Well not exactly, but you get the idea.  A while I told you about The PSP version of Nintendo…… I mean a PSP game called the Dog Happy Life, now Atari is getting into the act with a game called Hot PXL.  The game puts players in the control of a character called Djon and play more than 200 micro…I mean minigames.  These include stage diving, skateboarding, and trying to cross a street.  The game also promised downloadable content.  Hmm…a collection of minigames…where have I played this before?

The Dead or Alive series has never been as deep as the Soulcaliburs or the Tekkens of the 3-d fighting wolrd, but it’s interactive environments, Tag team gameplay, and it’s ‘fan service’ has always bought it a unique flavor. Dead or alive ultimate is a double package of both DOA 1 (saturn version, never before released in the US) and DOA2 (with a new intro, costumes, and backgrounds) and throws it together with online play. THis two pack is perfect for Xbox owners looking to pass the time until they pick up DOA 4 on 360.

Nintendo has started to put DS download stations in stores everywhere. Basically you just walk into a store that has one, turn on your DS and use the built in download option to download demos of games just like you would from your friend’s DS.

To find out if there’s one near you check out this store locator which lets you find all locations within 50 miles. Here in Canada it would seem that EB has cornered the market though in the US they seem to be primarily at Best Buys.

I dropped by my local EB and tried it out. Apparently the station had been there for 3 weeks which I found pretty annoying considering I’ve been to EBs a bunch of times since then without noticing. My DS saw the station as “volume 1” insinuating there would naturally be more demos to come as new games neared release. I spoke with a friendly EB employee who explained that it was just a DS sitting there with a cartridge that provided this functionality. He said their Nintendo rep would eventually come by to switch the cartridge when new demos are available. A pretty simple but engenious gimmick.

Nintendo’s customer service FAQ boasts that these stations will work within 65 feet of the source. The guy at EB said they kept it behind the cash and it worked at about a 15 foot raduis from there. Some pretty conflicting opinions there. I didn’t try to log on from the parking lot but I’d be more inclined to believe the 15 feet story as it’s just a DS sitting there. When I’d go to Best Buy to set up the display DS with the chat and hide behind the aisles sending pictures of penises to it with my DS while looking for people’s reaction I noticed that the range was in the wearabouts of 15 feet. Maybe a bit more but not 65 to be sure.

These games will stay on your DS as long as you can keep it powered. This means no turning it off and no switching to another game you’ve got in there without losing your download. Luckily it will still retain the game in sleep mode so, as long as you don’t leave it unplugged for days at a time, you should have no real problem keeping a game for long periods with a little common sense.

So go and steal games as sales people look at you hoping you’ll actually buy something for a change.

In the days before I had TechTV and G4 hadn’t even risen, let alone fell, video game programming on television was rare.
Some kind soul has uploaded a Discovery Channel special on the history of video games, one I really liked the first time I saw it. Starts with Atari and Pong and goes up until the success of Tetris, touching on the lesser known struggles of the early days of the electronic game world.

This link also provides a download option if you want to watch on your computer or iPod.

An inventive homebrew app writer has created the first online cross platform portable game.
TIC-TAC-TOE!
Ok, so the game in question ain’t exactly that exciting, but the implications of common code and compatibility for future homebrew applications are grand!
Thanks Caliongeo!

digg?

Alias and Lost creator and Mission Impossible 3 director JJ Abrams has been offically handed the reigns of Star Trek’s 11th feature film outing.
The story involves a young Kirk and Spock in Starfleet Academy. So its a prequel?
I’ll give them the befit of the doubt here, but my biggest gripes about the series following The Next Generation is taking all the action out of Federation space to the outskirts, way outside, and then into the past. Its like, we lost contact with this big universe TNG took so much care to create and only got further away the longer it went on. This movie hardly fixes that but the character credentials are all there so I won’t damn this outright. Lets hope JJ aborted Superman script is a fluke.

Remy of Remys World has given us a glimpse of even more design art for MP03 Starscream.

   

Adding fuel to the debate of whether Rumble is red like the toys or blue like in the G1 show, an image has been found off of the Wal-mart site of Alternators Rumble in robot. He features his large pistons as arms, however, it is unclear if he also has regulars arms as well. It is also of note, the chest is a clear tribute to Rumble’s original transformation as one of Soundwave’s cassettes.

I will be eagerly awaiting the blue repaint and the further debates over which should be called Rumble and which should be called Frenzy.

RIBFIR!