MP for Bromwich East Tom Watson has labelled the Panorama special on games 'addiction' as anachronistic and inaccurate.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz last week, Watson revealed his disappointment that the program's makers had not sought to present a more balanced picture by speaking to people who were making lives better with games and gaming, instead choosing to focus on the perceived negative aspects of the medium.

"It was a heavily editorialised piece," said Watson of the documentary. "I wish they'd reached out a little bit more to talk to other people. They could have talked to some of the people who are doing very positive things with games - they could have talked to Graham Brown-Martin, he could have put them in touch with some of the greatest teachers in the country who are capturing the imagination of young people every day using off-the-shelf game packages.

"It's a pity that they rehearsed a quite hackneyed mantra really about games doing bad things for children. We know that, in life, anything done to excess can have a downside. No-one seriously disagrees with that. But to try and project the games industry as trying to deliberately deprive people of sleep, money, time, work and social contact is basically anachronistic and inaccurate."

The documentary, which dealt with a number of children and young adults who were perceived as having been damaged somehow by excessive use of games, aroused widespread contempt from industry figures when it aired earlier this month. GamesIndustry.biz spoke to the program's director Emeka Onono to gauge his thoughts on the show's reception.

Watson is a keen proponent of the games industry in parliament, vocally supporting industry tax breaks and promoting games to the parliamentary agenda.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...and-inaccurate ...

Nintendo talisman Shigeru Miyamoto has admitted that at one time he intended to try and "destroy" the game genres that he had helped create.

Speaking in a lengthy, fascinating interview with The New Yorker, the Mario creator explained how he watched on with admiration as his favourite manga artists created a brand new genre from nothing and then later completely subverted it.

"When they became much older, they started to destroy the style they themselves had created," he explained.

"When I started working for the company, I thought that someday I would like to do the same. I wanted to destroy the styles that we ourselves created.

"I don't think we can do so completely, but I think that in the way that we are making video games today we might be getting closer to my idea of destroying the original style.

"Because we ourselves have created the original format or style of video games," he continued, "we understand why we had to do it at the time. Because we understand that, we can also understand why some of them must be kept intact and why some of them we can destroy."

Once famously banned from talking about his current hobbies by Nintendo top brass out of fear competitors might steal his game ideas, Miyamoto also shed a little light on what currently floats his boat outside of the office.

"I like changing the interiors of the house, or sometimes even the exterior of the house. Sometimes I'm called the Sunday carpenter," he revealed.

"Even at midnight or at some early hour in the morning, I will change the location of the sofa in the living room. That's me. Something tells me that by changing it my life is going to be more enjoyable. At least it's going to give me some fresh feeling."

Elsewhere in the piece, Miyamoto offers insight into perfectly balancing difficulty in his games, why he's not interested in photorealism and who he most admires in the games industry.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...nintendos-past ...

A new version of SNES RPG classic Final Fantasy IV is heading to the PSP, incorporating recent WiiWare expansion The After Years as well as the 1991 original.

Andriasang reports that Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection will boast revamped visuals and a brand new chapter linking the original RPG with its latter-day spin-off.

There are no further details right now, other than a mooted Spring 2011 release date in Japan, but we're onto Square Enix for more information.

Even the most casual Final Fantasy fan should be fairly well-versed in Final Fantasy IV's charms, but The After Years is something of a curio. It started out life as a Japan-only mobile game before coming to Western shores in July 2009 on WiiWare.

It's set 17 years after the events of Final Fantasy IV and follows the adventures of Ceodore, the son of the original game's hero Cecil.

Its retro RPG stylings won it a 7/10 from Eurogamer's Dan Whitehead.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...eading-for-psp ...

As the battle for motion-sensing supremacy heats up this Christmas, Sony has cast doubt on the wisdom of Microsoft's blockbuster Kinect launch.

"I don't think it was quieter," Sony Computer Entertainment Europe boss Andrew House told MCV in response to criticism over Sony's marketing of Move compared to Microsoft's high-profile Kinect campaign.

"We know a marketing push is important around a launch window, but what will really drive adoption of new technology is going to be great content.

"We've got a whole range of experiences that serve the broadest audience and that is a far better long-term bet. You can only sustain a certain amount of momentum just based on trying to ram product at people based on a strong marketing push. It really will be content that defines it."

Move and Kinect are considered to be neck and neck in worldwide sales, with Move enjoying around a month head start.

Earlier this month Microsoft's 2.5 million global Kinect sales announcement was countered when Sony announced it had sold 4.1 million Move controllers across the globe since its September launch.

However, while Sony's announcement used the word "sales" in relation to the impressive number, it actually meant "shipped". Shipped relates to sales to shops, whereas sales relates to sales through to gamers.

House added that consumer demand for Move is 'in excess' of projections.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...nect-marketing ...

News via http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/...EAnbSsBQxh.php

Hyper_Eye released a new version of Odamex for the Original Xbox:
[QUOTE]
Today is the 17th birthday of Doom and I am pleased to announce the release of Odamex 0.5.1 for all platforms including Xbox. This release has many Xbox bug fixes as well as the addition of chat macro support which allows Xbox players to communicate using the controller. Please read the updated README.Xbox to learn about the chat macro feature as well as the new default controller scheme. If you have played Odamex on your Xbox before you may want to reset your configuration settings so that your controller bindings will update to the new defaults. You can do this by selecting "Reset to defaults" at the bottom of the Odamex options menu.

What is Odamex?
Odamex is a modification of DOOM to allow players to compete with each other over the Internet using the client/server architecture. Odamex also provides a feature-rich single-player engine.
Please see the general README provided with Odamex for a thorough description of Odamex and its features.

General Odamex Changes:
* Fixed DirectX palette issues on Windows Vista/7
* First pass of zdoom map support including acs, mapinfo (classic)
* Scoreboard fixes
* Higher resolutions supported
* Various bug fixes and more

Odamex Xbox Changes:
* Chat macro support
* Fixed a bug that makes retrieving/refreshing the server list many times faster on affected Xbox's.
* Fixed DEH/BEX patch loading (mods like Batman Doom and GoldenEye load correctly)
* The player color sliders are now usable
* The launcher loads Odamex properly when it uses a long path name
* odamex.xbe can be launched directly from an XBMC shortcut with command-line parameters using the tag
* Various other bug fixes

Official Site: http://odamex.net/ ...

News via http://retroactionmagazine.com/retro...print-archive/

The second issue of N64 Magazine from May 1997 has just been archived over at Out-of-Print Archive. The N64 focused magazine was the spiritual successor to the classic Super Play, retaining much of the feel of that magazine along with some familiar staff. Thanks to meppi, who scanned and edited this release, we can all relive this classic magazine once more. The release comes with four online articles, taken from the magazine itself, and includes reviews of Blast Corps, Waverace 64 and Doom 64, along with an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto.

http://www.outofprintarchive.com/cat...magazine2.html ...

News via http://boards.openpandora.org/index....re-2010-12-11/

As you might know, Trey, a member of this community (and also a first-batch-preorderer) took the time to visit CircuitCo for us, the company that produces the Pandora Boards (as well as the Beagleboards and the Pandaboards).
He came back with a load of pictures and a lot of news - good and bad ones.

Basically, what I feared for the last weeks has come true - we haven't been told the complete truth about the production.
Sadly, there are not 2000 boards ready which just need to get the nubs. There are about 500 boards there, in various states (some completely finished, some finished except for the nubs, some had all the SMT parts on but were missing the rest, etc.)

It looks like they just started to work on the boards when they got the final nubs - that was what I expected, to be honest.
Why?

First: They never showed us pictures - which sounded to me like they were not really producing anything.
Second: If I were the company, I wouldn't have started before the final nubs were there (okay, on the other hand, I would have told the truth).

We pay them after they delivered the final boards. And I think THAT is the reason they didn't continue on the boards.
If we couldn't fix the nubs, the project would probably have gone bust - and then they had 3000 half-finished boards we couldn't pay anymore.
And as we kept asking and asking how things are progressing, my guess is they told as they are working and progressing to calm us down and not get angry, thinking we will not show up to check it out anyways.
Now they just got the first 2000 finally working nubs and started to work on the boards.

I am really sad to tell you this - but I don't think we'll see too many shipped Pandoras before christmas. We might get a bigger batch of boards and might even manage to build quite a few and ship them, but given the usual delays with shipping services right before christmas, it might be very narrow. I'd love to give you better news here, but oh well...


Now for the good news:

* Trey saw 15 people working, most of them were working on Pandora boards. This confirms that they are now really working on the boards!
* Trey will regularly visit them to check up how they're progressing. There will be no way to fool us anymore!
* They have nightshifts and will work most of the holidays.
* Now they know we have someone to check - which should hopefully motivate them to continue working.
* We got news from the nub company that the next 2500 nubs should be ready next week. It looks like they got the missing PCBs (for the nubs). Until the end of December, all needed nubs should be finished!


What will happen now?

Well, we'll keep a close eye on the production now and Trey will regularly visit them to make sure they continue producing the Pandoras!
All I can do is hope you will hold on for a while longer (yeah, probably Two Months ™) and wait for progress happening and good news from Trey.
We've dedicated a lot of time and money into this project. It probably is one of the most unique projects there is, and I don't want it to go down shortly before it's finished.

As we said, we used your prepayment to pay for parts and production. Any refund will decrease our own money and while we can cope with quite a few refunds, if all of you want to cancel your order at once, it surely won't be enough - so if you REALLY want a refund instead of a Pandora, please wait until the end of January (as then we should have an idea how well the production runs). Thanks!

Of course, I'll keep posting daily videos to give you some daily Pandora - and we'll make sure to keep you updated about the production.

Thanks again for your support! I know we can do it! Let's keep going!

Oh, Trey also took some pictures to show they are really working!
Various Pandora boards in various finished states. ...

News via

submitted by Rikku2000

GP2XMB for GPH CAANOO

I make an small port of the XMB for GP2X

Download: V1.0.0 Beta 4 - 12.12.2010
GP2XMB for GPH CAANOO
Changelog:
- Some XMB Menu Changes
- MP3 Support and Fix
- Game and Apps Floder
- Video Select (need MPlayer: "apps/mplayer")
- Video Select display now Extesion Icon
- Add ".avi" to Video and ".sh" to Apps/Game

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=929905 ...

News via http://emu-russia.net/en/

CaH4e3 posted new screenshots of Virtua Fighter 4 emulated in Demul.

http://forum.emu-russia.net/viewtopi...p=13823#p13823 ...