Due to StrmnNrmn jumping back into the scene,

I hereby announce that I will be continuing my work with Daedalus Spiff Up (That is, if there are still GFX issues) and hopefully with some sort of partnership with StrmnNrmn.

Getting the games GFX right is a priority to me, I am willing to donate time and money into this project (including buying N64 games to make sure games GFX are exactly the same for super gaming experience)

Its been a shock to me, and I am at work, glued to my seat, eagerly waiting for lunch so i can go to the Pawn Brokers to pick up some more N64 carts for testing.

Cheers

Wally

P.S Also will be doing a compat list ...

via pspfanboy

The fine folks over at Game Watch have put up some new screens from the Final Fantasy PSP rendition. The screens show combat, a cinema scene and the screen above. The game is scheduled to hit Japan April 19th, though no US date has been set yet. It's looking very nice considering, but I think the main deciding factor in these releases will be the price point. Will you be buying these releases and what Final Fantasy number would be your dream port to PSP?

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via pspfanboy

It's one of our most wanted Dream Games on the system: God of War. But is it actually happening? According to a Spanish website, MeriStation, Ready At Dawn may be working on a portable continuation of the revered franchise. Ready At Dawn is famous for their work on Daxter, which is still one of the system's most technically impressive games.

While this would be exciting, take it with a grain of salt. However, to add fuel to the debate, I'll reveal that a few weeks ago, I too received a tip about God of War on PSP. Is it really coming? ...

via IGN

Despite being around for almost two years now, the PSP has seen a serious shortage of original RPGs (most games in the genre have been cross-platform ports or resurrections of older titles). Luckily for fans, that void will soon be filled when Atlus ships its original RPG, Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner to North America sometime next week. We managed to get hands-on time with the finished version earlier today, and so far we've seem some interesting things.

Designed by Atlus co-founder and Shin Megami Tensei master Cozy Okada, Jewel Summoner is a stark contrast from the RPG that you'd expect it to be. Given Megaten's history, you'd expect that Okada would move his formula of frequent battles and demonic storylines into this new franchise as well, but that's actually not the case. Monster Kingdom is, in fact, quite the opposite of Shin Megami Tensei in its scope -- that is, it's chalked full of dialogue and a more traditional fantasy plot with a much lower encounter rate than your typical role-player.


The narrative itself seems like it could become fascinating. It follows the adventures of a young "Abomination" hunter named Vice. Driven by anger over the murder of his mother (who was killed by a winged creature several years ago), Vice takes various slaying jobs all over the kingdom in an effort to make money and search for the beast responsible for his pain. Amazingly, Vice also proves that he has the ability to summon monsters that will do his bidding by harnessing the creature located in his mother's only remaining keepsake, a sacred gem. Usually this power is only available to "Jewel Summoners," so Vice's useful ability quickly grabs the attention of "The Order" -- a special organization that studies these magic sparklers while also training said summoners. Eventually paths cross, bad things happen all over the world, and an epic journey gets underway.

Despite its thematic differences from Shin Megami Tensei, Monster Kingdom does have similar combat elements. Your entire offensive strategy, for example, is based around the summoning of monsters with their own strengths and weaknesses. As they battle other creatures, they must use their collection of special skills to locate weak points to earn more turns and create more damage. If you've played Digital Devil Saga before, then this system should sound familiar. Other recognizable battle elements include the ability combine monsters and jewels to learn new talents and the need to seek out and add new gems (critters) as you progress.

All the elements mentioned above play out in a turn-based fashion and are fairly simple to get into. If there's one area that concerns us so far, though, it's that there hasn't been a need to truly strategize with all of our different powers. When equipped with three different characters at a time, standard attacks are usually enough to defeat most enemies without a problem. Despite the fact that we're early in the voyage, it would have been nice to see more situations where we had to use monster-specific abilities. Though again, we're near the beginning so there's definitely room for change.


But what stands out about Jewel Summoner so far? A couple of things spring to mind. Take the combat screen -- it's shown from an interesting "split window" perspective that shows enemies on one side and your heroes on the other. It's very unusual for sure. Given the PSP's widescreen presentation this perspective actually works pretty well and helps to set the game apart in the genre. Monster Kingdom's soundtrack is also very good and it has a nice mixture of up and low-tempo melodies that are among the best we've heard in quite some time. Finally, the sheer amount of conversation/ town exploration that goes on is almost daunting. Expect plenty of word balloons in the first few hours of the game.

Of course, what we really want to know is where will all of this eventually lead? Hopefully it'll take us to somewhere pleasant and rewarding. While basic and familiar, the combat is fun to execute and the monsters are definitely worth collecting. We would like to see an increase in battles, however, and see a more common need for super powers and not just swipes of the paw. Either way, we'll let you know how it turns out when we review Jewel Summoner next week.

Screens Via Comments ...

via ign

Today, during an investor conference in Orlando, Disney executives announced a name change for the company's videogame business division to Disney Interactive Studios. Disney Interactive Studios' Senior Vice President, Graham Hopper remarked, "This change reflects our focus on creativity, the weight of Disney content in our portfolio, and the enormous value consumers see in the Disney brand."

Formerly known as Buena Vista Games, Disney Interactive Studios is responsible for publishing both Disney and non-Disney branded videogame products for all of the current gaming platforms. Presumably, this change is designed to leverage the massive name recognition of the Disney brand to publisher games under the company's other strong consumer brands ABC and Touchstone. ...

Guyduke posted this news/release:

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News from DrNeo:

MK5save - savetype.sdb assitant (win/dos) by cory

Not sure how handy this will be, but I modified a different exe I had worked on previously to allow one to add ROMs easily to the save list. Various save types can be found on scorpei's wiki and in offlinelist, and in some cases with the dumper app. Otherwise it is mostly trial and error.

It's a drag and drop app, you drop your ROM's on the exe and go through each one to either add it to the list or modify the entry if it already exists. Don't worry about the src.zip in the package, it isn't necissary unless you want to modify it (compiled with msys/mingw on a windows box).

It should be pretty solid, aside from the fact the number of files you can drop at once is limited by the combined lengths of the file names. I can do 20 or so at a time with really long names.

more info: http://www.neoflash.com/forum/index....ic,3741.0.html ...

New release from douddu59


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