Remember back in the late '90s, when Square was so frustrated trying to fit their opus Final Fantasy VII onto the cartridge-based Nintendo 64 that they made their famous defection to Sony? Well, just a short decade later, China's Shenzhen Nanjing Technology Co, Ltd has apparently done what Square couldn't, squeezing the PlayStation epic onto a cartridge. And not just any cartridge .. a Famicom cartridge. How's it feel to be shown up, Square?

Of course, the conversion isn't perfect. According to a write-up from intrepid blogger CinnamonPirate (who unearthed the 2MB ROM from a Chinese blog) the polygonal graphics and cut scenes are gone, replaced with an impressively wide array of sprites, many stolen from other Final Fantasy games. The story remains surprisingly authentic, though, encompassing the entire three-disc epic while only leaving out a few optional side stories (bye bye, Yuffie and Vincent). The wide array of weapons, magic and materia from the original is a bit restricted in the port, but frankly, we're impressed that features like materia-leveling made it on to the 20+ year old hardware in any form.

The company behind the cart is apparently now primarily makes MP3 players, so our hopes for a Colecovision version of Final Fantasy XII will probably remain unfulfilled.

http://cinnamonpirate.com/blog/507/

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/22/fi...ally/#comments ...

Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection service has always been entirely free of charge, but the company will soon introduce a pay-to-play service for some games, it announced at Game Developers Conference.

"Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Pay And Play" will let users subscribe on a game-by-game basis to certain titles. Nintendo project leader Takashi Aoyama announced the service at GDC, but did not say what upcoming games would require payment for the service, or how much they would cost.

To avoid customer confusion, Pay-And-Play games will have a red icon on the game's box that reads Pay And Play, in place of the traditional blue Wi-Fi Connection icon, which will only be used for games that are free to play.

This is a pretty big change for Nintendo, who has always been adamant about wanting online gameplay to be free. While this might attract more developers to the service with a new revenue stream, it also might confuse consumers -- and be a hassle if the payment system isn't easy. You'll use Wii Points to pay for the online gaming, so it should be interesting to see if this extends to the DS Lite or if it's just restricted to Wii.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/02/...do-to-beg.html ...

Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection service has always been entirely free of charge, but the company will soon introduce a pay-to-play service for some games, it announced at Game Developers Conference.

"Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Pay And Play" will let users subscribe on a game-by-game basis to certain titles. Nintendo project leader Takashi Aoyama announced the service at GDC, but did not say what upcoming games would require payment for the service, or how much they would cost.

To avoid customer confusion, Pay-And-Play games will have a red icon on the game's box that reads Pay And Play, in place of the traditional blue Wi-Fi Connection icon, which will only be used for games that are free to play.

This is a pretty big change for Nintendo, who has always been adamant about wanting online gameplay to be free. While this might attract more developers to the service with a new revenue stream, it also might confuse consumers -- and be a hassle if the payment system isn't easy. You'll use Wii Points to pay for the online gaming, so it should be interesting to see if this extends to the DS Lite or if it's just restricted to Wii.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/02/...do-to-beg.html ...

There are many things that we would like to see on N-Gage, but you can't always get what you want. Instead, here's a list of ten suggestions for the future of N-Gage which we think are fairly plausible, and which may help the N-Gage platform in the long term:


1. The Actual Launch

Yes, tongue slightly in cheek here, but we've been waiting for Next Gen N-Gage for quite some time. Some of us remember when it was supposed to launch in 2006! We know it's almost ready as the public beta testing has already begun, and there don't seem to be too many bugs.

It would be really cool if: Nokia brought out the full N-Gage service for all compatible phones and released all the finished games.


2. Releasing Lament Island on N-Gage

Lament Island is a beautiful game, with lovely graphics, wonderful music and some interesting use of the phone's microphone and camera. It's an S60 3rd Edition game so it's technically no different to other new N-Gage games, and it works in QVGA resolution in both landscape and portrait mode, so it should be playable on all N-Gage-compatible phone models. The developers have said in an interview that they will support the new N-Gage plaform if asked. On top of all that, Lament Island is a Chinese game. China is Nokia's biggest market and getting bigger all the time, and forging relationships with Chinese game developers now may be key to N-Gage's future success.

You can see All About Symbian's megagame review of Lament Island here, and there's a gameplay video of Lament Island here.

It would be really cool if: Lament Island could be brought to a wider audience by being sold through N-Gage.


3. Free games as prizes

The original N-Gage Arena didn't really have many prizes as such, just online scoreboards with the occasional contest featuring real rewards such as gamecards, phones and t-shirts. Now that Next Gen N-Gage is here with its downloadable games, perhaps Nokia might give free games to the winners of all regular tournaments and other Nokia-sponsored competitions? Third party games might be a problem, but first party games should be easy to arrange as Nokia owns the rights to them.

It would be really cool if: the winners of organised events on N-Gage Arena received free games.


4. Cricket games

Some people (especially those in North America and most of Europe) may laugh at the idea of Cricket-based video games, and these same people may dismiss it as a minor sport played by a small number of eccentric English people. In fact Cricket is one of the world's largest sports, with more people following it than Baseball, American Football, Basketball or Golf. Cricket is particularly strong in emerging markets including India, which is now well on its way to overtaking Europe and America economically and has a population greater than Europe and the USA combined. India is also Nokia's second largest market now, and its share is still growing.

It would be really cool if: there was some kind of Cricket game franchise on N-Gage. Most Cricket fans have a phone but no console, so Cricket games are arguably a natural fit for phone gaming.


5. Bluetooth controller

Many N-Gage phones (including the Nokia N82, N93, N95 and N96) have a TV Out feature, which lets you play games or use any other function on a real television set. Some games play very well on a big screen, but it would be even better if you didn't have to be crouched in front of the set using a phone on the end of a short cable to control the game. There already is a wireless alternative, you can control games using a Bluetooth wireless keyboard, which works on all N-Gage phones. However, keyboards generally don't have a good layout for gaming and you can't hold them in your hands like a controller. An increasing number of people in the world have a TV and phone but no console, so this kind of setup might well be the future of gaming if someone could solve the controller problem.

Some small third party companies have actually made Bluetooth controllers for phones in the past, but several vital ingredients were missing: the phones didn't have TV Out, the phones' screen resolutions were much lower than today, and the phones' screens only worked in vertical/portrait mode. All of those problems have now been corrected, and N-Gage provides a good source of games, so we need the Bluetooth controllers back.

It would be really cool if: someone at Nokia (or any other manufacturer) took the insides of a Bluetooth keyboard, removed the letter keys, and put the remaining hardware in a controller-shaped casing, perhaps with the horizontal layout of the original N-Gage. It wouldn't require any new drivers or software or research, the existing Bluetooth keyboard software built into N-Gage phones is already good enough, and the cost of doing this would be minimal. Everything a Bluetooth controller requires is already in place and ready to go, it just needs one small step to actually make it happen.

If Nokia is nervous about comparisons with home games consoles, they could call it a "Multimedia Controller" or something like that, and say that it's a general remote control for phones with TV Out.


6. Something like Habbo
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News/release from Masscat:


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News/release from Dark Knight ez


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Oxtob has updated his application for the Nintendo DS:


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Daren has released and updated StepmaniaDS:

Heres the translated details:


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News/release from Cheff:


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