Nintendo has done what we all expected and blocked the Nintendo DSi from running what seems to be nearly every single flash card on the market.
If you have a CycloDS, G6 DS Real, M3 DS Real, Supercard DS One, iTouch DS, FCard, NCard, M3 DS Simply, U2DS, R4 DS and EZ Flash V don’t expect any of them to work.
It seems the DSi blocks both auto boot cards and ones that boot from the menu. If it’s auto boot it crashes and while the others show up in the menu, but once selected come up with an error.
Bad news for pirates, good news for Nintendo and bad news for legitimate homebrew. But how long till they bypass it?
A Japanese magazine has revealed that Square Enix will release Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time for the Nintendo Wii and DS on January 29, 2009 in Japan.
Features translated from the article, linked above:
- Play at the same time on the Wii and DS, thanks to Pollux Engine created by Square Enix.
- Players on the Wii and players on the Nintendo DS will be able to play online together.
- Different gameplay for the 2 versions (stylus or Wiimote).
- Story revolves around Charlotta and a mysterious crystal.
- You can transfer Mii characters you made to the DS version.
As always, more details will be posted as they are available.
After the sublime experience that was Skate on 360 and PS3, it's great to see EA hitting other platforms with a skating experience tailored to their strengths - namely, the Wii's motion controls and the DS' touch screen. We got in touch with Mike McCartney, the Line Producer on Skate It to get a few more details. While the interview is primarily about the Wii version, there are a few tidbits for Nintendo DS owners in there too.
IGN AU: What has become of San Vanelona? How different is the city than it was in Skate?
Mike McCartney: Skate It's story begins shortly after the events of the original Skate game. A series of comical and somewhat tragic disasters have hit the city and all of your favourite locations from San Van have been re-invented giving them an all new feel, with new lines and areas to discover.
IGN AU: Have you had to reduce its size or introduce load times between areas now that you're on Wii?
Square Enix’s Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates, which shipped to North American retailers today for the Nintendo DS, includes a new copy protection scheme that attempts to discourage users from running an unauthorized copy of the game on certain DS flash cards.
Users of popular flash cards such as the R4 and M3 Simply are greeted with a “Thank you for playing!!” screen after twenty minutes of playing. Then, as if it were a demo, the game automatically quits.
Let’s face it, it’s almost inevitable that someone will crack the protection, but this seems like a good tactic to fight piracy in the short run — seeing as pirates often give the “try before you buy” excuse for illegally downloading games. :P
In a release overlooked by well, everyone, the Supercard team released an update for their Slot 2 based flashcarts for the Nintendo DS on Christmas day.
Main Feature:
# 1. Fixed the some games save problem. The save type like ROM 1780.
# 2. Optimized flash memory reading speed.
This week's top rental charts from U.S. game rental company GameFly, representing the most requested games for the week ending November 5th, highlight both to-be-released and already released games in a unique demand-specific chart.
Last week saw popularity en masse for EA's Simpsons Game, which suffers a good deal of slippage this week in favor of Assassin's Creed's rush on the top five of every platform on which it's available, while The Orange Box, which spent weeks in the top five, is also displaced. Interestingly, PlayStation 3 is the only applicable platform where Call of Duty doesn't take first, yielding the spot to Assassin's Creed instead.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare still stands at number one in the top five all-platform requests, while Assassin's Creed takes second. The big disruption in the top five rustles Ace Combat 6, Orange Box and Jericho right out, as Timeshift enters third place and Mass Effect takes the fifth spot. Super Mario Galaxy com... More »
Earlier this week, Nintendo and Hong Kong authorities broke up a major piracy operation for the Wii and Nintendo DS platforms. I had not heard much recently in China since the initial, serious, piracy hacks on Microsoft's Xbox 360.
Frank Yu answered my call with a note on the state of next generation piracy in China (slightly edited):
I know the pirates and the modders in China. They are able to chip the Japanese Wii but the US Wii has more protection (Editor's Note and, presumably not hacked because of the availability of the Japanese Wii). For games like Paper Mario, that needed a firmware update on the Internet which even modded Wii's could get. On the new Metroid, the Internet update does not seem to work for modded Wiis this time...(no doubt) a solution is being created.
Yes, the Xbox 360 hardware is totally broken for pirated games...however, if you leave your mod chip active MS will detect it and shut you out of Xbox Live. I have hea... More »
* Miniaturized game icons are shown in list view
* Random skin selection
* Allow unlimited number of skins
* Fixed GBA linking with 3in1
* Compatibility fixes
As the users manual has yet to be updated, following is some more detailed information regarding the changes:
1. In order to enable random skin cycling, toggle the skins in the settings menu until "Random" is selected. With this selected, a different skin from your collection will be chosen and used each time you boot CycloDS Evolution.
2. In order to enjoy GBA game linking via the 3in1, you must disable rumble support through the settings menu. As rumble is disabled by default, if you wish to utilise rumble during gameplay then please ensure that you first enable this i... More »
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