Pretty interesting news about Microsoft advertising for coders to work on a 'mobile Halo project', eh? Our initial thoughts, other than this sounding ideal for the iPhone, is that Halo mobile will probably be for Windows Mobile.

But Safety's Off has another possible avenue for this hot Microsoft pocket game. The Zune system is supposed to be leaving its native US shores soon, though Microsoft has undermined its own PR campaign by announcing the ZuneHD player right alongside.

Details on this new device are still pretty sketchy, but it's sounding as though it'll be compatible with Microsoft's software development kit, XNA.

To those of us who know nothing of coding, this essentially gives the ZuneHD the potential to play Xbox Live games, and with the rumour of a touchscreen also circulating, this could be the Xbox Portable Bill's boys have been so avidly denying.

It would seem like a wasted opportunity for Microsoft to release a new PMP that doesn't give the iPhone at least a bit of competition, so fingers crossed the ZuneHD will live up to the rumours

http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Windo...ws.asp?c=12718 ...

A video on youtube claims that the new tiff exploit is working on PSP 3000 Consoles.



Thoughts ? ...

UPDATE: After GameDaily sent an inquiry to Nintendo about whether the company would deliver patches that would make older games compatible with the new accessory, the company responded that "The Wii MotionPlus accessory is only for games that are designed to make use of its abilities."


The device that plans to add more precise control to the Nintendo Wii is set to arrive on June 8 for $19.99. Tracking slight wrist movements and a wider range of body turns, the device, which plugs into the bottom of the Wii Remote, translates those motions into movements on-screen.

"Wii MotionPlus represents a new evolution in video game control. The variety of fun games in Wii Sports Resort show off its incredible precision," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "Developers around the world are busy working on new ways to incorporate Wii MotionPlus controls into inventive experiences for consumers.
Oddly, the first announced game to use the new controller enhancer, Wii Sports Resort, won't actually arrive until July 26. Of course, the $49.99 retail pack for Wii Sports Resort will also include a Wii MotionPlus, which makes the whole point of the accessory's early release seem vague.

Getting more precise control in the Wii games you already love might mean big spring sales for Nintendo.

With a nearly two-month span of time between the accessory release and the game's arrival at retail, we expect that Nintendo will release patches that will make the new accessory work with your already existing library. Our first guess? Wii Sports, which after playing with the new accessory's new precision for almost two months, might be just the marketing play that Nintendo wants to make in order to get players to pick up Wii Sports Resort.

http://www.gamedaily.com/games/wii-s...or-wii-sports/ ...

That Crystal Bearers official site has been seeing a steady flow of updates, but for the real goods, we must turn to Famitsu. Japan's "gaming bible" offers the first real look at the game in its latest issue along with commentary from producer and scenario writer Akitoshi Kawazu and director and character designer Toshiyuki Itahana.

Crystal Bearers takes place in a futuristic Crystal Chronicles world, where swords have changed to guns and knowledge of magic has disappeared. In the past, the Yukes race died off following a war with the Lilties, and the Lilties now make use of crystals to support people.

That self-assured main character who stars in the trailer that's available at the official site is named Layle. A Crystal Bearer of the Clavat race, Layle has the ability to manipulate gravity. His story in Crystal Bearers begins after he's come into contact with a Yukes creature (yes, the same race that is supposed to have been wiped out) named Amidatelion. This creature causes Layle some trouble, and now Layle is seeking him out.

Incidentally, a portion of Layle's cheek has been crystalized (look closely and you can see it!). All Crystal Bearers apparently have had a part of their body turned into crystal form in this way.

Other characters introduced in the magazine include Althea and Jegran. Althea is the blond character shown sitting on the bench in the trailer. She (yes, it's a "she") is the queen of the Lilties Kingdom. Her mother is dead, and her father is sick. Jegran is the head of the Lilties army. He senses danger from both Amidatelion and Layle.

Taking control of Layle, you'll get to use some of the character's neat gravitational abilities via the Wiimote. You use the Wiimote in pointer mode, pointing at objects to target them. The primary use for this appears to be as a means of grabbing demons and then using them for various purposes.

Layle's actions change depending on the type of creature he's grabbed. Sample actions include: tossing demons at other demons, stopping demons in their tracks by flipping them over, and swinging yourself around enemies as an evasion tactic.

If you make Layle grab onto something heavy, like a ceiling lamp for instance, he'll pull himself up like a grappling hook. You can use this to navigate ceilings without touching the ground and also to clear tricky terrain.

In the interview part of the Famitsu feature, Kawazu and Toshiyuki at long last revealed why there was such a wait between Crystal Bearer's announcement and the recent trailer. According to Kawazu, development hadn't actually begun at the time of the original announcement!

Kawazu shared a few details on the game's character building elements. There's no level-up system in the game. Instead, you build your character's abilities by equipping accessories. As an example, he suggested being able to make Layle pick up bigger and more distant objects.

Rather than encountering more powerful beasts as you play, it's better to think that you'll encounter creatures with a greater variety of actions. This is true in town as well, apparently, as people will react to you in various new ways as you advance in the game.

The two hinted at somewhat of a free experience for users. There's no separation between battle and other elements of the game, said Kawazu. It's close to an open world game, he said, although that wasn't really the goal with the project. The actual goal apparently was to produce something that's fun not just to play but to watch as well.

This certainly explains some of those wacky videos that have been appearing at the official site! Crystal Bearers is listed in Famitsu as 60% complete and without a final release date. It looks like those official site videos are the closest we'll come to the game for a while, so enjoy them!

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/972/972988p1.html ...

So after braving San Francisco rush hour traffic to make SEGA's multiplayer event tonight, it was a bust: the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection servers weren't functioning properly so The Conduit couldn't link up even though the 12 systems were only two feet apart.

Still, we managed to squeeze out all of the details that High Voltage was going to reveal during this event. Things like the fact that the promised 16 player online had to be paired down to 12 in order to balance things better and, more importantly, to keep the game performance running well.

There will also be a ton of multiplayer game modes in many different categories. In "Free for All," players can take part in a quick match, with the match ending when a player reaches a set kill count. In "Marathon," players simply rack up as many kills as they can in a set time limit. "Three Strikes" challenges players to strive with only three lives to use. "Last Man Standing" is exactly what it sounds like, and "ASE Football" is a "tag" like game where the player who holds onto the All Seeing Eye the longest wins. Then there's "Bounty Hunter," the most complex sounding of the free for all matches: players aim for specific players, but get penalized if they take out the wrong targets.

There are two different Team Play categories. In "Team Reaper," you can play Quick Match and Marathon with sides, but you can also play "Shared Stock," where teammates pull additional lives from the same pool. In "Team Objective," you can take part in a capture the flag mode using the ASE -- each team has its own All Seeing Eye to grab. There's also a mode to grab a single ASE somewhere in the level; the team that captures the ASE the most in the set time limit wins.

The Conduit's multiplayer will support the Wii Speak voicechatting peripheral. To cut down on the overwhelming noise of 12 players gabbing away at the same time, players will only hear the players that are close to them -- according to High Voltage, players will hear, at most, the six players closest to them during battle.

We're promised a second shot at an early look at The Conduit's multiplayer soon, most likely in the coming weeks. We're already a fan of the game's single player mode, and the hands-on play we had tonight solidifies it: it's a top-notch first-person shooter, and easily in the running for the system's best in the genre.

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/972/972967p1.html ...

Publisher SEGA on Tuesday night held a private press event to demonstrate the hotly anticipated multiplayer component of its forthcoming first-person shooter, The Conduit, set to launch exclusively on Wii this June. But apparently Nintendo's own conduit prevented such a demo from taking place.

Journalists on-hand, the show was set to begin at 6:00 p.m.-ish Tuesday, but as SEGA tried to demonstrate the shooter's online connection, it ran into a brick wall -- specifically, Nintendo's servers. Apparently the servers had gone down shortly before the demo could begin and therefore the publisher could not connect the game online. As a result, the demo was halted and SEGA chose instead to focus on the title's single-player mode.

Whoops.

It is still unclear if this demonstration is meant to simulate gamers' own experiences as they attempt to connect online via Nintendo's servers. That is a joke. We kid because we love, Nintendo.

Anyway, High Voltage's still-great shooter's online component will have to be played another day. Whenever that is, we'll be there.

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/972/972956p1.html ...

Nintendo's stable of heroes is the envy of every other videogame company on the planet. Who wouldn't want a catalog of characters that can be relied on for regular hits? But not all Nintendo heroes are created equal in the eyes of gamers. You all have your personal preferences based on favorite franchises or the general characteristics of the heroes themselves. Maybe Mario's dogged pursuit of Bowser has defined your gaming career for your whole life and that's why you love him best. Or you just appreciate the way Link can tear through bad guys with the Master Sword?

We asked IGN readers to pick their favorite Nintendo hero from a list of ten choices. (Sorry, Birdo fans.) Over 80,000 readers logged their preferences with an authoritative click of the mouse. The results are now in and Hyrule is awash in the blood of the losers:



Link: 36%

Mario: 22%

Samus Aran: 10%

Fox McCloud: 6%

Donkey Kong: 6%

Yoshi: 5%

Pikachu: 5%

Luigi: 5%

Kirby: 4%

Pit (Kid Icarus): 1%


This was not even much of a contest. IGN readers by and large herald Link as their favorite Nintendo hero, beating the original Nintendo superstar Mario by a 14-point spread. It's not necessarily a surprising outcome considering how much readers love Zelda games. You certainly like to read about Mario's adventures, but you really click on those Zelda games, such as the newly announced Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS. Samus Aran, star of the Metroid franchise ranked third on your voting roll. She's always had her hardcore fanbase to be sure, but Link and Mario are definitely in a different league than the space-faring heroine.

Once you get past Samus, though, the rest of the poll participants jockey around with just a few thousand votes between them. Donkey Kong muscles his way to the top of that lagging tier, followed by Yoshi and Pikachu. Between the cuteness of Pikachu and the pink seductiveness of Kirby, though, sits Mario's brother, Luigi. The poor guy just cannot get a break, can he? He's busted ghosts and assisted his brother in over 20 years worth of exploits and escapades. What does he need to do to earn your respect?

And finally, Kid Icarus trails the entire pack with the least amount of votes. Is it his prolonged absence from the scene that keeps him from scoring better in the poll? Or is it just that Link and Mario are just that much more beloved? Hit the comments and tell us why you voted the way you did. And if you skipped out on the vote (shame on you), tell us how you would have voted.

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/972/972748p1.html ...

Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH has announced a new multi-player racing title entitled Driift (working title), which will be released as a WiiWare title from July.

Viewed from above, Driift is a fast-paced racer that allows up to eight players to race each other, using cartoon-style chars. Featuring twelve different tracks based on four themed environments – cityscape, hills, snow and a desert oasis – players can also select one of 32 vehicles from four categories. Each category is tailored for use within the different environments, with variations of speed, acceleration and handling and grip levels making specific vehicles ideal for particular locations.

Driift's multi-player modes allow users to play using combinations of Wii Remotes, Nunchucks and Classic Controllers, and seven game modes are on offer. These range from the single-player and multi-player championships, and Team Race, wherein participants are divided into two teams, with the winner determined by those that accrue the most points. The VIP mode elects one player per team as a VIP vehicle, who must be protected at all costs from the opposition cars, with the removal of the VIP car resulting in a win for the attacking team.

Driift also uses 'Contamination' where a player is marked contagious and must contaminate very other player within a set period, while the 'Cold Potato' mode charges the user with collecting said vegetable and holding on to it for as long as possible! Finally, the 'Meteorite' option sees players embarking on a normal race, while trying to avoid a series of meteors as they fall from the sky.

"We established our European development studio to create games for mobile phone devices. After a successful start and positive, high-value products, they are now moving to other formats, too," commented Martin Schneider, European Marketing and PR Director for Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH. "This WiiWare title offers a new approach in a more traditional console business and we are looking forward to this download title and further contributions from our European development studio." ...

News via emurussia

New beta version of Sony Playstation 2 emulator for Windows has been released.

Changes:

- Started major scale work on the emitter to simplify it and support the the x86 instruction set correctly. Changelog too long, read the svn commits if you want to know more.
- Added a check to to clear QWC register if the upper 16bits are set. This fixes most of the broken backgrounds in movies (This fixes Tri-ace movies and GUST games split-screen problem)
- Implemented another block lookup method.
- various vif changes and fixes, a few of them slightly experimental.
- VU - fixed 1-cycle branch delays.
- VU -fixed an issue with FDIV instructions whose operands are vf00.
- EE - fixed recompilation of SRA and SRL when shift amount is 0.
- EE - fixed conditional recompilation #defines a bit.
- A few vtlb optimizations.
- fixed a small ipu typo.
- Usual assorted code cleanups and optimizations.

Also, updated the plugins.

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