Scholastic Interactive, a division of Scholastic Media (SM) today announced Goosebumps HorrorLand for Wii, PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system and Nintendo DS. Goosebumps HorrorLand is the first game to be published under Scholastic Interactive's new publishing label Elastic.

Scholastic Interactive is already well-known for high quality, award-winning games that educate and entertain children. Now, with the introduction of the Elastic label, the company is expanding its catalog to include more entertainment driven titles and broaden its reach to consumers. The titles under the new label will be published across all interactive platforms and will feature content based on Scholastic properties, such as Goosebumps, as well as other original and third-party licensed properties.

"We are delighted to be launching our new games label, Elastic, with Goosebumps. Goosebumps has a broad and enthusiastic global fan base who will be thrilled with our new games. What better way to deliver the thrills and chills of a Goosebumps experience than with a game that puts the player in the heart of HorrorLand," said Deborah Forte, President, Scholastic Media and Executive Vice President of Scholastic Inc.

Marking the brand's first foray into gaming consoles and handhelds, Goosebumps HorrorLand is an adventure game set in a fright-themed amusement park filled with over thirty thrilling rides and bone-chilling attractions. Sounds like fun - until players discover the scares are all too real and find themselves vanquishing vampires, hanging on for life on the Roller Ghoster and battling Certain Death. As players fiendishly try to escape the park, they will unravel a mystery, encounter a host of creepy horrors, monsters and mummies plus trademark Goosebumps twists and cliffhangers. Goosebumps HorrorLand will offer the suspense, pulse-pounding action, tension and humor that defines the franchise. Goosebumps HorrorLand, the video game, is set to make nightmares come to life on Wii (SRP $39.99), Nintendo DS (SRP $29.99), and Playstation 2 system (SRP $29.99) in October 2008.

For an exclusive peek at Goosebumps HorrorLand, go to www.GoosebumpsVideoGame.com or to YouTube to view the "No Ordinary Park" teaser trailer.

With more than 300 million books sold in 32 languages, Goosebumps is a global mega brand. Goosebumps HorrorLand is based on the new 12 book Scholastic series by R.L. Stine that launched in April to terrific sales and national press attention. Additional content can be found on the official Goosebumps Web site www.scholastic.com/goosebumps.

Videogame publisher XS Games announced today its new music rhythm game, PopStar Guitar, featuring songs from top pop music stars including 3 Doors Down, Simple Plan, Blink 182 and many more. PopStar Guitar allows players to unlock their inner pop celebrity and star as the lead guitarist in their very own band. Shipping in October 2008, PopStar Guitar will be available for the Wii and the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system. The Wii version of PopStar Guitar will feature the AirG, an exciting new peripheral that turns the Wii Remote into an air guitar.

"The popularity of music rhythm games is at an all time high, but to date the games have primarily featured hard core metal, classic and alternative rock music," said Steve Grossman, chief executive officer of XS Games. "With popular songs from today's top pop artists, PopStar Guitar is a game the whole family can enjoy. We've also created a dynamic new air guitar game play experience with our AirG peripheral for the Wii, allowing players to have a blast as they unleash their inner pop star."

PopStar Guitar features a single player Career Mode and two-player Co-operative Mode, along with single player and multi-player mini-games. The game takes the player on a musical journey that starts with forming a garage band to playing at 25 unique venues and eventually performing in the worldwide "Battle of the Bands" contest. Twelve playable characters are featured in the game and can be customized to give the band its own unique look. PopStar Guitar features over 50 pop songs, including several masters performed by the original artists.

Exclusively for the Wii, PopStar Guitar will come with the AirG, a peripheral that snaps onto the Wii Remote and turns the controller into an electrifying air guitar. For PlayStation 2 system players, PopStar Guitar will function with any PlayStation 2 system compatible guitar peripheral.

PopStar Guitar has not yet been rated by the ESRB.

Well, it’s become increasingly clear that I’m not going to have 0.9 ready in the next 2 weeks, or even in month after that. There’s two main reasons for this - I’m unfortunately finding much less time to work on lxdream of late than originally counted on, and the OS X work pretty much took a couple of months out of the schedule by itself. In any case, based on the remaining work and current rate of progress, I’m rescheduling 0.9 for October. We’ll see how that goes ^_^.
However having said that, there’s certainly enough changes to warrant a 0.8.4 interim release, especially for OS X and x86-64 users. I have a fairly short list of things remaining that need to go into that release, so that will be out in about 2 weeks. In the meantime, if anyone’s noticed any regressions relative to 0.8.3 or platform-specific bugs, please let me know as soon as possible so they can be fixed prior to release.
Changes

* Various automake fixes (eg out-of-tree builds and distcheck work now for the first time)
* Tag SVN binaries with the revision for ease of tracking/reporting
* Initial implementation of the sort-dma channel
* Fix alignment of 64-bit FMOVs
* Fix soft-reset from the emulator (lockup)
* Fix off-by-one in the translator recovery data (crash)
* Fix build when no translator is available
* Fix build against OS X 10.4 SDK
* General formatting and warnings cleanup

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Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 292

Cool nJoy v0.3: Multi-controller support.
Hi!,

I just finished updating my input plugin nJoy.

nJoy v0.3 now features multi-controller support!

- Enjoy!

*update*

new builds are also here:
http://falcon4ever.pcsx2.net/dolphin/SVN_builds/

r49 of the attachments is actually r50.

Conspiracy Entertainment is pleased to announce that Summer Athletics for the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system has gone gold and is set to arrive in stores in early August. Summer Athletics is a fresh and fun take on more than 25 sports such as sprinting, archery, javelin, hammer throw and swimming - all presented in a friendly manner sure to please all types of players. A custom character editor, lifelike graphics and realistic animations will immerse players in the game's diverse and challenging events. A suggested retail price of $14.99 USD will make Summer Athletics the perfect game for families and casual gamers.

For more information about Summer Athletics, please visit http://conspiracygames.com.

Developed by 49Games, Summer Athletics will bring more than 25 action-packed sports right into your home. Featuring controls custom-tailored to each platform, the game will be accessible to all types of gamers. A character editor, career mode, 3D animations and realistic environments round out the game's offerings, ensuring fun for the whole family and sports fans alike.

Activision confirmed last week that Guitar god Jimi Hendrix is headed to Guitar Hero: World Tour.

It's only fitting that guitar legend Jimi Hendrix be featured in a rhythm game featuring guitars, and Activision confirmed that's exactly what's going to happen with the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour.

Activision's answer to Harmonix's Rock Band will have a number of Jimi Hendrix songs, and will feature the late rocker's avatar, similar to what Activision has done with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.

The Hendrix track list will include "The Wind Cries Mary" and a live version of "Purple Haze," which were provided by the Hendrix Experience, the estate that now controls the artist's songs. Other Hendrix tunes will be released in the future as DLC.

According to the Associated Press, this is the first time the likeness of Jimi Hendrix will be featured in a video game.

Talking with SEGA earlier this week, it was revealed that a future collaboration between the company's mascot, Sonic, and Nintendo's exuberant Italian plumber, Mario, could well be on the cards. SEGA of America's President, Simon Jeffery, explained that sales of the Wii and Nintendo DS versions of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games have now surpassed the ten million mark around the world, far in excess of the company's projected four million total that was initially set. And this is before the Olympics actually kick off over in Beijing, with sales expected to shoot up again when the event commences.

As a result of the huge success, the question has to be whether or not Mario and Sonic will once again team up in the future, especially given how Sonic made an appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl for Wii. In response Jeffery was cagey, but positive, stating, "We would be delighted to do another game with Mario and Sonic."

But what would you like to see - an in-depth RPG cross-over, a platform outing developed by Miyamoto-san and the team at EAD, or something completely different?

Emaar Malls Group, the developer of The Dubai Mall, has teamed up with Sega Japan for a project that will see the mall incorporate an indoor theme park featuring rides and motion-simulator.

Sega Republic will be a two-level, 76,000sq.ft indoor theme park, featuring a diverse line up of rides and amusements, all in a controlled environment designed from the concept stage to entertain all age groups, at all levels.

The development will be the first of its kind in the region and will serve as a benchmark for future Sega indoor theme park developments across the Middle East and North Africa region and the Indian Subcontinent.

The location will be split into different zones, themed to reflect the experiences on offer including the Speed Zone, Sports Zone and a huge redemption zone.

Commenting on the development, Yousuf Al Ali, general manager of The Dubai Mall, said: "Sega Republic is redefining the concept of indoor entertainment in the region by introducing never-before experienced adventures and games.

"Based on the original Joypolis in Tokyo, Sega Republic adopts the same adrenaline-fuelled offer of thrilling rides - including brand new concepts - and the latest interactive arcade games that will appeal to people of all ages."

Well, this isn't the surprise I was talking about but it's still better than nothing.
Makaron Test 10/1 is out. You know the drill.

T9/4 and T10 were rather unstable but this time around I'm more happy with both GD and DMA code. It's not just bugfixes though, there are several new features in this version:
- support for VMU sounds
- improved Z-buffering
- fully functional DSP
- experimental anisotropic filtering

DSP is enabled by default. It might slow down things a bit, though (as usual) if you have a fast C2D you won't notice it. I'm really considering running whole AICA on separate thread now by the way, so it should improve in future for multi-core systems.
Please note that there's a slight slowdown noticable (in audio) when sequenced music is being played, in all Makaron versions released so far. This is sort of design flaw (and due to rather demanding hardware setup) and will be someday corrected.

Anisotropic filtering is too enabled by default, to 8x - it will be scaled down if your card can't support such mode. This will only be a problem for those cheap cards that support AFx8 but are very slow at it, in this case you might get quite a performance drop.