In case you missed it back in June, the Palm Pre was rooted by extracting the Root ROM from a Palm tool used to reset a device with damaged software. A lot has been learned from examining the code inside that ROM but we’re most amused by one thing in particular. If you grew up in the 80’s there’s a pretty good chance you know the Konami Code by heart. So did the developers of WebOS, the firmware running on the Palm Pre. By inputting the familiar (UpUpDownDownLeftRightLeftRightBA) set of gestures the handset enters Developer mode for connection to the SDK which was leaked last summer but is now in open release.

http://hackaday.com/2010/01/27/nes-l...ding-for-palm/ ...

God of War II was almost a PS3 game (at least, before it did become a PS3 game). In an interview with Game Informer, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida remembered the internal debate over whether to release God of War II as one of the last big games for PS2 or as a headline title for the PS3 launch. "Many people, including marketing, suggested that maybe it should be moved to PS3," Yoshida recalled. Certainly, God of War II would've bolstered an exclusive launch lineup that was limited to Resistance: Fall of Man and very little else.

"We had a lot of debates about it, actually. I always firmly stood by keeping it on PS2," Yoshida continued, noting that "the end of a platform is when you see really great games, after developers really begin to understand the hardware."

Yoshida's "gamble" paid off, both critically and financially. If God of War II had been a PS3 launch title, more systems would probably have been pushed at launch, but software sales would've undoubtedly suffered compared to the game's success as a PS2 title. Besides, PS3 owners weren't excluded from the action! Back then, PS3s used to have this magical "backwards compatibility" thingy.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/26/go...3-launch-game/ ...

Bad news for those of you who have picked up some classic arcade titles on Xbox Live and can't wait to play them in Microsoft's new Game Room: It looks like you will have to repurchase anything you want to play with your avatar in the 3D environment. Game Informer learned this recently from a Microsoft rep, who went on to say that it's because the Game Room titles are different from the XBLA versions -- in fact, it sounds like they're more old-school and not "revamped," as the rep puts it.

Fortunately, you will get a small price break: As previously announced, the games will sell for 400($5) to play on Xbox 360 and PC, 240 ($3) for the game on one platform or 40 ($0.50) for "two quarters'" worth of playtime. But for those of us who've already shelled out 400 for the Centipede/Millipede combo, it looks like we'll have to pull out the wallet yet again.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/26/re...box-game-room/ ...

Sorry Steve, but we're not necessarily interested in playing first-person shooters like N.O.V.A. on your newly-revealed iPad. That doesn't mean we can't see the gaming possibilities though. Don't get us wrong, we're excited to see that most of our iPhone games will work, but we think that's only the start of the story.

Real time strategy: The interface just isn't big enough for detailed troop management on the iPhone, but the iPad's larger display could be the perfect thing for trying to keep up with a hectic battlefield while managing resources. A beefier processor means the game won't be held up by too many orcs/soldiers/space cars on screen. The apps we want: Command and Conquer, StarCraft 2.

Board games: It's obviously a great size for classics like chess and checkers, but we could see playing a hell of a game of Risk that we could either pass around the room or play against friends online. OK, we were kidding about the friends part. Good luck trying to get people over to your house to "pass the giant iPod Touch around." The apps we want: Risk, Pandemic, Othello.

Most iPhone games with a virtual d-pad: Think of it, if you can move the buttons on your favorite d-pad controlled iPhone game, you may never have to wish for invisible thumbs again. Well, you might still wish for invisible thumbs but only so you can freak out neighborhood children. The apps we want (and are thankfully already out): Pac-Man Championship Edition, Wolfenstein RPG.

That one on the iPhone where it looks like you're drinking a beer: Dude: Giant beer.

Adventure games: We know some of these have been making their way to the iPhone, but pointing and clicking your way through adventure classics just seems like a natural with the iPad's larger screen (not to mention the reduction on iStrain as you read those piles of text). More and more of these gems are being remade with high resolution graphics -- we think it's high time to start enjoying them on a screen that does them justice. The apps we want: Everything Telltale's ever done, Quest For Glory.

The games that run like crud on your iPhone: After all, you've already paid for them, shouldn't you be able to play them without a bunch of chugging and stuttering? Note: This doesn't really apply to those of you rocking a 3GS, though we'll see how well your phone continues to stack up when devs also have the juiced up iPad in mind for their apps.

Popcap: Sorry guys, but there's probably nothing to be done about this one. They're going to make games, and those games are going to be a lot of fun. You're not going to be able to stop playing it. Plants Vs. Zombies is going to be fun on the iPhone and it's going to be several percentages funner on the iPad. Sorry. The apps we don't necessarily want but will be powerless to avoid: Peggle, Bejeweled, Plants Vs. Zombies.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/27/th...-want-on-ipad/ ...

Here's some encouraging news for those hoping that the PlayStation Motion Controller (pleaseannouncethenamealready!) will give a reason to knock the dust off your old PlayStation Eye. According to a Nikkei report spotted by Andriasang, the device, which pairs with the Eye, will have "around 10 or so games" by year's end, including sports and pet raising titles.

We've been disappointed by the game support for the Eye so far, outside of the ability to construct extensive scrotum-centric LBP sticker libraries. Here's hoping that these promised releases can take all the Eyes sitting on our shelves from novelty to necessity.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/27/re...-10-games-thi/ ...

Considering that an entire game's worth of content was supposedly cut from Final Fantasy XIII, one could imagine there's a veritable gold mine of content waiting to be polished and released as DLC. Apparently not, however, as producer Yoshinori Kitase has allegedly indicated, "at present we're not considering [DLC]." The quote is said to originate from a brief interview featured in an Ultima Guide for the game (via FFReunion), and Kitase apparently added that DLC is still "possible," but it's just not something Square Enix is working on right now.

Kitase cited the team's drive to create a complete experience in the final retail game as one of the contributing factors to putting DLC plans aside. He also pointed to the game's exceedingly long development time and the developers' focus on getting the game finished as soon as possible. Clearly, "asap" has a different meaning in Japan.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/27/ru...-but-possible/ ...

he Apple iPad may be great for web-browsing. It may be the best slate on which to list half of the 10 Commandments since solid rock. But, for gamers, well, thou shalt have some legitimate doubts about this thing.

Why might the iPad not become the next great player in games?

(Bear in mind, we've now played games on the iPad.}

Uh, It's A Giant iPod Touch: If our man in San Francisco is sitting at Apple's press conference, waiting for Apple to announce a revolutionary way to play games via the iPad, well, I hope he lifts his feet when the janitors come by to sweep the floors. The wait could be long.

As best we could discern from today's announcement, the button-less, tilt-sensitive, touch-screen iPad offers no game-controlling interface improvements over the button-less, tilt-sensitive, touch-screen iPod Touch. In fact, the iPad doesn't appear to even have a camera, which has been supported by some iPhone games. The iPad just shows games bigger. It shows them Beautifully, of course, but Nintendo convinced the world a few years ago that graphical improvements are not the key to modern game machine success.

The Third Pillar Might Not Stand: Back in 2004, Nintendo was preparing to release a new gaming device, the DS. The two-screened system is a hit now, but back then it seemed about as unnecessary as a third shoe. Nintendo claimed that the portable DS would become a "third pillar," as crucial a strut to Nintendo's fortunes as the home console and the portable Game Boy. But that didn't make much sense, because the DS, which could play Game Boy Advance games seemed like it would need to supplant the Game Boy line to be successful. Why, really, would someone need two portable Nintendo machines?

And so the question can now be asked of Apple: If your consumers still need a computer and a phone, needs which you already can fill, what room in their wallet, their bag and their life is there for a semi-portable, semi-desk-ready tablet computer? For gaming or otherwise?

App Apprehensions: It's wonderful to hear that the iPad will run iPhone and iPod Touch games, but those games were made to run on a screen the size of an iPod Touch, not a screen a little bigger than a Superman comic book.

Do you want to run iPad games in a window while you multi-task on the iPad? That would be the closest you'd get to having App Store gaming available on a computer you can sit down with. Well, no can do. You can't multitask on an iPad. Plus, we're talking about games that either won't fill the iPad screen or will have to be blown up by users to play at bigger than their native resolution. We're told that the iPad supports "pixel-doubling" which will compensate for that, but it's hard to get that excited about the concept of playing iPhone games, but larger. The best hope here is that the early announcements of iPad-enhanced games such as Nova and Need for Speed Shift will swiftly give way to announcements of iPad-original games.

The Cost: You could buy an iPhone 3Gs for $299, a Nintendo DS for $129, a PSP for $169, a Wii for $199, an Xbox 360 starting at $199 or a PlayStation 3 starting at $299. Or you could buy an iPad starting at $499, gamers. Tough sell?

Versus PC Gaming: You can look at the iPad as a super-sized iPhone. You could look at it as chunky big brother to the DS and PSP. Or you could look at it as the most gaming-ready computer Apple has every released. In that last respect, the iPad is a nice advance for the prospects of being able to put an Apple product on your desk and play games on it.

But in that last context, the iPad must be compared to, well, Windows-based computers. The barrier to entry for developers is low for either: Make an App for the iPad. Make your own game for the PC. Grassroots developers could flourish on either platform. But we're likely to be seeing sized-up portable games on Apple's iPad for a while. They will be compared to fully-realized PC games that can be run with controllers, keyboards and mice. Advantage, Windows gaming... for now and for a while, it seems.

Room For the Little Guys? One of the best stories about gaming on the iPod Touch and iPad has been how the App Store allowed the smallest developers to vie in the marketplace against the biggest game publishers. The result of that competition has been wonderful games from the littlest crews to the biggest, everything from Tiger Style's Spider to some of EA's best.

The bigger screen size of the iPad, however, may raise expectations for the quality of graphics on iPad games — and smaller studios may find it more challenging than the EAs of the world to create games that are as visually pleasing as they were on the iPod Touch and iPhone.

Inherited iPhone Issues Some models of the iPad will run over Wi-Fi. Others can run on the 3G network, which raises questions about whether they will run into the same networking issues that plague games played over networks on the iPhone.

Another possible problem involves Apple's control of software for its devices. ...

iPhone owners holding out hope that OS 3.2 would bring some of these fancy new iPad spoils to their devices might be in for a disappointment, because two of the big ones -- split view and popovers -- are both referred to in Apple's updated human interface guidelines as "iPad-only." Realistically, this shouldn't come as a surprise; both of these UI elements were built to shine on larger displays, and it's hard to say how you could make either one of them work on HVGA -- but it's important for devs to note that heavily investing in these are definitely going to make it difficult to make their apps compatible across all iPhone OS-powered devices. Considering that iPhones will almost certainly continue to dominate iPads for sales volume, we know how we'd be developing.

In other news, running the updated iPhone simulator in iPad mode gives you the option to take photos, which doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense considering that it doesn't have a camera. There are plenty of plausible explanations for the muck-up, but our guess is that Apple's left the vestigial capability on-board since the framework's already in place for the iPhone and there could very well be iPads down the road that have a cam (or two). Follow the break for a shot of the iPad's Address Book imploring you to take a photo -- and savor it, since it's probably the closest you'll actually get to snapping a shot on the device any time soon.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/i...s-split-views/ ...

The iPad really is a giant iPhone—so much so that if you want to get a laptop-like experience out of it, you'll need adapters to change the typical 30-pin connector into USB, SD, or AC power.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5458376/apple-i...-usb-sd-ac-bbq ...