As a CAG, I know that I can find the best deals to video games around. It’s as simple as doing a quick search, and sometimes easier. Still, something is missing from the front lines.  Homebrew and free games.  Where are they?  It’s true that while you can find mention of these in the forums and in the CAG blogs, they still are never officially mentioned. I understand that there may not be much (if any) money to be made from mentioning these, and far from all of these games are worth mentioning.  But don’t you think it may hinder your cred? And we all know Cheapy is a gangsta with a capital glock.

And all I ask is that he either mention these on his blog, or in the CAGcast. Especially when some of these games such as Still Alive DS, or Guitar Fun, deserve the attention. While Cheapy does need to think about money, Wombat feels like the one who would stand up to the little guy, yet he doesn’t seem to want to talk about these games either.  Ive asked them on seperate occasions, and even asked the community in the CAG blog awhile back, and they dont seem to want to answer. Is it the stigma that surrounds homebrew?  Is it the fact that it just doesn’t interest them? (though if it interests CAGs, that shouldn’t matter, right?) Or is it something else all together?

So now I’m adressing it. And asking them, where’s the dedication to the truely cheap?

We decide to shoot for a weekly podcast, negating everything we said last week… oh well. Poot and I discuss Dragon Ball Origins, Old Commodore 64 games, and how much we hate Sony.

*In our haste to get the podcast up, I omitted a very special thanks to Waffle Slayer from Juggalo Gamers, thanks again ninja!*

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Show notes in the full post.
Study Says Wii Controls Don’t Contribute to Aggression
New Wii update targets modded save files, alters user agreement
Kingdom Hearts DSi at least kind of real
Nintendo confident core will be satisfied in 2009
Nintendo Plans to Build Online Community Says Reggie Fils-Aime
Mgestyk Fusion marries Wiimote and PC in interesting new way
Chrono Trigger piracy checks already beaten
Hardware Hackers Make Some DSi Flash Progress [Acekard]
Is Sony ripping off costume entries for LittleBigPlanet?
Sony-Owned Columbia Pictures Pulls Movies From Xbox Netflix
Guitar Hero Arcade: Some More Details, Some More Pics [Guitar Hero]
Frets On Fire For The Blind [Frets On Fire]
Rumor: EA/GameStop weighing Season Pass to cheaper games

Opening music: Brentalfloss’ Megaman 3 With Lyrics
Break music by Poot on the KORG DS-10
Closing music main theme from ATF for the Commodore 64

First off, it doesn’t seem its an improbability that you could create some sort of proprietary archiving method. Which then, the game could take and extract, separating the files, and allowing you to play each song separately, right? Apparently I’m wrong, or these guys just didn’t think about it. Obviously you’d need some way to “unzip” the archive, and if that isn’t included on the disk, why waste your time with having people download a whole program. Oh, wait, here’s a good reason; ’cause people want these songs, and you’ll make even more on your billions and billions of dollars. Idiots.

I mean, I believe you can already do “zipping”, or at least “unzipping” on the Wii via homebrew. Right? Anyone know for sure? If I’m wrong I stand corrected. And if so, I pray someone out there writes a program just to prove I’m right. But, lets say this sort of thing can’t be done. Just for the sake of argument. Guess since its a hardware limitation, we’re SOL, yeah? No, there’s another work around.

You sell them in packs, but you download each song individually. Duh. God, easiest work around ever. Everyone is still happy. But I guess when it comes to third party developers for the Wii, we’ll always get the ones that can’t think outside of the box. This is whats wrong with the Wii, the developers can’t pull their heads out of their asses.

Yeah, I know I’m being an asshole right now. So sue me. Does anyone disagree? Is this not what they should be doing? Seriously…

Inaugural episode of the 8-Bit Show; Poot and I bring you our impressions of Ninja Town, Mortal Kombat Fatalities, Chrono Trigger for the DS, and go on a rant about fanboys.

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Show notes in the full post.

Questions for Reggie Fils-Aime
Poot and his hilarious DS picture
Opening and break music by Poot on the KORG DS-10, closing music: Brentalfloss’ Super Mario World

First up: Guitar Hero World Tour. The problem with World Tour is the under-sensitive drum kits. So you really have to beat the shit out of them to get them to read. Not good, but Activision and RedOctane have come up with a semi-solution. A 10MB PC application, which features a simple interface, will allow you to assign a sensitivity level from 1-20 for each pad and the pedal. Thats good and all, but you’ll also need a MIDI to USB cable. I know that not a lot of people have one, but there is a silver lining for you; the program will ship with a free MIDI to USB cable! As for Mac users, you’re out of luck. The only official word I can give you is to buy/borrow a PC. But, here’s an idea. How about an update that’ll allow the tuning in the game, or at least from the system OS, and for those who don’t have internet, simply replace their instruments.
On a side note for PS3 GH:WT. Your drums will not work with Rock Band 1 or 2. Here is a link to see an instrument compatibility chart.

The Xbox 360 is close to launching NXE (thats New Xbox Experience) on November 19th, But if your one of the people trying to find it early, and it is possible, I wouldn’t advise it. Unless you to be kicked off Xbox Live until the actual release date. So think twice before you get it early. It is just a couple weeks away. Not to mention, you may get baned from Live for your impatience. Haven’t heard of any one getting the boot yet for good, but that danger is still there. But, if you’d like, you can find it on the internet, and let us know November 19th.

The DSi has some bad news too, if youre a homebrew user, that is. Those handy little flash cards will make your new DSi crash, as soon as it loads. Of course we know Nintendo, and its developers, are trying to stop game piracy. This however, puts any legitimate Homebrew developers at a loss. This, I’m sure, will be fixed fairly soon, with the DSi having a SD slot on it. So never fear, those hackers are most likely at work already. With any luck they will crack it by the time DSi hits the states.

Finally for the Wii; things are going great, but for anyone looking to get a Wii this Christmas it’s bad. Nintendo still can’t make enough Wiis. even though their production is up by 33% this last year. I think it put a foot in the mouth of those who said the Wii is a trend. Sure, it has many titles that just suck, but the games that are good blow others away.

thats all for this week. try not to let your self down with this. Keep in mind this is just the dark side of the news. So ’till next time, signing out, your friend, Poot.

Wii Fanboy shows their love for the PSone emulator, WiiSX. | Wii Fanboy |
This emulator looks pretty promising. I cannot wait for it to be done. I really missed out on the whole PSone era, so I may have some more catching up to do. Plus, it’ll give me a reason to turn my Wii on again.

Damn straight they want MKII back on PSN | 1UP |
Who doesn’t love this game, its arguably the best. Bad timing on the disappearance, anyone know if its back up yet?

Can’t find KORG DS-10? Look here! | 1UP |
1UP lists where you can find this awesome, and well worth it, synth program for the DS.

Wii Fakes | Wii Fanboy |
This should’ve been posted with Poot’s Bad News Sunday, but somehow got left out…

Next E3 may not have public days | 1UP |
Sad news for us all, but we’re hoping to actually get a press pass for next year, but if we don’t, bad news for us too. It really should be public. Seriously.

This is why we hate fanboys. | Kotaku |
Fanboys have flamed over the nets again, this time Metacritic is the battle field.

A great way to suck you back into GTA IV | UGO |
Wanna catch a virus, find out how on UGO.

Somebody should’ve done their research | Kotaku |
Political Blogger gets Little Big Planet confused with Spore. Sigh…

PS3’s back door (not like that, perv!) | Kotaku |
Home has been hacked, leaving the PS3 open for homebrew (oh good dog, I hope so!)

Kotaku gets punked… Again! Cry Baby alert.| Kotaku |
After last month’s CAG snafu, Joystick Division pulls a prank inspired by recent political BS. This is my favorite tidbit of the week. hehe.

American politicians should follow this guy’s suit. | Kotaku |
Don Foster didn’t know about games, but since it’s his job, he learned. To bad he’s in the UK…

Cosplay… but for animals…. | Kotaku |
Too cute to not post.

That wraps it up. I don’t mean to single out Kotaku in the above post (maybe I do), but their reaction to these two pranks is pretty rediculious. Everyone needs to lighten up, I think.

In this new segment I talk about the bad news we heard in the last weak. Just cause I feel we should talk about the bad too.

Ok so I think the worst news came from Sony and the newPSP 3000. The new PSP came out to fix the ghosting that the old LCD made. That would have been a great idea. But the new LCD has a new and worse problem; the scan lines that you see, and the people seem to shake instead of just have a ghost image. Sony has said “On some occasions, scan lines may appear on scenes where brightness changes drastically, due to the hardware features of the new LCD device on PSP-3000. Installed with this new LCD device, PSP-3000 offers more natural and vibrant colors on its screen, but the scan lines have come out to be more visible as a result of improving response time to alleviate the afterimages on PSP-3000. Since this is due to hardware specification, there are no plans for a system software update concerning this issue.” With no hope of it being fixed is it worth it? I say not even. All we can do is hope they come out with a better one.

The Nintendo DSi hits Japan on November 1st, and you can pre-order for it to be imported to you. But I hope you have a lot of money. The system runs for ¥18,900 thats around $180 here. If your impatient you can go on YesAsia.com or Play-Asia.com and get it imported to you for $299.99. thats with out shipping. The cheapest is at Model-Gadget.com selling for 272.99+ shipping. You want free shipping go to Gadget-Asia.com but the price there is 318.30. To me thats just outrageous. First off the DSi store is regional. Second, it will get here at some point for a lot less than 300$. I guess it’s just the price you pay to try to be better than everyone else.

The Wii has some bad news. They came out with a new update that doesn’t even do much. But the main thing it seems to do is stop the installing of fake programs, aka homebrew. But if you already have homebrew there is nothing to worry about. It will not stop those from running. I can understand trying to stop pirating. But to make an update who’s sole purpose is to do that is crazy. So those of you who didn’t get on the DVD homebrew program and updated, will have to wait. Probably not for long, though.

That raps up bad news sunday. I hope you don’t feel that bad. Have a great week. Your friend Poot.

I’m Looking into putting out a demo, right now I’m still in talks with publishers so I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance. I’d like to release a playable demo shortly before the game is available on at least one system to purchase, otherwise I’ll have some frustrated players who like the demo, and aren’t able to buy the full version.

You seem pretty positive that you’re looking at being one of the first games available for DSWare. Now, the service is set to launch November 1st in Japan. Are you actually that close to sealing the deal, where you will be part of that, or is this slated for the American premier of the service?

I was referring to the timing of the North American and European releases. Nothing is official yet, of course, but I’m pushing as hard as I can to get it out in the first batch of downloadable titles, it’s very exciting news and the timing is perfect! Since I’m just now talking to publishers, it’s the ideal time to be able to work this out in the deal (along with normal carts). I’d like to do something special for the DSi release, including support for the cameras and maybe even have something like downloadable content. The DSi version would be a lot cheaper, so I might package the overall game differently or have to cut some things out- especially if the file size has to be smaller, I’m not sure.
I’m pretty sure I won’t make the Japanese release, but I would like to mention that I’m definitely pushing for a release in as many languages as I can.
I’ve been picked up by a few Japanese gaming sites, and there was even a thread going on the famous 2chan for awhile about it.
It just so happens that my older brother (the NES gamer) does professional Japanese translation for a living nowadays, and he’s agreed to translate to Japanese along with the help of some native speakers that he works with. He knows first-hand target=”_blank” how hard I worked on it, so he’s giving it the extra attention to make sure it’s a very high quality translation.
It’s important to me that everyone who wants to play it gets a chance to, so even if I have to hire a translation firm myself for some languages and release a patch online I would be willing to do that.

If the game is released for the DSWare service, will there be any differences between the downloaded version and the actual physical copy of the game?

I’m not sure about this yet, I don’t know any more details about the service than anyone else. I’d like to add some DSi specific features, but I’m definitely going to make sure the retail title is worth having. I might end up releasing a DSWare version for very cheap or free that is a demo of the first half, and transfer the save file over the retail version, if that sort of thing ends up being possible. One thing is for sure, I’m definitely excited to be able to think up new ideas for this!

I’ve read that you learned C++ in highschool, and the game is coded in such. Would you suggest that those who want to make their own game to just gear up and work on it, even without a formal education?

The game is actually written in C, which is a bit different. C++ is a superset of C, and the way you do a lot of things is entirely different. PHP is also a sort of superset of C, the syntax is very similar but when it comes down to it it’s pretty different.
When I started five years ago, there weren’t nearly as many video game specific schools or courses available, so it made a little bit more sense to “go it alone”, but can I really recommend that people skip school and learn on their own? Maybe not the wisest advice, so I really can’t say.
I’m a pretty clever guy and I trust my own judgment, so I don’t know if what works for me will work for everyone else- though it might! I do know that all the guys that invented the language did it from scratch, and all the original game programmers had to do things from scratch as well, so I made it a point to do it the “old school” way and “reinvent the wheel.”
Nowadays the technology is much different, most companies don’t write things from scratch at all. Most of the game industry works with software packages called middleware, which are pre-built packages containing things like graphics engines or collision detection and physics. There’s some really amazing people that specialize in a single aspect of game design- for instance John Carmack and his Doom engine, or the Havok team and their physics engine. They’ve dedicated their entire career to that one piece of the puzzle, and it’s near impossible to beat them at their own game, so to speak. Most companies simply license these technologies and hire a team of artists, or contract an outside firm to do the graphics and modeling assets, so if someone goes through a formal program to learn game design they’ll probably be learning how to use one of these technologies.
I’ve actually read some interviews with developers that are frustrated with this- they’ll hire someone out of a development school but they don’t know how to adapt to new technologies if the company doesn’t use exactly what they’ve been taught.
It’s really up to the individual and what their personal goals are. I’ve always felt that to some extent there’s no reason why someone can’t teach themselves exactly what they would learn in school- we’ve got the internet at our hands and information is available in ways that didn’t exist ten years ago.
You obviously feel that your game is on a level where you can give it a proper release, and it definitely seems so, but with that are there fears of piracy, especially considering how rampant it is on the DS?

Honestly, I’m not that concerned about it. If someone honestly can’t afford to buy “Bob’s Game,” but wants to play it so badly they’re willing to break the law to get it, I’m sure they’re going to want to buy a legit copy when they can afford it, and they’ll probably become a fan and buy my next game. Then there’s the “collector” type of person, who is just going to pirate it for the sake of having a complete collection. They probably won’t even play it, so there’s no loss there. I’m sure there are people who can afford to buy it, but don’t want to bother going to the store, or they’re the type of person who plays so many games they would go broke buying them all. I think that type of person is going to be technically inclined, and that’s the sort of person who would probably appreciate the effort put into “bob’s game” the most, and they might send me a donation or the like. Of course, I’ll need to at least sell enough copies to be able to make another game, so I hope people will buy it if they can.

Could you give us an estimate on how much you think your game will cost, or in the very least what you’d like it to be priced at?

I’d honestly like for it to be a budget title, even though the size and quality of the game are up there with some of the high-budget premium titles. It’s more important to me that everyone who wants to play it gets a chance, especially kids who might have a hard time saving up money. I just hope that people don’t overlook the game on the shelves because it’s not priced as high as the latest big-budget titles, but I think people who recognize it will definitely appreciate the gesture.

Last, but not least, can we be expecting anything new from you in the future, either on your own, or with a team, or was this simply the game of your dreams, and you’d like to keep it at that, and will they continue to be for the DS or other platforms as well?

I’m definitely going to keep making games. I’m putting together a small studio with some talented friends, and I’ve already got the basic outline for the next title, which is very different from “bob’s game.” During these past five years I filled several notebooks with ideas and concepts for other games, and I selected my favorite idea from those. I think it’s going to be very cool, it’s something very experimental. I’m aiming for a downloadable title for WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade, or the PS3 Marketplace, though who knows- it might end up filling a whole DVD.

——————————————————————————–

And there you have it. For us here at CGB, it’s something we’re looking forward to, with anticipation. Both Poot and I have to agree that the DS is one of our most favorite systems, and the news that what may possibly be the greatest Homebrew game is definitely well recieved by us. A huge thanks to Robert Palloni for answering our questions, he really seems like a great guy. If you’re even slightly interested in the game, check out the links below for all your Bob’s Games questions.

Bob’s Game official site
YouTube videos (Demo 1 | Demo 2 | Trailer)
WiiDS Podcast interview with Robert (many in-game aspect questions answered here)
DS Fanboy Posts tagged “Bob’s Game”

Video of the Wii ISO loader in action after the jump

It should be noted that this has not been released to the public, so sites are reporting it as a rumor or unconfirmed, though the source (obviously) says its real.

There are some differences here. First off, the look is a bit more cartoony, but not to a degree where its painful. Obviously, from the title screen shown above, you can see that it doesn’t have a so serious feel, but the style used here, feels natural.

The provided maps, don’t last too long, its not very hard to beat. However, upon having your first go through, you can play again, with harder variations of the maps. But if that weren’t enough, you can also create your own maps and put them on your DS. It doesn’t end there though, you’re also able to wirelessly upload your maps, and download ones that others have created. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to mess with this aspect, because the wifi at my abode isn’t currently working. You can also browse and upload directly from the Still Alive DS website.

The final, and very pleasant variation, is that in order to successfully complete any room, you must collect a specified amount of items, cakes to be precise, in the room. It adds a little extra flare and makes the game last a little longer, and makes it slightly more frustrating when you’re doing something stupid.

Its very enjoyable, and if you have the option to homebrew on your DS, I definitely suggest downloading this. Its a must have to kill off some time.

I used this for the R4DS, and its as simple as placing the .nds file in any directory on your SD card. To use custom maps, run the game once, and it will create the necessary directories automatically for you. Or, to make it simple place it in “StillAliveDS/customMaps/” The “StillAliveDS” directory can supposedly be place anywhere on your SD card.