I've decided to release my latest port, while waiting for the C4 results:
It's RAW, an interpreter for Another World (http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/out-of-this-world) game data, so you can play it on your Sega Saturn.
This port is not part of the contest (i coded it in the last weeks), so i thought that releasing it would bring no harm :-)

You can get it from here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/28318981..._beta.zip.html
Source code included.

Some notes:
* It doesn't include game files as it would be illegal redistributing them.
* I've tested it mostly on real hardware, so i cannot assure how well it beheaves on emulators
* Should work OK at 50hz, but 60hz is much much better imho
* It's BETA, even though the game seems to work pretty well.

Additional infos and notes in the included README, enjoy everyone!
Hkz

Source : http://forums.segaxtreme.net/showthread.php?t=32643 ...

iPhone OS 3.1.2 Software Update for iPod touch

This update contains bug fixes and improvements, including the following:

• Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPod touch to
not wake from sleep
• Fixes bug that could cause occasional crash during
video streaming

Products compatible with this software update:
• iPod touch (all models) ...

It's in danger of becoming a lost art. Video game developers, increasingly focused on community building, cooperative play and massive online interactions, seem to have forgotten the satisfaction of the solo experience.

As once singular experiences give way to more multiplayer, more cooperative gaming, we can't help but wonder: Is the single-player-only game in danger of becoming extinct? And if it is, who's really to blame?

The annual pre-holiday game release flood, now spilling into early 2010 thanks to numerous delays, is filled with marquee multiplayer-driven blockbusters—Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Halo 3: ODST. It's also filled with brand new names, games from developers who have seemingly capitulated to the rising clamor for more multiplayer.

"[Multiplayer is] the most requested feature we get," says Todd Howard, executive producer of The Elder Scrolls series and Fallout 3 at Bethesda Softworks, so far resistant to the trend this generation. "So we do consider it every time... and every time it loses, but I suppose you never know."

Entering the multiplayer fray soon are titles like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Naughty Dog's sequel to its purely single-player PlayStation 3 debut. The list also includes BioShock 2, due much later, but also based on a title lauded for its story-driven solo experience and Brutal Legend, famed designer Tim Schafer's first stab at a multiplayer game.

Also due this November is the game that could outsell all of those highly anticipated releases, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a four-player cooperative spin on the side-scrolling formula.

While the latest Nintendo platformer may not be the first game in the series to sport a multiplayer component—portable games Super Mario 64 DS and New Super Mario Bros. both featured wireless multiplayer modes in a much more limited capacity—rarely has a Mario Bros. game focused so heavily on cooperative play. Not since, well, the original Mario Bros.

There is some cause for concern for the solo-only player. Massively successful games like Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Valve's Left 4 Dead offered shorter campaign modes in favor of a more robust multiplayer feature set. And StarCraft fans may be more than perturbed about the late release of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, already sliced into three campaigns, largely due to delays with Battle.net, Blizzard's multiplayer service.

If more publishers and developers follow suit in shifting more focus to multiplayer, will the lone wolf suffer?

The addition of multiplayer to games that have relied on their single player strengths is done for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is that the game buying public has simply come to expect it as a series sequelizes and evolves. It's an oft-demanded feature from the community, even in series that tend to be strictly single-player.

While Bethesda's epic role-playing games tend to be limited to solo adventures these days, the developer has flirted with multiplayer in the past, with Howard pointing to games like The Terminator: SkyNET. But he sees the tacking on of multiplayer as a potential distraction.

"With the big RPG stuff, I think adding multiplayer distracts your efforts to put the best massive single player experience you can out there," Howard says. "I'd rather use that development time to make the core experience of being a lone hero better."

That distraction was a common concern among PlayStation 3 owners when Naughty Dog and Sony lifted the veil off Uncharted 2: Among Thieves' multiplayer features. Fans lamented that co-op and deathmatch would ill-fit the game and, worse, could detract from the solo adventures of star Nathan Drake.

"Right at the start of the development of Uncharted 2, we decided that we wanted to create a multiplayer game," explains Richard Lemarchand, co-lead designer at developer Naughty Dog. "During production, the single player and multiplayer designers sat together in the same room, and the majority of the artists, animators and other team members that worked on the multiplayer levels worked on parts of the single player game as well. This meant that the quality bar of each part of the game was constantly being inspired and raised by the other parts of the production, and that everything came together with a really cohesive feel."

Fortunately for fans of the single-player Uncharted: Drake's Fortune campaign, Naughty Dog didn't sacrifice that portion of the game at expense of adding a handful of multiplayer modes. In fact, they offered a longer single-player mode

"We had lots of reasons to [add multiplayer] — we love multiplayer games and really liked the idea of Nathan Drake's play mechanics in that context, we wanted to develop ourselves technologically in an area that we hadn't touched for a few years, and, if we're totally honest, we thought that we might see some bonus sales as a result."

That's one of the other key reasons developers add multiplayer components to their games, to ensure that a consumer looking for something to play beyond the eight to twelve hours needed to complete a solo ...

When questioned about the possibility of a dedicated gaming handheld vs a phone with multimedia functionality, Microsoft's Robbie Bach expressed his hesitation to enter either market to attendees of yesterday's.First Annual Microsoft Open House. The Entertainment and Devices division prez said, "The portable market's an interesting market ... you have to decide which direction the market is going." Rather than pursue the phone with gaming/media functionality route that Apple has taken, Bach thinks current technology simply isn't good enough yet.

"You have to decide if the dedicated devices in the portable market are going to continue to grow, or whether the phone that you get is going to get powerful enough and battery power management is going to get good enough that people are going to look at it and say 'No, I just want one device that's going to have some games on it, some music on it, some video on it.' I'm probably more biased to think that's the direction where the market is going."
Though he didn't mention an iPhone competitor or a dedicated gaming device, Bach hinted at the possibility, saying the Xbox and Zune are integrating at "a steady drumbeat." That steady drumbeat likely won't lead to much in the coming months though, as he noted, "There is a CES two years from now where people will look back and say 'Wow! Look at everything they did.'" At that point we'll only be four years from flying cars and hoverboards, so let's hope that Microsoft has some serious future stuff up its sleeves.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/07/ro...ing-for-micro/ ...

news via pspita

Yoshihiro has just released a new version of Game Decypter, the now famous program that allows you to patch the file EBOOT.bin game that, for proper operation, requiring only the firwmare 5.55. In this new release, v4.0, the coder has introduced compatibility with the 5.00M33 Custom Firmware 5.03GEN and without having to use PC programs such as the Eboot Patcher released yesterday by the coder mc707.
More to follow.

Procedure:

Quote:

- Button : Allows you to patch the games to make them compatible with CF 5.50GEN
- Button : Allows you to patch the games to make them compatible with CF 5.00M33 and 5.03GEN
UPDATE v4:
- Fixed some compatibility issues with the CF-A and 5.03GEN

download via comments ...

Andy Phifer, like many of us, faced a glowing red ring on his nonfunctional Xbox 360. Facing an RRoD warranty technicality, he sent Microsoft $100 to make necessary repairs. Things didn't go so well. Here's his story

http://gizmodo.com/5376275/insanity-...-with-red-ring ...

The Xbox 360 may be getting its own retro-themed arcade space, an environment that looks remarkably similar to the one competitor Sony offers in PlayStation Home. The above pictures come from a rumored survey hinting at an "AvatArcade."

http://kotaku.com/5376338/xbox-360-m...-avatar-arcade ...

The PSPgo launch was not without controversy, but it seems to have reinvigorated the Playstation Portable market.

Last week I checked in with Sony Computer Entertainment of America to ask how the PSPgo was impacting hardware sales and what sort of impact they were seeing on the Playstation Network.

It's had a very positive impact, Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications and Social Media for SCEA, told Kotaku today.

The launch of the download-only device has "generated strong consumer interest in the overall PSP platform and the PlayStation Network's digital content offering," he said.

In the three days following the launch of the PSPgo Seybold says that their "top retail partners" saw a 300 percent lift in PSP hardware sales compared to the same period the prior week in the U.S. Seybold says that the launch also generated a "significant increase in revenue for PlayStation Network, driven by a 200 percent lift in PSP game downloads purchased from PlayStation Store" in North America.

Sony declined to give any specific sales numbers for this story.

The platform owner did that they think the growth will continue.

"With several blockbuster games launching digitally and on UMD in the coming weeks — from LittleBigPlanet to Assassin's Creed Bloodlines —," Seybold said, "we expect this momentum to continue and look forward to a strong holiday season for both the PSPgo and PSP-3000."

Seybold's comments echo what officials in the U.K. have said, pointing to a jump in sales the week of release.

http://kotaku.com/5376508/sony-pspps...some-retailers ...

Speaking at the First Annual Microsoft Open House in Manhattan yesterday, E&D Division prez Robbie Bach danced around the issue of pricing the company's upcoming motion tech for Xbox 360. "Relative to Natal, we'll see how the pricing/costs work out," Bach said. "But I think people should expect it to be like other things: We work through the price curve, just like we have with other products."

Though muddled, Bach's comment does not suggest that Natal will hit retail costing an arm and a leg (geddit?), but rather the device's launch price will be set high enough for significant discounts to go into effect over time. Using Wii as the bad example, Bach emphasized that Nintendo's launch price and its new discounted price aren't notably different. "When you start at $249, I don't know that a [price drop to] $199 -- I don't know how much difference that's going to make in the marketplace," Bach observed. "We'll see.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/07/pr...-room-to-drop/ ...