Gaming

Two Special Edition DS Lite Bundles Coming this Holiday Season

According to a leaked Black Friday ad from Sears, Nintendo has a couple of special-edition DS Lite’s coming this holiday season. First is a gold, Triforce-embossed version that comes bundled with Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass which should appeal to our general readership. Next is a metallic pink version with a paw print on it…

Looks like the only rhythm game Red Octane cares about anymore is Guitar Hero, as they’ve categorically denied making new dance pads for the 360—or any other system: “There are no immediate plans to create new dance pads outside of the current products available.” [Kotaku] http://kotaku.com/gaming/ddumps/red-octane-has-no-plans-for-xbox-360-ddr-pads-316220.php

Gamepark GP2X F-200 DivX/Xvid-Playing Handheld With Emulator Now Available

The crazy GP2X F-200 Gamepark handheld is available today for $169 on Play-Asia. What’s so special about this handheld? For one, it’s running Linux and can play back DivX, XVid and MPEG4 at 30FPS, or TV-Out your movies that are encoded at 720×480. For two, it supports emulation, which means you can load your old…

Nintendo’s First Half Profit Nearly Triples, Money Printers Can’t Keep Up

No surprises here, really. Profits for Nintendo’s first fiscal half were ¥132.42 billion ($1.16 billion) on sales of ¥694.80 billion ($6.09 billion), destroying the same half last year’s profit of ¥54.35 billion on ¥298.82 billion in sales. Nintendo’s feeling pretty good, obviously, raising forecasted sales of the Wii this fiscal year by one million to…

Venn Diagram Helps Your Mom Pick Up the Right PS3 for Christmas

Don’t know which PS3 to pick up this holiday season, awash in a sea of different, confusing models? Chris Kohler’s whipped up a Venn diagram to help you separate the wheat from the chaff, the backward-compatible from the gimped. An Xbox 360 version is undoubtedly right around the corner. [Game Life via BB Gadgets] https://gizmodo.com/sony-planning-price-drop-for-80gb-ps3-new-399-40gb-mo-298067

Game Bank is Your One-Stop Shop for Chinese Videogame Knockoffs

Game Bank is a small, crowded shop in Akihabara that sells video game equipment. But you won’t find any PS3s or Xbox 360s here. No, it specializes in Chinese knockoffs. So if you’re looking for a Dr. Boy, an XB 360, a TriStar 64, or accessories for your Nintendo Wü, this is the place to…

Playstation Eye Now Available

We have been telling you about the impending release of the Playstation Eye for some time now, but for those of you who have trouble remembering what month we are currently in, much less the release date of highly anticipated gaming peripherals, you will be happy to know that the Playstation Eye is now available.…

PS3 Firmware v1.94 to Add DualShock3 Support?

According to Shacknews, the latest PS3 software update, v1.94, will add support for the upcoming DualShock3 rumble controller. The update will also include Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, the first PS3 game to take advantage of DualShock3. Apparently the rumble feature can be toggled by pressing the PS button in the middle of…

The State of Free Cellphone Games: Dead?

Slate’s running a pretty solid piece bemoaning the state of mobile gaming, in particular, the genocide of free games like Tetris and Snake as developers realized “consumers aren’t going to buy the cow when they can play Virtual Milkmaid for free. It’s obvious where this line of reasoning leads: Goodbye Tetris, hello $7 Tetris.” The…

Nintendo’s Perrin Kaplan on Apple Comparisons and Revolving Door Hardware

MTV’s gaming blog, Multiplayer, strikes again, this time chatting up Nintendo’s VP of Marketing, Perrin Kaplan. One of the questions tossed her way was about the creep of Apple comparisons post-Wii—white aesthetics, marketing, rapid hardware turnover and so on. She basically bats it down, aside from mutual love from their customers: I don’t know that…

Park To Play Lets You Use Your Car as a Gaming Joystick

Esoteric Dutch blog Fresh Creation went to the Holland Innovation fair in, surprise, the Netherlands, and they found this crazy little — well, big, actually — thing. Park To Play lets you play games — Pong, Tetris, Pinball, Space Invaders etc — with your car. Yep, you didn’t hear wrong. Part art installation, part crazy,…

Panasonic PT-AX200E Home Cinema Projector Features “Game Mode”

Panasonic’s new PT-AX200E Home Cinema Projector is putting (wealthy) gamers in the forefront thanks to a “Game Mode” that promises a “life sized” experience. In Game Mode, signal processing is optimized to HD game content, which supposedly reduces response time from 15ms to 5ms. Panasonic also claims that the mode enhances gradation in saturated areas…

Pelican PS3 Charging Station Stores, Electrifies Two Controllers

Keeping our PS3 controller charged is such a pain that we always have to plug it in whenever we’re watching Blu-ray movies. Pelican’s Charge and Store eliminates lazy charging syndrome by providing both a charger and a stand, so you can keep your gaming area organized at the same time. The retail price is $29,…

Panoramic Mecha Simulator Arcade Game is Networked, Awesome

It may look like a decompression chamber, but Senjo No Kizuna is a networked arcade game in which you pilot a Mecha against other players. The game, developed by Banpresto, is, according to notre ami de Akihabara who gave it a spin, pretty damn good. Regular players can log their gaming history (scores, weapons, etc)…

Guitar Hero “Arcade Syle” Cabinet: Rock Out in Style

A simple but brilliant design—build an arcade style cabinet for Guitar Hero with a real Marshall cab acting as the base, a marquee and speakers on the top, and connect it to a hacked PS2 with every Guitar Hero game loaded on the hard drive. Then go ahead and deck out a couple of guitar…

D-Box GP-200 Racing Game Seat Costs a Fortune

Although it’s not the ultimate racing setup, this D-Box GP-200 definitely has the sitting and steering part of the equation solved. The bucket seat has three hydraulic jacks, five speakers, and is attached to a steering column that looks more solid than most cars built in the ’70s. However, the set only works with a…

Nintendo’s finally ending their support (read: repair) of the Nintendo Famicom (NES), as well as the Super Famicom, the N64, the Gameboy and the Gameboy Pocket in Japan. You’ll have to play those games on an emulator like the rest of us who moved past the ’90s. [itmedia via Arcade Renaissance via Kotaku] http://kotaku.com/gaming/japan/nintendo-forever-abandons-famicom-311712.php

Plugging Your PS3 Into a Surge Protector Doesn’t Void Your Warranty

A PlayStation forum poster claims that a Sony customer service rep told him his broken PS3’s warranty was voided because he plugged the console into a surge protector and not a wall socket, and that he’d have to pay $150 to fix it. When reached for comment, Sony said this wasn’t the case and that…

Acme Lunchbox Computer Features Triple 17-Inch LCD Screens

Acme classifies the LPG370TS lunchbox computer as “portable,” but when you pack three 17-inch high-res LCD screens into a briefcase style design, chances are you will need to hit the gym or buy a mule to tote this thing around. Still, having the triple screen option is great, and the Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz…

Rock Band Drum Kit Close-Up Look and Disassembly

Click to viewMTV’s Multiplayer Blog takes us on a close-up tour of the Rock Band drum kit. It’s the biggest piece of gear in the Rock Band set, so you’ll want to scope out how this thing comes apart and goes together to see if you’ve got enough room in your house to fit it…