via palgn
Spanish Site Meristation is reporting (in Spanish, but don't worry - we did the translation) that the Opera Browser will be coming to the Wii on December 23, the only catch being that it will be in Beta Form.

To cover ourselves, there's also a slight possibility that the Beatles will be performing at the Opera on December 23, but we're pretty sure it's the former bit of news. The beta version will have flash but it seems that we'll be waiting until March for the final version of the browser, which will be available for free until June. ...

A new version of the homebrew game 'Super Mario War for PC and Xbox has been released.

What's new:

* Game Graphics Pack, Menu Graphics Pack, and Sound Pack Support
* Graphics in PNG format
* Better menu system
* Support for map browsing by thumbnails
* New background/music system
-Includes support for any number of arbitrarily-named BGs
-Map makers may freely pick music categories in editor
-Music can now be in MP3 format
-Music packs for 1.6 will no longer work! (But they can be upgraded)
* Fully customizable controls, including joystick support
* Game engine improved with support for carryable stuff
* Support for Tournament Tours
* Multiple A.I. difficulty settings
* New interaction blocks
-Blue throwable blocks
-ON/OFF blocks and switches (4 colors)
* Increased interaction block limit (shouldn't crash with too many bricks now)
* Players now gradually slow down on ice (there is now a little friction)
* 11 new items
-Shells (4 types - green, red, spiny, and buzzy)
-2UP, 3UP, and 5UP mushrooms
-MOd Block
-Feather
-Mystery Mushroom
-Boomerang (includes three trajectory options - flat, SMB3, and Zelda)
* Item switch which lets you change which items appear and at what frequencies
* Bullet Bills are now color-coded and properly attribute kills
-If two Bullet Bills of different colors collide, they explode
-This can kill anyone, including the owners of the B.B.s
-Bullet Bills can also now kill enemies in Stomp mode
-If a player uses two B.B.s in succession, their effects now overlap
* 3 new modes
-Star
-Capture The Flag
-King Of The Hill
* Goomba mode expanded into Stomp mode, which now includes Cheep-Cheeps and Koopas
-Enemies in Stomp mode now also burn up by falling (just like players)
* Fire Frenzy, Hammer, and Bob-Omb modes combined into Frenzy mode
-Also includes 9 more cards
-You can still configure it so that it plays like the old modes
* Eggs in Yoshi's Eggs now have to be manually carried by players
-Can kick eggs to Yoshi and still get the points
* Jumping an already-owned player in Owned mode is now worth a 5-point bonus
-Chicken kill bonus is also 5 points now
-Tag death penalty also 5 points
* Podoboos and Bowser Fireballs added to Survival mode
* Most modes now have extended scoring options (i.e. you can set the goal higher)
-Point-based modes still only go to 1000 but you can select by 50s now
-As a result, 1UPs in point-based modes are now only worth 10 points
* Free Play mode removed (replaced by infinite limit in all modes)
* New configurable options available in most modes (Too many to list here - see Readme for more info)
* Random skin selection (pick a skin at random)
* "Random" skin selection (pick a skin at random at the beginning of each game)
* Skins are now alphabetized regardless of creator, like maps
* New option to turn off the bonus wheel after a tournament
* New option to clear currently stored powerups
* Moving platforms in maps (and test function in editor)
* Ability to filter maps based on several attributes and custom lists
* Ability to browse maps by thumbs
* Expanded and better-organized tileset
* Ability to limit or increase frames per second
* Respawn time now settable in half-seconds
* Configurable off-screen arrow time and item respawn rate
* Option to turn off warp locks
* Option to put the crown on the leader in-game (not just on the HUD)
* Lots of new projectile options (fireball life, shell life, etc.)
* New race lap and game-start sounds
* New chicken skin
* POW and MOd now animated
* Players are now animated on the team select screen
* Skin names are displayed on the team select screen
* "Ready" icon on team select screen
* At the end of the game, losers are shown with their aerial death sprite
* Pause button can now terminate the game when someone has won
* Lots of extra eyecandy added to lots of things
* Item no-spawn zones in editor (prevent coins, eggs, bases, etc. from spawning)
* Can now choose tile type for each tile on the map in editor
* Map screenshot option in editor
* Default map eyecandy set to None (was clouds)
* Tons of new maps and skins, and new and fixed BGs (thanks, forum regulars!)
* Skin error checking (skins of the wrong size or color depth won't work now)
* The game now detects no sound card and will default sound/music to off
* There is now an option to change music tracks instead of looping one repeatedly
* Spawning code greatly improved - players/items shouldn't spawn in blocks/walls now
* Losts of Bugfixes (full list)
* Much-improved Readme
* Various minor bugfixes and whatnot
* And probably something else I forgot, because Two52 put in so much new stuff (yay)

More info --> http://smw.72dpiarmy.com ...

MoonShell is a multimedia player for Nintendo DS (Lite) consoles. It has support for DPG video files, MP3/NSF audio files and viewing JPG/Jpeg/BMP/PNG (non progressive) files, it also has support for TXT textfiles. MoonShell supports dualscreens and it has full support for the touch screen. MoonShell has plug-in system that allows to add any compatible plug-in just by copying the plug-in files to the appropriate folder. MoonShell also comes with several kind of useful plug-ins.

Heres whats new:


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weltall has released the final version of CWCheat for DevHook v0.51+ with 3.XX emulation.

Cheat any PSP game through raw-relative hex codes much like Action Replay or Game Shark. Various installation methods are detailed inside README.txt.

Changes from beta to final include:

* included a new installer for windows (.net) which installs automatically cwcheat and if required the database
* re-added the menu opening delay
* re-hooked clock functions to devhook
* added cpu clock 300mhz, bus clock 150mhz
* now devhook version is showed again

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

Via toledoblade

“I love this game. I love all the PS3 games and the remote controls and cables. I think I have died and gone to heaven. I am so glad I traded my $1,500 Rolex that my parents bought me when I graduated from Harvard Medical School. After all, a watch is just a silly watch, but a PS3 ...”
— Comment on Amazon.com

That’s probably a joke.

I hope that’s a joke.

No, it has to be: the writer goes on to explain that since his November acquisition of the Holy Grail of the holiday season, a Sony PlayStation 3, his girlfriend has left him and his parents are convinced he’s becoming mentally ill. His obsession is overboard but he doesn’t care because he has a PS3. I believed it until the part with the girlfriend.

He has a PS3 and a girlfriend?

Sounds unlikely.

You’d break it off if you had a PS3.

Not to propagate stereotypes or anything; some of the best gamers I know are women, and you’d be surprised at the number of serious-minded professionals who are not full-blown nerds but play video games regularly and have a life and maintain perspective. The thing is, I’ve been tooling around on the PS3 for a few weeks now and find it hard to believe any serious gamer — if they took the console out of the box and spent quality time with it, putting aside the hours they devoted to waiting in the rain to buy it — would declare their world utterly, irrevocably rocked by the PS3. Frankly, it’s been easy to get up and turn my back on it.

At $600, too easy.

Last month, a handful of days before Thanksgiving, Sony and Nintendo debuted the next-generation of video game consoles, the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii (pronounced “weee”). Perhaps you saw the young men lined up outside stores, staring ahead patiently for hours like cats waiting for their feeding. You probably heard about the hold-ups and the gunshots. You thought it was nuts. But seeing how the video game business is a $30 billion a year industry and the movies (the next most profitable entertainment business) are expected to take in about $9 billion in North American box office, this was no minor thing.

But, that’s the problem.

PS3 glows with self-satisfaction — it believes its own hype.

It’s as powerful as promised, but so far, it’s not lovable, and not the must-have all the frenzy suggests. I’ll get to the reasons in a minute, but in short: All the silicon in Silicon Valley does not in itself make for a good time. You can’t exactly write PS3 off yet. It’s in its early days. The launch games have been disappointing but better titles will be released. A game will come along that allows the console to live up to its hype, and the online service will eventually feel seamless (I’m assuming). But at the moment, this thing is unwelcoming and expensive and not exactly mind-blowing, and feels symptomatic of an industry that has ignored casual gamers for a decade and lost perspective. Yes, I had fun with the PS3 — not $600 worth.

And isn’t fun the point?

Oddly, it hasn’t been lately.

If you played video games years ago but got scared off, it was probably the growing complexity of the games, the overloaded controllers and combinations of buttons you had to master before you could do anything — like any art, a faction of the audience took on an insulated clubhouse mentality and headed out of the mainstream.

Generally though, when this happens (avant-garde jazz, experimental fiction, etc.) the faction remains a faction. With video games, a young male demographic took over and demanded depth, and while games became more sophisticated, something was lost. Games became intimidating, not fun, and the game industry became lost in its own navel. With the PS3, once you’ve gotten past the sticker shock, you realize the industry has created the silicon equivalent of belly-button lint:

An overpriced system offering the promise of a more sophisticated game experience that has not quite worked out what sophistication should look like.

Sound but no fury
The machine itself is as shiny and smooth and curvaceous as a new sports car (and nearly as heavy — reinforce that entertainment center). Pop the hood and you find a high-definition Blu-Ray DVD drive, a wireless Internet network, the graphics card of a high-end personal computer, and a processor chip so overwhelmingly powerful it will bench press your kids and kill your dog with its bare hands.

But Blu-Ray? Unless you’re in the market for a high-definition DVD player, who cares? And if you are, and you purchase a PS3 but the hi-def HD DVD format takes off instead — you’re essentially stuck with a high-end gaming unit attached to a Betamax. (And talk about stingy. Despite being one of the leading supporters of Blu-Ray, Sony doesn’t even include the hi-def cable to connect the PS3 to a hi-def TV.)

Games look amazing on it (though only a few are worth $60). Sound reaches every inch of the room. There are ridiculous oversights (that I’ll get to in a minute) you can ignore when the presentation is this dazzling.

So why did I keep thinking, “Is that it? This is next-generation?”

It’s been five years since the debut of the Sony PlayStation2 and the Microsoft Xbox — then, ...

Back in May Elebits was showing signs of Katamari-like appeal. Seven months later the final product certainly stands out among Wii's early titles. A classic? Nah, but Elebits is one of the better available showcases of Wii's motion-driven potential; plus it dares to experiment with the WiiConnect24 service.

If you've already plowed through Twilight Princess and surgery ain't your bag, Elebits should be a strong candidate for your attention, even if it's not a lasting experience.

IGN (83/100) - "Elebits begins with a misstep in the form of a poorly presented storyline ... Once the game starts proper, though, Elebits shines ... The game dishes out a surprising level of hidden strategy, too, due in large to a clever balance between the electrified items in the stages and the ability of your capturing gun ... but the real stars of Elebits are the control and, of course, the physics ... This title is destined for sleeper status."

GameSpot (75/200) - "Functionally [Elebits is] a first-person shooter for younger audiences ... You'll bust through the game's story mode in under six hours and fail maybe one or two stages during the entire course of the mode ... Though the game is simple, there's an oddly compelling quality to the action."

Game Informer (70/100) - "[Elebits] taps into the same vein of quirky fun as titles like Katamari Damacy, but isn't as endearing ... With such a simple concept, it is really up to the control scheme and the Wii remote to salvage the experience, and it is only partly successful ... I couldn't shake the feeling that the game's big draw – total power over the surrounding world – will one day just be a small part of a much more involving and full-featured title...probably starring Jedi."

via joystiq ...

via kotaku

As we've seen, some people will do anything to sell a PS3 on eBay, including pimping themselves and or their girlfriends/wives. Now the internet is clouded with a bunch of bizarre photos of people doing unmentionable things with PS3s, many of which I hope to never see again.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on the photo), someone has actually gone to the trouble of rounding up a bunch of the PS3 auction photos that were being sold by scantily clad girls as spokesmodels. This bevy of beauties includes saucy wenches of all kinds using their feminine wiles to entice us in to purchasing their pricey wares. We get white trash gals, boobs, goth-dom chicks, boobs, bikini babes, boobs and even side boob!

Screens via Comments ...

via insertcredit

From Game Watch we learn that Hori will release two new arcade sticks for the PlayStation 3 on the 8th of february, both of them sequels to their two most successful lines of sticks. The Fighting Stick 3 (pictured on the left) is the low-end choice and will have an MSRP of 5,229 yen, while the Real Arcade Pro 3 is the be-all end-all choice, with an MSRP of 8,379 yen.

This news comes as a big surprise, considering there's already a PS3 stick on the horizon: Sega's Virtua Stick High Grade. Now three brand-new sticks for a console with only two upcoming arcade games (Virtua Fighter 5 and Power Smash 3) may be overkill, but don't forget that all of them will be USB, which means you'll be able to use them for MAME and general emulation purposes, without the need for lag-inducing adaptors. Personally, I am sold. The problem now is figuring out which one(s) to pick up.

Screens via Comments ...

via engadget

Will the myriad of modded consoles from Ben Heckendorn never cease? (We sure hope not.) The man who brought us the NES Micro, N64p, PPS2, Phoenix 2600, (not to mention an ongoing series of how-tos for Engadget) has finally updated his November 2005 hack of the Atari 800. That laptop, which combined a screen and the guts of the 1980s gaming system, has now been brought into the modern age (read: 2006) with a new case, a cleaner keyboard (with round keys!), and a breakout cartridge case. We particularly admire the Atari logo on the top, and Ben's usual attention to detail and a clean, efficient, design. Still, we can't wait for the day that Ben's talents get noticed by Apple, Dell, or another big-name laptop maker, so that more of the masses can be showered with his talent -- but then again, perhaps it's better that we keep him to ourselves. Check out a few more snaps on the next page, and then head over to benheck.com for his always thorough and entertaining build diary...

More Info Here ...