Towards Mecca

I’m not telling you which, but I’m working on one of those four games

Gameloft Set to Develop For WiiWare

March 27th, 2008
Gameloft®, a leading developer and publisher of video games for mobile phones, announced today it is developing a strong line-up for WiiWareTM, Nintendo’s new downloadable game service for the Wii systemTM.

With games set to launch in Europe, Unites States and Japan, Gameloft is planning a diverse line-up that consists of Block Breaker Deluxe, Midnight Pool, Midnight Bowling and TV Show King. Each game will either be completely original to WiiWare or vastly enhanced and redone for the platform. In addition, all the games are created to complement the Wii RemoteTM, a motion sensing controller which allows the player to interact with the screen.

“We are delighted to be working with Nintendo on the WiiWare,” said Michel Guillemot, president of Gameloft. “We have great confidence in the games that we are developing, several of which include award winning established brands and original creations specifically for WiiWare.”

Block Breaker Deluxe is the best selling brick-breaking game, over 8 million copies sold, that has been vastly enhanced and improved for WiiWare. The longest, most feature-rich brick-breaker game created, the game is easy to navigate by moving the Wii Remote left and right to shift the pad and connect with the ball.

TV Show King is an original game only available on WiiWare. The game takes on the role of a mock game show testing players general knowledge.

Midnight Pool and Midnight Bowling, are top sellers on the mobile platform, but have been completely redone with new features for WiiWare. For Midnight Pool, the Wii Remote is used as a cue and in Midnight Bowling it substitutes for the bowling motion.

Gameloft is a Nintendo Official Publisher in Europe and the United States .

I’ve already written about how I’ve discovered, and even re-discovered MUGEN but something about playing it on my relatively small 19-inch monitor kept me from finishing my dream MUGEN compilation. Well, all that’s about to change as I have just heard news that MUGEN is alive and well on the X-Box.

Ok, so this is old news to some, but the discovery that this was indeed true, and not a rumor, nearly knocked me off my seat! Well, after fumbling with it for a couple of days, I have to admit I have still not been able to successfully get it to run. Still, with so many people out there on forums complaining that it took them forever to successfully have it running, I am not losing hope. Especially since some people have even got it to boot directly from a DVD!

Before you ask, this version of MUGEN works with the original X-Box and not the X-Box 360. Also, no versions have been made for either the Dreamcast or the PS2/PS3’s. Before the announcement, I was trying to find an older PC with TV out just for MUGEN! I was that consumed with the idea before my wife made it clear to me how ridiculous that would have looked in the middle of our living room I still wanted to do it but I didn’t feel like storming through the inevitable resistance so I gave up on that.

I think the only thing that’s not working for me is the swap file. Once I figure that out, I’ll be on my way to Fighting Game Bliss! If you want to give it a try yourself, you can download an Xmugen full package from the usual places. Anyone out there got it working?

Apparently, the next firmware update (2.20) is going to see improvements to the PS3 Browser’s page loading times! Also, for all of us who wanted to save certain files onto our console but weren’t able to from the browser, this issue will be resolved too!

As I had stated in a previous post, the PS3’s browser had really let me down. Hopefully this will elevate it to the level of being usable! I would have also liked to see an upgrade to the newest version of flash so that I can watch trailers on gametrailers.com. Who knows, maybe it’ll be part of the next update?

Today, I finished reading David Gemmell’s Echoes of the Great Song for the second time. I read a lot of books but there are very few that I’ve read more than once. I’m a huge fan of the late David Gemmell as I have read nearly all of his books and Echoes is by far my favorite of his works and one of my favorite books of all time.

If you like Heroic Fantasy, you’ll love this book. The characters are unique, the story is superbly written, and the world is both believable and surreal at once. There’s really not much more to say … go out and buy it!

Yesterday, while going through my collection of SNES Roms, I stumbled on a surprising discovery! Master Chief, the hero of the famous Halo video game Trilogy, was a character on an SNES game!

Ok, so it’s not really him. You have to admit that he shares a striking resemblance with the Spartan we all know!

In reality, he’s just a goon in the SNES Spiderman game.

I’ve had a lot of people complaining since I’ve installed that decal on the hood of my car (see previous post) about why I chose the Decepticons instead of the Autobots.

The main argument of those Autobots lovers is, since it’s a CAR, it had to be an Autobot. Hell no! The Decepticons have several wheeled vehicles in their line-up and the Autobots have got several ‘non-cars’ in theirs so that’s not a very valid argument (You know what? Next time I own an F-15 I’ll put an Autobot decal on it, how ’bout that?)

The other argument is about the overall ‘coolness’ of the Autobots VS the Decepticons. Coolness? Oh come on! All the Autobots have this side of cool is Optimus Prime. Pretty much all of the rest are lame (come on, their 2 mini-vans don’t even have a freaking head!) with the possible exception of Jazz (the cartoon one, not the ‘I-got-2-lines-then-I-die‘ movie one) since Jetfire/Skyfire doesn’t count. Yeah he is probably the coolest of all Transformer BUT he is a rip-off from Macross and he was, after all, originally a Decepticon).

Now the Decepticons are something else: they’ve got 2 guns, several jet fighters, some construction vehicles (and what can be manlier than construction?) that can turn into a giant, they’ve got a guy that can turn into BOTH a tank AND a fighter jet for crying out loud. They even have a freaking tape deck that can throw a panther and birds of prey at you, how can you be any cooler than that?

And don’t get started about the good guy / bad guy thing. The ONLY freaking transformer that can create (empty) Energon cubes is Soundwave (SOUNDWAVE damn it, this has to be the coolest name ever!) how can the Autobots even survive then? I’ll tell you how: they keep the cubes that the Decepticons create by stealing energy from humans. So I ask you, who is more evil: the guy who steals from you, or the guy who took back your money from the bully but spent it himself instead of giving it back to you?

You fail me yet again, Starscream!

My good friend Jean-Francois just sent me this picture of his car! For the people out there who think they have everything figured out, this isn’t photoshopped, it’s a stencil he bought off e-Bay. I’m so jealous it’s not even funny

I don’t get it. A console that’s more powerful than most computers out there can’t handle browsing? How is it that the PS3 browser can run out of system memory if I have more than a few webpages open at once? What friggin sense does that make?

Many sites, like digg.com, don’t even work. As soon as I go on the site, it just loads a white page replacing it. No copy/paste feature? That should be unheard of! You can’t even select text! And how come it doesn’t already come with the most recent version of flash. I can watch Youtube videos but I can’t see anything on gametrailers.com.

And why is it so damned slow? I have high speed cable internet at 10 Mbps that flies on both my PC and my laptop, why does the PS3 browser feel like I’m on 9600 dialup? Sometimes it’s so slow I think it froze! Other times, it’s actually frozen and I have to reboot.

I understand that this browser is better than the Wii one, and I know that the XBox 360 doesn’t even have a browser, but how hard would it have been for Sony to just put Firefox or Opera on the PS3 instead of making a useless crappy browser of their own? I’ve had a better experience browsing on cell phones and pocket PC’s and that just ain’t right!

Inspired by the many dedications to video game characters I’ve seen around, like this one of Mario, I’ve decided to make my own dedication to my favorite Street Fighter character: Ken (a.k.a. Ken Masters) from the Street Fighter video games/movies/comics.

Most of the pictures are beautifully drawn while others make me want to reconsider him as my favorite character . Do you recognize where each picture is from?

I tried my hand at making a Joe Madureira tribute PS3 theme and I’m actually very happy with the result! For those who don’t know, Joe Madureira is one of the best comic book artists ever and definitely my favorite.

To name a few comics, he’s worked on X-Men, Street-Fighter, and the Ultimates ! Not to mention a short-lived series of his own creation called Battle Chasers. He’s also made a lot of concept art for video games. The man is a living legend and is one of the biggest reasons I draw today.

Anyhow, if you’d like to download and use the theme, you can do so here directly from your PS3’s browser! I’d really appreciate if you would also give my theme a 5 star vote if you like it

The theme contains 10 joe mad wallpapers and many custom icons. Here’s a preview: