via Computer and Video Games


On May 16 - that's next Friday - you'll be able to pick up PS2 and Xbox 360 versions of PES 2008 on the cheap(ish).

Both iterations are going budget, you see, the Xbox 360 version to retail at £24.99 and the PS2 version at £19.99. Konami calls the trip to the bargain bin for the duo "the essential summer signing".

PES 2008 was received reasonably well by critics - well, apart from the PS3 version, which Pro Evo creator Sebass himself has admitted was "far from what we wanted". ...

via Eurogamer


A demo of much-delayed shooter Haze has now been added to the PlayStation Store.

It was added on Tuesday, actually, but we forgot to tell you. We're wearing one of those spiky punishment belts to make up for it.

The Haze demo lets you romp around that sun-drenched Salva region, described as "the only place on earth where you can blow a stranger's head off with a jolly smile".

Those smiles can be shared with up to three friends in online co-op, or offline with just one friend in ye olde splitte-screene.

Haze will be released exclusively for PS3 on 23rd May. ...

via Games Industry


Former Xbox boss and current EA Sports president Peter Moore took a swipe at an old sparring partner this week, expressing dismay at the ongoing delay of Sony's Home service for the PlayStation 3.

The EA Sports president's comments came less than 24 hours after Sony Computer Entertainment boss Kaz Hirai apologised for the latest delay to Sony's ambitious online social networking project.

Our sister site Eurogamer.net asked Moore whether he was interested in working with Home now that he was no longer a direct rival.


Home will allow PS3 users to create their own virtual avatar and living space, encouraging interaction with Sony's online community. It is now scheduled for an autumn release.

"We've been testing Home for some time and I simply feel that as great as Home currently is, it needs a little bit more time before it's ready for the wider public - something we firmly believe we can provide in the autumn," Hirai said as he explained the delay at an event in London earlier this week. ...

via Eurogamer


SCEE boss David Reeves has said there is not enough incentive for developers to work on multiple language translations during development - explaining that's why us Europeans get games after the US.

Reeves told Eurogamer he would "love to go day and date with some titles" in the two continents, but said that was only really feasible in the UK. And he thinks you might call him bias if he did that.

"Well some developers would say they can do [translations during initial development]. Talk to Ted Price at Insomniac and he builds it in at the beginning. We're trying to educate all our developers to do that but it's something that's going to take a while," Reeves told Eurogamer.

"But even if you talk to Guerrilla, Namco, Square Enix, they all do it in English to begin with and then think about localisation later. You're absolutely right, we should do it at the beginning. But they look at it like, 'How much can I get for a Dutch version of the game?'

"With PlayStation Store we could probably go in the UK almost day and date. But then what are the Germans and the French going to say to me? That I'm Anglo-centric," added Reeves.

Yes and they may use other words, too. ...

via Computer and Video Games


Rockstar has released a patch that plugs the crash-causing holes in the PS3 version of GTA IV, and has issued a statement to "apologise for the inconvenience".

The patch, now available to download directly from the internet (your PS3 will need to be connected, obviously) fixes issues related to Gamespy's servers.

According to Rockstar, it "prevents Gamespy's servers from being overloaded and therefore reduces the impact on those servers that were causing the game to stutter and lock up."

So, as well as stopping the freezing, you should also actually be able to get a game online.

Rockstar says it'll be keeping a close eye on things from here. "We continue to monitor the performance of the game both on and offline and will provide further updates as necessary," it told CVG.

"We want to assure everyone that, together with our hardware partners, we continue to strive to give our fans the best possible interactive entertainment experiences possible. This update will ensure that everyone will experience Grand Theft Auto IV the way it was intended.

"We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused."

We forgive you. ...

News/release from BassAceGold


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News from Bushing:

I have a “bitch” Wii — a Wii that I use specifically for testing out NAND flash hacks. I bought it on eBay, and it came with a broken drive — not a modchip disaster, but an actual launch-day Wii with an expired warranty. It had never been connected to the network, and had only played 4 or 5 games — so it only contained IOS9. It’s about as close to a “virgin” Wii as I ever expect to see. (I’ll refer to this often as my “ios9wii”).

Before playing, I backed up all of the contents with my Infectus. I then booted a PAL copy of Mario Kart. It recognized the disc, and told me it needed to install an update. It started to update, but never finished — after about 30 minutes, I decided it was probably a lost cause, and power-cycled it. I was greeted with this, a slight variation on a theme:

I then dumped the flash again (90 mins), and then flashed back to the original dump (6 hours ). We can now compare the two to see what happened.

This may not be the best comparison possible, since so many other changes happened between IOS9 and IOS36 — if I need to, I’ll pick a different route to brick.

The easiest way to start is by extracting the contents of each dump — before and after — with Segher’s zestig utility. Then, we compare the two. We get:

There are so many new files in the mkart dump because it installed all of the new versions of IOS. Also, in the process, it moved some files (e.g. config.data). Titles 1-2 (System Menu), 1-100 (BC) and 1-101 (MIOS) were upgraded. These also placed files in /shared1.

We can safely ignore the WC24 stuff. We can also ignore the added tmds and tickets for the new IOS versions, and all the files associated with the upgrades for 1-2, 1-100, 1-101. The title directory for 48414b50 has no data or contents. The /tmp files are interesting, because it shows we were in the middle of an operation — more on that later.

It’s getting late and I’m tired, so I will have to continue this later. However, I do have some goodies for those of you that want to dig into this yourselves:

ios9wii dump skeleton (zip file)
mkart-bricked directory skeleton (zip file)

(Note, the above archives have some of the “content” files removed to avoid legal issues and to save on bandwidth. They aren’t relevant to this discussion, anyway.)

I’d welcome any theories as to what the specific problem is, based on the contents of those two zip files.

Here are the files I will be talking about tomorrow — take a look and see what useful data you can extract from them:
ios9_fs_metadatabin.bz2
mkart_fs_metadatabin.bz2
mkart-sffs.zip

Full details and files etc --> http://hackmii.com/2008/05/autopsy-o...io-kart-brick/ ...

News from Bushing:

Just a quick post on my way to bed:



I did some hacking around, and was able to get amoxiflash to build under XP. I’ve posted a binary for Windows here: amoxiflash-win32-02. In order to run it, you will also need to install the libusb-win32 filter from here: libusb-win32 filter driver

Of course, the source is included there (for what I’m calling “Version v0.2″), and you can compile it under Mac OS X and Linux, too! I’ve tested it a bit under Windows, but I make no promises. On my MacBook Pro using VMWare and XP, it seems to run at about half speed under Windows as compared to natively under OS X. Ideas for improving the speed would be greatly appreciated.

http://hackmii.com/2008/05/amoxiflash-binary-for-win32/ ...