DCEmu Featured News Articles

Nintendo has denied reports that it is to cease manufacturing the DSi range of home consoles due to the imminent release of the 3DS in February.

In a statement issued to press including GamesIndustry.biz, a representative for Nintendo said there are still DSi products to be launched in the UK throughout this year. An earlier report translated by Kotaku claimed the system would be dropped - although the larger DSi XL was still to be manufactured.

"We plan to still manufacture and supply DSi consoles in a range of colours in the UK in 2011," said Nintendo.

"On an on-going basis, continuing supply is based on retail and consumer demand."

The 3DS is released next month in Japan on February 26, priced ¥25,000 (£194). European and US details are to be announced next week, with a launch window of March. Nintendo is manufacturing 4 million units for the two month launch period.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-dsi-phase-out ...

Elite creator David Braben has strongly criticised the current digital national curriculum in the UK.

Referring to his own self-taught programming skills on Acorn Electrons and BBC Micros, he worried that today "the equivalent kid to me would probably hate ICT and therefore probably be put off computers for good."

He told the Learning Without Frontiers conference in London today that "every kid I talk to says ICT is dull. They hate it. The majority is learning how to use certain MS tools and how to find the on and off switch.

"That is such a far distance from what I'm talking about, where self-driven learning happens. I think it was very well meaning to try and make ICT universal but I think it's backfired." He called for computer science teaching that "actually taught programming and all the things which are exciting about it."

The problem was particular acute, he felt, for those children who could not use PCs at home. "For those who didn't have access to computers it just confirmed the fact that they weren't interested."

With this in mind, Frontier Developments had created a self-contained miniature computer prototype which pupils could take home with them.

Known as the Raspberry Pi and potentially being trialled later this year, the device is "Really really small, a complete computer, everything you need to program. It can run all sorts of things from project canvas to programming language. It's very, very cheap to distribute."

The unit includes wireless networking, Linux, an ARM processor, an HDMI output and is "utterly indestructible."

The scheme is a not for profit venture which Braben felt could feasibly become widespread. "Imagine if everyone had one at home. It could be something that could be used as a vehicle, because the important thing is to have the feeling of ownership when you get home."

Braben also argued that games themselves could be an effective learning tool. "Games are a great weapon for education. Have you ever heard a kid say 'can I stop playing Mario and go do my homework?' You have to tear them off it. It's a very, very powerful thing.

"There's the huge feeling of progression, there's a lack of criticism or failure, there's huge easy steps. What games do is these very small incremental steps, each of which is motivational – for that reason kids love them, love the worlds represent in them. Ironically they are doing those days and weeks of hard slog. And dare I say it, they can often learn in the process, so long as it's secret."

Key to adopting such methods, he felt, were "great teachers."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ys-ict-is-dull ...

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is to keynote GDC 2011 with a presentation entitled 'Video games turn 25: A historical perspective and vision for the future', discussing what he believes are the most important industry trends, past and future.

2011 is the year of the 25th anniversary of GDC, with Nintendo's poster boy Mario having enjoyed the same celebration last year. Iwata is a regular speaker at the conference, having appeared first in 2005 to discuss what would later become the Wii, then in 2006 and again in 2009.

"We are honoured and pleased to welcome Mr Iwata back to the keynote stage for our 25th conference," said GDC's director, Meggan Scavio.

"Nintendo continues to innovate and captivate developers and gamers alike, and we're looking forward to their unique insights into both the history and future of the game business."

GDC 2011 takes place in San Francisco from February 28 to March 4, 2011. Tickets are available now from the organisers' website.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...g-presentation ...

Yarnton positive about 'multitude of game systems and tools that can help stimulate development'
Nintendo UK boss David Yarnton believes rival firms Sony and Microsoft are as equally important in promoting the industry to the next generation of game development hopefuls.
Speaking at the Learning Without Frontiers event today, Yarnton set aside old rivalries to say the arrival of both Sony and Microsoft in the console business has been beneficial for the industry as a whole.
He said all three platform holders were crucial “to promote game development, providing the extra tools for developers and help them experiment and explore new ideas and concepts”.
“As an industry we can provide people with a lot of different options across formats with the view of having something that can appeal to everyone,” he said.
There are “really powerful programs and games that come from Sony and Microsoft” that can both help developers and encourage industry growth, he added.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...e-of-diversity ...

PSP was the bestselling platform in Japan during the week ended January 2, with more than a little help from Capcom's chart-topping Monster Hunter Portable 3rd.


Sony's portable moved just shy of 100,000 units during the seven days in question, 20,000 more than its closest competitor Wii, which just edged PS3.

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd headed the software chart with 284,000 sales, ahead of Donkey Kong Country Returns' 107,000 and Wii Party's 103,000, Kotaku reports.

Perhaps it'll be Sony's year in Japan, after it was narrowly defeated by Nintendo in the 2010 sales race.

Weekly hardware sales
PSP - 99,703
Wii - 77,307
PS3 - 76,422
DSi - 48,039
DSi LL - 47,798
PSP go - 9,083
DS Lite - 3,741
Xbox 360 - 3,708
PS2 - 2,480

Weekly software sales
01. Monster Hunter Portable 3rd (PSP) - 284,000 / 3,850,000
02. Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii) - 107,000 / 638,000
03. Wii Party (Wii) - 103,000 / 1,677,000
04. AKB1/48: Idol to Koishitara... (PSP) - 64,000 / 300,000
05. Mario Sports Mix (Wii) - 58,000 / 494,000
06. Pokemon Black / White (DS) - 58,000 / 4,967,000
07. Ni no Kuni (DS) - 53,000 / 382,000
08. Inazuma Eleven 3: Sekai e no Chousen! The Ogre (DS) - 45,000 / 338,000
09. The 3rd Birthday (PSP) - 45,000 / 186,000
10. Gundam Musou 3 (PS3) - 43,000 / 289,000
11. Wii Sports Resort (w/ Wii Remote Plus) (Wii)
12. Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem (DS)
13. Tongari Boushi to Mahou no Otana (DS)
14. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)
15. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
16. Super Mario All-Stars Collection (Wii)
17. Momotaro Dentetsu World (DS)
18. Super Kasekihorida (DS)
19. Taiko no Tatsujin Wii: Minna de Party * 3-Yome! (Wii)
20. Gran Turismo 5 (PS3)

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

With the news that infamous iPhone hacker George Hotz has enabled homebrew via a custom firmware patch, speculation is now moving on to what Sony will do to stop unauthorised code running on the PlayStation Network. What exactly can the platform holder monitor from your machine and what steps can Sony take in banning you from the PlayStation Network?

First of all there's an important distinction in the unofficial hacker's "code of conduct" to be aware of: these guys believe that once you buy a machine, you own it and you have the right to run your own programs on it, even if the inevitable consequence of this (by their own admission) is that piracy becomes possible on what was previously a "backup"-proof system. However, hackers are equally adamant that the PlayStation Network, or Xbox Live for that matter, is a service that users subscribe to and for which they have no ownership rights at all. In short, if you do decide to run your own code on a system connected to such a service, you're on your own and should be prepared for the consequences.

Thus far, educated estimates put the amount of Xbox Live bans at well over one million consoles, accounting mostly for users who modified their DVD drive firmwares to run games burned onto DVD. However, Sony has been remarkably restrained in its response to the Jailbreak even though PSN has been vulnerable for some weeks over the last few months. Does the company have the tools to track Jailbroken consoles and if so, why haven't we seen the banhammer fall already?

First up, what does Sony know about what's going on with your console? It is true that when the PS3 boots up - whether you have a PSN account or now - the machine itself communicates with a string of Sony servers, as recently posted on NeoGAF, and a log of applications run on the system is almost certainly transmitted. Similarly, the game you're running at any given point also shows up on your PSN profile, and the chances are that if you run a game from within a "backup manager", then the manager - not the game - will be displayed attached to your PSN account.

According to the terms and conditions of the PlayStation Network, this effectively makes you fair game for a PSN ban of which many variations exist - a timed suspension or even a lifelong ban. The amount of access Sony has to your machine is greater than you probably suspect: the company even has the means to irrevocably disable your console should it so wish, and if that happens, it will remain non-functional whether you're online or offline.

However, despite the options Sony has available, to date there have been no ban waves that we've been aware of, despite Jailbroken consoles being easily detectable. Sony's approach has been very responsible - issuing security updates via new firmwares that automatically lock Jailbreakers out of the PlayStation Network as opposed to issuing outright bans. Sony effectively offers PS3 jailbreakers the opportunity to "go legit" in order to preserve their PSN access.

It was the right solution for its time: a system update is inconvenient for the end-user but for Sony it would be far more of an issue in dealing with the unwelcome publicity of a ban wave. Just the logistics of the customer relations element also makes this the most reasonable approach: why deal with thousands of emails, requests for info from the press and - yes - potentially banning a small amount of innocent users when a new firmware prevents any of this from happening?

Microsoft went the nuclear option with its various ban waves of course, but there is a difference between modifying DVD firmware and running a PS3 jailbreak: opening up your 360, re-flashing the drive and reassembling the machine demonstrates a singular purpose in running burned games. With the USB jailbreaks, all machines were vulnerable and any one could run the dongle on any machine whether they owned it or not. Sony may well have a list of "suspect" consoles, but arbitrarily suspending PSN access without a proof of sustained usage would be an over-reaction. As a knock-on effect, it would obviously stop these people spending money in the PlayStation Store. Updating new firmware and locking out the compromised systems while offering offenders the chance to "go legit" has clearly been the platform holder's MO thus far.

In the short term, expect to see Sony do exactly the same thing. Firmwares 3.42 and 3.5 worked in locking out Jailbroken consoles with the minimum of fuss. Hacks to get compromised consoles onto PSN were neutralised relatively quickly and you can expect the current access Jailbreakers have to PSN with Geohot's hacked software to be revoked imminently with a new system update.

In future firmwares, expect internal checks to be carried out during run-time and on boot to ensure the integrity of GameOS - these are trivial for Sony to code, invisible to the legitimate end-user and much more difficult to reverse-engineer. However, the long term challenge facing the platform holder is ...

Importers and globetrotting gamers suffered a blow today after it emerged that Nintendo 3DS software will be region-locked.

Confirmation comes from an email from Nintendo of Japan support, translated by user farnham on forum NeoGAF.

This means that software specifically created for the Nintendo 3DS will be region-locked: European software will only work on European consoles, and more importantly US and Japanese software won't.

While the move is sure to disappoint importers, it comes as no surprise. Although previous DS handhelds - and GameBoys before them - had been region-free, the DSi and the DSi XL are region-locked.

Nintendo was undecided on the matter as late as E3 2010 in June, when Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said the company had yet to make a decision.

The 3DS is due out in Europe and the US in March, and in Japan on 26th February.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-region-locked ...

I will be releasing the 2nd game in the Zelda french homebrew trilogy (Zelda - Oni Link Begins) next week. I'm testing the game now and will be releasing it as a beta initially, due to my lack of time to play all of the way through the game. When I've finished testing the game you will know, because it will get a 1.0 version number in the sourceforge site (not available yet).
The reason it's been taking so long is do to other obligations as well as memory leaks in the original code. The PSP's low memory makes these very problematic compared to the Windows version. Thankfully the Dingux peoples port fixed most of the memory bugs, so I am using theirs to locate the memory bugs (though I decided not to use their source code for the port due to numerous system specific changes). ...

To celebrate Castle Crashers reaching over 2 million players on Xbox Live Arcade, developer The Behemoth is giving away a pretty mental prize to the slash-em-up's best player.

"With all these people playing Castle Crashers many have claimed to have the unparalleled skillz, the bestest combos, the most awesome attacks," the developer wrote on its blog. "Finally, once and for all we shall know: Who is the best Castle Crashers Arena Fighter in all the world?"


The first prize of the 'Tournament of Champions' is a Gold Xbox. Yes - a functional Xbox plated in 24k GOLD. It looks fantastic.


"Imagine playing on a golden Xbox. Envision the look on your friend's faces. Kings and Queens would come over to your house to play BattleBlock Theater," Behemoth gags.

Second prize wins a Castle Crashers themed Xbox 360 Elite (not gold) and third place is unfortunate enough to receive 250 squishy chickens.

To be eligible for the tournament you have to be in the top 100 Weekly Ranked Arena players on the Castle Crashers leaderboards at noon (PST) on January 28. You will have all that week to battle for those spots.

The top 100 will compete in 1 on 1 Arena matches, in a single elimination tournament format on Saturday February 5, says Beth.

If only we were good (or excitable) enough...

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...