Nintendo has recorded yet another hugely impressive week for the DS in Japan, with games for the handheld console capturing eight of the top ten places in the chart and 390,000 further hardware units sold.

The latest in the company's Brain Training series, DS Training for Adults: Work Your Brain 2, was the top selling game for the week, debuting with a massive 415,000 sales, while Animal Crossing: Wild World racked up a further 205,000 sales at number two, and Mario Kart DS sold another 169,000 units at number three.

Last week's number one, Square Enix' PS2 action RPG Kingdom Hearts II, dropped three places to number four but still managed a perfectly creditable tally, with over 150,000 copies sold during the week, while the only other PS2 title in the chart was another Square Enix game, new entry Front Mission 5, which sold 146,000 units and came in at number six.

The only other new entry in the chart was Nintendo's DS RPG title Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time, which sold 136,000 units and came in at number seven in this week's ranking.

In total, Nintendo had seven titles in the top ten, all of them for the DS; one further DS title, Bandai's Tamagotchi Connection, charted at number nine, and Square Enix' two PS2 titles complete this week's chart.

Looking briefly outside the top ten, Dead or Alive 4 came in at number 13 in the chart, selling just under 61,000 units - making it into certainly the fastest selling Xbox 360 title yet, but not providing the boost to hardware sales that Microsoft might have hoped for.

Confounding the expectations of some market watchers who believed that the low sales of the Xbox 360 at launch in Japan were down to gamers waiting for DOA4, the console shifted 12,300 units during the week - twice the number that it did in the previous week, but still less than the GameCube, which sold marginally more at 12,579, and the Game Boy Advance handhelds, which sold 27,679.

The 390,000 sales racked up by the DS are hugely impressive, especially coming in the wake of the 600,000 units sold in the previous week, and 300,000 the week before that - but the number might have been even higher of the console hadn't sold out at retailers around the country.

The system continues to build its lead on the Sony PSP, which sold 110,000 units in the same week. The PlayStation 2 sold 79,000 units.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=13936 ...

Nintendo has issued an official apology to its retailers and customers after the seasonal rush to the stores after New Years in Japan left the Nintendo DS console out of stock across the country.

Reports from Japan suggest that every major electronics store in the Tokyo metropolitan area, as well as several non-specialist stores such as toy shops, placed sold out signs on their DS displays in the week after the New Year holiday.

Many Japanese children and teenagers receive gifts of money from relatives at New Years, which may have caused a rush on the hugely popular console - already undoubtedly running at low stock levels after three weeks leading up to January 1st which saw combined sales of 1.3 million units of the hardware.

"During the year-end period, there was a shortage of our company's portable gaming system, the Nintendo DS, due to a flood of demand which far exceeded our expectations," Nintendo explained in a press release, partially translated by YamaKiyo Press.

"We greatly apologise for inconveniencing all of our customers and retailers," the release concluded.

Nintendo has temporarily moved its shipments of the DS hardware into Japan to airmail in order to try and restock the console as quickly as possible.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=13950 ...

HEDZX has updated his game written in Lua to V0.6, heres whats new:

V: 6 Added:
two levels,
level select, and an
optional chao design.
also a diffrent menu option when using new chao.
new chao is... Tails Chao, my favorite

Download via comments ...

k_man316 has posted news of the release of a new Lua game for the PSP, heres the info:

This is my initial release of Air Warriors for the PSP. This was written and is powered by the amazine PSP LUA engine! I'm a big fan of shooters and wanted something that could be played on my PSP so wrote this one.

This game is you basic top down shooter for the PSP. I have tested it with LUAPlayer version 0.15 on a US PSP with 1.5 Firmware so I'm not sure of compatability with other firmware versions.

INSTALLATION:

Copy the "AirWarriors 1" and AIRWAR~2% to the \PSP\GAME folder

Thank you!

Download from the release thread here --> http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=16733 ...

PSMonkey has posted some excellent screenshots of what will be his entry into our Coding Competition for the PSP, heres what he posted:

Well it's time to give you all an update & introduction to the project me, MGfox & Produkt have been cooking up recently (sorry if this anouncement is somewhat incohearent, i'm lacking on sleep atm).

So today I introduce to you Iris. Iris is a game built off the bsp rendering engine I have been working on for the past few months. The game is ment to be a simple yet fun 3rd person Deathmatch game for the psp. Old Quake mappers will have the additional fun of making their own maps & characters to use in the game. The maps are based on quake 3 bsp format & the character are based on quake 2 MD2 model format.

Insted of giving you guys some unoptimised quake 3 maps. MGFox & Produkt have steped up and created 3 wonderful maps that will be included in the release as well as the posibility of 2 more maps (if time permits).

Sadly due to time limits, our dcemu compo entry might more be an alpha then a real release (too much to do) but we plan to get a second build out asap to add what we want.

With out further delay, time to check out the screen shots !!

Check out the outstanding screenshots via the site here --> http://nemo.dcemu.co.uk/ ...

Just Noticed that Lik Sang are carrying the great Football (Or soccer depends where you live in the world) manager game for the PSP, the PC Versions were excellent and if you like those sort of games you will be well sorted, heres the info:

Championship Manager PSP is a fully portable version of the best known football management simulation, and also boasts a wealth of new features. Dealing with everything from transfers to training, tactics to tabloids, Championship Manager is the closest you'll get to real-life football.

A realistic 2D match engine
55 playable leagues across the top 12 footballing nations, including Europe, Asia and South America
25,000 players from 100 nations
Exclusive PSP game modes, including Challenge mode and Quick-play 3 season mode
Live Cup Draws
Realistic manager options to influence your team tactics, and the match result
Fully interactive transfer system simulating modern day negotiations
Exclusive PSP skin and interface


More information and to buy visit Lik Sang Here --> http://www.yesasia.com/?/info.php?pro...8&lsaid=219793 ...

Videora PMP Converter is a free video conversion application developed by the creators of Videora. It allows you to convert your regular PC video files (avi, mpeg, etc) into the PMP video format developed by Jonny. With a version 1.5 PSP and Jonny's PMP Mod 1.0, you can now playback full resolution video on your PSP!

When combined with Videora, Videora PMP Converter + Videora allows you to download, convert and copy video to your device, automatically using BitTorrent and RSS technology. See ITVCasting for more details:

This was posted at the Release Thread

Introduction
Thanks to Jonny, full native 480x272 video is now a possibility on the PSP (well v1.5 PSPs at least). Due to the limitations of the PSP's processor, video still has to be converted and thus we are proud to announce the first beta version of Videora PMP Converter.

Mega Thanks to Jonny
Jonny, we just want to say thanks for sacrificing your own free time to write this awsome, insanely complex piece of software. We really appreciate all the hard work you have put into it. We hope everyone will also take the time to thank Jonny for his hard work.

Obligatory Videora Converter Introduction Stuff
Our favorite feature of Videora PMP Converter is ITVCasting, a term we coined up to define automatically downloading, converting and copying video. For more information, see this page.

If you are looking for help with Videora PMP Converter, want to submit a bug report, request a feature or talk about PMP in general make sure to check out the forums specifically for PMP.

Finally, if you enjoy using Videora PMP Converter or this website please consider making a donation to help support the development and webservers of PSP Video 9 and Videora.

Download Via Comments ...

Ive some great news that should interest all Nintendo DS Developers and Nintendo DS News Sites and those who release Magazines and so on and so forth.

We have now changed to Open Source newsposting, that means any admins, mods, staff and more importantly Nintendo DS Coders can now post news and with the ability to upload up to 8mb files then this is a great launch platform for your Homebrew game, emulator, application or indeed anything.

Massive thanks to Martin64 for sorting out the tech stuff but from now on anyone who wants to post news (obviously i have to first give you the ability) can do so.

What this means is that no more do developers have to put up with sites non linking and more importantly you get the feedback and credit you deserve and to me thats whats most important.

Theres a way to newspost but theres also rules which ill gladly chat via the comments, but for now use Nintendo DS News as your main and true launch site for anything Nintendo DS related. ...

Ive some great news that should interest all PSP Developers and PSP News Sites and those who release Magazines and so on and so forth.

We have now changed to Open Source newsposting, that means any admins, mods, staff and more importantly PSP Coders can now post news and with the ability to upload up to 8mb files then this is a great launch platform for your Homebrew game, emulator, application or indeed anything.

Massive thanks to Martin64 for sorting out the tech stuff but from now on anyone who wants to post news (obviously i have to first give you the ability) can do so.

What this means is that no more do developers have to put up with sites non linking and more importantly you get the feedback and credit you deserve and to me thats whats most important.

Theres a way to newspost but theres also rules which ill gladly chat via the comments, but for now use PSP News as your main and true launch site for anything PSP related. ...