via Computer and Video Games


Starbreeze's Xbox 360 and PS3 Riddick 'remake' Assault on Dark Athena has slipped and will miss its planned 2007 release. Publisher, Sierra, told us that the title has now been moved to 2008.

A Sierra spokesperson was unable to give a reason for the delay, however we reckon it may have something to do with the minor ruckus that erupted over Dark Athena's content - i.e. the fact that a good portion of the content consists of the original title Escape from Butcher Bay - when the game was first announced in May.

It could well be that Sierra and Starbreeze have taken the moans to heart and are now planning additional new content beyond the Dark Athena expansion with its new story and new gameplay features, and multiplayer. But we'll have to wait and see. ...

via Computer and Video Games


Despite the ugly legal battle between Silicon Knights and Unreal Engine 3 studio Epic Games, Too Human publisher Microsoft says there's no change to its current release plans.

In an e-mail statement to CVG sister site (but just as manly) Next-Gen.biz, MS said, "regarding development of Too Human, we are still on track for a 2008 release date, as we announced most recently at E3 2007."

Then again, it's rather easy to say a game is "on track" when it doesn't have a confirmed release date, isn't it? The "2008" release window gives Epic and SK about a year and half to sort out their licensing row.

The ruckus kicked off last month when Silicon Knights served Epic with a lawsuit, claiming it was "mislead" over how complete Unreal Engine 3 code actually was. According to Silicon Knights it was forced to re-write parts of Too Human's game engine, pushing the release back significantly.

Epic has since filled a countersuit, accusing the Too Human dev of among other things, breach of contract.

We're hoping Too Human's in better shape the next time we see it, because after all this ruckus it'd be a terrible shame if it turned out to be pants. As always, we recommend keeping the popcorn at arm's reach. ...

via Eurogamer


Microsoft has remained quiet on rumours that another Halo 3 beta test is currently getting under way.

Word spread after keen-eyed Live gamers spotted others playing something called Halo 3 Epsilon, supposedly later confirmed as a new build of the title by an unhelpfully anonymous email.

According to the mysterious note, Epsilon will let you battle across six multiplayer maps, play custom games, enjoy a single co-operative campaign level, use the Forge feature and get to tinker with the full Saved Film functionality.

Unfortunately it looks as though this will be a closed affair for a select few, but with the game a little over a month away, we can quite happily wait.

Halo 3 recently became the fastest-selling pre-ordered game ever, soaring past the huge one million mark last Thursday. ...

via engadget



There's a couple of developments in Xbox land today, one official and one decidedly less so. On the latter front are some rumored new Xbox 360 bundles that French website Gamick.fr claims to have caught sight of on a Microsoft marketing site. As you can see above, the bundle (in this case for the Elite model) supposedly includes Forza 2 and Marvel Ulitmate Alliance for "free." A Premium bundle with the same games was also spotted, but there's no indication of one for the Core model. According to Gamick, the only other information about the bundles is that they were labeled as "Holiday Value Bundles." In more official Xbox news, attendees at Microsoft's Gamefest 2007 got a chance to check out Torpex Games' "Schizoid," which is the first Xbox Live Arcade game to be created with XNA Game Studio (it'll be available later this year). What's more, Microsoft also announced that the top four winners of its XNA-centered Dream-Build-Play contest will be able to have their games published on Xbox Live, although there doesn't appear to be any word on exactly when they'll be available. ...

via Eurogamer


Sony Europe has kept its lips sealed over the release date of Gran Turismo 5 in Europe, following news that the racing game is expected in Japan next July.

The target date was let slip by game creator Kazunori Yamauchi, who told Japanese magazine Famitsu he hoped to have it ready by next summer. Given that previous instalments have taken around three to four months longer to appear in Europe, it might not show up here until 2009.

But at least we'll have the Gran Turismo 5 Prologue demo to sink our teeth into sometime this year, although when exactly is still undecided - Japan will have it in October.

It will be a similar affair to the Gran Turismo HD Concept taster we were treated to in March, which let us try out the engine under the hood of the new instalment and race a spattering of cars around a single track. We expect it will also be free to download, too, when the time comes.

Unfortunately concrete details on what will be in it are scarce, but online play has been mentioned.

We'll let you know when so much as a tire squeals. ...

Wow what a busy week for the Apple Iphone, its great for those of you who have one, most of the rest of the world are still waiting to get their hands on one.

The last week has seen Nes and Mame Emulator releases/WIP News, a Port of Doom and various applications. For a new homebrew scene this is a very encouraging start and we do hope that Apple see that homebrew is good for the iPhone and not a detriment.

Viva le homebrew ...

Whether you’re feeling competitive this summer or just want to take a break and unwind, you can do both this week with the latest additions to Xbox LIVE Arcade : “Hexic 2” and “Ecco the Dolphin.” Both games will be available to download this Wednesday 15th August 2007 at 9:00 GMT.

Building upon the addictive gameplay of its predecessor, “Hexic 2” offers new special pieces, challenges, additional formations and an innovative head-to-head battle mode!

Gamers can also travel through time this Wednesday with “Ecco the Dolphin”, update of the classic undersea exploration game featuring an online leaderboard that tracks “Best Time,” and includes enhanced graphics and sound.

Hexic 2 wiil be 800 Microsoft Points and Ecco the Dolphin will be 400 Microsoft Points ...

via cooliscool

Overview:

Utility of Time is a tool that allows a user to view and edit Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask actor (.zobj) files, map files (.zmap), visually place and change actors (also known as models, or NPCs in most cases) in the loaded room, save them, and inject back into the Debug ROM, and much more. Actors are represented as cubes in place of the actor. It's open source, too.

Graphical Features:

Uses OpenGL 1.1 - 1.4 features for rendering. 1.4 compliance is not necessary but highly recommended.
WASD FPS style camera system.
Full polygon mesh support (geometry).
Lacks texture support in releases, though allows RAW texture dumping.
Vertex colors used for primitive coloring and shading (most maps look quite nice ).
Per-Vertex alphas.

Release 0.83.1 Changes

+ Self contained through tabs. No more map mod dialog, everything you need is all in tabs (hide or show by clicking the button with the "<" or ">" character to the left of the window). Tabs are "Graphics", "Map", and "Map Continued". Graphics is limited right now, but will contain more in the future. Map options are the same as the old map mod dialog.
+ Dumping of actor information to a txt file ("Map" tab).
+ Manual vertex entry through the "Graphics" tab.
+ In 0.83, the picking engine would very rarely fail due to the objects drawn in the back buffer being the same scale as those shown on screen. Fixed.
+ Tool Sensitivity slider in the status bar. Should help actor or vertex positioning on larger scale models or maps (ie, box.zobj and spot00_room_0.zmap, respectively).
+ Press T to cycle through textures. I know, it's a silly thing to do, but at least you can see what textures are in use until I have time to fully rewrite the renderer. RGBA textures are red only because VB .net's overflow checking is like a morman mother who hates bit shifting (OoT uses 16bpp RGBAs, which OpenGL can support, but most GPUs don't like them, so I have to convert them to 32bpp). Will most likely be fixed next version.
+ FPS is now part of the on screen display (top right corner).
+ If zav.ini is not present or is null (first time setup), the setup dialog's cancel button will be disabled.

Download Binary

Download Source Code ...

via xbox scene

FuseX is a Xbox port of FUSE, the Free Unix Spectrum Emulator, and will allow you to play ZX Spectrum software on your Xbox games console.
What's new/fixed:
* NEW: Zip support.
* NEW: Enabled graphics filters.
* NEW: Emulator settings loading/saving.
* NEW: Settings now saved per game (joystick setting and joypad config).
* NEW: Tape fast-fwd loading option.
* NEW: Tape control menu.
* NEW: Subdirectory browsing in file list menu.
* NEW: Re-Mappable buttons for emulator actions.
* NEW: Nice splashscreen and dashboard icon. [Thanks Antiriad!]
* NEW: Savestate slots now have an info panel to tell you what is in each slot.
* NEW: Snaps can be stored anywhere on the HD instead of just within FuseX dir.
* NEW: Wrote some proper documentation.
* NEW: Added more user-tweakable settings for RZX demo mode.
* CHANGED: UI is a bit nicer and more user friendly.
* CHANGED: Virtual keyboard looks nicer and can be moved with the analog stick.
* CHANGED: General optimizations. Should be less sluggish now.
* CHANGED: Joypad mappings menu is more user-friendly.
* FIXED: RZX loading _much_ faster.
* FIXED: RZX memory leak.
* FIXED: Big RZX files should now load.
* FIXED: RZX compatibility improved.
* FIXED: Sound stuttering (note: fix only works on PAL compatible boxes).
* FIXED: Vertical and horizontal line running through centre of the screen.
* FIXED: Lots of bugs.

Official Site: http://fusex.sourceforge.net/ ...