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

Updates to resume soon

Sorry for the lack of udates normal updates should resume soon with a review of Donkey Konga 2

Kirby Cursed Canvas has been relesed in the states and has been getting rave reviews, I can't wait to play it, review as soon as I get and played it.
I've been using free browser Mozilla Firefox, it's a great browser with some great fetures, check it out.

Bah!, Wario Ware

Last night I went to a site not noticing that my protection was not active (was playing PSO, it has its own protection), I was hit hard, ad-ware, spy-ware, various software and even a couple of viruses. It took me all of last night and this morning (with sleep in between) to get it sorted, eventually I had to re-install Window but I did it over the existing partition which meant I lost none of my files.
You would have noticed that to the right of you there is a poll, go on, vote in it. I will change it every so often and yes I know the poll section colours do not match up to the rest of the right hand sections.

Live by saber, die by the saber

Yeah it's PSO:BB, one of the small new features is that you can now do all the posses in game and with your weapons, you can get some brilliant pictures.

MMORPGs to be banned in china? Because they are too addictive, Wario Ware is next then.
PSP owners in Japan can now watch Porn on their PSP. UMD porn movies to be released, dirty people.

Strange name for a town, perhaps it says something about the people

Wario Ware Twisted- Game Boy Advance
Nintendo are truly the masters of innotive control, almost every control feature you see in todays Joypad were created by Nintendo and Nintendo have not stopped, recently we have seen the DS with a touch screen and now a motion sensor built into a GBA cart? Wario Ware Twisted is the first of two games to use this.
The usual Wario Ware Stuff is here, you complete various Micro games to advance to complete the course, get the presents and to beat your own high score.
This is addictive just like the previous two Wario Ware games. You have games that just use the sensor like catch a butterfly in a net, switch the day from morning to night, move a kids hands to deflect incoming objects. You also have games that use the sensor and the A button like move the bow and shoot the fruit, move the hammer and pound the nail, get the puzzle piece the right way round and press A to place. There is also normal games like the original Wario Ware.
Using the Sensor is what makes this game brilliant, I just love the whole innotive control concept as it makes games feel different. The presents that I have unlocked so far are good, there is a sheep jumping game, there is a wind up music box and record of jimmys song, but judging by the question marks there are loads more to be unlocked. A big difference in this Wario Ware game is if you fail a micro game the counter will not go up.
As an added bus to people who own Touched on the DS having twisted in the cart slot at the same time as Touched will unlock you a Mona's Pizza Music Video.
I tend to use my SP instead of my DS to play this game as it is smaller and sometimes your console will be upside down but after a while the sensor will go wrong and start going right when you are not moving it, when this happens load up the game again, this problem does not seem to happen when using the DS?
Just like the other Wario Ware games, its pure fun and addictive gameplay make it an absolute must, rmember folks we play games to have fun and this gane is FUN! It's also very different from the other versions which is a huge plus.
Rating- 9 out of 10

Advance Movie Player

Big Brother started last friday and I could not care less, fed up with all this reality TV crap. Desperate Housewives finishes tonight and I like that for some very strange odd reason. E4 came to freeview on friday which menas I can watch more Scrubs and Smallvilem, me is happy.
Been playin loads of PSO:BB recently, last thursday me and some guys were remembering the good ole days from dreamcast PSO here are some recent PSO:BB pics.

I wanna ride next!

Advance Movie Player- GBA
I got a 1GB Compact flash card for a good price so I thought to myself I might as well get this as it would be good to have something that plays music and theres no way I'm spending money on an I-Pod or those crappy cheap MP3 players.
This advance movie player is independantly made player that supports compact flash, their site is here. It can be brought from Lik Sang for around about £14 which is great value for money.
The review is based on this running on Nintendo DS, if you are expecting high quality movie playback from this thing then you would be a moron, remember the power of the GBA is similer to a SNES with a 32bit RISC, also remeber that this player is not made using a Nintendo development kit but regardless of all that the product is pretty darn good for what it's running on. Before you start using this thing pop to the official site and get the latest firmware upgrade and encoding software.
First off is music, music need to first be converted and cannot be played straight from MP3 form which is annoying at first but the encoding software is very fast. The software will encode to a .gbs file. There are many file conversion modes, the best is 8-1 stereo, this will get the quality and size of your file to that of the MP3 original. The other conversion modes are mono and sound is very disstorted so there is no point in using them. If a file is low in volume then the music converter has an option where you can boost the volume, I used this with a couple of low volume files and it worked really well. When I tested these converted files the quality was great, I plugged in my headphones and could feel the stereo sound, the quality sounded as good as the MP3 but if the source file is poor quality then the the converted file will be poor quality, the software will not enhance the quality of the track. One problem with the software is if you encode too many files at once, after a while it will only encode the first minute of the track. When playing the music on the hardware, up will switch to next track, down to the previous track, right will fast forward 10 seconds and left will rewind 10 seconds, R will pause and L will also skip to next track. There is no playlist support here but with this being firmware upgradable you never know what could come next but it does support file browsing so numbering the files and putting them in specific folder is a cheeky replacement for play lists.
Next up is movie playback, like the music the files these need to be converted, the software has three modes, you might as well use the High Quality mode only, the software supports AVI, qucktime, Real and windows media formats. The software outputs two files a .gbm and like the music a .gbs file. Movie quality is hit and miss, I encoded a episode of Sentai Dekaranger with subs, I could read the subs, sound was great, video kept a decent frame rate although was a bit blocky, it was perfectly watchable. I tested an episode of Family Guy, source file was high quality but the framerate was not good which menat the sound lagged behind, I also did a Futurama, source file was high quality but the framerate dipped a bit in places but was perfectly watchable, last test was South Park, source file was low quality but was perfect! Controls when watching a movie are the same as the music but the fast forward and rewind is a minute this time.
Next up is NES rom support, first off you have to put the Pocket NES emu into the source of your Compact Flash Card, this is a nice feature but is limited, NES games play fine but the ROM size is limited to 256kb which is annoying as many roms are just 1k more lol, also there is no saving and you have to literally turn off the console and reboot if you want to play another ROM as the Exit option does not work properly, hopefully this can be improved in future updates but its still a nice feature.
There is also support for pictures but just like music and movies this has to be converted which makes this feature rather pointless. Last feature is E-book support or actually not E-Book support as it says on the hardware much rather txt file support, this has its uses as you can store game guides on the card for when you go on holiday but this has no find option.
The cart its self is the same size as a GB mono cart, it's big due to the size of compact flash cards, if they went with SD cards the cart could have been much smaller and then Nintendo fans would be able to use those cards for future Nintendo products.
The developers are planning a big update which will use the abilities of DS, hopefully touch screen and better hardware, looking at what they achieved with the GBA hardware the DS upadte could be pretty stunning.
Overall this is a stunning product but it has many flaws. If you want a music player and movie player for your DS or GBA then get this.
Rating- 7 out of 10