Pages

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Video Game Take-Out #25 - Ninja Five-O

As promised, here's the latest episode of Video Game Take-Out, this time about a rather obscure GBA title (just what we like, ain't it?). Being somewhat of a Shinobi/Bionic Commando hybrid, in this game you take control of a ninja armed with a rope (probably attached to a kunai or something, but that's just my guess) that he can use to reach higher places. Sounds fun, doesn't it? I might give it a try sometime. I remember reading a very positive review back when it was released, but since then the game fell into complete obscurity. Fortunately now you can see a pretty good review of it and know exactly what you were missing, just click the picture above.

Related posts: Street Fighter II GBA, them GBA hidden gems, Astro Boy - Omega Factor review, an advanced Barbarian

Monday, April 14, 2008

And now for another completely different Atari 2600 handheld

Atari 2600 retro handheldA friend discovered it via Engadget and I thought I should let you retro loving lot know. The Multari after all is the most beautiful handheld version of the Atari 2600 I've ever seen, and the only one to come with 32 built-in games, a shiny 5" screen, speakers, all the necessary buttons and an almost industrial quality case. Find out more -and see how the Multari was conceived and made- over at this lovely place and/or look at it move. Lovely. Oh, and in case you were wondering it's not for sale.

Related posts: Atari Lynx Marlboro Go, Video Game Take-Out, Street Fighter II GBA, the MegaDrive handheld

Friday, April 11, 2008

Call Of Duty 4 (DS)


"So long as there are men there will be wars..." (Albert Einstein)

And as long as there are male gamers, there will be war games (apparently...)Now I've always thought of myself as a bit of a pacifist really, I was an ardent CND campaigner in the good old eighties and actively campaigned against the Iraq war when the world's biggest terrorist (George W. Junior) started flexing his muscle in the Gulf after 911...


So it was something of a surprise to myself, when I started to really enjoy wasting virtual foreign soldiers in the 360 classic, Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. In the past, I've restricted my gaming 'killing sprees' to fictional zombies, aliens and mutants.
I've never played 'war games'. I thought them a little crass...But seeing my two eldest sons, deriving such pleasures from COD4, and riding high on the army life of new recruit "Soap" McTavish, made it somewhat inevitable that at some point, I'd dip my toe in the waters of war... (N.B. There is no such phrase as "the waters of war", I just made it up... But Hey! Feel free to use it whenever you want!)
Well, that was the start of it, and ever since, I've been LOVING war games. I'm currently enjoying the WWII delights of Brothers In Arms DS, and looking forward to procuring the handheld port that is COD4 (DS).


Indeed, the very lovely (yet not necessarily impartial) Official Nintendo Magazine described the game thus...
"It may not have been released on the Wii, but the DS version is impressively faithful to the game available on 'other' consoles with fantastic graphics and slick gameplay."


For some reason, our sage like mentor Gnome has advised me to steer clear of this title... I'm not sure why, but maybe even he will revise his opinion when he sees the beautiful video above...
Until then, remember that "War! (Da da!) What is it good for? (Huh!) Absolutely nothin'!" '(Edwin Starr) LOL!

(Apart from being the premise for really good videogames!)

Saturday, April 05, 2008

The N-Gage lives!

No, dear friends, I'm not talking about the N-Gage 2.0 game platform available for the fancier Nokia phones, but about the very first N-Gage! Confused? As you may recall from my very first post here, I had a N-Gage once. In fact I had two, since the first one had a fatal encounter with the washing machine, and I just couldn't live without the system any more. Yeah, I loved it that much. Unfortunately my 2nd one eventually died on me too, this time by itself. After a few weeks of erratic behaviour, it suddenly just refused to boot up. By the time my passion for the system wasn't that strong, so I just gave up on it and bought a new phone instead of trying to fix it.

That was until yesterday! While browsing the most excellent Racketboy forum, I stumbled upon a topic about the ill-fated system and a post in particular about a so-called WSOD (that's white screen of death). That made me think, my N-Gage was indeed dead and whenever I tried to boot it up all it showed was a white screen before turning itself off again. Could that be it? After searching trusty google for answers I discovered a lot of forums with possible solutions for the problem, including pressing an awkward set of keys while turning it on, followed by a deep reset.

I wasn't too convinced it would work, but the fact is that it did! After a long, long time of inactivity, lost in the corner of a drawer, my N-Gage still worked! At first it wasn't too stable, but after 2 deep resets and formatting the memory card, it now seems to work just fine! Whoorah! Between revisiting old classics and trying out games I missed, I'm having a blast with my favourite portable system! =D

Related posts: N-Gage 2.0, BooksInMyPhone, Orcs & Elves review

Yeti 3D and iPhone FPS gaming

Yeti 3D iPhoneStill not sold on the Apple iPhone really, but I have to admit Yeti 3D seems pretty... uhh... neat. It is after all a pretty decent 3D engine that has been ported to the platform. Apparently, it also allows for both landscape and portrait gaming modes, can manifest onscreen buttons and even do a variety of... uhh... other neat tricks. Have a look here.

Related posts: The King of Zing, a NES ringtones how-to, phone DOOM for free, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within mobile