FREE GPRS,hacking,gameschets.etc

A new product called the Wii Clip aims to make modding Wii-D2A and D2C consoles something of a 2 minute plug and play job. The Clip has one major advantage of not ruining the motherboard but there is still some handy work required and there is absolutely no guarantee of how effective this method is or will be.

Warranty firm SquareTrade has revealed more details on its widely reported 16.4% failure rate for Xbox 360 systems. They had 171 breakdowns out of a sample size of 1040 purchased warranties, which mostly consisted of Premium 360's. Sixty percent of the failures were down to RROD, but other problems included disc read errors, video card failures, hard drive freezes, power issues, and disc tray malfunctions.

The new report does note that this only tracks up to 10 months after the warranty purchase, and once a longer period of time is given, the failure rate is likely to increase. It's also worth pointing out that since Microsoft's Red Ring of Death warranty extension was introduced last July, some users may be going directly to the parent company instead.

"Our data shows that failures spike in the third month after warranty purchase but remain fairly steady after that, with only incremental drop-off until the eight month," the SquareTrade Analytics Team wrote on the blog. "This pattern is fairly consistent with all electronics failures."

SquareTrade also said its numbers don't take into account those Xbox 360 owners who bypass it altogether and take their claims directly to Microsoft, which could mean the failure rate is even higher still.

For its study, SquareTrade tracked 27 Xbox 360 Elites, 57 Cores and 956 Premiums. Out of the 171 claims reported (60 percent), 102 were general hardware failures (Red Ring of Death). Of the other 69 claims:

- 18% were disc read errors.
- 13% were video card failures.
- 13% were hard drive freezes.
- 10% were power issues.
- 7% were disc tray malfunctions.

SquareTrade said that, because the above issues are not covered under the extended Microsoft warranty, which only covers RROD, they are the more reliable figures.

Darren Waters of the BBC has confirmed that Motorstorm 2 will feature a four player split screen option, thus fixing one of the key missing features in the first game. Waters goes on to mention the game is months away from completion, but the engine looks superb and the graphics as you'd expect were very impressive.

Motorstorm 2 is due out in time for Christmas and moves the action away from the desert locale of the original. Gamers will be able to race around a lush island environment, full of interactive vegetation.

The game will feature four-player split-screen action, righting one of the obvious failings of the first game.

The title is some months away from completion but the game's engine looked rock solid and the graphics were as impressive as one would expect from one of the best-looking racing franchises.

Everything you need to know about the latest wii loader can be found on wii brew's wiki:
http://wiibrew.org/index.php?title=Twilight_Hack

The Twilight Hack works by employing a lengthly character name for the horse in the game ('Epona') in order to facilitate a stack smash. This gets triggered when talking to the man next to you when you start the savegame as he loads the name to use it in his dialog or upon entering the next zone when the game loads the horse for you to ride.

Nice work guys!

Homebrew is starting to trickle out. We have a wii mode MP3 player and a Wii SNES Emulator released recently. More to come soon, I'm sure...

All made possible by dumping ram. Kids, don't try this at home

British tabloid The Telegraph have interviewed the man behind Ninja Gaiden II, designer Tomonobu Itagaki, about the violence in Ninja Gaiden. They questioned the violent content on the game, which is yet to be rated by the BBFC, and compare it to Manhunt 2. However Itagaki has stood up for the game saying that "Violence is not about cutting an enemy into pieces or seeing a lot of blood." He believes "real violence" is about inflicting "dishonoring wounds" and that "you would really have to hate your opponent and this is not what this game or this character is about."

"Violence is not about cutting an enemy into pieces or seeing a lot of blood," he says. "That's not what real violence is." To emphasise his point, Itagaki reaches for a sheathed samurai sword mounted in his office, and holds it out in front of me.

"In the Japanese warrior tradition you would shame an opponent. A real sword expert would aim his slice at the first four fingers of his opponent's sword hand. This would cost a warrior his livelihood and someone suffering this wound would normally commit suicide rather than live without their sword hand.

"That's what I consider to be real violence," he says, replacing the sword in its mount. "It's not about lopping off limbs. It is about the relationship between you and your opponent. In order to inflict these dishonouring wounds you would really have to hate your opponent and this is not what this game or this character is about."

S60-CPC is an Amstrad CPC emulator for Symbian S60 devices.

I ported the S60 2nd edition made by Kokak to 3rd edition devices.
The porting history is somehow complicated. Quote from Kokak's site: "It's based on WIN-CPC by Ludovic Deplanque for the core emulation. The main architecture is based on those of EDoom by Peter van Sebille, a Doom Port for Symbian UIQ (which I partially ported to S60)."
I rewrote some routines, ported from EMame some more, and now have something working! I also added qwerty and multitap input.

Current Version: 0.01

What's New
V0.01
Ported to S60 3rd edition.
Multitap emulation.
Now works from phone memory or MMC.
Rom and disk files moved to \Data\s60cpc
Rewrote blit routines for newer resolutions.
"No rotation" option added.

Not working / planned
Sound.
Program Icon.
Qwerty keyboard.
On Nokia E90 the emulator doesn't start.
Download files directly from nvg. (maybe)
Better front-end.

Download
Amstrad CPC emulator for Symbian S60v3