Pandemic has released a new trailer for Destroy All Humans! 2, its 60s alien-invasion sequel arriving on PS2 and Xbox later this year.
The second game promises split-screen co-op, two-player mini-games and five new environments to invade, including Tokyo, San Francisco and even bits of old Blighty, complete with Nelson's Column and authentic red buses. Unfortunately, it looks like you can't shoot-up the tube with your alien death ray though. Hmmm.
Destroy All Humans! 2 is due out in October. We'll let you know how it turns out but in the meantime feast your eyes on this latest psychedelic trailer.
New release of the port of Zsnes for the Xbox, heres whats new:
-New GUI thanks to the excellent work of Neverwill.
-Fixed High Res Mode 7 filter.
-Added option to resize the GUI. These settings are separate from the emulation screen settings.
-Added various animation effects to the GUI
-Changed the default skin to the new Zelda skin by Neverwill
-Added a Splash screen
-Added a main menu screen
-Added two new menus: Image Options and Text Options.
-Added the option to move resize most of the GUI text. This includes all the text on the Rombrowser. This will allow people to make GUI's with the rombrowser on the right side of the screen for example.
-Added option to change the FPS and animation speed of the rombrowser animation
-Added support for a preview overlay image. This has to be in png format and ideally will contain a border with a transparent middle.
-Added option to disable the preview overlay
-Added screenshot transparency. The transparency level can be set to 0-255.
-Changed the background music to one more fitting to a Zelda theme.
-Rewrote the video render code to provide even more emulation speedup.
-Fixed (?) the invisible third digit in the cheat code menu. Please post if this digit is still invisible in 720p or 1080i.
Brienj has released a new version of Xbox Save Parser. heres the info:
Lets you parse an Xbox save file to find the signatures if you have the correct AuthKey and HDDKey needed. Also includes a front-end for my Non-XBL AuthKey Patcher v1.0 program.
After nearly three hours of deliberation Tuesday morning, a jury has recommended death for Troy Victorino, 29, and Jerone Hunter, 20, and life in prison for Michael Salas, 20. The three men have been convicted of six counts of first-degree murder. On August 6, 2004, Victorino, Hunter, and Salas, along with Robert Cannon (who would be tried separately, pending the withdrawal of his guilty plea) used aluminum baseball bats to beat to death six unsuspecting victims.
Media attention has focused on Victorino's Xbox, which had been in the possession of one of the victims, Erin Belanger, 22, at the time of the murders. Allegedly, the slayings were provoked by Victorino's desire to reclaim his Xbox and several other belongings, as well as enact revenge on Belanger for evicting him from her grandmother's home. Hunter and Salas' lawyers have argued that Victorino used violent threats to coerce their clients into joining him.
Finally one of the emulators i most wanted to see on the Xbox has happened, heres the news:
Alg5 has released a new version of XVBoy, a Nintendo Virtual Boy emulator port to the Xbox.
Heres whats new:
* Lots of optimisations: compilation in release mode, palette
texture...
* With this version, some games are playable without slowdown!
* SRAM save support for the games supporting it.
* Stretching is implemented.
The owner of an LA videogames shop has been sentenced to six months of home detention for selling illegally modded Xboxes.
Poor old Jason Jones, owner of the ACME Game Store, yes really, will have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet so that the Feds can keep track of where he is at all times. He's also on probation for three years.
As is his mate, one Jonathan Bryant, who also pleaded guilty to selling the chipped consoles. They admitted to installing more than 50 pirate games on each machine, charging customers between $225 and $500 per Xbox.
Jones and Bryant were nicked after an undercover investigator from trade body the Entertainment Software Association bought one of the consoles at their store. They've been ordered to pay the ESA a fine of $2648.
The po-po have yet to catch up with the third person involved - Pei "Patrick" Cai, who was allegedly the person responsible for modding the consoles. Apparently he's on the run and is now described as a fugitive by the US attorney's office. Best lock those doors and close those windows, then...
Super Mario War is a Super Mario multiplayer game. The goal is to stomp as many other Marios as possible to win the game. It's a tribute to Nintendo and the game Mario War by Samuele Poletto.
The game uses artwork and sounds from Nintendo games. We hope that this noncommercial fangame qualifies as fair use work. We just wanted to create this game to show how much we adore Nintendo's characters and games.
Features:
- Up to four players deathmatch fun
- a whole bunch of game modes (featuring GetTheChicken, Domination, CTF, ...)
- Comes with the leveleditor - you can create your own maps...
- ... and a lot of people did so. There are currently over 400 maps
- More fun than poking a monkey with a stick
- The whole source code of the game is available
- uses SDL and is fully portable to windows, linux, mac, ...
- CPU Players
- will make you happy and gives you a fuzzy feeling
Hmm, not a very pheasant subhead to greet this rather grey Wednesday morning, but given Mortal Kombat's illustrious and brutal heritage, entirely in keeping with the theme of the series.
And Mortal Kombat Armageddon is all about the series' heritage as it takes its final bow on current gen consoles PS2 and Xbox. It allows you to play as every character from Mortal Kombat's long and bloody history, while also allowing you to create your very own custom fighter and even customise the series' infamous Fatality moves in what Midway is promising is the most 'complete and lethal' fighting experience ever.
Judge for yourself in this round of freshly delivered carnage-filled screens and await Armageddon when it punches through your chest cavity this autumn.
After months of speculation, Microsoft announced their choice for director of the film adaptation of their star property, Halo, this morning. After enlisting New Zealand's Peter Jackson to serve as Executive Producer last October, there has been little revealed about the secretive project. Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro seemed like a brilliant choice -- a proven storyteller with a knack for FX work -- but scheduling conflicts (apparently) couldn't be overcome.
Enter South Africa's Neill Blomkamp, director of last year's exceptional short film Alive in Joburg, a futuristic commentary on Apartheid in South Africa where aliens have become refugees. The film, embedded after the break, blends photorealistic CGI with handheld, documentary style filmmaking.
Described in his bio as "a new breed of director, [who] has harnessed the powers of technology, art and creativity to bring the world imagery never before possible" and by Microsoft as "one of the most innovative and original artists currently working in short films and commercial advertising," Blomkamp seems as unlikely a choice to direct Halo as ... well, as Peter Jackson was to direct Lord of the Rings. The film will be shot in Wellington, New Zealand -- to take advantage of Jackson's state-of-the-art Weta facilities -- and will see a worldwide release in the summer of 2008.
+ T + released a new version of FBA-xxx Pro for the Xbox:
Heres whats new:
* All problems with loading games in HDTV video modes should hopefully be fixed.
* Re-fixed Black/White buttons.
* Fixed Beta menu freezing when navigating gamelist.
* Replaced many Neo-Geo drivers with updated versions by iq_132. These contain many fixes and improvements including:
* Several drivers now use less RAM during loading.
* kof2003 is finally using the correct P3 ROM.
* ms5pcb is now working.
* ridhero no longer runs slow in AES mode.
* AES mode fix for cthd2003.
* Protection errors fixed in fatfury2. (Massive thanks to iq for sharing these. )
* Removed all fully decrypted NG sets. They serve no purpose in an emulator like Pro where all protection routines are fully emulated. They also offer no significant improvements in zip compression or loading time compared with the decrypted C sets.
* Fixed problems with ct2k3sp.
* Restored rbff2 V3 ROM to publically available version for now.
* Removed the unavailable jgokushi set for now.
* Several miscellaneous ROMset updates.
* The following sets have been added: ddsomb ; ms5pcbd
* The following beta sets have been added: naname
* NOTE: The setting to enable/disable beta games has been moved to UI Options --] Menu Setting.
The port of the Snes emulator Zsnes to the Xbox has had an update, heres whats new:
* ZsnexBox now comes with two excellent (Zelda and Metroid) skins to choose from by Neverwill. Be sure to try them both.
* Added an animation to the Metroid skin
* Skin switching supported. Up to 15 skins are supported. Add additional skins to the skins folder. In each folder put a copy of the ZsnexBox.ini that has the correct text/image placement in this folder. It must be named the same as the folder name. For example, the Metroid skin is in the D:skinsMetroid folder and contains a Metroid.ini
* Added more text placement options. Virtually all the text can be adjusted.
* Changed the main menu, controller, and emulator options text to be centered.
* Added a Help/FAQ Menu option. This screen contains information about the use of ZsnexBox as well as an updated FAQ. Please look here "before" posting a question on the forums.
* Added option to adjust the clipping window for the Help text.
* Added a new Help background image for the Help screen
* Tweaked the timing and animation code. The animations now run much smoother.
* Fixed the HD corrupt graphics problem some users were getting. ZsnexBox should display correctly in 720p and 1080i for all Xbox versions (regardless of the dashboard used to launch it)
* Fixed Player 3 and 4 controls
* Added the ability to change the Rombrowser text clipping. The width can now be increased or decreased.
* Created a new menu called GUI Options and moved the Text and Image Options to this menu.
* Added a GUI transition between screens. The fade effect duration can be adjusted
* Added support for a zooming logo/graphic for the rombrowser.
* Fixed a bug where some text was too far to the right in HD modes.
* Fixed the invisible digit bug on the cheat menu in HD modes.
* Changed all GUI images to PNG format. JPG's are no longer supported anywhere. This alone frees up around 4MB of RAM and as a result, all of the previous HQ previews work again. The GUI looks even better as well.
* Changed the "Show ROM Info" option to be off by default.
* Fixed a bug where the Option screen would be dimmed if screen resizing was done outside of the emulation.
* Fixed a bug where the preview border values were not being saved correctly.
* Added a confirmation screen for exiting ZsnexBox.
* Added options to change the zooming logo animations on the main menu and rombrowser. The values that can be changed are minimum size, maximum size, and speed of animation.
* Decreased the amount of time before the rombrowser animation repeats.
* Added option to change the distance the rombrowser animated character moves (if it moves at all). The default value is 100. So a value of 50 would cause it to repeat in half the time.
It seems video games really can cause violence -- but only on the dumb, ignorant scale. Recently, a few Neanderthals in the Seattle area were so enraged with each other over an Xbox that windows were broken and fires were started because of it.
Police say a 20-year-old former resident of the home in the 700 block of 20th Avenue, there as a guest, was arguing with a current resident about possession of an Xbox. The former resident then threw the console through a window and into the front yard.
Then after this rather violent altercation, the former resident marched back to the house and burned the sucker down. Yes, all this over an Xbox. Remember people, sharing is caring. There are plenty of Xbox's to go around, no need to shed blood over them.
New release of the port of the best Snes emulator for the Xbox, heres whats new:
Version 2.6:
Added support for enabling/disabling all 4 background layers
Added support for enabling/disabling the sprite layer
Added support for enabling/disabling all 8 sound channels.
Version 2.5:
Added a higher quality Zelda animation (higher resolution and more frames) to the Zelda skin
Fixed a bug that was causing garbage to be written to the ZsnexBox.ini. Hopefully this will fix the problem some people were getting with changing the skin.
Fixed a savestate loading bug that would cause a crash in Super Mario Kart and Pilotwings.
Added skin previews for the skin selection menu.
Tweaked the GUi a little.
Updated the FAQ
Added the ability to specify exactly how many frames the rombrowser animation is. This can only be set in the ini and not in the GUI. Each skin will only load the exact amount of frames specified. This cuts down on the memory usage for the Metroid and Zelda skins. Animations up to 18 frames are supported.
Note:
There may be an issue (Xbox lockup) loading DSP1 (Super Mario kart, Pilotwings, etc...) savestates generated in previous versions of ZsnexBox
How fast can you beat Halo 2? In August of 2005, Cody Miller managed to take on the Flood on Legendary difficulty in 3 1/2 hours ... without dying. It's an amazing feat, so much so that the 2007 Guinness Book of World Record lists Cody's stunt.
If any Joystiq readers can get a scan of the page, let us know and we'll update. The Guinness website does not have it listed yet, unfortunately.
"I bet that about 40 of you will say, "ZOMG I TOTALLY DID THAT TWO YEARS AGO IN HALF THE TIME." But you're lying. I know it, you know it and your mom knows it good and hard. So just don't."
Think beer, evolved. Brewed by Oregon's Widmer Brothers Brewing, this "Broken Halo" India Pale Ale isn't some viral Bungie campaign for Halo 3, but a happy coincidence. The green label was a complete kawinky-dink as well—at least, we think so. Though the brewer's website claims, "The finish is juicy, clean, and short lived." Kinda like me playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live.
New release of the port of the best Snes emulator for the Xbox, heres whats new:
-Added support for the SNES mouse via the Xbox controller. All SNES mouse only games are now fully playable.
-Added support for the SNES Super Scope via the Xbox controller (a crosshair is drawn on the screen). All super scope games are now fully playable.
-Mapped each of the two mouse buttons and Super Scope buttons to the SNES gamepad Y and B buttons.
-Added the ability to control the speed the cursor or crosshair moves. A setting of 1 is recommended for Mario Paint. A setting of 2 or 3 is recommended for all other Mouse games. A setting of 3 is recommended for all Super Scope games.
-Added an option to allow or not allow the rombrowser animation to repeat.
-Added options to the controller config that allow the setting of the controller type (joypad, mouse, or super scope) as well as the cursor speed.
A new Version of FinalBurn Alpha for the XBOX has been released, heres whats new:
* rumble disabled when pad is not used since 5 seconds, useful for intros in game supporting rumble
* fixed nasty video bug when using launch command
* detects if the game supports 2 or 4 players in the controller menu
* fixed xbox buttons color in controller menu
* now display "return to 'name of game'" in the minimenu
* changed "fbaxxx is decrypting and loading rom" to "please wait"
* corrected some bug in moves menu, the game found was not the correct game
* corrected going back to moves menu via exit with A button
* changed the way moves menu is presented, the background is now the in-game
* mini menu now uses an alpha channel, it means it is now darkened a little, it will be more easy to read
* added adjust screen option in mini menu
* fixed simple1x (none in software filter)
* removed donations informations from splash menu (see main page to find out why)
A new release of the Snes emulator for the Xbox, heres whats new:
-New excellent Mario skin by Neverwill. Be sure to give it a try.
-Added support for graphics packs. New games supported:
Far East of Eden Zero (J)
Far East of Eden Zero - Shounen Jump no Shou (J) [!]
Momotarou Dentetsu Happy (J) [!]
Super Power League 4 (J) [!]
-Made SuperScale 2X the default filter. SuperScale 2X looks just as good (if not better) than Advance MAME 2X and it is a lot faster. For example, the spinning title screen for Yoshi's Island with Advance MAME 2X, the FPS averaged in the low 50's. With Superscale, it is a rock solid 60 FPS. If you are an Advance MAME 2X user, I recommend using this instead.
-Updated the FAQ. Added several more question/answers. Please read this before posting a question on the forum.
Classic99X is a Texas Instruments 99 Emulator ffor the Xbox.
Features:
- Emulates the Texas Instruments 99
- Excellent compatibility - ported from Classic99
- All standard XPort features
- Relax/SMB support (not 100% ZIP support - see below)
- Save states
- Rewind support
This is now a core feature of the XPort UI and will be added to all
other ports (eventually) as long as the port supports saving states.
Important Notes
===============
How to Play Cartridge Games
---------------------------
Place your cartridge games in the TIGAMES directory.
The file format for TI99 cartridge images is rather strange. Each cartridge
game consists of 1 to 3 files. These files need to be named in a specific
manner to be correctly interpreted. The naming is like this:
XXXXXC.BIN
XXXXXD.BIN
XXXXXG.BIN
Where XXXXX is the descriptive name of the game and C/D/G represent the different
parts of the cartridge ROM.
All you have to do to play these is select one of the C/D/G files. Classic99X
should be able to locate all of the appropriate pieces and put them together.
Be sure to select "Cartridge" as the image type during game configuration.
Due to this strange naming, there is not currently any formal support for ZIPped
cartridge images. You should use the uncompressed BIN files instead.
How to Use Disk Files
---------------------
Place your disk files in the DISKFILES directory.
Select one of the disk files and choose "Program File" as the image type.
This will also automatically generate some text that can be pasted into
the emulator that will assist you in running the program file you selected.
After configuring the game, you will enter the emulation. You can select
regular or extended BASIC. Once the BASIC selection is loaded, go to the emulation
options menu (press RTHUMB) and then select "Paste Lines into Emulator" to
initiate a command sequence that should launch the program. You can hand-edit
these lines to be pasted if you wish.
If you use a cartridge game that needs to read information off of a disk drive
device (DSK1) then you can place the files it needs in the DISKFILES directory.
The DISKFILES directory is always mounted as the DSK1 device whenever you
launch a cartridge image. If you launch a disk file image, then DSK1 will be
mounted as the directory in which the disk file image is located.
Tunnels of Doom
---------------
Tunnels of Doom is a cartridge game that needs to read information from the disk
drive (DSK1). The required disk files (PENNY, QUEST, PENNIES) are already in
the DISKFILES directory. So when you launch the TunnelsOfDoomG.BIN file, it will
ask you where to load from. Select #2 to load from disk and then enter either
PENNY, QUEST, or PENNIES as the filename.
How to Use the TI99 System
--------------------------
Please consult the section "USING TI PROGRAMS" of the LoadingFiles.txt file for
useful information on how to use TI99 programs.
Rewind
------
Default button mapping to enable rewind is BLACK+WHITE.
Once rewind is enabled, press LTRIGGER to actually rewind.
Chip8X is a CHIP8/SuperCHIP8 Emulator for the XBox.
Features:
- Emulates the CHIP8/SuperCHIP8
- Excellent compatibility - ported from Chuit
- All standard XPort features
- ZIP/Relax/SMB support
- Save states
- Rewind support
This is now a core feature of the XPort UI and will be added to all
other ports (eventually) as long as the port supports saving states.
Notes
-----
Put games in the CHIP8ROMS directory
Default button mapping to enable rewind is BLACK+WHITE.
Once rewind is enabled, press LTRIGGER to actually rewind.
SoftVMUX is a Sega Dreamcast VMU Emulator for the XBox.
Features:
- Emulates the Sega Dreamcast VMU
- Excellent compatibility - ported from SoftVMU
- All standard XPort features
- ZIP/Relax/SMB support
- Save states
- Rewind support
This is now a core feature of the XPort UI and will be added to all
other ports (eventually) as long as the port supports saving states.
Notes
-----
Put games in the VMUROMS directory
Default button mapping to enable rewind is BLACK+WHITE.
Once rewind is enabled, press LTRIGGER to actually rewind.
PokemonMiniX is a Pokemon Mini Emulator for the XBox.
Features:
- Emulates the Pokemon Mini Handheld
- Excellent compatibility - ported from Minimon
- All standard XPort features
- ZIP/Relax/SMB support
- Save states
- Rewind support
This is now a core feature of the XPort UI and will be added to all
other ports (eventually) as long as the port supports saving states.
Notes
-----
Put games in the PMROMS directory
Default button mapping to enable rewind is BLACK+WHITE.
Once rewind is enabled, press LTRIGGER to actually rewind.
There aren't that many games for it, but the ones that do exist are quite fun.
VirtualBoyX is a Virtual Boy Emulator for the XBox.
Features:
- Emulates the Nintendo Virtual Boy
- Excellent compatibility - ported from Red Dragon
- Sound
- All standard XPort features
- ZIP/Relax/SMB support
- Save states
Notes
-----
Put games in the VBROMS directory
Rather slow, but very playable with 2-3 frameskip.
Alg5 has released XSupervision, an Xbox port of Potator, a Supervision emulator, heres the details:
It's my first port using OpenXDK(info): so it's 100% legal.
Supervision is one of the handheld game console that arise following the Game Boy.
Game are worst that game boy, but this handheld was sells for some years in some countries.
A visit to the local Gamestation this afternoon turned up a bit of trouble for Eidos Interactive's ultra-violent Reservoir Dogs game. We like the staff at the aforementioned shop; they’re always helpful, they know their stuff. Dagnabbit, some of them we'd even refer to as our friends. But had we been in the mood to suggest an exchange of monies for said game, we'd have been disappointed.
It turns out that the Xbox version of the game has been recalled. A quick call to one of the other local game shops turned up a similar response; the Xbox version is not available. Thankfully the staff at Gamestation made it completely clear why the Xbox game is not on sale; somebody somewhere forgot to put the BBFC 18 age rating logo on the disk. The packaging carries the rating logo, but without the logo on the disc the game cannot legally be sold by UK retailers. Our man was told that the PS2 version was perfectly legal, and has been available since this morning.
A call to Eidos turned no further info, as our contact was unable to comment on the recall and when we could expect the Xbox version to be reissued.
So if you go looking for Reservoir Dogs on Xbox this weekend and Mr Shopkeep won’t let you take one away, don’t say we didn’t tell you about it.
- Rewind support
This is now a core feature of the XPort UI and will be added to all
other ports (eventually) as long as the port supports saving states
Xport has updated his Playstation emulator for the Xbox:
* Brought up to date with core UI features
* Multiple XBEs for PCSX cores:
+1.4 : PCSXBox version 1
+1.5 : PCSXBox versions 2-13
+1.6 : new as of version 14
* Selectable SPU cores:
+1.6 : PCSXBox versions 1-11
+1.9 : PCSXBox versions 12-13
* Selectable GPU cores:
+1.12 : PCSXBox versions 1-7
+1.15 : PCSXBox versions 8-11
+1.16 : PCSXBox versions 12-13
* Bugfix recMTC2: Medievil works now in the recompiler instead of just the CPU interpreter mode (possibly other games as well). Medievil actually always worked if you enabled "Use CPU interpreter" from the CPU fixes menu, but it was unbearably slow. Set Frameskip and Framelimit off and set the SPU settings to the fastest possible. It's still far from fullspeed, but it's playable now.
* ISO9660 support
* Save state selection menu now has timestamp next to each used state.
* Each game gets its own set of memory cards
* Added new game configuration section "Set SPU Fixes"
+XA Sound - disable/enable (disable to speed up performance), default was on
+XA Speed Fix - if XA sound is too fast, try enabling this, default was off
+Reverb - better reverb effects at the expense of performance, default was Best/Slowest
+Interpolations - better sound effects at the expense of performance, default was Gaussian/Good
+Wait for CPU Action - Fixes games like Valkyrie Profile (tested) and Metal Gear Solid (untested)
+IRQ in Decoded Sound Buf - Fixes Crash Team Racing (untested) (Setting Reverb and Interpolations to None/Fastest can give noticeable FPS increases since all prior versions had them set to better/slower values.)
* See notes about Memory Cards
* Rewinding does not work (not that it ever did anyway)
Eidos has confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that the Xbox version of movie tie-in Reservoir Dogs has been removed from shop shelves following a printing error.
The game went on sale in the UK last Friday. Although the PC and PlayStation 2 versions are still available, Xbox gamers will have to wait a while longer to get their hands on a copy.
"Eidos has recalled the Xbox version of Reservoir Dogs due to a printing error," a spokesperson told GI.biz.
"We are working with retail to rectify the situation as quickly as possible."
It's thought that the game has been withdrawn because the 18 certificate logo was not printed on the Xbox discs. However, Eidos has yet to confirm that this is the case, and did not give any indication as to when the game will go back on sale.
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