It must be tough for lesser-known games when the Nintendo Download contains a big-name title like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, but Chronos Twins DX, ShadowPlay, and the rest of this week's offerings put up a good fight.

Good fight or no, it'd be hard for any title to compete with a port of the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (1,000 Wii points), especially when it features new Wii remote gesture-based controls for presenting evidence and objecting. The only downside is the game only contains four of the five chapters of the original game, with the final chapter showing up in May for 100 points. If you find that objectionable, then there are plenty of other games to download this week.

Take Chronos Twins DX from EnjoyUp Games (1,000 points). It's a neat little mix of action, platforming, adventure, and puzzle gameplay, with the player controlling the game's hero, Nec, through two different space time continuums at the same time. Or how about Deep Fried Entertainment's ShadowPlay (800 points), which challenges players to transforming shadows into new objects in more than 100 puzzles? That sounds semi-intriguing, doesn't it?

And hey, there's always DSiWare, which gets Touch Solitaire (200 DSi points), Jazzy Billiards (500 points), and Word Searcher (500 points) today. Those all sound...swell.

See? There are plenty of games to play besides Ace Attorney this week, and that's not even counting the Virtual Console's addition of Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye (800 points), the mahjong game for the Sega Genesis!

So yeah, Phoenix Wright.

WiiWare™

Phoenix Wright™: Ace Attorney
Publisher: Capcom
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: T (Teen) - Blood, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
Price: 1,000 Wii Points™
Description: Meet Phoenix Wright, the rookie defense lawyer new to the scene with the wildest cross-examination skills in town. Take on four intriguing cases to reveal dramatic, stunning and even comical court proceedings. Use the Wii Remote controller to investigate the crime scenes, question witnesses and present shocking evidence.

Chronos Twins DX
Publisher: EnjoyUp Games
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E 10+ (Everyone 10 and Older) - Animated Blood, Mild Fantasy Violence
Price: 1,000 Wii Points
Description: Enter into the original world of Chronos Twins DX to live a fantastic adventure full of innovative ideas. Thanks to its Dual Gameplay game system, you'll be able to control Nec in two temporal scenarios at the same time. Chronos Twins DX mixes action, platforms, adventure and puzzles to challenge your intelligence and ability.

ShadowPlay
Publisher: Deep Fried Entertainment
Players: 1-2
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) - Alcohol Reference
Price: 800 Wii Points
Description: Welcome to ShadowPlay. Let your imagination run wild when light meets everyday objects to create fascinating shadows. Play and experiment, make a monster out of a pineapple, a dolphin out of a banana - the only limit is your imagination. ShadowPlay challenges players by transforming shadows into more than 100 exciting, unique puzzles. As more challenging puzzles are unlocked, players will have to find more creative ways to solve problems. You will never look at a slice of pizza the same way again! Winning a round will allow players to advance to the next level as well as score another item to use in the Free Play Mode, where you can unleash your imagination and create your own shadow art. Family and friends can also jump in to help tackle a puzzle at any time using Local Co-op Mode. ShadowPlay will provide tons of brain-racking fun for players of all ages. How do you ShadowPlay?

Nintendo DSiWare™

Touch Solitaire
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 200 Nintendo DSi Points™
Description: Touch Solitaire features two of the most popular versions of the world-famous card game - Spider and Klondike - with simple touch-screen controls and an easy-to-understand interface. In Spider, the aim is to arrange cards in piles of a single suit from King down to Ace, thereby removing the pile from play. When all cards are removed, you win the game. The goal of Klondike is to arrange cards from Ace to King in piles, one for each suit, on the four foundations. You win when all cards have been moved to the foundations. Various difficulty levels are available for Spider and Klondike, allowing beginners or experts to enjoy the game at their own pace.

Jazzy Billiards
Publisher: Aksys Games
Players: 1-2
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Challenge intelligent computers or even your friends to a traditional game of 9-ball while enjoying mind-soothing music with Jazzy Billiards. Take advantage of the intuitive stylus mechanic to aim and hit the cue ball with varying strength to sink the other balls. Defeat your opponents by being the first to sink the 9-ball. Jazzy Billiards' Stage Mode features nine different stages, each with an opponent of ascending difficulty. Find out how many computers you can defeat in a row with Challenge Mode, or challenge your friends to a game ...

Game companies hate when people trade in gaming goods at game shops. Gamers hate the propensity for Xboxes to break. But were it not for these two things, an alleged crime would not have been exposed.

From the files of news-from-December-about-something-that-happened-in-November comes the Daytona Beach, Florida News Journal's tale of a purloined Xbox.

On November 17, a person reports to the police that his Xbox 360 has been stolen from his home, allegedly by a man named Michael Dunbar. The police find their way to a video game trade-in store that has a photocopy of Dunbar's driver's license, fingerprint and proof that — don't get too mad, Microsoft — the Xbox 360 was sold to the shop for $32. Video game companies generally don't like the fact that retailers such as GameStop accept and encourage trade-ins, because the game companies make no money from the re-sales of those traded-in goods.

Our victim had a problem: No serial number for his Xbox 360, ergo no proof that the traded-in 360 was his. But that — don't get mad, gamers — is where the unreliability of Xbox 360 hardware comes in. Now maybe our victim had broken his Xbox 360 himself through his careless gaming. But maybe, just maybe, the machine had one of its issues, as Xboxes do. Usually that would be a bad thing, but in this story, a broken Xbox was just what was needed.

The News Journal reports:

At the time of the report, the victim was not able to provide the police with the serial number of the Xbox. Several days later, the victim's grandmother, who had originally purchased the Xbox contacted the police department and said she had contacted Microsoft Corporation in reference to the investigation. She informed the officer that she previously sent the unit to Microsoft for repairs and when she contacted them they were able to give her the serial number. The serial number provided by Microsoft was identical to the unit Dunbar sold to the video game trader.

As of December, Dunbar faced multiple charges including burglary and dealing in stolen property.

If your Xbox should ever break, send it in for repairs and think of it as protection against potential crooks.

http://kotaku.com/5445521/two-xbox-w...y-make-a-right ...

So that meeting a few days ago where financial analysts physically beat a few choice WinMo 7 nuggets out of Robbie Bach yielded something else that's pretty interesting, too: the expansion of the Zune franchise. Virtually everyone and their mother has been calling for a Zunephone since the day the first Zune 30 rolled off the assembly line, and a very, very carefully-worded statement by Bach in the meeting has us believing that we could finally see it make the bold leap to GSM (or CDMA, or both) this year. In response to a question about how Zune fits into Microsoft's mobile strategy, Bach had this to say:
"Now, your other question was about I'm getting old. Zune, so Zune has been critically successful. And the way Zune is going to be successful for us in the future is you should think of that as our media service across multiple screens. We'll continue to have the Zune device screen. But, we now have Zune on Xbox. We have Zune on the PC. There are other places where Zune logically could go that we don't get to talk about yet. And I think lots of different screens with that capability can go."
If you read between the lines there, it certainly sounds like Robbie's got his eyes on the prize -- but whether Zune will come to Windows Mobile or live as its own brand remains to be seen. No guarantees, but we're hoping all will be revealed at MWC next month.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/11/m...-zune-logical/ ...

There's no such thing as a perfect mobile app store strategy -- you're either too draconian, too arbitrary, or too loose in your policies, and as far as we can tell, there's no way to find a balance that isn't going to trigger an alarm here and there or get a few people worked into a lather. If you're too loose, for instance, you're liable end up with the occasional bout of malware, which is exactly what appears to have gone down recently in the Android Market with a few fake banking apps published by a bandit going as "Droid09." As you might imagine, the apps end up doing little more than stealing your information and ending your day in tears; the apps have since been pulled, but that's probably little consolation for those already affected. The moral of the story? Be vigilant, keep a close eye on those system permissions the Market warns you about as you install new apps, report sketchy ones, and -- as always -- use a hearty dose of common sense.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/11/p...ed-out-credit/ ...

Epic Games VP Mark Rein brought with him the latest platforms on which the company's Unreal Engine 3 officially runs, iPhone 3GS hardware and Nvidia's Tegra 2 "system-on-a-chip" platform, giving us a chance to go hands-on with the tech demo.

Our demo was the same shown back in December of last year, a small, tightly contained room built from an existing Unreal Tournament level. The level spawned a single enemy for us to strafe about the room, avoiding enemy fire while trying to soak in the limited scenery. The demo moved at a good clip, with smooth sharp graphics, and not a whole lot happening on-screen.

But it was impressive, the best-looking 3D shooter I've seen on the iPhone platform. That's due in part to the fact that every iPhone game I've played has been compatible with all generations of Apple's phone. The current version of Unreal Engine 3 for the iPhone is only for iPhone 3GS, the third-generation iPod Touch and iPhone future hardware.

Also striking was the "strafe" mode control system, featuring a small analog stick-simulating area in the bottom left, a fire button in the bottom right. Holding one's finger on the screen controlled the camera, with screen taps (anywhere, really) firing rounds of some Unreal Tournament energy rifle. As touchscreen controls go, it worked like a charm.

Rein showed us the same demo running on Nvidia's newly announced next-generation Tegra platform, an identical experience displayed on a device about three times the size of the iPhone's screen. The visuals scaled nicely, giving us a chance to better study the details of the stained glass windows and ornate architecture of the level.

While the Tegra platform can be used in touchscreen tablet devices, Rein showed us a version using an Apple USB keyboard and mouse, controlling the Unreal Engine 3 demo like any other PC control set up. Again, the demo looked sharp, with Rein saying that Tegra 2 hardware was on part with three-year-old PC gaming hardware.

Gamers looking for a very portable Unreal Tournament experience should keep an eye on developers licensing Epic's engine, as the iPhone and Tegra demos were graphically impressive, despite their limited size and scope. It could be a viable and popular solution for tablet based gaming.

And if those rumors that the Tegra platform has been chosen as the hardware basis for Nintendo's next portable are true, expect to see Unreal Engine 3's portable version powering many of the future's on-the-go games.

http://kotaku.com/5444554/hands+on-w...e-nvidia-tegra ...

Proving once again that Apple's iTunes approval process is absurd and futile, an app developer got his porn browser approved in under 12 hours, even with all the latest rules in place. The funny thing: Apple doesn't know about it.

Until now, that is. Here's what the developer told us:

I developed an app that is currently available in the app store. It's called forChan and it is technically the first app with nudity that meets all of Apples requirements (hey, it was approved in under 12 hours believe it or not!).

It is a web browser/photo app. You have to enter URLs to browse different imageboards which do/don't contain nudity. You can switch between categories to decide which uncensored content gets delivered to the
previous URL (blondes, brunettes, etc, etc).

There is currently over 100,000 pics spread between 15 categories with much much more coming soon.


It's pretty simple. When you get the app, you can only browse a gallery of dogs. They are naked, but they are dogs, so unless you are into furry butts and lipsticks, all is fine.

But after pasting the image board URL, forChan allows you to browse through your favorite smut with ease, including full frontal nudity. While I haven't seen any gallery with actual sexual intercourse yet, you can basically set this $1 iPhone/iPod touch software to browse whatever material you want. The app is 17+ and its description mentions nudity and sex, so Apple must know about it. However, no other 17+ iTunes Store app shows all the juicy bits.

Would Apple remove this app, like they did with BeautyMeter? That was a interactive application for teens, created to exchange photos and rate them. Porn was bound to happen. This one, however, is just a web browser for images. If they ban it, however, they will be consistent with previous cases: Any app that can be used to browse porn is automatically removed from the store.

But unlike previous cases, the software itself is truly innocuous until you enter a web address in the URL field (one could have argued the same about BeautyMeter, which was innocuous until you uploaded your bust or penis to ie). So, if they remove forChan, they will set yet another dangerous precedent.

I can think about another app in the iPhone that does exactly what forChan does. It comes from the factory.

Its name is Safari.

http://gizmodo.com/5445065/apple-app...under-12-hours ...

Google's Nexus One support forums have been flooded with anecdotes about the phone's poor 3G connectivity, so one user decided to follow up with some reasonably scientific tests. The conclusion? The Nexus One is kind of terrible at basic cellphonery!

The test was simple and limited, consisting of one dude, user WV, wandering in and out of his house, recording signal strength as measured in dBm and ASU with Android's built-in metering app. Assuming the Nexus One is supposed to work like a normal cellphones—that is, it connects to 3G networks when they're available and EDGE only when they're not—something's wrong.

Since the phone is obviously finding and receiving the cellular signals just fine, but not handling them as you'd expect, randomly flipping between the two—and evidently preferring EDGE most of the time—no matter how strong its signal is. This points to a software issue, not a hardware issue. That, and this:

OK. I found "Phone Info" screen through "Any Cut". This looks like a screen not intended for average users. It clearly has settings that should not be messed with. However, it does have a pull down menu that was set to "WCDMA Preferred". I changed this to "WCDMA Only". The phone reset, and never again saw the f'ing "E" on the signal indicator- ALL 3G. After about 1/2 hour of speed tests (150k - 800kbps) and google satellite map downloads (all definitely faster), I switched back to "WCDMA Preferred". Guess what? After a few minutes, I was back on EDGE, even with a good signal. Switched back to "WCDMA Only", and 3G it remains.

This doesn't fully solve the problem, because as WV notes, if you fall out of T-Mobile's 3G coverage area with EDGE disabled, you're basically boned. But anyway, yes, this appears to be a software bug. Or, if you're feeling conspiratorial today, like WV, a software feature:

My concern is whether T-mobile is being sneaky about this and purposefully dumbing down the 3G to Edge to reduce cell frequency congestion and/or their back-end network congestion.

I'm not sure I want to draw that nexus (haw?) quite yet, since the issue was first brought to light by comparing the Nexus One's 3G/EDGE handling to other T-Mobile 3G Android handsets, and those, despite having the same data-sucking potential as the Google Phone, haven't been throttled in any way. While Google and T-Mobile say they're "investigating," the evidence keeps mounting and the question looms larger: what's really wrong with the Nexus One's 3G?

http://gizmodo.com/5445324/the-nexus...e-damning-data ...

How do you take a great idea like Xbox Live games coming to cellphones and ruin it? By only bringing those games to Windows Mobile phones, which may be what Microsoft has planned.

As you can see by the image above, taken from some internal Microsoft marketing material from last month, Xbox Live is spread across the Xbox 360, Windows and...Windows Phone. Now, this could just be a stand-in for many phones, or a new branding for game content to be available on many platforms. But it also could mean the games are just heading to Windows Mobile phones, which would pretty much kill the entire initiative right off the bat.

Also conspicuously absent from these plans: the Zune. No love for the Zune, Microsoft?

http://gizmodo.com/5445319/xbox-live...-mobile-phones ...

Burnout developer Criterion has rubbished leaks sprung this morning about the new Need for Speed game.

"NFS stories on the net today - 100% FAKE," Tweeted Criterion.

Those reports claimed the game would be called Out of the Law and set in a fictional San Francisco known as Sun-Bay. Police cars would apparently be unmarked and racing was to be focused on street cars rather than expensive sports cars.

Two pieces of concept art were leaked.

EA confirmed last November that Criterion is making the next instalment of Need for Speed, but so far that's all we know.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/cr...shes-nfs-leaks ...