The music track from first level was released.

Download it here. ...

There are certain events of 2007 that industry folks would just as soon not ever hear about again--so here they are...

#9 – This Heading Guaranteed 100% Free of Wii Puns

Nintendo has had a tremendous year. Everything it touches turns to gold, it seems. Yet, they also have made a critical miscalculation: they have undersupplied the Wii hardware for over a year. If we take their production throttling denials at face value, the only reasonable conclusion is that they simply haven't believed their own success. Seriously, what else could it be?

One's imagination runs wild imagining Nintendo's twisted logic:

First Quarter '07: Sold 1 million Wii systems in the U.S. and six different titles in the top 20 charts. We could increase production, but what if this is just left over demand from the holiday?

Second Quarter '07: Sold yet another million Wii systems in the U.S. and another six titles in the top 20 charts. Still, the trolls on NeoGAF say the Wii is just a fad, so better not increase production just yet.

Third Quarter '07: Sure, we sold another 1.3 million Wii systems, but what if we make another million and no one buys them? What are we doing to do with all that extra stock? We'll be ruined! Keep production where it is.

Fourth Quarter '07: Oh shi... People are still buying it? MAKE AS MANY AS YOU CAN AND DO IT NOW!

Now an analyst has revealed a price for Nintendo's commercial conservatism: $1.3 billion lost this holiday due to Wii shortages. Damn, that stings.

If it's any consolation, Nintendo, your former tormentor – Sony – will probably also lose $1.3 billion this holiday, but for precisely the opposite reason...

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?op...1&limitstart=0 ...

via xbox scene

It's starting to get a real tradition to see the xbox-linux/free60 guys at the Chaos Communication Congress at the Berliner Congress Center in Berlin, Germany. The 24th edition of the congress (25C3) started yesterday (Thursday), and later today (Friday) Felix Domke (alias Tmbinc) and Michael Steil (alias Mist) will hold their 1-hour "Console Hacking 2007" lecture.

The title for this year is "Why Silicon-Based Security is still that hard: Deconstructing Xbox 360 Security", so I guess they will not only explain and talk about the Hypervisor Exploit (remember: it was introduced 'anonymously' last year during one of the 'Lightning Talks' at 23C3 by the 'hoodie guy' ) but also about the Timing Attack downgrade-hack. To know if there will also be some new stuff introduced we'll have to wait till after the 1-hour lecture that will take place at 4pm CET.

Here's the introduction of their lecture:

Other console related lectures at 24C3:
* 'Playstation Portable Cracking' by TyRaNiD on December 30th 5:15pm CET
* 'Console Hacking: State of the Wii' by Ben Byer+others - 14th in line of the 'Lightning Talks' (5-minute talks) ...

There are certain events of 2007 that industry folks would just as soon not ever hear about again--so here they are...

#10 - The Non-Elite Elite
"Now, for only $20 shy of the price of a PlayStation 3 you could own a wireless-less, HD-DVD-less system with a larger hard drive and that thunderous Xbox 360 fan noise. To its credit, it did have a sweet black paint job..."

#7 - Surprise! Zombies!
"The corporate VP of Microsoft Game Studios, Shane Kim, had a secret. Each morning he chuckled quietly to himself, knowing it would make a huge splash at E3 in 2007. Then a Game Informer interview ruined it. You can't really improve on the original, so just read for yourself"

#1 - Red Ink of Death
"With a year's headstart and exclusive hits like Gears of War, Microsoft started 2007 looking every bit the confident market leader they'd longed to be since 2001. Beneath that sanguine exterior, however, lurked a horrible, horrible truth: "Things break."
So said Microsoft's Peter "Antoinnette" Moore of increasingly prevalent Xbox 360 hardware failure - known colloquially as the Red Ring of Death - in a May 2007 in an interview with Mike Antonucci of The Mercury News. Within two months Microsoft publicly acknowledged finding several design flaws which were killing systems and took a $1 billion charge to extend consumer warranties. That charge alone cut Microsoft's profit for the quarter by 25%."

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?op...1&limitstart=0 ...

Phoebius has released a new game for the PSP called Sonic 4 and judging by the screenshot above it looks pretty nifty too.

Heres the translated release info:


Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

Hellcat posted this update to his Pandora Installer for 3.xx kernels

Heres whats new:


Key features
Prepare (repartition and format) your memstick for Pandora
(to reserve space for the MS IPL)
since revision 3 you can also choose the name after format (see below)
Make normal battery to Pandora one
Make Pandora battery to normal one
Install a full 1.50 to the memstick, including the Pandora
Backup current battery serial to file
Restore battery serial from file
(if trying to restore from a backupfile without one beeing present,
the default serial will simply be used instead)

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments
via hellcat ...

Nightfox posted this update of his remake of an old MSX game:


Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

The format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD continues, but now the participants are really getting feisty. Both camps have been particularly aggressive this holiday season, offering a variety of discounts, free movies, and other incentives to convince consumers to back a particular format. The intense competition seems to have rubbed off on Internet fanboys, leading to Internet arguments that are even more ferocious than usual (which is saying something). As part of the animosity, the official Blu-ray site was hacked this weekend, and an online forum had to shut down its format discussion section.

The Blu-ray site modifications occured last Friday, when visitors to the Blu-ray site were redirected to "The Look and Sound of Perfect," the website for the HD DVD format operated by the North American HD DVD Promotional Group (including Universal Studios, HP, and Intel).

The redirection seems to have been fixed quickly, but it was no doubt a bit disconcerting to the Blu-ray camp while it lasted. There's no word yet on who was responsible for the mischief, although speculators have proposed various scenarios, including the HD DVD Group paying off a hacker to do the job. That last one seems particularly improbable, but we've heard stranger stories before. Either way, this hack wasn't a particularly malicious or damaging one, but it is representative of just how heated the format wars have become.

The acrimony has spilled over to audio-visual forums, too, providing plenty of examples of the heated discourse about Blu-ray and HD DVD that has been clogging the tubes lately. Plenty of name-calling is sprinkled in with discussions of the merits of the two formats, and a little misinformation tends to further feed the flames. The AVS Forum is a particularly popular venue for home theater discussion, and the arguments there apparently got so hot that the site temporarily closed its Blu-ray and HD DVD discussion areas in November.

They're back now, but with a pretty extensive set of rules and liberal warnings against format arguments posted all over. Again, some format forums closing isn't a huge deal, but the fact that the discussion is getting this heated in the first place is a good indicator of just how passionate both sides are about their formats.

Sadly, there's no end in sight to the Blu-ray/HD DVD war, but hopefully things will at least calm down a bit as the holiday season winds down and people are buying fewer movies and players. If not, we're going to keep seeing the format wars splashed across the web as the hacks and the arguments continue. Happy new year!

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...en-uglier.html ...

Newly released at Play Asia:



features
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The Famitsu Wave is Japan's No.1 selling video game magazine. It features all the latest video game news and pictures from Japan's upcoming video games.

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http://www.play-asia.com/SOap-23-83-...j-70-2fbf.html ...