News/release from Poison


Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

Jap site TGBus have taken the newly released PSP Slim to pieces and posted a massive amount of photos on their website.

More details ...

Nervegas has released a new version of his Nes Emulator for the iPhone:


Download Here ...

via allabout ngage

Nokia's Go Play event in London on the 29th and 30th of August brought with it a string of important revelations including new devices (the N81, N81 8GB, N95 8GB, 5310 and 5610) and new services (Ovi, Nokia Music Store and the Next Gen N-Gage platform). As our name suggests, All About N-Gage is going to concentrate on the Next Gen N-Gage announcements, but if you want coverage of the other stuff you ought to visit our sister site All About Symbian.

A while back we published an article over on AAS about the mistakes Nokia made with the original generation N-Gage, and how these could be corrected by the Next Gen Platform. Now Nokia has revealed its hand, at least a bit more, by revealing some of the platform's compatible phones and launch games. What do we make of all this?

Games
The Next Gen launch line-up announced by Nokia at Go Play was fairly impressive. There was a large number of games (23 specific titles plus four other publishers who haven't yet announced titles, so at least 27 confirmed games in total) and the games were spread across a wide range of genres and audiences:

- Hardcore gamers received things like Brothers In Arms, Asphalt 3 and One.

- Casual gamers were served by titles such as Mile High Pinball, Midnight Pool 3D and Block Breaker Deluxe.

- Online gamers found three online multiplayer titles at launch including Pro Series Golf, Snakes Subsonic and Hooked On: Creatures Of The Deep.

- New gamers have various titles such as Dogz (a Nintendogs clone), Brain Challenge (a Brain Training clone) and Sims 2 Pets to tempt them.

Most genres are catered for: arcade, 3D shooter, 2D shooter, card and board games, racing, online, puzzle, simulation, sports, fighting. A few genres were conspicuous by their absence however, especially RPGs, strategy and adventure games. The lack of RPG and strategy genres is particularly curious as Nokia themselves published some of the best portable strategy and RPG games ever made on the original gen N-Gage, with titles such as Pathway To Glory and Rifts receiving extremely positive reviews, even from websites which generally disliked the N-Gage. We shall have to wait and see if these gaps are filled between now and the launch.

Overall though, an excellent start for Nokia, especially when you consider that there are many games yet to be revealed, and there may be more publishers who join the platform between now and the launch in November. On the day that Next Gen N-Gage goes live, there may be as many as 30 or 40 games available or imminent, compared to around a dozen when the original N-Gage launched.

Phones
One issue above all else seems cause confusion when discussing Next Gen N-Gage: there's still a misconception, even among many technology journalists, that Next Gen N-Gage is a console-like standalone device. It isn't of course, it's a platform which is being made available on a number of Symbian S60 3rd Edition smartphones. Indeed the original N-Gage was itself technically just an S60 1st Edition smartphone with a horizontal layout, it contained no gaming-specific hardware or software at all, and Nokia could have made that into a general platform across other S60 1st Edition smartphones (many argue they should have).

The following phones were announced as being compatible with Next Gen N-Gage games: Nokia N73, N81, N81 8GB, N93, N93i, N95 and N95 8GB. Nokia also said they would be adding more phones to this list over time, although it's unclear whether this will include any more current models. It could be that the list will only expand as Nokia releases new S60 3rd Edition models.

As All About Symbian's Ewan Spence pointed out, from a technical standpoint the presence of the relatively old N73 on the list means that virtually ANY of the dozens of current S60 3rd Edition smartphones should be capable of running the new games. It therefore seems to be a deliberate (and hopefully temporary) decision on Nokia's part to exclude the vast majority of current S60 3rd Edition smartphone models from the Next Gen platform, which is very strange indeed. Why throw away potential customers? Why keep the userbase smaller than it needs to be? Why does an N73 owner get to use the platform when an N76 owner doesn't? What about all the popular non-Nseries S60 3rd Edition devices like the Nokia 6120 and 6110?

Whatever Nokia does, this discrimination between models should gradually fade away if Next Gen N-Gage compatibility becomes a standard feature on most or all future S60 models. The platform may gradually grow and grow into something with a userbase of tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions (S60 phones as a whole have now sold well over 100 million in total, and their sales are growing at an ever-faster rate).

"But people hate N-Gage, right? Why is Nokia even bothering? N-Gage sucks..."
Perhaps Nokia's most difficult task is trying to give the Next Gen N-Gage a good reputation in the gaming world. Rightly or wrongly, the original N-Gage wasn't just criticised but openly made fun of by most gaming journalists and gamers, sometimes even shop ...

Sam Fisher posted this news:

I finally got round to updating Boomshine2x yesterday. Now it has some new optimisations to increase speed slightly and reduce slowdown in the later levels, and a new type of shapes, with its own scoreboard that can be selected from the options menu. You can cycle through the different scoreboard on the high scores screen using L and R.

Download Here ...

Fangorn has released a new version of the port of Mame to the Tapwave Zodiac

Heres whats new:

ROM directory is now configurable in the launcher
Performance boost for many graphics drivers. CPS1 games have a big boost from this tuning with smoother framerate changes.
Added simpsons support, woohoo!
Added parodious and aliens support
bombjack graphics driver tuning, near full speed now with Hi sound.
Added artwork for Vector games

Download Here ...

BlueTunes is a program that will allow you to use the Nintendo remote (Wiimote) as a remote control for your computer music library (Windows only). Using bluetooth technology, the Wiimote will allow you to control your iTunes collection from 50 feet away. Walls and floors pose no problem at all. Even the Wiimote's motion sensing is utilized - shake the Wiimote to the right and the next track is played. Best of all, the BlueTunes software is completely free. You will need to purchase a Wiimote if you don't already have one (a Nintendo Wii is not needed) and a bluetooth transceiver (if your computer isn't already bluetooth enabled).

http://home.comcast.net/~bluetunes/ ...

via joystiq

If you or a loved one have been thinking of trading that glitchy Xbox 360 console for one of the newer HDMI-equipped models with the (thus far) more reliable Zephyr motherboard, you should be aware of what isn't included in this offering. While the premium experience of the Xbox 360 Elite nets you that 120GB hard drive and "elite" black casing, it also buys you an HDMI cable and an "audio adapter connector" that extracts either stereo or digital audio out of the box, if you're not into the whole HDMI audio thing.

There are two solutions for those of you with external stereo systems that don't support HDMI: 1) Buy the $50 HDMI cable with adapter or 2) switch your HDTV's audio setting to reroute audio from the internal speakers out to the stereo, as described by Joe Hutsko. If your setup requires the $50 adapter (with HDMI cable!), you can either consider the Elite and its massive hard drive for only $50 more or just hit eBay for someone else's leftovers. Just sayin'. ...

via engadget

The New York Post is reporting that Apple's September 5th dog and pony show is set to usher in the age of iTunes as ringtone-management software for iPhone. Apparently the rumored service will see iTunes able to convert any song into a ringtone -- for a fee, of course -- and you'll even have the ability to dictate which portion of the song becomes the tone. The offering will also include the ability to use previously purchased tunes as ringtones, and we're hoping your own music in iTunes, too. We're feeling this is long overdue, but can assume that Apple could have been in conversation with the labels to sort out the financials of all this magic. Watch this space next week for more news on pricing and availability -- if indeed, it actually pans out. ...