Friday, February 17, 2006

DS Lite nudies!

Okay JeuxFrance put up a article about the La Nintendo DS Lite jouable au Japon or the Nintendo DS Lite playable in Japan. :) Evidently they got the heads up from this article at Kotaku. The Kotaku article gives a nice "hands on" review, but check out the photos of the Lite kiosk at JeuxFrance.com. Looks like the screen is going to have the same Wow! factor as comparing the backlit SP, to the old non-backlit SP.

DS Lite kiosk demoing Princess Peach

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Time for some DS luvin!

Well evidently there was a DS conference yesterday (in Japan I'm assuming...) where they announced a web browser for the DS! Yes, you read that right Opera will be making their browser available for the Nintendo DS. It will come on a DS cart not a firmware upgrade, and you can read more about it here.


Some of the other tidbits gathered were that Tetris DS will be a ***get title in Japan (1,000y=about $9.00) less than a normal Nintendo release. So hopefully when it's released here it may hit around $24.99, which I would definitely pick up. They also announced a May release date of the new Super Mario Bros. in Japan.

Yesterday, of course was Valentine's Day. If you connected to Nintendo WFC in Animal Crossing you got a letter from Nintendo containing a "Lovely Loveseat" part of the Lovely furniture collection. It wasn't anything rare or cool like the Coin we got a while back, but a nice touch. You also received a new bulletin Board entry from Nintendo in your town square.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

360 Graphics overload... and #%!@ E3!

Well this has been quite a weekend for Xbox 360 news, first a developer put up a PC<->360 comparison video for Far Cry he said...
Hey Guys,

Want to see how the 360 version looks like ?
Look at this short video : http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=22950

It is suppose to be "internal use only" but I guess it's not a big deal to release it.
We made it to benchmark our version versus the PC one (with all the settings at the maximum).

The link he posted has died already, but you can find the video here or here. Check out the water, simply amazing!

Hot on the heels of that, EA released some in-game footage of Battlefield 360 that is awesome as well.

There is also supposed to be a Nintey Nine Nights demo released on the LIVE Marketplace around March 1st in Japan. Of course you should already have your LIVE Silver accounts set up for Japan, and Europe exclusive content shouldn't you?


On a sad note I just got my admission denial back from E3 2006. :(

They screwed the retail sector this year by distributing "buyer's passes" to each corporation (I'm assuming GameStop, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, etc...) that the home office people are to give out at their discretion. (So... Miklotov if your reading this I really need some help! :) I will try to pursue some other avenues, and hopefully come up with something.

Friday, February 10, 2006

DS goodness aplenty...

Well there's been more details on the DS lite coming in... Nintendo Japan has announced the official launch colors (Crystal White, Ice Blue, and Enamel Navy) that will be available in Japan on 3/2/06. Looks like the preorders are going for ~$169 on most of the import sites, personally I like the looks of that Enamel Navy one. :) I also like how they colored the d-pad, and other buttons to match the console color. The only thing that bothers me is my hands get kinda cramped from playing Animal Crossing for extended periods I wonder if the smaller form factor is going to make that worse? That was my big peeve with the GBA SP too, I preferred the grip on the original GBA so much better.

At the D.I.C.E. conference in Las Vegas big N announced some other juicy upcoming DS goodness. Retailers across the US will get Download Stations in a few weeks, (these will be like the ones currently in Japan, and the one set up last year at E3). The first DS Download Service stations will include free demos of Tetris DS (Yay!), Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, Mario Kart DS, Meteos, True Swing Golf and Pokemon Trozei, along with a Metroid Prime Hunters video clip.

The news article goes on to announce that Metroid Prime Hunters will have voice chat built-in so that players can talk to each other before/after wi-fi matches.