『 No homebrew for you! 』

It's official. Nintendo DSi does NOT support any presently sold flash devices. Not that anyone thought otherwise, but there always is that small spark off hope. Well, that spark of hope just got pissed on by Nintendo and their new firmware.

I guess this means back to the drawing board for flash cart manufacturers. They have a new challange ahead of them now. Make a flash device that will allow to run Nintendo DS games, but hopefully also feature support for dedicated Nintendo DSi apps and games.


Piracy is of course the driving force behind the flash cart market, but with backup devices comes the ability to run homebrew software that I'm very fond of. I wasn't planning on getting a DSi for at least a year, and I hope that something developes until then.

『 Happy New Year 2008? 』

Ok, so I've managed to screw something up while messing with some of the blog settings and this old entry from New Years Eve 2008 got moved up the list somehow. But hey, at least now I can write something here, since I never bothered to do it back then, and all this entry contained were the pictures.


I probably never wrote anything, because the two WonderSwan games I purchased weren't particularly exciting. I've never been a fan of slow-paced, turn based strategies and that's exactly what 信長の野望 for ワンダースワン is. Add the fact that this installment was developed for WonderSwan mono and the production cost was obviously kept low, and you have a game that will most likely gather dust for all the eternity.


Unless I change my mind when I'm in my 70's and I'll find Nobunaga's Ambition and Japan's unification through turn based war and conquest really exciting. We'll just have to wait and see and I promise to get back to you sometime after my 70th birthday to let you know.


If Nobunaga no Yabou wasn't exciting enough, I bought the special edition of 競馬予想支援ソフト 予想進化論, which is a horse race sim, or rather a betting sim. It comes with a 130 page book with the '99 race statistics and profiles of both horses and the jockeys. How exciting.


Being a collector of all things WonderSwan, I buy even the crappiest of games if the price is right. Truth be told, most of WonderSwan games are fun, but Japan for some reason likes these weird sims, gambling games and other weird titles that I just can't find exciting, and being able to read japanese doesn't help at all. A crappy game is a crappy game, and that's that.


Media Entertainment, the company behind Keiba Yosou Shien Shinkaron, is known for their "casual games" and even the booklet that I mentioned earlier contains ads for their cherry slot games for the PlayStation. They even brag about the games taking advantage of PocketStation. Oh well, two more for the collection. And of course Happy New Year 2008, Cryptic Allusion.

『 Watchmen ★ ウォッチメン 』

Three, six, nine. There's only a few short months left until Watchmen movie opens. Ever since I found out that there is going to be a movie, I was strongly against it. After all, every film has to compromise and cut out original content to make the movie fit between studio guidelines. My opinion from the start was that Watchmen can't be squeezed into a three hour feature. Now I read that the studio made the silver screen version two and a half hours, omitting thirty minutes from Snyder's original cut.


Being a Watchmen fanboy that I consider myself to be, I can't help but worry that the movie will not only spoil the whole Watchmen experience, but will also create an army of teenagers who never heard about the graphic novel, but now know all about it and claim they have read it ages ago. Not that suck things keep me up at night, but it kind of bothers me to see such things happen and I'm not surprised that Alan Moore refused to work on both V for Vendetta and Zack Snyder's latest blasphemy of a movie.


Am I planning on watching it? Yes, I am. Will I go to the movies and get the DVD afterwards? I probably will. The main concern that I have is that this movie is just another money making machine. I already know that the story of the Black Freighter will be released on a separate DVD. Being a sideplot in the graphic novel, it was a bit of extra spice that Moore had cleverly put there to give the whole Watchmen experience even more depth. Now it's merely a DVD, sold separately. Oh well, at least they shot it, right?


Another concern of mine is the amount of violence that will be shown. Despite the "R" rating that the movie recieved, I know that moviemakers have the tendency of mellowing down the more violent bits. Violence is one of the main aspects of Watchmen and is there to illustrate something. Toning it down is like putting clothes on Demi Moore in Striptease.


Even though there are only two spoken lines in the movie trailer [which you can watch by clicking on the thumbnail below], already one of them is cut down to size. Compare the frame pictured above with the following quote: "The world will look up and shout 'save us', and I'll whisper 'no'" Still being a strong line, it's a mere shadow of Rorschach's original narrative. Can this movie be good or at least decent? We'll see in a couple of months.

『 Flash Cart is Your Friend 』

Backup devices of all sorts and kinds have been a serious concern for handheld console manufacturers. Let's not kid ourselves and admit that the main reason behind these devices is software piracy. It's only natural that someone will try to make a profit by developing a quality device that will allow anyone to play pirated games without any problems. I'm not a pirate but I do buy these devices because they open a door for homebrew software and naturally, when there's a working backup solution, there's plenty of homebrew to choose from.


When it comes to Nintendo DS, there are several flash devices to choose from. I personally think the Slot 1 solutions are the most convenient ones, that's why I went with the R4, which plugs into the NDS cart slot and acts as an adapter for a MicroSD card that's plugget into it. Mine is the stansard type that supports up to 2GB of flash memory, but now you can buy R4's with support for high capacity MicroSDs.


The most common and widespread kind of homebrew are emulators and Nintendo DS allows you to emulate several platforms. One among these is Sega MegaDrive / Genesis. Emulators are fun, but even here you have to remember that emulating titles you don't actually own is illegal. On the photo above you can see JEnesis running Gunstar Heroes. The emulation is really good both when it comes to visuals and sound. Z80, YM2612 and SN76496, it's all there. Compatibility is high but unfortunately I wasn't able to run the Pier Solar demo on it, which is a bit dissapointing since even PicoDrive can do it on N-Gage and other S60 Symbian phones.


When I first heard about NeoDS, I assumed it was a fake. After all, Neo Geo is a 2D monster and even now games like Metal Slug 7, which runs natively on the DS, can't be compared with original Neo Geo quality [Metal Slug 7 is a DS and XBLA exclusive, but looking back at Metal Slug 5, the graphics were sharper and sprites considerably larger]. NeoDS can take advantage of additional RAM, so if you happend to own the Opera browser, just plug in the memory expansion into Slot 2 and the emulator will make use of that. However, even without the additional memory, NeoDS will handle basically 95% of the Neo Geo games you throw at it. This is one emulator I'm really impressed with.


Every platform capable of running decent homebrew must have its own Famicom / NES emulator, and Nintendo DS is not an exception. NesDS is far from being a perfect emulator and from what I can gather, the support is rather poor, but games are playable, even if the sound emulation is extremely limited. Let's just put it this way: Don't expect to hear FME-7, VRC7 ... in fact, even forget about the drums in Super Mario Bros. The emulator is enough to play Contra but it can't handle Ninja Gaiden III [which is my absolute favorite run 'n slash of the NES era] nor Famicom Disk System games.


GameBoy Advance generation, excluding GameBoy Micro which got stripped of the Z80 coprocessor, was the last to feature original GameBoy mono and color game support. This means that the only way to play your favorite oldies is through the means of emulation. The emulator I'm using is called LameBOY and it comes with some nice extras, one of which is the support for Super GameBoy features. In case you didn't know this, some GameBoy mono games had special features programmed into them that the Super Famicom / Super Nintendo add-on called Super GameBoy took advantage of. Via this add-on you could play your GameBoy games on the TV screen using a SF / SNES controller, but to make the mono games look better, Super GameBoy added some color to them, plus displayed a colorful frame so that the square game picture wouldn't stick out so much on a TV screen. LameBOY displays this special if one is programmed into a game.


ScummVM has been ported to most of the platforms that could handle the emulation of SCUMM engine based games. ScummVM features regular updates for over twenty different platforms ranging from Atari FreeMiNT to Wii. While PCs seem to be perfectly fit for point and click games, Nintendo DS is even better.


If you dreamt about actually clicking on the objects or characters, ScummVM is your dream that came true. The emulator has really good support, with the list of games enclosed with the distribution. It even supports mp3 files if the game originally used CD audio.


Fun with flash carts doesn't end with homebrew software and emulators. There are, of course, game ROMs to download. These are illegal and by using them, you're ripping game developers off and your recklessness results in higher software prices. Plus, you're a tool. Back on the topic though, not all officially developed content is illegal in ROM form. I'm talking about game demos. These can be downloaded via a Download Station in your area or via Wii Nintendo Channel. In both cases you can download only one game at a time and it's stored in your console's temporary memory. Once you turn your DS off, the demo is gone. However, just like regular games, kiosk and wifi demos can be dumped and run from your flash cart. There are over a hundred demos released in total and many of these have ben made into ROMs. As far as I'm concerned, these are legal and I intend to use them.


In conclusion, not all emulation is bad, not all ROMs are bad and flash carts can be used to enjoy non pirated productions. Thanks to a flash device you can listen to music, look through photos, read comic books, magazines, watch movies, watch scene demos, play homemade games and enjoy many applications like cooking timers, organizers and web browsers. The list goes on, and while you're enjoying the homebrew scene, nothing is stopping you from buying legitimate Nintendo DS games. If you like the console, buy the games.

『 Capcom vs SNK 2 EO 』

I make a habit of not updating my blog on regular basis and many of my game purchases never make it onto the site simply because I'm too lazy or the title I bought is just not that interesting. I wanted however to mention Capcom vs SNK 2 EO because it's a kickass game and it's still a great fighter.


As you can see on the photos, I got the Xbox version. I already own the DreamCast one, but when I found this copy in a bargain bin, brand new and shrink-wrapped with a 4 USD pricetag, I just bought it and I'm amazed it was still there and that noone got to it before me. Oh well, their loss is of course my gain.


Capcom vs SNK 2 was released on a number of platforms. First were the arcades where it ran from a GD-rom disc on the Naomi system board. Just a few months after the arcade premiere, both DreamCast and PlayStation 2 got their ports, with the DC one being a fan favorite.


It took some time before the EO version appeared on GameCube and Xbox, but when it finally arrived, it came with improvements and the title feature, EO-ism. This version fixed the roll cancel glitch present in all of the previous ports and added the new "Extreme Offence / Easy Operation" mode to join the other "isms". EO-ism allowed the player to use the second analogue stick [for the Xbox] or the C stick [for the GameCube] to perform special attacks.


While this feature was something nobody really cared for, Xbox version brought two more improvements that I welcomed with a big smile on my face: Online play and progressive scan. Xbox is well known for it's online capabilities and good support so it's nice to see that a quality fighting game got an online mode. Progressive scan in 480p boosts the visuals, making the Xbox version a great buy. Xbox releases of Capcom and SNK games are often frowned upon for no reason. They are however fairly cheap so if you own an Xbox, get yourself an arcade stick and buy some Capcom and SNK fighters, or better yet, buy Capcom versus SNK 2. And if you want to see Yuri Sakazaki naked, check out the video linked below. If you don't have a Nico Nico Douga account, read this tutorial to find out how to get one.