Return Of The Macs. All Of Them.

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We all know there’s something of a cult around Apple. The temple-like stores, the zealotry of the fanboys, Jobs as a weird Wizard of Oz / Jesus hybrid whose disappearance and resurrections over the last year have produced widespread hysteria and $10bn of panic. Hell, if there aren’t already genuine religious orders devoted to the iPhone, I’ll eat my pagan hat.

So here’s a handy resource for the budding evangelical – your very own online Apple shrine! Stocked full of high-res Macintosh pics and wistful stats about the pioneering 16Mhz Performa 200, ShrineOfApple.com is admittedly a bit closer to faded Mac-porn than holy relic – but no doubt that will suit most of the diehards just as well…

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My fellow Ambassadors, 3DS that is, NES games ahoy

Greetings my fellow 3DS Ambassadors, you may have noticed some talk yesterday about the free NES games already available to us on the 31st, well when I checked they weren’t, not here in the UK anyway, but today you should be greeted with a helpful message when you visit the eShop news section, assuming you were eligible for the 3DS Ambassador program in the first place, you’ll be able to go to Settings/Other probably on the far left, then to Titles You’ve Downloaded, and the new titles should be available to re download, that’s the way they have authorised it for us. All ten NES titles promised are available Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Jr, Balloon Fight, Ice Climber, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Zelda 2 the Adventure of Link, Mario and Yoshi, Mario Open Golf, and Wrecking Crew. Note that the versions available to us ambassadors are labelled priority release, some features maybe missing. Later when these games become available for all at a fee, ambassadors will receive the update at no cost, and hopefully fully featured. So if this applies to you, start downloading your favourite retro NES games right now, one at a time though, but they’re only small downloads, doesn’t take long.

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Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life, Guardian Heroes release iminant

Guardian Heroes screenshotEarlier today @majornelson tweeted that the Guardian Heroe’s release for XBLA was as early as tomorrow, this has now been updated to NOT being released tomorrow. Original developed by Treasure on the Sega Saturn console, this re release has been updated for the higher definition XBOX 360, with classic Saturn modes and graphics as well as some new features including online play. This action RPG brawler first hit my favourite console in 1996, the same year as Nights into Dreams, yet we don’t see a re release of that puppy do we. At least us retro fans have a Sonic cd re release to look forward too.

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Ah, what a shmup

Radiant Silvergun screen shotRadiant Silvergun, one of the most expensive Japanese only Sega Saturn games is coming cheap to a Sega Saturn Xbox 360 near you. Available for 1200 MS Points this September 14th via XBLA. This remake of a golden classic will have Arcade and Saturn modes, different graphical styles, and 2-player online co-op play. Though not as collectable as its Saturn counterpart, it sure is gonna be nice to have a fantastic old school Japanese shmup in the house. Oh yes. Arcade Stick ahoy.

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I’m an Ambassador don’t you know

Some of you may have noticed that the layout style of nintendo.co.uk and nintendo.com are slightly different, we have a news section with not very useful news, and the Americas have a what’s new sections, which also has news, and is far more informative than our own.
If we take the dot com’s news as similar or exact to what we can expect, then we are soon to get our hands on some pretty decent NES games on our 3DS’s for free(us Ambassadors that is) the recently announced games for them and I assume us, are Metroid, Zelda 2 the Adventure of Link (my first and favourite rpg), Yoshi’s Egg, Mario Open Golf, and Wrecking Crew. It has not been announced when these shall be released though. Our humble nintendo.co.uk site says the first five that are scheduled for us from the 1st September are Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong Jr, Balloon Fight, Ice Climber, and The Legend of Zelda. There are still only five GBA titles announced, and they shall be released sometime by the end of this year, for the curious these are Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Metroid Fusion, WarioWare Inc.: Minigame Mania, Mario vs. Donkey Kong and 5 more titles.

For me, I’m glad to see: both Zeldas, Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, Mario Kart Super Circuit, and both Donkey Kong games. Though its not worth the extra £80 I spent as an early adopter. And of course I’ll Never get around to playing them because I haven’t finished Ocarina of Time 3d yet, or Twilight Princess on the GameCube for that matter, I know, poor show.

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The US gets a free Orchestra cd with Skyward Sword, but what about us?

Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword box art

Over at Nintendo.com there’s news as far as the states is concerned that the first batch of The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword for the wii will come with a free cd of select tracks from the upcoming recordings of the 25th Anniversary orchestra playing in october. The game comes with or without the Gold WII remote plus controller, motion plus is essential for the new precision sword swinging. What we don’t know is if the same dealeo will come to European shores, nintendo.co.uk hasn’t been updated with any info as yet, though this 3rd Zelda title for the year will still be released on the 18th November, 2 days ahead of America. We’ll let you know more when we do ^_^.

*******UPDATE********
We do get it, Hurrah

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Hairy Golden Axe Wound and Cheap ChuChu for All!

Well stroke my bunions if SEGA haven’t chucked a load of iOS gaming on the bank holiday bonfire. This stuff is going so cheap that taking it off them is effectively looting. Which we couldn’t possibly urge you to do. But should you have a saucy 69p to spare, you can have all the fun – with none of the illegality and long term prison sentencing that would otherwise await you.

So SEGA have effectively saved you from jail! Like Colin Firth in Bridget Jones! What a bunch of sexy British heroes. Who are actually Japanese. Or American. Or something.

Right. Erm. Where were we? Oh yeah, some cheap games – well, here they are people. Get buying!

Golden Axe™ 2: $0.99/ 69p / 79¢
(was $2.99/ £1.99/ €2.39)
Golden Axe™ 3: $0.99/ 69p / 79¢
(was $2.99/ £1.99/ €2.39)
Streets of Rage™ 2: $0.99/ 69p / 79¢
(was $2.99/ £1.99/ €2.39)
Streets of Rage™ 3: $0.99/ 69p / 79¢
(was $2.99/ £1.99/ €2.39)
Gunstar Heroes™: $0.99/ 69p / 79¢
(was $2.99/ £1.99/ €2.39)
ChuChu Rocket!™ : $0.99/ 69p / 79¢
(was $2.99/ £1.99/ €2.39)
ChuChu Rocket!™ HD (iPad): $0.99/ 69p / 79¢
(was $4.99/ £2.99/ €3.99)

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Jobsy resigns as ceo of apple, yeah, that’s what i’m calling him

Seriously though, when you have health problems but can still steer a company to have access to more cash than the US Government, you’ve done well enough, you might as well leave it there and call it a day. The metaphorical Goliath that is Apple inc has lost another great founder at the reigns, for the second time in this case (some weird spat in the 80’s). Apple inc has become a leader of innovation and quality. Truth be told they always were, only now they’re a little more main stream.

Back in secondary school, I had this friend, a weird friend mind, who was always going on about his macintosh, and how it was better than the Amiga and even Nintendo, can you believe that, and yeah this was a looonng time ago, like early nineties, I was like, no dude, commodore rules, and Nintendo’s even better, they got the joypad (coming from years of torture of an unresponsive joysitick). So now i’ll admit it, Vanbreeda, whereever you are, I was wrong, I mean I love commodore, mostly the c16 plus 4 I had as a kid, but since getting back into computers at the turn of the millennium, I have a new fondness of the retro computers, and macintosh were good, I just didn’t realise it yet. Sure I’ve seen that movie with the kid from weird science as Bill Gates, where it looks like the MS windows idea came from a visit to Apple, who may or may not of got the idea from Xerox PARC. But despite that little faux pas, they still innovated, the ipod for instance, which is just the bestest technology ever, and I’m talking to those who know what it was like to carry a chunky walkman with the one chewed up album in it and maybe another in a rain drenched pocket. But before all this, before the macintosh, and before the Lisa, Jobs and Wozniak pioneered, creating some of the first personal computers for hobbyists and the like, i think i read somewhere that they even designed breakout for atari arcade cabinets, but atari couldn’t use them the design was too complicated for atari engineers or something. Steve Wozniak was the engineer, and Jobs was the business, together they founded one of the biggest and best companies out there, and my hats off to you well done Steve, and other Steve. Good Job.

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Ludum Dare August 2011 is over and sleep is good

The competition for rapid game development is over, for now. My humble attempt can be found here https://www.grigorig.com/files/twister2.html it’s called twister, as the them was escape, though you can’t actually escape it as it gets faster and mows you down lol. Its almost what was submitted, but to make it more playable i fixed some bugs this morning. The game was coded in actionscript and is a flash based game. The bugs are what was most disappointing about the game, although my simple game wasn’t difficult to code, i didnt spend as much time on it as i could have this weekend, and that is what really let me down, something that i will no doubt still do when Decemeber comes round for another crack at the competition, in the mean time though i can judge the other entrants, one of which is notch from mojang, he done a nice little dungeon crawler titled “Prelude of the Chambered”, you can get the src and find links to play it from http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?uid=398. Anyone intereseted in my official entry on ludum dare and links to the source can do so from http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?uid=5721 where somefolks have already played it and commented 🙂

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He who dares, wins. Ludum Dare update for my game

With just over 12 hours until the submissions for Ludum dare end, i’ve just added my first update to the ludum dare sites blog, with a brand spanking new shiny screen shot, here it isScreen shot of my twister game

At the moment you just tap the left and right keys to stay ahead of the storm, there still needs to be a fair amount more gaming logic, but i’m going to keep it as simple as possible just so i can atleast enter it.

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