Source - DSFanboy

DS Fanboy has a copy of Animal Crossing: Wild World to give away! Of course, by "give away" we really mean "reward to whoever jumps through our most insidious of hoops". All you have to do in order to get your hands on Nintendo's epic celebration of gentle anthropomorphism and neighborly etiquette is to apply your incredible (or feeble) photoshop skills to the above image. Insert text, thought bubbles, game characters, elaborate disguises, hypnotic badgers, mutant garbage disposal technicians or a deeply melancholy trilobyte--anything, as long as it makes sense (clearly, our examples weren't very good), is irrefutably hilarious and doesn't kill us instantly. Keeping it simple might drive home the punchline (try adding some dialogue), but we're open to some wackier interpretations of this dramatic scene as well (try adding some explosions). Heck, you might even remove or replace something in there for comedic effect.

The entry we deem to be the funniest will secure the lovely prize. Send your submissions along with your e-mail address to dsfanboy.submissions[AT]gmail.com. Alternatively, you can host the image somewhere and send us the link via our tips form.

Entries close at 11:59PM on Wednesday, 5 April. Go wild. ...

IGN has gone on record to claim it has been privy to some hitherto secret information regarding what will be under the hood of Nintendo's looming Revolution console, offering specifications allegedly obtained from senior development sources which point to a GameCube-based next-generation console.

According to the site:

Insiders stress that Revolution runs on an extension of the Gekko and Flipper architectures that powered GameCube, which is why studios who worked on GCN will have no problem making the transition to the new machine, they say. IBM's "Broadway" CPU is clocked at 729MHz, according to updated Nintendo documentation. By comparison, GameCube's Gekko CPU ran at 485MHz. The original Xbox's CPU was clocked at 733MHz. Meanwhile, Xbox 360 runs three symmetrical cores at 3.2GHz.

Revolution's ATI-provided "Hollywood" GPU clocks in at 243MHz. By comparison, GameCube's GPU ran at 162MHz, while the GPU on the original Xbox was clocked at 233MHz. Sources we spoke with suggest that it is unlikely the GPU will feature any added shader features, as has been speculated.

The overall system memory numbers we reported last December have not greatly fluctuated, but new clarifications have surfaced. Revolution will operate using 24MBs of "main" 1T-SRAM. It will additionally boast 64MBs of "external" 1T-SRAM. That brings the total number of system RAM up to 88MBs, not including the 3MB texture buffer on the GPU. By comparison, GameCube featured 40MBs of RAM not counting the GPU's on-board 3MBs. The original Xbox included 64MBs total RAM. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 operate on 512MBs of RAM.

It is not known if the 14MBs of extra D-RAM we reported on last December are in the current Revolution specifications.

Worthy of note is the fact that both CPU and GPU clock speeds mooted for Revolution are almost exactly 1.5 times faster than the GameCube, leading some to vocalise doubt that IGN's report comprises little more than 'outsider' developer information from a second-hand source at last week's Games Developers Conference.

The fact that no shader technology has been mentioned has surprised many, leaving Nintendo somewhat out in the cold in the eyes of technophiles as the next-generation of home consoles come online.

As you would imagine, the very suggestion that the Revolution will be underpowered when compared to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 has caused fanboy meltdown, in spite of the fact that Nintendo has repeatedly outlined it is focusing on gameplay innovation over graphics. The row over what element of gaming boils the videogame community down into two main factions. Those who care about pixel-shaded sweat beads appearing on the face of Dante in DMC7 and those who would rather play Bishi Bashi-inspired competitive interactive cookery using a magic wand.

The fact that no mass storage has been announced for the Revolution has also caused some to turn their nose up at Nintendo's new machine, though SPOnG believes Nintendo will release a first-party hard disc soon after the Revolution ships. Company president Satoru Iwata briefed some developers during GDC to expect HDD support, explaining that the Revolution can make use of any USB storage medium.

As to whether Nintendo's gamble with power, and understand, it is a gamble, pays off remains to be seen, though SPOnG, for the record, believes it will and in a massive way.

Should these specs prove accurate, essentially every studio on the planet with GameCube experience can begin making games for Revolution. Then bear in mind these games will cost a fraction of those being readied for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The result will be more games available at lower price point. Then throw into the mix the ever-impressive online service from Nintendo and of course, the Revolution's word-defying new controller and a whole new world of quick, accessible fun gaming opens up.

The same games but prettier or a whole new way of playing. A no-brainer for people on both sides of the divide.

We'll leave you with this. Ask anyone who owns both a DS and a PSP which they play and enjoy the most. The technophiles will back PSP and the gamers with take DS every time. ...

Hamsterburt has posted some WIP news on the state of his emulators for the PSP, heres what he posted:

Dispite being very busy this week, I have found a few hours to do some more psp coding. Here is what I have been working on:

PSPFceultra: I've added options to load custom palletes, cheats, and FDS images. I am still working on adding nes movie playback, and improving the sound and I might have a version with adhoc support before too long.

PSPadrive: I've made a start rewriting the graphics rendering code to use the psp hardware to render the background tiles. This should give a decent speedup aslong as I can get it working better.

Unnamed new gameboy emulator port: This is progressing quite nicely. I am writing a new gui lib for use in my other ports using this emulator as testbed. It will be interesting (for me at least) to see how it turns out.

More info --> http://hbert.dcemu.co.uk/ ...

According to comments made by a Hudson online marketing manager to 1UP, Saturn Bomberman — considered by many to be the best version of Bomberman and one of the greatest multiplayer titles of all time — is "under evaluation" for Xbox Live Arcade. The original Sega Saturn game featured a frantic 10-player Battle mode that would likely be a huge draw for 360 owners looking for a simple, but addictive multiplayer experience. Let's hope the evaluation process comes to that same conclusion. ...

Microsoft released its latest Xbox 360 backwards compatibility update, marked by the additions of BLACK, Star Wars Battlefront II, and World Soccer Winning Eleven 9 to the growing list of playable Xbox titles. In addition, the following titles — previously compatible, but buggy — received tune-ups:

Darkwatch
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Half-Life 2
Fable
Fable: The Lost Chapters
Forza Motorsport
Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Gaiden Black
SSX 3
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
kill.switch
World Series Baseball 2K3 ...

"The new iGoatse is the definitive skin for your iPod. There are no words to describe it. And you know why."

Besides the angry pink you see above, iGoatse can also be seen in equally lurid shades of green and blue. Dull cream and gray also, but we feel that bright colors are best, to remind the world what Goatse stands for: Freedom. Liberty. Anal leakage.

http://www.extraneo.it/goatse/goatse_ipod_skin.html ...

Nintendo's upcoming Revolution gaming platform, which is rumored to be officially named "Go," may not go as fast as had been originally hoped, at least if you believe the numbers that were dug up by ign.com. The website obtained updated documentation, showing the IBM "Broadway" CPU that powers the box will run at 729MHz. That's slightly slower than the original Xbox CPU, which ran at 733MHz. By comparison, Xbox 360 has a three-core chip running at 3.2GHz.

The graphics processing unit (GPU) on the Revolution, dubbed "Hollywood," has a clock speed of just 243MHz, compared to the original Xbox's 233MHz speed. At least that's better than the original Game Cube's GPU, which ran at 162MHz.

Those are a lot of numbers, but they may not mean much. Nintendo presidents past and present say they're more concerned about the controller than the speed of the hardware, where they think what you hold in your hands is more important to gameplay than the horsepower under the hood. And then, well, there's the quality of the games, too. ...

Source Gamesindustry

Alabama's Supreme Court has given the go-ahead to the lawsuit filed against Sony, Take-Two and US retailers by relatives of police officers murdered by a Grand Theft Auto fan.

A trial judge refused to dismiss the suit, and the defendants have been given no leave to appeal the decision. As a result, the trial could commence later this year or some time in early 2007.

However, the defendants do have the option to launch a challenge over whether the Alabama courts have the power to try the case - which could mean further delays.

The lawsuit was filed by the families of two police officers and a dispatcher who were murdered by 18 year old Devin Moore in June 2003. Moore pled not guilty by reason of mental defect, but was convicted of the crimes and sentenced to death. The plaintiffs claim that Moore trained to become a killer by playing Grand Theft Auto.

Their case was initially presented by anti-videogames campaigner and lawyer Jack Thompson - but he withdrew from the case last November following accusations that he had violated legal ethics. ...

Microsoft has made a minor update to the Xbox 360 backwards compatibility list, adding patches to allow three new titles to run on the new console - namely Black, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Winning Eleven 9.

The update, which is the first change to the list of backwards compatible titles in several months, also fixes issues with a number of games which previously worked with the Xbox 360 but had bugs in the compatibility code, including Ninja Gaiden, Fable, Half-Life 2 and GTA San Andreas.

Details of the new update were posted on the popular blog of Xbox Live director of programming Larry Hyrb (better known by his GamerTag, Major Nelson), and the update appears to apply to European users as well as US users, according to comments left on the blog.

As with all previous backwards compatibility patches, users can download these new updates by putting the Xbox game that requires them into the Xbox 360 drive while connected to Xbox Live. They can also be downloaded to a PC from the Xbox.com website and transferred to the Xbox 360 on a CD-R.

Although only a small number of games have been added to the list with this update, Microsoft's stated goal is to eventually have every Xbox game working on the Xbox 360 - although at this rate of progress, it looks like it could take a long time for that objective to be met. ...