all sets to match MAME 0.123u1
- Tidied up all source code to compile cleanly for all builds (unicode, non-unicode, debug, non-debug)
- Added support for M6502 CPU
- Added support for SH-2 CPU
- Added support for NEC V30 family CPU
- Separated misc drivers into "Misc (pre 90s)" and "Misc (post 90s)"
- Moved some common sound cores into the burn folder
- Added various clones and fixed some little issues in various games
- Added driver for Madgear and Last Duel
- Added driver for 1942
- Added preliminary driver for 1943 and added support to the Zet interface to get the BC register
- Added Oopsware's CPS-3 driver
- Added various drivers by iq_132
- Cleaned up the drivers by iq_132 (separated into Misc pre 90s category, corrected aspect ratios, fixed rom-sets, etc.)
- Added driver for seta2 hardware
- Added preliminary driver for m92 hardware in debug builds
- Added a d_parent module to put required parent drivers that don't have a specific driver
- misc: sysinformation and system picker windows now got a cmpro icon
- misc: 'checking unknown sets' dialog shows processed filename before working on it
- misc: toggling a check box for scan tree update, autoscroll is disabled during update
- misc: speed optimized "deeper check for fixable missing files"
- fixed: wrong zipclass exception handling may cause crashes when working on corrupt zips
- fixed: xml datfile check didn't use the engine.cfg replacement settings (mess import issue)
* Proper handling of OpenGL/Direct3D windows with menu bars.
* Stubs for all the d3dx9_xx dlls.
* Several graphics optimizations.
* Many installer fixes.
* Improved MIME message support.
* Lots of bug fixes.
- NEW DVD/CD Drive EDM System (Enable/Disable Manager)
- NEW Improved Dumping/Burning engine more stability and speed
- NEW Blu-ray format (single and double sided) are supported in the Xtra Wizard
- NEW Blu-ray format (single and double sided) are totally supported in Alcohols Burning & Dumping Wizard now.
- NEW DPM extraction and writing for more accuracy with some drives.
- NEW Performance graphic now supports Blu-ray format (single and double sided)
- FIX Problem with some Drives Not showing correct manufacture ID of blank discs.
- FIX The incorrect 'Processor Info' display on some Operating systems
- FIX Addressed some blacklisting problems
- FIX Bugs reported by some users
- FIX Auto play doesn't show in x64 platform problem
- UPDATE Some language files
- UPDATE Devsupp additional support for more drives
Officials from the U.S. and European Union gave themselves a big pat on the back today, announcing that a joint operation of theirs recently netted over 360,000 fake computer components over a two week period, a haul that they say rang up to some $1.3 billion. That apparently included both counterfeit integrated circuits and various computer parts, which were branded with over forty different trademarks including Intel, Cisco and Philips, to name a few. Needless to say, the officials are now apparently feeling a little buoyed by their success, with them vowing to crack down on computer counterfeiters the world over, and " take up the matter" with China, which is where most of the seized products apparently came from.
IGN has some interesting coverage of a panel at GDC 2008 that featured some of the top names in the MMO world who got together to discuss the future of the genre.
"On hand were Jack Emmert of Cryptic Studios, Mark Miller of NCSoft, Min Kim of Nexon and Rob Pardo of Blizzard Entertainment. MMO newbie Ray Muzyka was also on hand to share his thoughts as BioWare moves into the MMO arena. [...] The conversation got a lot more heated when the subject of micro-transactions was introduced. This is a popular revenue model in Asia, where the games themselves are free to play but charge a premium for a variety of premium extras, from vanity items to additional content or abilities. It's a model that's working well for Korean developer Nexon but hasn't been adopted by many American developers."
Even the most diehard PC gamer has to admit that their console gaming brethren get the better end of the deal as far as costs are concerned. But exactly how much does a console gamer save over the system'ss lifespan? A poster over at TechConsumer crunched the numbers and found that, when everything is added up, the savings aren't necessarily that great.
When all is said and done, the full Xbox 360 gaming setup (including TV, accessories and Xbox Live subscription) costs $3,152 over six years, about $350 less than a basic gaming PC for the same period. Of course that cost includes a 42" 1080p TV, while the comparable PC uses a relatively paltry 22 inch display. When a comparable screen is used on the PC, the savings on the console side balloon to near $1,200.
The real killer for the PC, of course, is the upgrades (estimated in this study at $250 every other year) and recommended full-on replacements (every three years) that come much more frequently than the console equivalents (one replacement every six years). So, PC gamers, is it worth the extra money?
Hi all i finally got around to sorting out the RSS Feed for the Whole DCEmu Network, you can now check out http://www.dcemu.co.uk in the right column or http://feeds.feedburner.com/dcemunetwork, you now have access to hundreds of news items per day from the worlds best homebrew network.
Hopefully should also help people who are still suffering those damned DNS Issues with the sub domains
Also Cyrille has added an "Tutorial: Create emuControlCenter gtk themes"
emuControlCenter supports many japanes platforms. So we began to gather some details for this rare computers. We´ve started with Fujitsu FM-Towns / SHARP X68000 Details including links to the emulators / bios files and videos.
Be careful who you frag. Having eliminated all terrorism in the real world, the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence.
The Reynard project will begin by profiling online gaming behavior, then potentially move on to its ultimate goal of "automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world."
The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.
If it shows early promise, this small seedling effort may increase its scope to a full project.
Reynard will conduct unclassified research in a public virtual world environment. The research will use publicly available data and will begin with observational studies to establish baseline normative behaviors.
The publicly available report -- which was mandated by Congress following earlier concerns over data-mining programs -- also mentions several other data-mining initiatives. These include:
Video Analysis and Content Extraction - software to automatically identify faces, events and objects in video
Tangram - A system that wants to create surveillance and threat warning system that evaluates known threats and finds unknown threats to issue warnings ahead of an attack
Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination - This tool is reminiscent of the supposedly-defunct Total Information Awareness program. It seeks to access disparate databases to find patterns of known bad behavior. The program plans to work with domestic law enforcement and Homeland Security.
The report gives no indication why the find-a-terrorist cell in Sims project is called Reynard, though that is a traditional trickster figure in literature.
It was only a few short years ago when in-game physics were a novelty, like lava lamps and black lights. Today, however, like barrels that explode when shot, obeying the laws of physics is expected behavior for objects in most any game. This turnabout is pinned largely on the popularity of Havok's core collection of animation and physics tools, which the company notes that it will make available to PC game developers for free later this year.
The toolset, dubbed Havok Complete, has been used in creating a number of high profile titles, such as Ninja Theory's Heavenly Sword. Beginning in May, Havok will make available these same tools to developers for non-commercial use, while both it and parent company Intel also plan to offer those devs deemed worthy with a free commercial distribution license as well. Says Havok, the move is designed to "boost creative game development throughout the industry," from indies and academics, to PC enthusiasts who for too long have lived without the joy of being able to throw virtual ragdolls down flights of stairs.
This is one of the options the UN is taking into account in its attempt to find new ways of financing its fight against poverty.
Philippe Douste-Blazy, the newly-appointed Special Adviser on Innovative Financing for Development for the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, has recently declared that the branch he is leading (the UNITAID- the international drug purchase facility hosted by the UN World Health Organization) is behind schedule with implementing the measures required by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agenda:
"We are halfway in the timetable with the deadline in 2015, but we are not halfway in terms of results. The truth is we are late." He added that global development assistance has fallen for the first time in 10 years.
In order to find new resources, Douste-Blazy, who was also the French Foreign Affairs minister and a member of the European Parliament, said to French newspaper La Croix that "the UN is reflecting on the possibility of putting taxes on video games and Internet commerce to finance the fight against poverty". Another option would be to convince citizens to "contribute voluntarily with one or two euros".
The high-ranked official unveiled the fact that more than $500 billion are needed to reach the targets established by the world powers in 2000. Although to some this might look like an insanely huge amount of money, Douste-Blazy said that transactions worth more than $1500 billion are being rolled on the world's financial markets every single day.
Mr. Douste-Blazy's conclusion is that "new means" of financing are necessary, like putting taxes "on Internet video-games and the e-commerce".
However, the irony is that in the fight against hunger and poverty, money is actually not a problem. Corruption is. Prestigious magazine Wall Street Journal has recently unveiled that more than 90% of the funds allocated by the World Bank for Indian health programs have been wasted on badly executed repairs or have simply vanished (read "have entered the pockets of corrupted Indian officials"). This adds to the massive thefts registered in Africa, where tons of food, medicine and construction materials never reach the hands of the poor.
And speaking of corrupted officials, not a year has passed since Paul Wolfowitz's resignation from the World Bank, after it was found that he personally negotiated a generous salary for his mistress at the US State Department. Former UN Secretay-General Koffi Anan's son was also investigated for using his father's influential position to obtain preferential oil contracts in Irak, during Saddam Hussein's reign.
We're just curious: what kind of new taxes does the UN have in mind, since the gaming industry is already paying a lot of taxes?
- The resolution of the PSG sound (wave memory sound) has been improved. As a result, the tone has approached a real machine. On the other hand, processing is a little heavy. If a personal computer environment not fast is used, select "Volume"->"Light PSG" menu.
- Processing of drawing on the screen was sped up. Additionally, if "Volume"->"Light PSG" menu is used, the processing lightens. And, In the window mode of "Windows Vista", V-Sync comes to work, and compatibility with gadgets has improved.
- In "F1 Circus", the bug not to be able to start car (Generated from v1.29. Controller processing relation) was corrected.
- The processing speed and timing were elaborately brought close to a real machine. At the title screen of "Macross 2036", the problem that had fallen into disorder by one frame occasionally was solved.
- When "Private eye dol" is started, the message to recommend [CD Install ("CD-ROM"->"Install" menu)] is displayed. The screen display of the demo is steady by the "CD Install".
- It corresponded to the initial shipment version of "Linda Cube".
- Additionally, a detailed part has been improved and corrected.
1) Added options to create and save either 35 or 40 tracks to a D64 file.
2) Added track align option for creating and loading D64 files.
3) Added command line options.
example:
hoxs64.exe -quickload -alignd64tracks -autoload "c:\games\games.d64" 5
This will auto quick load program 6 from the file games.d64. Aligned tracks will be used.
- Major CPU and APU timing fixes, hard work.
- Fixed sound config GUI dialog.
- Cleanups, future savestates might not be compatible.
- Lots of minor changes and improvements.
Shendo released a new version of his PSX MemoryCard editor.
Changelog:
Note: This version of MemcardRex was written from the scratch.
* Added comments support for dexdrive memory cards.
* Added toolstrip informations.
* Added support for simultaneous editing of 2 memory cards.
* Added support for dragging-and-dropping of memory card files.
* Saves can now be copied to the temp buffer and pasted to the selected card and slot.
* Double click on the selected item now shows a save information.
* Product code, Identifier and Region now shown in the list instead on the toolbar.
* Editing operations are now save based instead of the slot based like in older versions.
* Dropped support for .vmp cards until proper header reconstruction is possible.
For those that had no qualms kicking Teddy to the curb and cuddling with Asus' Eee PC throughout the night just as soon as it was released, you may want to utilize your scroll wheel right about now. For those with a tough stomach and a perverse appetite for destruction, you can most definitely stay put. In the video posted after the jump, the Eee PC is pushed from great heights onto solid floors, forced to sit in extreme temperatures and repeatedly prodded to see if it still functioned. Interested? You're just one click away from a clip sure to make gadget aficionados everywhere cringe.
Publisher seeks "friendly" acquisition of Take-Two
Electronic Arts has said that it waited until the development of Grand Theft Auto IV was complete before making a formal proposal to acquire its publisher Take-Two Interactive.
The company also believes the time is right for the proposed acquisition as EA has completed its internal reorganisation and its newest studios – the recently acquired Pandemic and BioWare – are currently settling in.
"We've waited to ensure that our proposal did not disrupt development of GTA IV," said EA. "The game is scheduled to launch in about two months, which means the core development should be essentially complete."
Electronic Arts said that the two companies have been in discussion on-and-off for about a year, with official dialogue to discuss the intention to acquire Take-Two opened in December, followed by a formal proposal on Febraury 6, and second proposal on February 19.
Despite Take-Two's rejection of the USD 2 billion offer, EA maintains its proposal to acquire the rival publisher is "friendly to Take-Two shareholders, developers, partners and customers. We continue to seek a friendly, negotiated transaction," added EA.
EA believes that Take-Two's internal studios - which includes Firaxis, Visual Concepts and Irrational - would be able to maintain their own identities, and that the Rockstar teams would also be comfortable working as part of the Electronic Arts group.
"We have great respect for the Rockstar leadership team and some of our executives have worked with Rockstar leaders while in previous positions with other companies.
"We believe EA's decentralised label organisation will be attractive to Take-Two’s creative talent," added EA.
Although EA said that it was too early to discuss any plans for staff changes or the future of intellectual properties, it did reiterate its respect for the Rockstar portfolio, stating, “We strongly believe that behind all the controversy is a core of great intellectual property and development talent.
"These titles don’t sell millions because they’re controversial; they sell because they’re great games."
+ MAME 0.123u2 compatible
+ text files and links were updated
+ gamelist.txt was updated
+ minor changes of interface
+ language (lng) files were updated
Be wary of who you laugh at while shamelessly ganking in World of WarCraft - they could turn out to be a real-life terrorist.
Apparently, you see, the US intelligence community is looking to develop code that'll investigate suspicious goings on in online virtual worlds. The overall scheme is dubbed Reynard, according to a publicly available document.
Reported on Wired, the document explains that Reynard is "a seedling effort to study the emerging phenomenon of social (particularly terrorist) dynamics in virtual worlds and large-scale online games and their implications for the intelligence community".
It continues, "The cultural and behavioural norms of virtual worlds and gaming are generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify emerging social, behavioural and cultural norms in virtual worlds and gaming environments.
"The project would then apply the lessons learned to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious behaviour and actions in the virtual world".
If terrorism weren't such a horribly serious issue, we'd laugh until our boots of +5 strength fell off.
* Changed the tabs in the Shadow skin to be vertical buttons. Chat Rooms, Screenshots and Videos now have their own buttons
*
* Fixed many small graphical glitches in the Shadow skin.
* Reinstated the World of Warcraft infoview with character information.
* Fixed a synchronization issue if you receive a chat room invitation in Xfire In-Game but alt-tab and accept it out of game.
* Added Xfire In-Game 2.0 support including the mouse to the following games:
Call of Duty United Offensive Single Player Demo Conflict: Denied Ops Contract JACK Darwinia
Darwinia Demo Devastation Digital Paint: Paintball 2 Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
Enemy Territories Quake Wars Demo FIFA Soccer 06 Genesis Rising Half Life: Blue Shift
Half-Life 2: Episode One Harry Potter - Quidditch World Cup Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Instinct
Jedi Knight II Multiplayer Jedi Knight II Single Player Nexus - The Jupiter Incident Operation Flashpoint
Operation Flashpoint Resistance Opposing Force Peter Jackson's King Kong PlanetSide
Prey Demo Pro Evolution Soccer 5 Quake II Red Orchestra
Return to Castle Wolfenstein Multiplayer Return to Castle Wolfenstein Single Player Sauerbraten Serious Sam
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter Silent Hill 2 Sin Sin Multiplayer
Sniper Elite Soldiers - Heroes of World War II Soldner - Secret Wars Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II Stubbs the Zombie Total Overdose Trainz Railroad Simulator 2006
UFO Aftershock Unreal Tournament 2003 Voyage Century Online Winning Eleven 9
Winning Eleven Pro Evolution Soccer 2007
* New games supported: 9Dragons, Feeding Frenzy 2 Deluxe, Bejeweled Deluxe, Bejeweled 2 Deluxe, Chuzzle Deluxe, Insaniquarium Deluxe, AstroPop Deluxe, Iggle Pop Deluxe, Zuma Deluxe, Dynomite Deluxe, Big Money Deluxe, Heavy Weapon Deluxe, Pizza Frenzy Deluxe, Hammer Heads Deluxe, Typer Shark Deluxe, Rail Simulator, Bookworm Deluxe, Bookworm Adventures Deluxe, Sins of a Solar Empire, The Sims Castaway Stories, Thrillville: Off the Rails, Secret of the Solstice, CABAL Online: The Revolution of Action, Holic, Racer Beta, FIFA Manager 08, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Conflict: Denied Ops, Harley-Davidson Race to the Rally, Manga Fighter, and Audiosurf.
Epic Games VP Mark Rein has laughed off Cliff Bleszinski's recent claim that PC gaming is in "disarray", pointing out that PC gaming is Epic's "heritage".
"Cliff's an idiot!" Rein joked when we asked about the comments during a GDC interview. "I'm kidding, obviously."
We asked if he had words with the Gears of War designer. "Oh yeah," said Rein. "Hey, Cliff is Cliff, and he's making a console game, and that's what he's focused on, so that's what his thinking is all about.
"But as a company, we make PC games. We love the PC, it's our heritage, we want to see it be strong, and we want to sell games like Unreal Tournament III and Gears of War on PC, and have them sell as well as they do on console."
Epic Games is among the first to sign up the PC Gaming Alliance - an organisation set up to help promote PC gaming, and Rein said it was an easy decision.
"As soon as they invited us we said 'yes, here's our cheque'. It took all of ten minutes to decide we wanted to be involved in this."
Check back soon for the rest of our interview with Mark Rein.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games has continued its Michael Johnson-like domination of the UK All Formats Chart.
The Wii version dug its spikes in and accounted for 58 per cent of the sales this week, helping it to a second consecutive gold medal and fifth in its career.
More surprising was FIFA Street 3 only managing to debut at 11, despite being rather prominent on football hoardings and in telly adverts. It makes it the worst performing instalment in the series to date, with the original entering at three and the sequel at one.
Unreal Tournament 3 faired a little better, returning to the top flight at nine thanks to the freshly released PS3 version.
The other new entry in the chart was Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, which managed a rather disappointing first week at 37.
Otherwise the charts were rather predictable. Call of Duty 4 continued its well deserved success to hold on at two, Brain Training climbed to three, Devil May Cry 4 fell to four and Wii Play took five.
Game Party did well to jump from 15 to six, Turok fell to seven like a dying dinosaur, FIFA 08 was at eight and The Simpsons rounded the charts off at 10.
The UK All-Formats Top 40:
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii, DS)
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360, PS3, PC, DS)
Dr Kawashima's Brain Training (DS)
Devil May Cry 4 (PS3, Xbox 360)
Wii Play (Wii)
Game Party (Wii)
Turok (PS3, Xbox 360)
FIFA 08 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii, PS2, DS, PSP)
Unreal Tournament 3 (PS3, PC)
The Simpsons Game (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, DS, PSP)
FIFA Street 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, DS)
Cooking Mama 2 (Wii, DS)
Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360, PS3)
Burnout: Paradise (PS3, Xbox 360)
More Brain Training From Dr Kawashima (DS)
Need For Speed: ProStreet (Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii, PS2, DS, PSP)
NCsoft has revealed that the Guild Wars franchise has sold over five million units in Europe, Asia and North America.
Developed by ArenaNet the title has received three expansions since launch three year's ago – Guild Wars Factions, Guild Wars Nightfall and Guild Wars: Eye of the North.
"Guild Wars is a proven success and has set a new standard for online RPG games with its unique business model and superior playability," commented NCsoft CEO Taek Jin Kim.
"ArenaNet is dedicated to creating games that expand the market and provide great new content to our loyal player base. This success has built a great foundation from which the next generation of Guild Wars games will grow."
ArenaNet is currently working on a sequel to the MMORPG, although no release date has yet been set.
"Reaching the five million mark is extremely gratifying for us at ArenaNet because it shows the hard work and dedication we put into our games has resonated with the fans," said Mike O’Brien, co-founder of ArenaNet.
"We are committed to supporting all of our Guild Wars players, and at the same time, we’re extremely excited to work on the game’s evolution. Certainly the future of Guild Wars is as bright as its past and present," he added.
- High storage capacity (6GB) for storing essential digital content such as high quality photos, videos, music and more
- Optimal speed and performance for microSDHC compatible devices
- Speed performance rating: Class 4 (based on SD 2.00 Specification)
- High Quality microSDHC card backed by 5 year limited warranty
- Built to last, with an operating shock rating of 2,000Gs, equivalent to a ten-foot drop *
- SanDisk microSDHC 6GB card ships with Bonus MicroMate� USB 2.0 SD/SDHC Reader, to ensure compatibility when downloading pictures or other digital content
Easily transfer files between your digital devices and computer
High speed USB 2.0 certified reader/writer for fast data transfer
In case you haven't noticed, the Eee PC has quickly become a favorite among folks that like to, shall we say, customize things, and it now looks like you can chalk up another big modification to the list of operations the laptop has gone under. This latest come to us from one "guryhwa," who managed to cram a 1.2GHz Pentium M processor into the laptop, giving it a bit of boost of the stock Celeron. Needless to this, this particular hack involves some soldering and a good deal of guts, but you apparently at least don't have to make any modifications to the BIOS. Without any changes, however, the processor only runs at 840MHz, although guryhwa's apparently working to improve that.
Professor Samuel Hunt arrives in the picturesque Spanish city where time seems to go by slower. Narrow streets, squares with an atmosphere of the Middle Ages, silence and calm. Or not: a young man formerly known for his honesty has recently been caught stealing treasures, and now some families have renewed wounds of past grievances. Family revenge? Black magic? Lost bet? Dishonest intrigue?
It is difficult to find out, since some of the characters have taken their secrets with them to the grave. However, the Professor is compelled to take part in the untangling of the entangled threads if he is to reach his goal, as an offspring of the family indicated on the granite plate has been arrested on the well-grounded suspicion of having stolen the treasures.
features
Improved battle system with siege machines
Vivid game environment with change of day and night as well as weather changes
New historically accurate settings, units and events
New currency and improved trade mechanics
Crime, riots and natural disasters
Many new units
features
Adapted motion blur effects and a new unified lighting system with real-time lightning create great depth with a realistic atmosphere of psychological horror.
Finding the answers to questions of the mystery of Philip's lost father throughout the game, with new explanations and a complete storyline wrap up.
You can interact with any object not nailed to the ground! Focus on, pick up and move around objects through a simple drag and drop interface.
The sounds of the different environments are contributing to the atmosphere and give the player scaring hints of dangers.
Horror adventure game in puzzle-like style with bonuses and incentives to challenge the player throughout the game.
description
Penumbra: Black Plague is a creepy and dark psychological horror experience featuring the adventures of Philip as he sets of in search of his dead father.
Trapped in a shadowy, underground complex, intrepid explorer Philip is determined to discover the truth behind his father's disappearance.
Surrounded by enemies and assaulted by terror from all sides, Philip must collect clues and solve vexing puzzles while combating the gnawing psychological terrors that assail his mind and threaten to strip him of his sanity.
Can Philip master his fear and finally uncover the truth behind a mystery that has haunted him for a lifetime? Only you can decide...
features
Help reunify the U.S. in this modern 3-D tactical war game
Fight across the U.S. in wake of terrorism and nuclear destruction of D.C.
Play as 1 of 7 different factions; fully destructible terrain/environment
Non-linear mission progression; real-time resolution of turned-based moves
Online and offline multiplayer on all platforms
description
Shattered Union is a dark look at a possible American future. After much internal strife and the nuclear destruction of Washington, D.C., the United States shatters into a half-dozen nation-states that descend into war. Take the helm of one of these warring factions (or the "peacekeeping" European Expeditionary Force) and struggle to reunify America...by any means necessary! A turn-based strategy wargame from the developers of the Tropico series and Railroad Tycoon 2 and 3. Choose to play as one of seven different factions - Greater California, Arcadia (Pacific Northwest), New Republic of Texas, Heartland (Midwest and Great Plains states), Dixieland, Yankee Union and the European Expeditionary Force. Call up National Guard forces equipped with M1 Abrams battle tanks, Apache helicopters and stealth bombers. Or make a deal with the Russians and equip your boys with MiG fighters and T-95 Heavy Tanks. Online and offline mutiplayer support on all platforms.
- A maintenance release fixing the following issues:
- Fixes issues when paging down to end of list and only last item in list is displayed
- Fixes themes with custom emulator layouts
- Fixes emulator backgrounds not being displayed when set in theme editor
- Fixes mouse selection for toolbar when windowed in version 2 themes
- Fixes toolbar not displaying properly in version 2 themes
The official site has been updated with information on this Friday's update. Here's what to expect.
Item exchange mission
"The Collector" will have new items added to it including new music discs, remodeling tickets and room decorations.
New free mission
"The Black Nest" introduces a new field: Ryucross. Here, Guardians will be sent in to the recently-discovered HIVE to take down the deadly Zasharogan.
New story mission
"Will of Light," the third chapter in Episode 3, picks up right where "Restorations" left off. You and Laia rush back to GUARDIANS HQ after word comes in of the discovery of Ryucross.
The British Board of Film Classification has hit back at suggestions that it doesn't provide a more effective ratings system than the Pan European Game Information version, as suggested by Microsoft's UK head of corporate affairs Matt Lambert, at a CMS Select Committee hearing yesterday.
Lambert had said that the "BBFC is set up to rate films, and it takes that approach for games when a different approach is required," and that the PEGI system was "a different depth, it's more sensible, and it also has a European aspect to it."
But speaking to GamesIndustry.biz the BBFC has rejected those claims, and stated that while the body uses the same symbols as for films in order to enable a greater understand of the level of content to be expected in games, it doesn't "classify games in the same way that we classify films, because we physically play the game."
"We know for a fact that the public is confused by [the PEGI] symbols, they don't understand them," said a spokesperson. "They do understand consumer advice which says 'Contains strong language' or 'Contains strong violence'.
"The fact is, we provide consumer advice about the content - and extended information - on our Parents website about exactly the sort of things you can expect to encounter in the game, in all of the games we classify - and we do it in words, which people understand, they don't understand the pictograms.
"We know this - in January we did research and the public really couldn't get their heads around what a spider meant. That is not sufficient information for them to make a decision."
In addition, while the BBFC admits that there is confusion over game ratings, it's not helped by the PEGI system.
"What people think about the PEGI system is that it's a difficulty rating," said the spokesperson. "One of the parents in our research groups was complaining that she had bought a game with a 3+ on thinking it was suitable for her child, and it turned out to be a complicated sports game - whereas if they see a PG12, they know it's going to have the sort of content (and here you can argue that the system is similar) as they would expect from a 12-rated film.
"Just like when they get a film that's an 18, and says 'Strong bloody violence' they have an idea of what that is, because they've seen it in 18-rated films…The fact is, sticking a spider on the back of a box is not going to help a person make the kind of decision that they ought to be making about games."
The BBFC also underlined that during its review process it employs people that actually plays through the games, and noted the contrast with the PEGI methodology.
"Unlike the PEGI system, which is purely a tick-box system filled in by the distributor themselves, the BBFC has very well-qualified games examiners - who are games fans themselves - to play the games right through all the levels, with the cheat codes, and spend a lot of time playing them so that they know what the content is.
"Yes, we're using the same symbols that we use for films, but that's because parents understand what those symbols mean."
The CMS Select Committee is investigating the effect of violence in videogames and on the Internet, alongside the Byron Report, with the latter publication expected to recommend improvements to the age rating system in the UK.
We knew it was May, but sometimes, it's nice to know specifics. Bets may be determined by this date. People's lives may hang in the balance. So it's without further ado that we let you know that Mass Effect's PC adventure will kick off on May 6, giving you a pinch over two months to decide whether faster load times and shiner graphics are worth a second purchase. And if you own a PC but not a 360...well, Mass Effect with faster load times and shinier graphics is worth a first purchase.
We're already searching for a mile-long cable that'll hook the CVG gaming PC up to the nearest nuclear power plant after watching two new Far Cry 2 tech videos. Come see...
The videos, viewable in our player, are designed to reveal the power of Dunia, which is Ubisoft's new engine lying at the heart of the first-person shooter sequel.
One shows day/night cycle, while the other focuses on tree regeneration. Sounds dull, we know, but watch them and you'll see. The day/night cycle movie in particular is incredibly impressive. Let us know what you reckon in the comments below.
Far Cry 2 is in development for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, just in case you're playing catch up.
While its claim of being the "first" to offer an OS specifically designed for the latest crop of low-cost laptops and UMPCs may be a little dubious, the unfortunately-named Linpus is at least pretty quick to jump on the bandwagon. To that end, the company's just let loose its Linpus Linux Lite OS, which it says will run just fine on laptops like the Eee PC and Cloudbook, or any other system with as little as a 500MHz CPU, 128MB of RAM and 512MB of storage.
Just as importantly, the OS is also apparently designed with low-res 7-inch screens in mind, although as CLUMPC points out, it doesn't go so far as to include support for little things like built-in WiFi out of the box. Still, if you want to give it a shot, you can grab it now in the form of a Live CD direct from Linpus.
It looks like that little lawsuit over "Vista Capable" stickers on PCs could now be about to get quite a bit bigger, as a federal judge has now bestowed class-action status on the suit, which accuses Microsoft of misleading marketing. More specifically, as the AP reports, the suit alleges that the "Vista Capable" stickers slapped on PCs during the 2006 holiday season created an "artificial demand" for the computers, and "inflated prices for computers that couldn't be upgraded to the full-featured version of Vista."
As we've seen, those stickers even took in at least one higher-up at Microsoft itself, who has made his thoughts on the program quite well known. While things are still obviously in the early stages, the law firm that filed the suit is now looking for others that feel they've been burned by the stickers, and ComputerWorld has the details on you can get involved at the link below.
* Don't show artifacted colours for CSS=0.
* Better emulation of undocumented 6809 behaviour.
* New joystick axis and button mapping options.
* Add GTK+-2 file requester.
* Mid-instruction peripheral state sync.
* Restructure CPU core to more accurately reflect data sheet.
* PIA code not so intimately tied to emulator code.
* New 5-bit NTSC cross-colour renderer.
* NTSC cross-colour phase saved with snapshots.
So at Sony's Open House we were having lunch with Mike Abary, Sony's US SVP of Information Technology Products Division, who oversees Vaio computers (among numerous other things). Of course, the inevitable question came up about the Eee PC's success thus far, and what that means to computer companies on the higher end of the spectrum, like Sony. Mike's response was a little surprising, but certainly sensible enough: if consumer expectations begins to weigh too heavily toward the $300 end of PCs, he believes that kind of consumer adoption would have a profoundly negative impact on the industry, referring to its effect as "a race to the bottom."
We know there are a lot of Eee fans in the house, but the man makes sense. Sony isn't trashing ultra-cheap machines so much as recognizing that it's hard to push things forward when your primary objective becomes making the very cheapest possible machine you can (and not very best). Innovation is hard enough to subsidize, but when your already thin margins flatten even further in trying to sell ultra-cheap machines, it's easy to see the economics working against tech companies. (Asus has less to worry about here because its primary business is making PCs for other companies.) Of course, the reality is that ultra-cheap machines probably won't soon envelop the lion's share of computer sales and threaten what most think of as "real" PCs, so we probably don't have to worry about the industry bottoming out because of the Eee. False advertising and abusive trialware, however, are different stories entirely.
- based on FB Alpha v0.2.96.74 compiled with vs2008.
- added mouse left/right double click to select cheat. [Sho]
- fixed sf2turyu.
- added Marvel Super Heroes (USA 951024 Phoenix Edition).
- added Street Fighter Zero 2 (Asia 960227 Phoenix Edition).
- added The Amazing Adventures of Mr. F. Lea driver. [iq_132]
- added Penguin-kun Wars driver. [iq_132]
- added cheat support for m6502 and Z80. [iq_132]
- updated romsets to match MAME 0.123u2.
Source Changes
--------------------------
Corrected clock speeds for the megasys1.c boards. Yes, the games actually ran _THAT_ slow! [Brian Troha]
Makefile & build system update: [couriersud]
* verinfo: New syntax. verinfo now uses the following syntax:
verinfo.exe -b windows|winui|mess. Does not depend on compile time defines any longer.
* makefile will include src/osd/$(CROSS_BUILD_OSD)/build.mak if it exists. This was necessary to enable cross builds for winui.
Cloak & Dagger video code cleanup: [Zsolt Vasvari]
- resnet conversion - colors are now signficantly less saturated because of the 1K pull-ups. This is noticable in the agent's coat and the sky color, for example.
- Added bitmap palette selection based on the 128H line. Not sure where this is actually used in the game.
Removed unnecessary machine->pens[] lookups in a large number of drivers. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Added built-in layout to Space Tactics. Cleaned up and reorganized the driver. [Mr. Do!, Zsolt Vasvari]
Switched the funworld color decoding routines to use resnet code. [Roberto Fresca]
Fixed namcos2, namcos21 crashes due to nvram allocation in MACHINE_RESET. Created MACHINE_START and move allocation there. [couriersud]
Updated info.c to output raw video parameters (pixclock, htotal, hbend, hbstart, vtotal, vbend, vbstart) via -listxml if they have been given. [couriersud]
Removed some deprecat.h includes from osd layer: [couriersud]
* add machine as parameter to osd_update and osd_update_audio_stream
* change Machine to machine and remove include deprecat.h
Added a rule in vconv.c to make VS2008 compile seamlessly. [Aaron Giles]
bionicc.c: [couriersud]
* Added cpu clocks from schematics
* Comment about z80 nmi generation
Fixed the DAC sound in X The Ball. [Zsolt Vasvari, Mamesick]
Removed the confirmed bad dump of Virtua striker 2 2000. [Brian Troha]
Fixes crash in Raiga. [Zsolt Vasvari, David Haywood]
drawgfx.c improvments: [Zsolt Vasvari]
- Added some asserts to drawgfx and drawgfxzoom
- Moved some variable declarations so that they are only visible where they are actually used
Removed 8bpp bitmap support from drawgfx. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Removed MDRV_PALETTE_LENGTH from vector games, which would trigger an assert in emupal.c (debug build) [couriersud]
Added new module: tokenize.h. This centralizes the behavior of tokenizing data structures, as currently used by the input port system. Redid the input port tokenization to be more compact and make use of the new macros. Added support for designated initializers in C99 and GCC builds to enforce type safety. [Aaron Giles]
Removed bogus DIPs from the NSS driver. [R. Belmont]
Improved the global "flip_screen" macros and variables: [couriersud]
* fix issues related to flip_screen being a define
* add "int flip_screen_get(void)"
* clean up drivers with collisions
* remove flip_screen macro
* flip_screen_x and flip_screen_y made static
* add flip_screen_x_get() and flip_screen_y_get()
* change writes to flip_screen_x to flip_screen_set_no_update()
* added save state calls for flip_screen_x and flip_screen_y
Converted MACHINE_DRIVER definitions from function constructors to tokenized lists. For the most part this is a non-invasive change, except for those drivers using MDRV_WATCHDOG_TIME_INIT. In order to allow for tokenization of attotimes, a set of new macros is provided called UINT64_ATTOTIME_IN_x() which follows the same pattern as ATTOTIME_IN_x() but packs the attotime down into a single 64-bit value for easier tokenization. Fixed several errors in the machine drivers which were caught by the additional checks now done in the machine config detokenization code. [Aaron Giles]
Separated MDRV_DEVICE_CONFIG_DATA into 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Added floating-point versions with configurable resolutions. [Aaron Giles]
Converted speakers into devices. Machine->config no longer houses an array of speakers; instead they are iterated through using the new macros (defined in sound.h) speaker_output_first() and speaker_output_next(). Updated all relevant code to do this. [Aaron Giles]
Added typedefs for all the machine config callback functions at the top of driver.h. [Aaron Giles]
Big changes to Cal Omega driver: [Roberto Fresca]
- Renamed the driver to calomega.c.
- Extended the driver to support all the other Cal Omega systems.
- Switched to XTAL def.
- Fixed CPU & sound clocks based on official diagrams.
- Replaced the AY-8910 with AY-8912 to match the real hardware.
- Unified some memory maps.
- Splitted machine in sys903 and sys905.
- Fixed memory map offsets for sys905.
- Added a list of official/unofficial games, and their states.
- Fixed a bug introduced when extended the color PROM region to eliminate colortable length.
- Updated technical notes.
Merged memory maps for a number of drivers beginning with a digit or the letter 'a'. [Aaron Giles]
Cleaned up the Crazy Climber video driver, mainly via tilemap conversion. This fixes the ape sprite positioning in Crazy Kong - no more gap between feet and platform. Merged Yamato driver with Crazy Climber. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Converted XX Mission to tilemaps. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Removed VIDEO_START(generic) - no longer used. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Added PGM.c EEPROM/hiscore saving. [Creamymami]
Added support for original Omega Race state PROM. [Mathis Rosenhauer]
Added support in the MC6845 emulation for cursors. All 4 blinking modes are supported. [Zsolt Vasvari]
Added a stub implementation of the Rockwell 6545. [Nathan Woods]
Added basic support for the NEC uPD7801, uPD78C05, and uPD78C06 CPUs to the uPD7810 cpu core. [Wilbert Pol]
Some improvements to the 6850 ACIA CTS pin checking logic and the MPU4 ACIA clock logic. [James Wallace]
Another Risky Challenge opcode to fix a sprite bug and a general clean up of the remarks in the driver. [robiza]
Added dip locations to astinvad, bonzeadv, cadash, asuka, mofflott, galmedes, atarifb, atarifb4, abaseb, soccer. Added DIP locations and improved DIP switches in seawolf2, wow, gorf, robby, profpac. [RansAckeR]
One-line fix for the z80pio. At the moment when the interrupt control word is sent (with interrupts enabled), an interrupt occurs. In reality, interrupts are disabled until the interrupt mask byte is sent. [Robert]
New games added or promoted from NOT_WORKING status
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jolly Joker [Roberto Fresca]
Cal Omega - Game 7.6 (Arcade Poker) [Roberto Fresca]
Cal Omega - Game 7.9 (Arcade Poker) [Roberto Fresca]
Cal Omega - Game 12.8 (Arcade Game) [Roberto Fresca]
Cal Omega - Game 17.51 (Gaming Draw Poker) [Roberto Fresca]
Cal Omega - Game 23.9 (Gaming Draw Poker) [Roberto Fresca]
El Grande - 5 Card Draw (New) [Roberto Fresca]
Jackpot Joker Poker (5 sets) [Roberto Fresca]
New clones added
------------------------------
Cosmic Smash (JPN, USA, EXP, KOR, AUS) (original) [icronnya77]
Jolly Card (Evona Electronic) [Roberto Fresca]
Jolly Card (croatian, set 2) [Roberto Fresca]
Super Joly 2000 - 3x [Roberto Fresca]
Royal Vegas Joker Card (fast deal, english gfx) [Roberto Fresca]
Dungeons and Dragons Tower of Doom (Japan 940412) [Razoola]
Real Bout Fatal Fury (bug fix revision) [Razoola]
Metal Slug 5 (AES Cart) [Razoola]
New games marked as GAME_NOT_WORKING
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A large number of Cal Omega games [Roberto Fresca]
So now that the "Vista Capable" lawsuit is a full-blown class action, the judge has unsealed all 158 pages of emails between Microsoft execs trying to sort out what went wrong with the sticker program.
While bits and pieces have been blacked out, what remains is still fairly incredible -- although Intel's 915 chipset was initially rejected as compatible with Vista, MS execs flatly admit that "In the end, we lowered the requirements to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded" and "We are caving to Intel. We worked the last 18 months to drive the UI experience and we are giving this up."
On top of that, it seems that the company was getting direct feedback from retailers that the stickers were confusing, with Wal-Mart appealing directly to HP to pull Vista Capable stickers from low end machines, and an MS exec saying that "I was in Best Buy listening to people and can tell you this did not come clear to customers. We set ourselves up." That's pretty damning, if you ask us -- and the complete emails, linked below, are full of similar bombshells. Looks like this case may have some serious legs after all.
Iron Lore Entertainment has closed its doors and is no longer making any games.
The Titan Quest developer said "several unrelated events" stopped it gaining crucial funding.
"It is with great regret that we must announce that as of close of business Tuesday, February 19, 2008 Iron Lore Entertainment has ceased active game development," said the statement on its website. "Several unrelated events occurred which resulted in Iron Lore being unable to secure funding for its next project.
"We would like to extend our thanks to everyone who has helped us in the last seven years - our team who moved mountains to create such great games, our publisher THQ who has been a great partner through three product development cycles, and most of all our customers and fans. We owe all of the success we've had to you, and our greatest satisfaction has come from creating games that have given enjoyment to the community."
Iron Lore was formed in 2000 and released its first game, Titan Quest, in 2006. The Diablo-like title scored well among critics and was well recommended by Eurogamer.
It was decorated with an Immortal Throne expansion a year later, before Iron Lore set to work on Dawn of War add-on Soulstorm. Presumably work on that is now finished, given its imminent release on 7th March.
It would appear that Super Smash Bros. Brawl adoration hasn't begun to ebb in Nintendo's homeland, with the Wii fighter pushing another 78,000 copies to Japanese consumers last week. It fought off a dozen newcomers to the Media Create chart, including USA and Australia's very own BioShock. So happy to see a homegrown hero move a respectable 18,000 units over there.
Elsewhere in this week's chart, we see that the PlayStation 2 NiGHTS Into Dreams re-release didn't find many fans and that the kids still love themselves some Musou. For the rest of the top thirty for February 18 to 24, make the jump.
01. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) - 78,000 / 1,291,000
02. Etrian Odyssey II: Shoou no Seihai (DS) - 69,000 / NEW
03. Wii Fit (Wii) - 62,000 / 1,546,000
04. Musou Orochi (PSP) - 47,000 / NEW
05. Harvest Moon: Kira Kira Taiyou to Nakama Tachi (DS) - 45,000 / NEW
06. Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008 (Wii) - 36,000 / NEW
07. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (PS3) - 23,000 / NEW
08. Bioshock (Xbox 360) - 18,000 / NEW
09. Wii Sports (Wii) - 17,000 / 2,798,000
10. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS) - 15,000 / 236,000
11. Family Ski (Wii)
12. Wii Play (Wii)
13. Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's Side 2nd Season (DS)
14. Mario Party DS (DS)
15. Poison Pink (PS2)
16. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd (PSP)
17. Pachinko Kamen Rider: Shocker Zenmetsu Daisakusen (PS2)
18. Burnout Paradise (PS3)
19. L: The Prologue to Death Note: Rasen no Wana (DS)
20. New Super Mario Bros. (DS)
21. Devil May Cry 4 (PS3)
22. Mobile Suit Gundam: Giren no Yabou - Axis no Kyoui ()
23. Last Escort 2: Shiya no Amai Ira (PS2)
24. NiGHTS into Dreams (PS2)
25. Naruto Shippuuden: Dairansen! Kage Bunsen Emaki (DS)
26. Hisshou Pachinko*Pachi-Slot Kouryoku Series DS Vol. 1: Shinseiki Evangelion - Magokoro o, Kimi ni (DS)
27. Mario Kart DS (DS)
28. Taiko Drum Master DS (DS)
29. Populous DS (DS)
30. World Soccer Winning Eleven: Ubiquitous Evolution 2008 (PSP
