News from Lik Sang

On July 14th, Mario invites you to boogie down on his own dance party, staged courtesy of Nintendo and music games veteran Konami. It's the first time the incredibly popular Dance Dance Revolution franchise makes its appearance on GameCube, and does so with a bang: no need to dust off the disco ball yourself, DDR with Mario blasts onto the scene with driving beats, lots of mini games and unmistakable Mushroom Kingdom charisma.

No doubt at all, it's a full-fledged DDR title, that the Bemani community will just love to shake their dancemat-experienced limbs to. What makes this Ninty edition unique is the inclusion of a storyline, where someone has stolen the Music Keys and released the music they held. Without these keys, the unstable power of sound is wreaking havoc on the land. Mario himself must recover them before the chaos destroys the entire Mushroom Universe! The path to the keys is simple: Left, Right, Up, Down, Right, Down... Choose from famous Nintendo icons like Mario, Luigi, Toad, Waluigi, Wario and Bowser and clear levels by performing the correct steps. Once all the levels in a particular world are behind you, a Music Key awaits as your glorious reward. You guessed it: the path to victory is collecting all of the keys in the game.

Please check out the Nintendo dance with the official E3 trailer from this year, offered in either Windows Media Player or Quicktime form:

Players control Dance Dance Revolution with Mario by stepping on different arrows on the dedicated dance mat. According to Nintendo, this cool peripheral will not only be released at the same time, but even be included with the game! Now you can finally experience the thrill of grinding Goombas and other enemies into the ground firsthand. As you clear songs, you will unlock more tunes, minigames and difficulty levels. Split-screen mode allows the dance frenzy to be enjoyed by two players, where while depending on skill, the invitation to sabotage your opponent will certainly prove irresistible. As the US version (DDR: Mario Remix) is still some way off, Bemani and Nintendo fans alike can look forward to playing the upcoming Japanese version of Dance Dance Revolution with Mario in just under a month now. It has been confirmed today that the game will come out bundled with the GameCube official Dance Mat Controller.

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ShALLaX has released a new version of Gentoox Home

What's new/fixed:
* Gentoox Loader v5.11.
* Updated software as of 04-Jun-2005.
* Fully synced with magic as of 12-Jun-2005.
* Sparkle v1.5.
* Removed LED tutorials - its now part of the Loader.
* KDE 3.4.1.
* XFCE 4.2.0.
* Switched to 2005.0/2.4 profile.
* Stardust is more friendly to v1.6 Xboxes with overscan.

http://gentoox.shallax.com ...

Sony has put to rest any fears surrounding PlayStation 3 backwards compatibility by confirming that the next-gen console will play both PS2 and PSone games, via a combination of hardware and software emulation.

"Developers sometimes do things that are unexpected," explained Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi. "Their games run but are written in ways that make us say, 'What is this code?'

"We need to support backwards compatibility for these games too, so using software alone for compatibility is difficult."

In contrast, Microsoft has cautiously stated that its next-gen machine will just be capable of playing 'top' titles for the original Xbox.

As Xbox 360 won't run Xbox games off embedded hardware, there is the risk that some games could catch out the emulator - and hence wouldn't work.

"The current Xbox will become antiquated once Xbox 360 launches in November," reckons Kutaragi. "When that happens, the original Xbox will be killing itself.

"The only way to avoid that is to allow 100% compatibility from launch but Microsoft won't be able to guarantee that. It's technically very difficult." ...

Owners of the Nintendo DS will get a little bit more of mans best friend when Nintendogs makes it’s debut on this side of the Pacific.

Not one, not two, but three, count ‘em, three new breeds will be included in the game. A game which will be shipped in three different versions, on August 22nd. ...

It’ll be a November to Remember this year when Xbox 360 debuts. According to the editor of Famitsu Xbox, it will be debuting with 20 titles.

The editor, Munetatsu Matsui, has very close ties to the Japanese Xbox operation, and is therefore considered to be in the know. When contacted, Microsoft did confirm that between 25-40 titles would be available in the launch window.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the story is about how Xbox 360 will have hidden features which won’t be unveiled until a year after the launch. Which of course means every Xbox hacker was just placed on high alert, and anyone with an internet connection will probably be able to find out how to access them by the following Valentines Day. ...

A set of specifications purporting to be for Nintendo's Revolution console have appeared on the Internet, outlining a system with impressive graphics capabilities - but the company has confirmed that high-definition outputs won't be supported.

The specifications, which appeared on blog site Nintendo Centrium, suggest that the system will be powered by two 1.8Ghz IBM PowerPC G5 processors, a 600Mhz graphics chip from ATI and a 7.1 Digital Sound chipset.

The console will apparently sport 128MB of high speed 1T SRAM as main memory, along with 256MB of slower DRAM, while the graphics chip has 12MB of on-board high speed RAM. 6GB proprietary DVD-size discs, designed by Panasonic, would be used for Revolution's games.

The specs differ greatly from a previous "leak" last month, which claimed that the system would have a dual-core graphics chipset and a total of four processing cores, using IBM's dual-core technology.

According to Nintendo Centrium, the spec originated from a programmer currently contracted to work for Nintendo on a DS project. However, it's impossible to say how close to reality the figures actually are - but with the high speed GPU and large frame buffer, the system seems oriented towards high-definition output, which jars somewhat with a statement late last week from Nintendo of America saying that HD is off the menu for Revolution.

Nintendo of America's vice president of corporate affairs Perrin Kaplan is quoted on IGN.com as saying that "it is accurate that at this time we will not support high-definition [on Revolution]."

"Nintendo doesn't plan for the system to be HD compatible as with that comes a higher price for both the consumer and also the developer creating the game," Kaplan continued. "Will it make the game better to play? With the technology being built into the Revolution, we believe the games will look brilliant and play brilliantly. This can all be done without HD."

The statement is not only at odds with Sony and Microsoft's stances on HD - which both firms are supporting strongly - but is also slightly unusual given that Nintendo has previously said that Revolution will work with PC monitors as well as televisions.

Kaplan's statements do however seem to give the lie to both sets of specifications leaked until now - both of which featured large frame buffers that would only be required if Nintendo plans to support high definition resolutions.

It seems that we still have some waiting to do before we see the real specs for Revolution - which may not even be completed yet, if they're anything like the controller for the console, which Shigeru Miyamoto admitted last week has not yet been finished. ...

Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi has claimed that the PlayStation 3 is being positioned as a supercomputer capable of running multiple operating systems, with the Linux system to be pre-installed on the machine's hard drive.

Interviewed by Japanese website PC Impress Watch, Kutaragi lashed out at Nintendo and Microsoft for defining their systems purely as toys or game consoles, and said that PS3 will be sold as a "supercomputer".

In order to accomplish that, the system will ship with the Linux operating system on its hard drive - although it's not yet clear whether that drive will actually ship with the system as part of the default configuration, or as an optional extra.

Kutaragi claims that the PS3 will be capable of running multiple operating systems, and could in theory run Linux, Windows and Mac OS X together. He also mentioned Lindows, a variety of Linux designed to emulate the ease of use of Windows, and alluded to a "new OS" which could be the Linux-based system which Sony is rumoured to be working on with a number of other Japanese companies as a potential competitor to Windows, especially in the media space.

This isn't the first time that Sony has tried to position one of its systems as a personal computer rather than a console - the firm tried to make the same claim about the PlayStation 2, in a move which was largely seen as an attempt to win lower import duty from the European Union.

However, this time around, Kutaragi seems serious about the system's computer-like capabilities - citing applications such as photo and video editing as possible functions for the system's Linux operating system software.

Such functionality would be a logical evolution of the type of software which ships with Sony's PSX media centre systems, and would be an unsurprising addition to the box given the company's ambition in the home media space.

It's an area where Sony seems likely to face competition not only from Microsoft, but also from Apple - which commentators believe is likely to make a bold move into the living room with a new product line based on the popular and low-cost Mac Mini computers, and powered by Intel processors.

It has emerged that Sony did indeed approach Apple with a view to encouraging the computer maker to include the Cell microprocessor in its future systems, but according to sources close to the Japanese company quoted by the New York Times, Apple boss Steve Jobs was "disappointed" in the Cell processor and opted for the Intel deal instead, although whether technical or commercial reasons were foremost in that decision is still unknown. ...

News from Miqualke

I contacted people from who hold the right of the gridlock concept.
They don't want my game use their levels.
So i change some stuff in it, there won't be the 40 first levels previously added, but there will be 750 brand new levels

Better graphics will be added soon too.

So I'm finnish those stuff and if the company is okay with the new version, i will released it as a 1.0 version.
For the moment i will close the download of the 0.5 versions. ...

BeerSleep has updated his Block Moving game for the Nintendo DS, heres a translation via google of whats new:

New version quasi-finale!
What was added:
- Is not necessary to touch the edges (like the original)
- Skins: you have the choice between the traditional one and the mario
- time in seconds, finally!

Download from Here --> http://nintendo-ds.dcemu.co.uk/carrerouge.shtml ...