scraft has released a new shell for the PSP and it looks like the Wii has played an influence:



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Aspyr has partnered with Nobilis Publishing to introduce the successful Nintendo DS titles Emma at the Farm and Emma in the Mountains to the United States. Bringing the French literary heroine to young girls in the US for the first time, the Emma games feature engaging and educational gameplay utilizing all of the interaction possible on DS. To guide Emma through her adventures, players must manipulate the stylus as well as the microphone to race, choose outfits, find items, call to other characters or blow debris out of the way. The stories of both games teach young girls to identify animals, discover plants and interact with and preserve nature. At the same time, players have fun racing toboggans, finding groundhogs and coordinating Emma's outfits.

The Emma titles each contain a story mode and a mini-game mode where players can play through the activities individually. Mini-games include finding Emma's lost keys, cleaning up the trash in the forest, locating groundhogs in a maze, building a snowman and learning to cook with recipes. The well-rounded gameplay makes Emma a role model for young children as well as a virtual best friend inside Nintendo DS.

In Emma at the Farm, Emma is tasked with helping her uncle Jules take care of the animals on his farm. Along the way, players must help Emma identify farm animals, learn about vegetables in the garden and become a better chef by discovering new recipes. All of the 18 mini-games in Emma at the Farm center around animals, nature, cooking and fashion.

Emma grows concerned about the groundhogs in Emma in the Mountains because they haven't come out of hibernation yet. She sets out to investigate with Andy and her dog Pickles. Players help Emma solve the mystery of the missing groundhogs through talking to other characters and completing mini-game activities with them. Games and bonus modes are unlocked once completed so that players can compete for high scores with friends at any time. Completing every mini-game at the normal difficultly level also unlocks a more challenging 'expert' mode.

Emma at the Farm and Emma in the Mountains will release later this fall on Nintendo DS. Each game has an SRP of $29.99 and is rated E for Everyone. ...

XIDER Games is to release Ankh: Curse of the Scarab King on Nintendo DS. Following the success of the popular PC versions, this fun and colourful adventure will be available to play on DS in September 2008. Players will need to think outside the box and solve many puzzles in order to explore new areas in their quest to save the young adventurer, Assil, from the death curse put on him by an ancient Mummy.

Mischievous Assil steals his father's key to get into the Scarab King's tomb. As he and his friends party away inside, their search for a bottle opener rudely awakens a Mummy. Unhappy at being disturbed from his peaceful slumber and unimpressed by the gang breaking seven of his precious urns, the Mummy casts a lethal curse upon Assil leaving him with just 24 hours to live. Shocked, Assil stumbles back home where he is greeted by his unhappy father, who grounds him for a week so he is unable to escape the house.

The game begins in Assil's bedroom. Players must help him escape from captivity without crossing the path of his angry father. The stylus or the d-pad can be used to direct Assil around his environment, discovering clues to help solve puzzles and progress through the quest. The bottom left hand corner of the screen displays four hieroglyphic symbols that players can select to look, talk, pick up and use items.

Players will need to examine every bit of their surroundings, as objects that look harmlessly decorative may play a key role in moving the quest forwards. For instance, by combining two items of clothing found lying around, a rope is produced sufficient for escaping his room through the window. Other objects stored in the inventory can be combined with each other to create new and inventive ways of solving puzzles. There is however an easy setting to guide players to the key objects so they can progress.

Time is of the essence though, as Assil must find the Pharaoh, the only person who can save his life, before time is up! ...

News/release from rck


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Daydream posted about a new version of the rather excellent Video Games Hero for the Nintendo DS, heres the info, rather than me explain



...

News via nintendomax

copete carrying out a new version of its futuristic Pong "KomoPong DS v0.95, learn 2 new levels.

Changelog:

-- Improved menu of options, which is now able to adjust the volume
-- Added two new levels with different challenges
-- Adding credits at the end of the demo
-- More than music for each level
-- System pause, press start (although it has no utility)

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"Adobe® Photoshop.com Mobile is the easiest way to upload, view, and share your photos online from your phone. All you need is a supported Windows Mobile phone and your Photoshop.com account ID. Photoshop.com Mobile beta will be available as a free download in September."

Adobe claims that Photoshop.com Mobile will only support the MOTO Q, Blackjack, and Treo 700/750 series, although we're willing to bet most other Windows Mobile devices will handle it just fine as long as Flash is installed. At any rate, we'll let you know the moment it's available.

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/news...september.html ...

"Apple has come under scrutiny on its iPhone 3G for false advertising, and now the Advertising Standards Authority, a UK ad group, has come forth to declare a specific television ad for the touch-based smartphone to be misleading to consumers."



Above is the ad in question, and while I'm not normally a fan of the Eurocratic system of slapping fines on every company they can find, it's pretty easy to see their point here: Apple makes some very bold claims about having the best browsing experience on a mobile device, but that browsing experience comes to a screeching halt as soon as you hit any Web site that uses Flash - and many of them do. These commercials fail to mention that. They also fail to highlight that nothing happens that quickly on a 3G network, but that might be splitting hairs. Java is also mentioned, but I can count the number of times I see the Sun JVM fire up on my PC on one hand - and it's almost always when I'm uploading photos on Smugmug. Is Java on a phone really needed for Web browsing? I don't think it is.

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/news...isleading.html ...

It has been a month since the iPhone 3G hit stores worldwide to an eagerly awaiting crowd. It was the second coming of the Jesus-Phone and this one was going to be the phone we deserved the first time round. New Firmware, GPS, the App Store and of course the 3G support all built into a more curvaceous body.

Things didn’t get off to a perfect start on launch day with O2s systems going down in the UK and Apple having problems with iTunes activation and the freshly launched Mobile Me. But despite these issues Apple still managed to sell over a million iPhone 3Gs in its first weekend of release.

So how does the Jesus-Phone 2.0 shape up?

The Hardware

The original iPhone was extremely well built with a metal back-plate and a solid glass front and the iPhone 3G maintains that pedigree. The metal back-plate has been replaced by a more curvy plastic one but the device still feels reassuringly heavy, solid and is more pocketable.

Sadly that is where the praise ends because the iPhone 3G has to have some of the worst Hardware I’ve ever used in a high-end phone. It fails at even the most basic tasks and a lot of the features didn’t seem to work at all.

Let me start with the most basic of features: Making voice calls. The iPhone 3G (I shall refer to it as the iFail for the remainder of this post) would regularly refuse to initiate a phone call sometimes requiring me to try 7-8 times before it decided it would let me call someone. That is something I’ve never experienced even in the early days when I had my first mobile phone.

Of course I would only be able to try and make that call if I was actually lucky enough to be in an area where I could pick up reception. The iFail seems to maintain an average reception level of 2 bars and will also drop service all together at random intervals. 3G reception is just as dodgy.

And before you even mention O2, I always carry 2 phones with me, both on the O2 network. Whenever I’ve had these problems on the iFail the other phone (usually a Nokia) has worked perfectly and has maintained full reception in most cases. Can’t blame O2 at all, it’s all down to the iFail hardware.

And reception isn’t the only hardware issue, GPS is just as problematic. The first iFail I used flat-out refused to connect to GPS at all even when out in the open on a perfect clear day. The device even failed to give me a rough location based on Cell-ID or WiFi hotspots, something that the built in Skyhook software should be able to do. The second iFail proved to be a bit better and would actually lock onto a GPS location, however it seemed to have a mind of its own and would only connect when it felt like it. Admittedly when GPS worked it was great but it’s lack of reliability meant that I couldn’t trust that it would work when I needed it to.

However both these problems are trumped by the iFails worst feature: Battery Life. The iFail has the worst battery life of any device I’ve ever used, including the first-generation N95. Sure it will last all day if you turn 3G and WiFi off and don’t check your email too often but I’m a person who actually uses his phone.

Let me try and put this into perspective: After 2.5 hours of using the iFail as I would any other phone I had 20% battery left from a full charge. What was I doing? Checking email, taking pictures and uploading them to Moblog, making a phone call or two and using the browser to check and update Twitter. I wasn’t even listening to music while doing all that. So even if the iFail had no faults and had the most compelling features in the mobile world, I wouldn’t be able to use them as I’d run out of charge before my day had even begun.

Software

When it came to Software I wasn’t expecting any problems. Apples UI is fantastic and intuitive and had just been updated. Unfortunately the new updates seem to have slowed down the UI and OS. Applications (both native and installed) freeze when being opened, Safari stutters when you scroll round a page and I’ve experienced my first crashes on an iPhone. In a word, it’s Buggy.

More annoying than these minor speed issues are the limitations the device has when compared to other phones on the market. We all know that the iPhone can’t send MMS and can’t record video, which is a bad start. There really is no excuse for these basic features to be missing and I’d assume these would be more important to the average user than GPS or even HSDPA.

However power-users who are used to having smartphones will notice more limitations like the absence of an option to copy/paste text and, crucially, the inability to run non-native apps in the background. Before you start shouting, yes I get that most users wouldn’t miss either of those features but in my opinion it’s features like this that are crucial to making a phone a truly multi-purpose device.

The lack of background apps is particularly annoying, something I’ve become used to after years of S60 (and even WinMo) use. The last.fm application is useless to me as I can’t play the music in the background while ...