Yes it is an update!!

Well I have not updated for a while reason is I now have a girlfriend so there ya go a miracle has happend lol!
First off I would like to congratulate my education establishment for gaining full University status. It is the start of something special for them. I also recently purchased an SD Card MP3 player with 128MB internal memory, FM Radio and voice recorder, I can also use it as USB flash stick and SD Card Reader. Its very nice I got it from ebay.

Next up is the recently unveiled Revoltion Controller

The remote control looking device on the left is the main unit using sensors put beside the TV, the Revolution will be able to pin point your movement and how fast you move the device, on the left is the numchuck expansion and is the first of many expansions for the revolution, it adds an anolugue stick and two triggers. Now I know what you are thinking? and that is why? Well it can open up now oppertunities for creativity in games take a look at this video to get some ideas. It could also give current genres a new feel to it like First Person Shooters. So what about traditional games and the wealth of downloadable games that will be availiable, well Nintendo are going to create a shell where you insert the remote like device in and it will play like a normal controller with motion sensor.
So what about the reaction? Well the press and some hardcore gamers love it but the rest are laughing because it does look like a remote control and at first glance people will not see whats it's about, this will be a problem for Nintendo, perhaps if Nintendo revealed the shell then it looked a bit better. Nintendo should advertise it a kinda detachable controller with motion sensor. Its not the final design so lets see what happens.

The DS has now got its most technical challenge to date with a port of Burnout Legends from PSP.

Monkey ball on DS, Its looks better in action then the screenshots.

Speaking of portables the PSP sold an impressive 185,000 units at launch betaing the DS by nearly 100K. Nintendo have a real challenge in europe as they have never had such big copmpetition since Sega's Game Gear. Perhaps Nintendogs will spike sales for DS like it has in the states.

M3 is being sold by Divineo China, they are shipping the CF version with the SD version coming by the end of the month. The SD version is pictured below, its only 1cm smaller then the CF version which is a dissapointment but I'll still get it.

I'll be selling loads of stuff on Ebay later tonight to raise money to buy M3, take a look.
Finally GBAX are selling the GP2X for a stunning £125 with Special UK Delivery for £129. It has also been unveiled that you'll be able to connect the GP2X to the TV which means that you'll be able to play emulators and movies using the GP2X. Sounds great :D

game news, Hombrew and stuff!

Well I'm now back on Broadband at 2MB, I've had download rates of 150KB on torrent and 250KB on direct downloads, it's very sweet indeed.
In some news Nintendo have delayed two major games, the first being Zelda Twilight Princess, it has been delayed to make the game better but that is a huge blow to Nintendo this christmas but the cube still has Fire emblem and Pokemon XD as well as a wealth of third party games. The second is Metroid Prime Hunters on the DS it is looking likley that it has been delayed so that NST could add online play to it as fans have been demanding it since it was announced without online play at E3.
Nintendo announced the price of the Game Boy Micro at the rather high £69 which is the same price as the GBA:SP, now it came with Play Yan I could understand the price but cough up another £30 and you could get a DS and by the time christmas comes around the DS could come with a game for £100. I will have to admit that the Famicom face plate looks great

Microsoft have announced the price for the X-Box 360 at £209 and £299. The £209 version you a wired controller, faceplate and standard AV cable but no hard drive but with the £299 you get 20GB detachable hard drive, Wireless controller, Removable faceplate, Headset, HD-AV cable, XBL silver membership as well as a media remote. It'll be interresting to see the sales of each package but the £209 package could attract some gamers this christmas.

The M3 apdator team are claiming that there GBA support in there upcoming product is nearly perfect, much better then supercards, this piece of kit will be the ultimate in GBA multimedia and ROM playing and it also has support for DS which they have now unveiled their Pass Me device, this looks better then the current pass mes as the DS card does not stick out the top but goes down the bottom of the console, the pic is off the CF Card version I myself am waiting for the SD Card version. more info.

Recently I have been playing on smsadvance which is a new Game Gear and Master System emulater for GBA and it is at PERFECT SPEED! Compatibility is not brilliant nor has it got save state support yet but it is still very early. I can not belive what is being achieved on the GBA in regards to emulation as it has the power of a SNES with 32-bit RISC, first perfect NES, then Game Boy and now Master System, if you own a Flash Cart or Supercard then check it out.
Next up is a new app for Nintendo DS called Moonshell this program allows you to file browse and play MP3 files of any size, various picture formats and text files, still in early stages with updates happening very often but hopefully more support will be added. I have not tryed it yet but according to this post it is very good. Take a look.

Take a look at this topic. That is the GPX2, the sequa to the GP32 made by Gamer Park Holdings. It will host a 250Mhz CPU with 64MB of DDR Ram and uses SD cards. It will be powered by Linux. It will be the ultimate homebrew handheld as that is what it is created for. It also supports various Media types and ROm support, it is going to be good. Take a good look

ISP's suck!!

Looks like I'm off broadband for about a month now and stuck on pay as you go.

First I wanted to migrate from Wanadoo to AOL because Wanadoo was sending me letters andout my usage, that was nearly 3 months ago, nothing was happening, I phoned them, told them about it, still nothing until they told me to wait until my wanadoo account has closed, well it closed yesterday so I phoned up AOL and they said that it would take upto 10 working days for BT to disonnect my BB line unless Wanadoo give me a MAC code. Phoned up wanadoo and they said they don't give MAC codes to closed accounts. So basically I will have to wait for 10 working days for the line to be disconnected, then order a new ISP which will then take at least 10 working days to be reconnected.

A word of advice for those who don't have BB yet, make sure you get yourself a good ISP because changing ISP is complete and utter bitch and migration does not work.

I looked at this site http://www.freedomlist.com/ and got me self a decent dial up for 1p a minute on evenings and week ends at local rates.
The one I got is this http://www.1-2-free.co.uk/ which has connected me at 48KBS which is a better rate then I had on 56K wanadoo and BT.

Anyway I'm on holiday next week :D

METEOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I've just been working loads and stuff, holidays are boring at the moment, not to much going on really but Meteos has kept me entertained for many hours. Been watching Drawn Together it's a reality TV cartoon show and it's brilliant, you should check it out, it airs on MTV and Paramount.

What did he have for lunch?

Leaving experimental code in games is dangerous as Rockstar makers of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas have found out.

Meteos- Nintendo DS
Q Entertainment, a development studio founded last year by Tetsuya Mizuguchi who used to run UGA, a development team of Sega, he made famous games such as Sega Rally, Space channel 5 and Rez. His first game in his new studio was Lumines on the PSP, a game which has met great reviews with it's addictive gameplay and great sound. Now his first Nintendo DS game Metoes has hit and boy is it something special.
The concept is simple,lots of different coloured bloks named Meteos will drop into the bottom screen, using the stylus you can move any meteos vertically, when you get three of the same colour together either vertically or horizontal they will turn to grey blocks and take off taking with them the meteos which are above them, but blocks that are dropping will weigh the metoes that just took off down, so getting another three of the same colour in line after some meteos have taken off will help the meteos get off the screen. There are number of planets each with there own meteos and each planet has different gravity which deters how fast the meteos will take off, in some they will take off fast and some it they will take off slow, in one they just dissapear. Off course the longer you last the faster the meteos will drop, there are items that will drop like drills, different kinds of bombs and an item that will take off your meteos.
Tetsuya Mizuguchi is famous for music in his games an Meteos is no different, each planet has its own track, when metoes are taking off, leaving the screen and doing what ever different sound effects play which goes with the music, the quality of the sound is superb, I suggest playing it using headphones.
Modes? well we got simple which is you set the rules choose the planet, difficulty and if you want a CPU opponent in. Starship which is a course of levels ending with Meteo the game boss. Time war where you can do 2 & 5 minutes challengs as well as a 100 & 500 meteos challenge. Finally is Deluge where you choose a planet and get rid of as many meteos as you can .
There is unlockables as well, depending on how many meteoes of different types you have taken off you can unlock more planets, items, sounds and Rare Materials. Single card multiplayer is here as well as the ability to download a demo to another DS.
Obviously this a puzzle game and has no story as such and it will take you some time to get the hang of this game.
This game is addictive, and fast, you will not see this on any other games console other then DS and it would be impossible to recreate on any existing console due to the speed of the game. If you can only buy one Ds game then make it this one.
Rating- 9 out of 10.

Kirby, Supercard & more

Yesterday I went to alton towers, best ride was Rita Queen of Speed, it was incredible, the fastest ride I have ever been on. First year Uni results, 4 passes, 2 merits and 2 distinctions, to be honest I wanted at least 2 more merits but I passed so thats the important thing.

One day after we get the olympics, terrorists attack London, a tradegy.
Lumines and minesweeper clone for your GBA, don't forget to rename the extension to .gba.

Double review today first up is a hardware review.

Super Card Compact Flash Version- Game Boy Advance
Links
Official Site
Ebay seller
Fan Site

One thing you have to remember about cartridges is that there capacity is measured in Mega bits, not mega bytes, 1 mega byte equals 8 mega bits so a a 1G flash cartridge is actually about 128MB that fits about 4 big sized GBA games. What if you could use a flash card, say a 1GB flash card that would be about 8 Giga bits that would fit 31 full sized GBA games, now you can with supercard.
It comes in two versions, compact flash and SD card. I have the Compact Flash version. The cartridge is the same size of a normal GBA cart and the CF card sticks out of the top, the cart feels weak, its feels like it could fall apart but it has not so far, the CF card does not have any protection by sticking out of the top but so far nothing has happend. The cart supports file browsing and folders. It has a 32MB RAM chip in it which is used to store the ROM being that is being played.
It supports a number of file formats the most populer being GBA roms. The cart comes with software, using the software you choose your GBA ROM and it will out put the ROM along with two save files. First is your normal save file which will save all saved data from the game, but to write this to the CF card you have to press L+R+Select+A, The second is a Real time save, this is just like a save state on an emulater, it will save your exact position to do this you have to press L+R+Select+A. Playing GBA ROMs is pretty good, it plays commercial and public domain ROMs, it does not seem to like ROMs with the hackers splash when the ROM is loaded up, I tryed other versions of those ROMs without the splash and they worked fine, with some ROMs it can slow down at points, Mario Kart is a good example of this but still not everything works, Supermonkey ball did not work at all. Playing GBA ROMs is not much of a problem and feels like your are playing it on the actual cart.
As well as GBA it has a number of emulaters built in which means you just put the ROMs on the CF card and run it. There is Pocket NES which is a perfect speed NES EMU, GoomBA is a perfect speed GB mono emulater. Dr SMS is a game gear and master system emulater, this is not full speed, speed is around about 80% to 90% depending on the ROM. PCE Advance is a PC engine emulater which is not full speed but is just about playable but it does not seem to like US ROMs that much. The ROM conversion software does not support these ROMs, it only supports .gba, this menas you have to take a .sav file and renanme it to the same name of the ROM, then use the emulater to do a save state then use the normal save function to save a game, annoying? yes it is. So for Pocket NES and GoomBA I used the emu file and the ROM compiler to compile the emulater and ROMs to .GBA form then it will support Real Time save and all save states you save will then only need one .sav file, I can't do this with Dr SMS and PCE Advance as it does not work.
The CD provided has a .GBA ROM of the software used in the First version of the advance movie player, this version does not support the crystal engine and can not be upgraded so the movies I had already encoded did not work but the music did and was about the same quality as on the Advance Movie Player. Unlike other Flash Carts this does not work with a PassMe to support DS homebrew but as this product is firmware upgradable you never know what the future holds. One more point is that due to accessing a CF card and rwriting to a RAM chip supercard does suck alot of power so your GBA will last about 6 to 8 hours using supercard.
This product is not perfect but I'm going to give it the benifit of the doubt as I use it loads and love it much, hence the high score.
Rating- 8 out of 10

The Advance Movie player team have made a rival for Supercard named M3, it claims better compatibility, no need to save to the flash card manually, better battery life and DS support with a DS specific version coming take a look.

Kirby Canvas Curse- Nintendo DS
Nintendos pink cloud has made his debut on DS in a innotive and very fun game, a witch has put a spell on Kirby and he/she probably she has been turned into a ball. Using the stylus only you must guide Kirby through the levels dispossing of the enemies whilst collecting stars and coins.
With the stylus you can draw a line and kiby will ride it or you can use the line to direct Kirby in a different direction or to protect kriby from projectile items, Kirby will only ever go the way you draw the line but remember you only have a certain amout of ink which in time will refill its self so don't use it all at once, also by using the stylus you can tap on star boxes which will break them and bombs which will clear surrounding blocks. By tapping Kirby he will shoot forward, you use this to kill enemies or get to somewhere faster. By tapping and enemy it will become stunned which means kirby will just have to roll into the enemy to dispose of it. Some enemies have special abilities so in typical kirby fashion you can copy them by disposing of them, these abilities will replace the dash until you get hit or you click a button to drop it, some power ups include fire which puts out a line of fire thats spins around kirby killing enemies in its path, wheel which will turn kirby into a wheel and will speed and kill enmeies in its path untill stopped by a cannon or a wall, stone which turns Kiby into a stone which is usefull in water. The top screen acts as map so you can see the layout of the level.
The game has 8 stages, each has 3 acts and a boss stage, at the end of each act you have a jump you must dash Kiby along and daw a line at the ledge and get Kirby as far off the edge as possible, I have managed about 800Meters. When you reach a boss stage you have three bosses to choose from, each have a different gameplay style. First you have Block Attack Draw paddles by touching the screen at one point and lifting off at another. These touch and lift points will be the start and end points of a paddle which Kirby will bounce off. You can also swing paddles into Kirby. Cart Run In this boss battle you are in a cart which constantly follows a line drawn by
the generator. You can move the generator by dragging it. The generator will
destroy things it comes into contact with except for food which, if you run
into, will give you a quick speed boost. Hitting two food boosts at the same
time will take you to max speed. Finally Paint Panic This boss battle is divided into two sections. Mimic drawing and paneltapping. For the drawing you connect the dots by dragging your stylus from point to point as instructed to by paint roller. In panel tapping you tap any panel with a star on it as soon as it appears. After you have done a boss next time you have the option to play the boss at a harder level.
The acts have stars, like a typical platformer get 100 stars get an extra life.
Each act has three medals, these are used to unlock stuff like music, different paint textures and even different charcaters, you have to complete the game with these new charcters to unlock some stuff so there is plenty to do, also you can not get to some medals straight away, you have to find a switch somewhere else in the game first.
After you complete a stage it will be unlocked in the Rainbow Run, this contains two modes where you can win 3 medals in each first is time trial. In Time trial you have to get to from the start of level to another part in a certain amount of time and don't worry it is not the entire level. Second is line trial where you have to complete part of the level with using as less ink as possible. This all adds to the length of the game which makes it bigger then all other innotive DS titles, graphics are nice and bright 2D visuals and the music is bright and cheerfull and goes well with the levels, but only 3 bosses? Damn close to perfection. This game is awsome.
Rating- 9 out of 10

TER? PSO:BB stuff perhaps.

A few details on my upcoming PSU Clan. The host will be fragism, with them I get 25MB of space with ulimited bandwidth for free, I have had experience with them before and they are good but their free forum sucks so my forum host will be http://www.phpbb88.com/ which has quick reply mod as well as a shop and many more, again this is free and of course I will get a .tk address.

Name will be The Elite Revolution (TER) as I want us to be an elite bunch of players, clan won't that large but hopefully big enough where we can have a good community. Launch? might be at th end of the year, if it is then I'll do PSOBB support until PSU comes out.
I got and idea for a sub clan which I migjt do or not called Elite DS, this will cater for the Nintendo DS online.
The site it's self will just be for Clan info and news, no Reviews or stuff or that as I want to concentrate on being a clan, doing gaming news and reviews takes focus off the clan and it will all get to much.
So that's it for now.

More kitten goodness but this one has the Rambo approuch

If you imported a PSP, Sony does not want you to have it.
DS sells a Million in europe, nice and quick that was.

I made a new character on PSO:BB a cute little Force named Polo, click on the pic for a larger version.

Also they have put the first part of Episode 4 up today, click on the pic for a larger version again.

The host used for those pictures is Imageshack, you can upload a picture and it will give you code for a thumnail, works well.

I have Kirby: Canvas Curse but I want to play it more before I review it so maybe next time. I also have Another Code:Twin Memories and Splinter Cell Chaos Theory DS.

I'm back! Probably?

Been working loads of shifts at work but it's about to all calm down so I should be able to post more now. I got a result for one of my modules at uni, Distinction for Introduction Internet Programming (VBScript), score was 19 which is the equivilent of an A+ so I'm happy, it was a great module taught by a great lecturer.

One Kat you don't wanna mess with

Random Violence where the hero does not win.
Best Metal Slug Flash game yet.

Next a review but in the next few weeks we will have many DS games as I have just received Kirby Canvas Curse, on friday I will have Another Code: Twin Memories, also in the next few weeks I will have Splinter Cell CT, Meteos and Bomberman DS, as well as the long awaited Killer 7 for Gamecube.

Donkey Konga 2- Gamecube
Last year Nintendo released Donkey Konga on the cube with Bongos for the price of a normal game, as it was good value for money I brought it and loved it as this music game does not feature those crappy home style dance mats. This turned out to a be popular game amoungt my friends and Donkey Kong Jungle beat was released and was brilliant, a DK platformer being controlled with the bongos, what a brilliant idea.
Now the second Konga game is here and there is not a lot to say, it has a few new modes and new tracks.
A big improvement is the fact that the game now stores the top three scores instead of just the first and when you have made it onto the top three you can select a badge which features characters from DK and the rest of the Nintendo universe.
One of the new modes is the freestyle zone, here you can select a background and a track and just play the bongo's how ever you like.
A new option is the music lab, here you need coins gained in the street performance to enter, you have two options. First is Barrel race where you have complete a certain number of notes before your oppenent can, when playing this in single player when you beat a CPU you get the chance to win an extra badge in a match the badge game. The second mode is Rhyhm Keeper, here you have memorise the notes given to you by your oppenent or your CPU, then you have to play them back in the rhyhm that thye did it in, very tough, again if you are playing this in single player then you get a chance to win a badge. All the modes from the first game like concert, Street performance, battle and challenge are all here. Just like the first you can use coins won in the street performance to unlock different bongo sounds and the tunes for expert mode but did not see any options for sub games like there was in the first.
There is a good variety of tracks in here like Breakfast at Tiffany's, All Star, Boombastic and many more, gaming tracks this time include F-Zero X's Mute City Track and the Super Mario Bros 3 tune but I think the track selection was much better in the first game.
Problem is there is not a lot changed in the gameplay which is a problem with the whole music game genre but if you enjoyed the first and played it with your mates then pick this bugger up, it is at a slightly budget price at an RRP of £29.99.
Rating- 7 out of 10