Success HK have posted the news of the release of Kirby Canvas Curse US ver for the DS, heres some info and shots etc:

Kirby: Canvas Curse delivers classic Kirby action with a fun twist. Using the stylus to control Kirby's movements is surprisingly intuitive, and the new control scheme provides many unique gameplay challenges. The rainbow paths you draw guide Kirby through the game, but they also can protect Kirby from falling icicles, lasers, cannon blasts and other hazards. In addition to drawing paths, the stylus can also be used to stun enemies, destroy barriers, detonate bombs and much more. Each of the game's seven worlds is divided into three stages, and each stage holds three hidden medals. Some are easy to find, while others are either well-hidden or heavily protected. You don't need to find these medals to complete the game, but the medals you recover can be traded in to unlock special features like new ink colors for the paths you draw with the stylus.
Get rolling! Kirby's been turned into a ball, so your rainbow paths are the only way he can find power-ups and reach the gates of each world. Draw loops to make him speed up, make ramps to jump danger, and draw walls to block laser beams and cannon blasts!
Be a copycat! Touch enemies to stun them, then tap Kirby to dash into them and copy their abilities. Turn into Wheel Kirby, Fire Kirby, Stone Kirby, and many more!
More modes than you can swallow! Try tough challenges in all seven worlds, take on bosses in unique battles, or play mini-games. ...

New Super Mario Bros heralds the long-awaited return of Nintendo's much-loved Super Mario Bros series, which first appeared on the company's NES console 20 years ago. And, as the shots on the right show, it should provide fans with a heart-warming trip down 8-bit memory lane.

The game will offer players a traditional 2D platforming experience, while also adding some 3D elements into the mix. The DS touch screen will be exploited, although currently this only stretches to being used as a score board and inventory control.

A two-player wireless mode will give players the chance to compete against each other, with one player taking the role of Mario and the other controlling Luigi as they race head-to-head through one of three levels.

Let's keep those retro fingers crossed that New Super Mario Bros will be as good as we all want it to be.

New Super Mario Bros will be released for DS in winter 2005 ...

DC France have posted some great screenshots of a new Homebrew shootem up called Drill, the site also has a movie of it to download too. More information here --> http://www.dc-france.com/ ...

The Nintendo DS is making its way to China under the title IQue DS. This version will be basically the same but will use Chinese text. Also, the IQue DS will not be a flash download based device like the original IQue.

Games announced for the iQue DS include:
Polarium
Wario Ware: Touched
Nintendogs
Super Mario 64 DS
Yoshi Touch and Go
Band Brothers ...

segadreamcaster over at www.OnlineConsoles.com

MAXIMUM POOL BACK ONLINE AS OF 17th JUNE 2005

Well amazingly, I started this thread on Monday 13th June 2005 to hopefully make some progress into getting this game back online, little did I know that just 4 days later, the thread would have completed its task...totally amazing.......

In basic terms, when maximum pool saves to the VMU, it includes a list of server addresses that were originally used for the DC to connect to the servers and calls upon these everytime you go online, however these changed at somepoint since the release of the game, so of course the DC was now calling on the wrong addresses, which mean the meeting room showed up as empty. Tino had a good idea that these servers were listed in the VMU save and knew what the current server addresses were due to his experience with the PC version of the game and so was able to edit the Dreamcast's save file using a hex editor so that the Dreamcast version was now calling the correct servers.

Full Thread

well done to Tino, Blast, Maddmaxx, Moi, Lordnikon and segadreamcaster for working this out ...

whats the deal with the officially licensed wireless xbox controllers?...
how many 3rd party companies have an official license?
anyone recommend a 3rd party wireless controller?
do 3rd party wireless controllers damage your system?
have there ever been evidence of any wireless controller harming your system (goes for any 3rd party controller for any system)

tried to make the questions as "to-the-point" as possible...

any help on these questions would be greatly appreciated


EDIT: found this info on this site: http://www.epinions.com/content_1493016708

...does this apply for the officially licensed controllers made for systems now?...could there be other reasons that 3rd party controllers would damage a console? ...

Good news for potential Revolution buyers, bad news for GameCube owners. Speaking with tech Web site Wired News, Nintendo creative spark plug Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that the next platform game featuring the company's iconic plumber will not be coming to the GameCube.


When asked by the online tech journal about the fate of the fabled "Mario 128" (working title), Miyamoto said, "We think we want [Mario 128] on Revolution... The Mario team can't create too many games at the same time, so they're concentrating on the Revolution."

The buzz on a proper sequel to the Nintendo 64's Mario 64 began back at 2000's Spaceworld, when Miyamoto showed a tech demo (link below) for Mario 128. The demo was meant to show off the capabilities of the GameCube, then code-named "Dolphin," and featured 128 Marios prancing about the screen simultaneously.

Mario 128's existence appears to have gone the way of Bigfoot and Nessie--it's out there in some form, but it's more in faith than concrete proof. According to the interview, Miyamoto and Nintendo are still waiting for the "fundamental idea that's going to drive the next 3-D Mario game."

One of those "fundamental ideas" could very well be determined by the Revolution's supersecret controllers, which have been rumored to involve everything from stress-ball-like squeezing sensitivity to gyroscopes.

In regards to the controllers, Miyamoto told Wired News, "Because the user interface is going to drive the Revolution software design, that's what's going to make our software stand out. Nobody else is going to be able to do what we do with next-generation game software. So, I can't reveal anything. It's under wraps because it's the big gun." ...

As rumours surrounding the the Nintendo Revolution controller continue to fly around the net, Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that the Japanese giant is keeping the design under wraps for fear of plagiarism by rivals.

In an interview with Wired News, Miyamoto says: "Nintendo is always trying to be on the forefront of control innovations, like the analog stick, rumble or wireless. As soon as these are available, our competitors snatch them up.

"Because the user interface is going to drive the Revolution software design, that's what's going to make our software stand out. Nobody else is going to be able to do what we do with next-generation game software.

"So, I can't reveal anything. It's under wraps because it's the big gun."

Miyamoto went on to confirm that Mario's next 3D adventure will appear on Nintendo's next-gen console rather than the GameCube. "The Mario team can't create too many games at the same time, so they're still concentrating on the Revolution."

He added that the team has yet to finish work on the initial game concept: "It's still floating around. We're searching for that fundamental idea that's going to drive the next 3D Mario game, but we're not sure when that's going to jump out at us. We're doing lots of tests with small groups."

But Mario fans have always got New Super Mario Bros DS to look forward to before Mario 128 arrives. Miyamoto says that the team working on it is led by Takashi Tezuka and Toshihiko Nakago, who've long worked on the Mario and Zelda series respectively.

"I jump in from time to time, so it's really close to the original Mario team members," he says, which might explain why the game will see Mario going back to his 2D roots.

"When Mario went 3D, there were a lot of new things that Mario could do and that the player could experience. But moving from the side-scrolling game that everybody is used to into a full 3D environment, the game design process became more difficult."

"With the DS we wanted a game that uses cutting-edge technology - you're using wireless gameplay for two-player simultaneous Mario - but also has gone back to the roots of the series to be a game that anybody can pick up because it's very familiar."

"We wanted a Mario game that everybody can be excited to play," Miyamoto adds.

Miyamoto also hits back at critics who have accused him of hypocrisy for commenting on the unoriginality of modern games, stating: "Nintendo's always been about challenging itself to come up with interesting things."

"People from outside might say that we make many different games with Mario every year, or a lot of Zelda games. But within those titles are always new and interesting challenges. We have the luxury of being both profitable and creative."

The full interview, which also reveals Miyamoto's views on Nintendogs, hardcore vs casual gamers and the state of the Japanese games industry, can be found on Wired.com. ...

Microsoft has signed a deal with NVIDIA to license the company's technology in order to enable backwards compatibility in the Xbox 360, which uses an ATI graphics chipset that isn't natively compatible with Xbox titles.

The question of how to get Xbox 360 - which uses a radically different architecture to the Xbox - to play Xbox titles has been a major problem for Microsoft, and it's rumoured that backwards compatibility wasn't actually part of the original specification of the console.

Indeed, it wasn't even confirmed that the system would be able to play Xbox games until E3 this year, when Microsoft announced that "best-selling" Xbox titles would work on the Xbox 360 - a curious piece of double-speak which the software giant refused to clarify fully.

Following the announcement, sources close to the company indicated that a form of recompilation (known as "transcompilation") would be required to make Xbox games work on the 360, with the resulting patched executables being shipped on the system's hard drive for certain popular games, and patched versions of other games gradually being added over the Xbox Live network.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz at the time, Microsoft Xbox PR manager Michael Wolf denied that games would need to be recompiled, and assured us that the company had no intention of charging for updates to the backward compatibility service. However, he refused to answer further questions about how the process will work.

Now a report on US website 1up confirms that Microsoft has in fact licensed parts of NVIDIA's technology from the Xbox to allow it to emulate the chipset in Xbox 360, a deal which will see Microsoft continuing to make payments to NVIDIA for several years.

The company apparently plans to emulate the Xbox' Intel CPU on the 360's multiple IBM PowerPC cores, and will now be able to emulate the NVIDIA chip to some extent on the ATI graphics chip in the 360 - but it would appear that many games will still not work without some modification.

Patches for some popular games - or "emulation profiles" - will ship on the Xbox hard drive, and those games will as a result work out of the box. Microsoft is expected to work to get emulation working for other games over time, and will distribute further emulation profiles over the Xbox Live service.

What's not clear is how users without Xbox Live access - around 90 per cent of users on the current generation Xbox, for reference - will be able to update those profiles, and whether Microsoft will ever get the full range of Xbox software working on the new console.

Wolf declined to answer the first of those questions when we put it to him last month, but was more positive on the second issue, telling us that "our goal is to make ALL Xbox games play on Xbox 360, and at launch we'll have a selection of the top selling that will be tested and confirmed to work." ...