Live Arcade updates usually come on Monday, but Microsoft decided to liven this week of slow news up a bit by announcing that Neo Geo classic Metal Slug 3 is hitting XBLA next week, January 2.
At 800 Microsoft Points, the title features remastered HD visuals, Dolby 5.1 surround sound, and co-op play over Xbox Live. more »
Impaler mailed in to let us know that he has released an update to his PSOne EBOOT creator dubbed ImpalerPSX. The application sports an easy-to-use graphical user interface and supports the latest version of Dark_AleX’s popstation, so creating single / multi-disc PSOne EBOOTs is just a few clicks away!
New to this release is a preview option and a global output window designed for error handling.
ImpalerPSX [Impaler]
Homebrew developer Art has released an update to Road Dog, a WiFi connection sniffer for the PSP. Unlike the PSP’s built-in WiFi scanning feature, Road Dog alerts users with a sound when an access point is detected, making it the ideal application to find suitable access points while driving or walking down the street.
Version 2c includes the following changes:
* Program exit will now reset the PSP if it was launched from within iRShell (rather than freezing).
* All LEDs are now turned off by the program.
* Implementation of signal graph that logs to the screen. You see the last 3 mins, 50 secs of activity.
* Basic familiar name search feature.
As with previous releases, Road Dog is incompatible with the PSP Slim and Lite at this time, but will work on all original PSP units running custom firmware or firmware 1.5.
Road Dog - WiFi Connection Sniffer for Sony Playstation Portable [Art]
While Dark_AleX is hard at work on custom firmware 3.80 M33, developer HellDashX has updated the PSP decryption tool known as PSARDumper with support for 3.80 firmware decryption.
The updated PSARDumper now supports decompression of KL4E compressed modules — a new compression algorithm found in firmware 3.80.
Thanks to Fadil for the tip!
Download 3.80 PSARDumper With KL4E Decompression / 3.80 Update EBOOT
Last week we reported that the Wii had overtaken the GameCube in terms of lifetime sales data. Now the DS has done the same to Sony’s PlayStation 2.
Since its introduction to the Japanese market in December of 2004, the DS has sold a whopping 20,954,157 units. Compare that to the PS2, which has sold 20,901,468 units in Japan, since its debut over four years ago.
With sales like this, it won’t be long before the DS is heralded as the best-selling video game system worldwide.
Japanese Hardware Sales [M-Create]
Demonstrated during today’s 24th Annual Chaos Communication Congress (24C3) in Germany was a fully hacked Wii capable of running native Wii homebrew with lowlevel hardware access.
The guys over at 24C3 just demoed a Wii hack that is set to provide native Wii homebrew in the near future (not running in GC mode, and with full access to all the Wii hardware!)
They were able to find encryption and decryption keys by doing full memory dumps at runtime over a custom serial interface. Using these keys, they were able to create a Wii ‘game’ that ran their own code (their demo happened to show live sensor/Wiimote information, amongst a few other things).
Currently homebrew on Wii is limited to GameCube mode. GC mode limits homebrew developers to GameCube specifications, meaning certain features like motion sensing are completely disabled. If this is no longer a limitation, as the video suggests, then we could see some interesting developments in the Wii homebrew scene over the near future.
A video of the five-minute presentation is available over at YouTube.
Real Wii Homebrew with Full Hacked Hardware in the near Future? [Nintendo-Scene]
The Realtech VR team have announced that development on No Gravity: The Plague Of Mind is now complete and that we can expect a release soon, as soon as the new website planned for the game’s release is finished.
No Gravity was instantly recognized as a homebrew classic for its engaging gameplay and commercial-quality visuals when the first demo of the game was released back in March of this year.
realtech VR Classic [Realtech VR]
Earlier this week, an Xbox fan site reported that a first-party solution to bring motion sensing to the 360 was in the works. Today TeamXbox, a subsidiary of IGN Entertainment, confirmed that Microsoft is indeed planning to bring motion sensing technology to the 360.
Microsoft has been researching alternative input technologies for the last two years, including vision-based recognition such as the one used on Xbox Live Vision, as well as motion sensing technologies similar to those seen in the Microsoft Freestyle Pro and the PlayStation 3 SIXAXIS.
It’s still unclear whether motion sensing will be delivered in the form of an add-on for existing Xbox 360 controllers, or if Microsoft will release an all-new controller with motion sensing functionality built-in. All signs are pointing to an add-on, though. And the photo above that certain individuals are claiming is a prototype of the controller design? Fake. It’s a photo of an old prototype that Gyration had pitched to Nintendo for the Wii back in 2001.
Microsoft Cooking Up an Enhanced Xbox 360 Controller? [TeamXbox]
Following yesterday’s RC7 update, developer Winnydows today issued another update to his popular video conversion software, XviD4PSP. In case you are new to the application, XviD4PSP accepts various video formats as input (XviD, DivX, x264, et al) and can convert video files for use with the PlayStation 3, PSP, iPod, BlackBerry, Xbox 360 and PC.
RC8 features improved accuracy to interlace detection and adds two additional video filters: FractalDenoising LS and FractalDenoising 3D LS.
* Fixed muxing to MKV.
* Fixed load autovolume and autodeinterlace settings.
* Added FractalDenoising LS and FractalDenoising 3D LS - do LimitedSharpen after denoising. FractalDenoising LS - one best filtering modes now.
* Interlace detection a little bit longer now, but more accurate.
Use of the program requires that you have installed at least version 3.0 of Microsoft’s .NET Framework, which is available for download here.
Download XviD4PSP 5.027 RC8 Update / XviD4PSP 5.027 RC5 Full
XviD4PSP 5.027 RC8 update! [Winnydows]
Duo Slasher and Madsoul team up to bring us Orbid, an original homebrew game for the PSP. So what exactly is Orbid, you ask?
Orbid is a unique game in which you’re a small orb struggling to survive. You must eat the smaller (orange) orbs in order to gain points and survive in this dangerous world. All the while, you’ll be avoiding larger orbs or else you’ll become their dinner!
While the default game mode is level based, Orbid offers three additional game modes including Survival, Time, and a Mine mode in which players scurry to eat a helpless orb each round while avoiding deadly mines.
Orbid PSP [Team Duck]
