Portal 2 has emerged as the best-selling video game in the UK last week, with fellow new release Mortal Kombat taking the number two spot.
Despite the PlayStation 3 version of Portal 2 featuring exclusive cross-format support with the PC it accounted for only 35 per cent of sales, with the Xbox 360 on 54 per cent and the PC on 10 per cent. The latter though does not account for digital sales.
The addition of Sony-exclusive character Kratos, from God Of War proved to have more impact on sale of Mortal Kombat though - with the PlayStation 3 version selling 54 per cent compared to the Xbox 360's 46 per cent.
As a result the Xbox 360 version of Portal 2 was the best-selling individual format title of the week, followed by Mortal Kombat on PlayStation 3, Mortal Kombat on Xbox 360 and Portal 2 on PlayStation 3. Previous number one Zumba Fitness ranked number five.
The other major release of the week was Operation Flashpoint: Red River, which made its debut at number six. Codemasters' team-based shooter saw 70 per cent of sales on the Xbox 360 and 30 per cent on the PlayStation 3.
The only major new release not to break into the top 20 this week was Sony's SOCOM: Special Forces (aka SOCOM 4) at number 28, although a number of older titles did continue to move up the charts thanks to retailer promotions.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops rose six places to number three, while Wii Fit Plus was up 11 places to number nine. Wii Sports Resort also re-entered the charts at number 14.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...k-sales-charts ...

Have you got any spare Nintendo Points sitting in your account. Well, that's where they'll be staying.

Unless you're a wannabe animator, in which case you might want to have a look at the Inchworm Animation app which lets you create your own mini films on your DSi.

Hopefully the 3DS' eShop will come to save us from the monotony.

The list:

Airport Mania: First Flight
Publisher: Lemon Games
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 200 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Pack your bags for a trip through the skies in Airport Mania. Travel through eight amusing airports while you land a variety of planes, purchase upgrades and avoid delays. Stay on your toes, as some planes carry precious cargo and will need to land in a hurry, while others might need a trip to the repair shop. With good planning, you're sure to make it to the gate on time. With unique challenges and whimsical characters that will put a smile on your face, this is one flight you don't want to miss.

Inchworm Animation
Publisher: Flat Black Films
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Inchworm Animation is a full-featured paint and animation system for the Nintendo DSi system. Five years in the making, Inchworm Animation lets you create mind-blowing digital paintings and animations in the palm of your hand. Use the Nintendo DSi Camera application to record video, stop-motion animation and time-lapse photography. Paint with transparency and smooth anti-aliased brushes. Create images up to 9,999-by-9,999 pixels. An easy-to-use pattern editor lets you make cool repeating patterns. Other tools include onion skin, six-level zoom, cut/paste/rotate, undo and shape primitives. Inchworm Animation's sophisticated layer system allows you to create structured animated scenes. Each layer can have its own independent frame loop. You can even draw on your animation as it plays. Comprehensive tutorials will show you the ropes. Export your finished masterpieces to an SD card (sold separately) as Flash or BMP image sequences.

Ubongo
Publisher: Korner Entertainment
Players: 1-2
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone) - Mild Language
Price: 500 Nintendo DSi Points
Description: Ubongo's mechanics are very simple. Just solve as many puzzles as you can and get gems of the same color. The player who has more gems when time runs out will be the winner. Game modes include History Mode, Quick Game, Time Attack and Multiplayer Mode. The original board game is a blockbuster in many countries.

WiiWare

Word Searcher Deluxe
Publisher: Digital Leisure Inc.
Players: 1-4
ESRB Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: 500 Wii Points
Description: You'll need a sharp eye and a quick mind to complete 100 themed word search puzzles. Word Searcher Deluxe contains fun words from multiple categories, including palindromes, pirates and painting. With a huge assortment of subjects to choose from, there are puzzles for everyone to enjoy. Test your vocabulary, memory and problem-solving skills with these challenging puzzles. Keep track of - and try to beat - your own play-through times again and again as words are scrambled every time you play.

Learning with the PooYoos: Episode 3 (demo version)
Publisher: Lexis Numérique
Players: 1
ESRB Rating: EC (Early Childhood)
Price: 0 Wii Points; full version available for 500 Wii Points
Description: Welcome to the first fun, poetic brain-trainer for children aged 3 to 6. With the PooYoos, a merry band of adorable baby animals, children will have fun while learning the basics for development, including numbers, letters, lateralization, shapes and colors. Children get to dance with their new friends and earn lovely interactive rewards. With two levels of interactivity, children of any age or level can play the activities based on plants and music. This game has been designed for use by children who have not yet grasped reading. The instructions are spoken in French, English or Spanish, depending on the language setting of your Wii console.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

Platform holder encouraging consumers to embrace art using best-selling DS title

Nintendo’s latest sampling tour will use Art Academy to inspire the UK’s budding artists.
The platform holder’s Create Britain campaign kicks off on Thursday, May 19th to promote artistic pastimes to consumers via the 2010 DS release, which has sold more than 345,000 copies in the UK.

Nintendo reps at each event will show shoppers how easy it is to learn how to paint or draw using the title’s step-by-step tutorials.
“The aim is to get the UK to discover its artistic side through the use of Art Academy,” said Nintendo marketing assistant Rebecca Archer.
“Sampling will therefore be an integral part of this campaign, as the only way consumers will discover what Art Academy can teach them is through trying the software themselves.
“Many people view art as elitist and highbrow. We want to make it accessible to all by demonstrating that anyone, whatever their ability, can learn to paint and draw using Art Academy.”
The tour will visit some of the UK’s biggest retail locations, from London to Scotland (see ‘Sampling Tour Dates’ below).
“All of our sampling venues are large footfall shopping centres that have mass market appeal,” said Archer. “We have also been careful to select sampling venues across the country so that every consumer has an opportunity to come along.”
Nintendo will be promoting the tour with a three-week TV campaign, with spots running during family shows such as Coronation Street, Hollyoaks and Emmerdale.
There will also be online ads and a range of Create Britain POS in stores.
SAMPLING TOUR DATES
Brent Cross, North London – May 19th to 22nd
St Davids, Cardiff – May 26th to 29th
MetroCentre, Gateshead, Newcastle – June 2nd to 5th
Bullring, Birmingham – June 9th to 12th
Arndale Centre, Manchester – June 16th to 19th
Braehead, Scotland – June 23rd to 26th
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/44048/Get-...ademy-campaign
...

Pate has released a new version of his Dos Emulator for the DS Console:

Sorry for the one day delay to my normal Sunday updates, but as this was a long Easter weekend I wanted to use the one extra day to work on DS2x86 and get as many fixes implemented as possible.
DS2x86 0.07 release info



Okay, this new version has the following fixes:

• There is now (finally) a blinking cursor in the text modes, most importantly in the 4DOS command prompt.
• HIMEM.SYS emulation added. This allows Chaos Engine to run, and will enable support for Windows 3.00a in Standard Mode in the future.
• Fixed a serious total crash problem in 32-bit string opcodes. This happened in games like Abuse, Ascendancy and Carmageddon. Those games still don't work properly, but they don't hang the system completely any more so I have a chance of debugging and improving them further.
• Fixed a stack alignment problem that could cause "Exception 4" BSOD errors. This fixes at least Micro Machines.
• Improved the BSOD reporting. Now the printed data includes a stack trace, so I can better determine the location of the problem.
• Improved horizontal blank reporting, this might solve hanging problems in some games, like Pinball Fantasy.
• Improved Mode-X graphics blitting code to handle wrap-around properly.
• Changed the screen refresh interrupt interval from 60Hz to 59Hz. This might help with the intermittent "stuck key" problem in some games.
• Direct file read to EGA memory is now supported (for example in Heimdall).
• Implemented a number of previously missing opcodes.

DS2x86 0.07 background information
After the previous blog post I worked on Jazz Jackrabbit for a while, but could not get any notable progress with it. It still needs a lot of debugging to determine the problem, and so I decided to move on to some other issues that might be faster to solve.
First, I decided to add HIMEM.SYS emulation, as I could simply port the code from the most recent DSx86 version. This in itself didn't take long, although I ran into a very strange problem where the whole DS2x86 hung immediately when launching any game. It loaded 4DOS.COM fine, and I could give internal commands like "dir" or "memory", but immediately after launching any game it hung totally. I then began commenting out the new HIMEM.SYS stuff, until the only things remaining were a couple of static integer variables in the new C++ module! Commenting these variables out got rid of the problem, but when I added these static variables back, the problem came back. One of the variables had an initial value based on the addresses of two other variables, which seemed to cause the problem. I switched to using a #define, and the problem was solved, but I still don't quite understand how a static variable initialization can break the whole software.
After the HIMEM.SYS emulation started working, Chaos Engine began to ran otherwise fine, except that the display had a moving line of black pixels, and scrolling the zoomed screen did not work properly. The game wraps the display around the A000 segment while scrolling (similarly to what Commander Keen 4 does in EGA mode), and this feature was not yet supported in my Mode-X screen blitting code. I took some time to make this work correctly in both Zoom and Scale screen modes, and now this type of wrap-around should cause no more visual glitches. This is what Chaos Engine now looks like, with a wrap around in the middle of the screen (but not showing :-).

After the HIMEM.SYS emulation in place, I wanted to see whether Windows 3.00a would run in Standard Mode. I had several problems with it, all due to various bugs in my protected mode implementation which I had to fix. There is still a problem with the Global Descriptor Table handling, as Windows uses a segment selector 0x0101 when returning from protected mode to real mode, but in DS2x86 the GDT entry points to a data segment, while in DSx86 and DOSBox it points correctly to a code segment. So, no Windows 3.00a in Standard Mode yet in this version, but I'll try to fix this problem in the near future.
Next, I was looking whether I had Hexen on my SD card. I didn't find it, but as there was Heimdall, I decided to test how it runs. It started fine, but when talking to a character I got a BSOD reporting an invalid store address of 0x600CE030. In this same situation DSx86 shows garbage on the screen, so I thought that this might be a chance to find out what exactly is wrong in my emulation code. I checked the address reported by the BSOD, but it pointed to inside the C library memcpy() function. Obviously, memcpy is used all around the code, so that was not of much help. I needed to find out what code it was that called the memcpy, so I implemented a simple stack traversal routine into my exception handler code. It attempts to find return addresses pointing to my own DS2x86 code by traversing the stack above the exception handler stack frame. When I ran Heimdall again, I got a stack trace that (after converting the hex addresses to function names ...

News via http://www.scummvm.org/news/20110422/

The ScummVM team is announcing another round of release testing in preparation for our next release: 1.3.0!
Since our last release, we've been very busy working on adding support for more of your favorite games. Backyard Baseball. Backyard Baseball 2001, Hugo's House of Horrors, Hugo 2: Whodunit?, Hugo 3: Jungle of Doom, Playtoons: Bambou le Sauveur de la Jungle, Toonstruck, and Urban Runner are all ready for our loyal fans to play through to their hearts' content. Several Living Books games are also supported now: Aesop's Fables: The Tortoise and the Hare, Arthur's Birthday (v1), Arthur's Teacher Trouble, Dr. Seuss's ABC, Green Eggs and Ham, Harry and the Haunted House, Just Grandma and Me (v1), Little Monster at School, Ruff's Bone, Sheila Rae, the Brave, Stellaluna, The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight, The Berenstain Bears in the Dark, The New Kid on the Block. You can see more info on the bugs we fixed and the features we added over here.
Like with our last release testing, not all games will be tested; only games that have had significant changes to their codebase since the last release are up for testing. As usual, the list of games to be tested is on the wiki.
Those games aren't going to test themselves! Download a daily build and report any bugs you find to the bug tracker. If you complete a game, please let us know on the forums so we can throw the results up on the wiki page. Be sure to provide the version, language, and platform of your game when reporting a completion. Any other questions? Go check out the release testing guidelines. ...

We caught wind of an internal GameStop memo this morning announcing the discontinuation ofNintendo's DS Lite. The memo (pictured above) asks employees to remove displays of Crimson, Black, and Metallic Rose models, once they've burned through their stock -- we've since confirmed the fact with an employee of the gaming chain. Not a huge shocker, of course, given the fact that the five-year-old system has since been eclipsed by 2009's DSi and, more recently, the company's glasses-free 3D portable, the 3DS. We have reached out to Nintendo for comment on the matter and will update this post with official word once received.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/22/d...d-at-gamestop/ ...

12 EA games in the Top 50; Five 3DS games chart; Pokémon drives DS market share

THQ’s new IP Homefront beat Pokémon and a string of high-profile EA titles to become the biggest selling game of March.
The result – combined with strong sales of WWE and uDraw – helped THQ leap up the publisher rankings. The firm is now amongst the Top Five publishers in terms of units and value last month. The firm was outside the Top Ten in February.

But the biggest winner of March was EA.
The publisher has a whopping 12 games in the All Formats Top 50, with Crysis 2, Fight Night Champion, Dragon Age II and FIFA 11 all in the Top Ten.
In total, EA held a 27.9 per cent share of the software market (in terms of value) last month. Nintendo enjoyed a strong month, too.



The platform holder’s duo of Pokémon games, White and Black, managed No.2 and No.4 respectively.
There are also five 3DS games in the Top 50, including Super Street Fighter IV 3D, Pilotwings Resort, Rayman 3D, Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 and LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars.
MARCH TOP TEN
1. Homefront (THQ)
2. Pokémon White (Nintendo)
3. Crysis 2 (EA)
4. Pokémon Black (Nintendo)
5. Fight Night Champion (EA)
6. Dragon Age II (EA)
7. LEGO Star Wars III (LucasArts)
8. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft)
9. Zumba Fitness (505 Games)
10. FIFA 11 (EA)
All figures are courtesy of UKIE GfK Chart-Track.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/44036/Home...n-top-in-March
...

Amazon have informed me they are having a stock clearance sale on their site, might be a great time to buy something before its gone

full details here --> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clearance/b/...94&tag=dcemu21 ...

News via http://www.nintendomax.com/viewtopic...ebf5bb15b53dc3


http://dsgamemaker.com/dsgmforum/vie...hp?f=13&t=1500


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