Dandandin.net

When a few hours ago I read about the new Nintendo 2DS on Twitter, I immediately thought that it was an hoax: a new "portable" console to play 3D games on a 2D screen, with a wedge design that makes impossible to place it in a pocket and play outside home! After the great success of the giant tablet-gamepad on the WiiU, the great design genius strikes again!

What do you think about it? For me it's ridiculous, it's huge, for just a few dollars more you could take the original 3DS, even if I have a theory: are they discontinuing it? If you search on Amazon, you can see that the original 3DS is sold for $10 more than the MSRP and the giant 3DS XL has almost the same price. With the same price, everyone will choose the larger one, right?

As you might have noticed on the last post, on Facebook there is an ad that promise you a free GTA IV San Andreas download. Are you curious to know what happens when you click it?

I documented the installation on another blog, because it will install TWELVE adwares, the article is full of images and I didn't want to make Dandandin heavy to load.

If you are curious, read the story. If you just want to download the mod, download it from http://gtaivsa.com/ (You need to have a working GTA IV copy)

Cleaning my bookmarks, I found this old blog from year 2009: Alice and Kev. Old story, you might say, but I find it interesting.

The author created an homeless family in The Sims 3, removed all the money and let them live in a garden, leaving them live according their digital personalities, writing a diaries of their autonomous adventures.

Alice is a kind-hearted girl, but also is shy and with a low self-esteem, while her father, Kev, is an antisocial mad guy that hates kids.

The story has already reached a conclusion, but it's still interesting to read its evolution.

Short story: when the GameCube mic is connected to the Wii and you try to run unsupported games, they will hang at startup.

Long story: when some years ago I went in Japan for the first time, I bought a Wii and a lot of GameCube games, as they were sold for just 100 yen cadauno (around 80 cents at the time)

I also bought 伝説のクイズ王決定戦 （Densetsu no Quiz Ouketteisen - The legend of the quiz tournament of champions), a quiz with voice recognition where you have to say the right answer, in Japanese and without a list of "possible" answers.

Ok, I never played it, but the box is nice to keep on my shelf... and then there was the very useful mic included in the box

The games that use the mic are:

• Mario Party 6
• Mario Party 7
• Odama (a "ninja" themed pinball created by the designer who created the only Dreamcast game that uses the mic)
• Karaoke Revolution

In the beginning, I only owned GameCube games: Wii games were "too new" and were starting from 2000 yen - $15, so I preferred to save money and buy 20 games for the same price - I didn't even have Wii Sports, as in Japan it's not bundled with the console.

When I came back to my country, to play PAL games I installed the WiiKey.

The problem is that the Japanese Wii works ONLY in Japanese.

Yes, if you take a copy of the Italian Wii Sports DVD and you run it on a Japanese Wii (using a modchip, because there is regional lock), everything will still be in Japanese!!! (unless a game does not contains the files required for Japanese language)

So, when on Waninkoko blog I read about his new Region Changer, I immediately using for changing the region to PAL.

What a dumb decision! It was an untested beta (Marcan defined it as semibrick) and I got an half-working Wii tthat would hang when the keyboard would open because the Italian dictionary wasn't installed, and had double channels for weather, news, and so on...

A mess!

In the end, using AnyRegion Changer I fixed the problem, but I never managed to run any of my  GameCube games anymore.

I tried everything, loaders, dozens of different MIOS, but ALL my GameCube games were hanging at boot: strange....

I tried using a GameCube SD adapter to load them using the old SD Loader: nothing

I tried the new DIOS MIOS, for loading games from USB: nothing, no game started

Yesterday I told myself: "enough, there is no way to make them work", and, while I was disconnecting controllers and memory cards, including the mic (that's actually using the memory card interface). Just when I unplugged it, BOOM, the game started!

I tried my games: all were working now!!!

Moral: when the GameCube mic is conntect to the Wii (at least to mine) and you try to run a game that doesn't use it, it will hang at the booting logo.

Yay, now I can play Donkey Konga!

I shot this photo a week before the official release of Assassin's Creed 3: you could preorder it the digital gold edition for just 130 euro ($170). What a bargain!! On Amazon you could preorder the boxed version for just $60 (now now $30), and you can lend it to friends, sell it, keep it on the shelf to gather dust, etc...

You might say "hey, that special $170 digital download gave the PS Vita version for free"

But on Amazon the PS Vita version was $40 , if you bought both the boxed edition you would still saved a lot of money, even if you splurged on the exclusive Assassin's Creed III Encyclopedia Edition, that includes a 384 pages hardcover book and a 208 pages graphic novel.

I believe that a digital download MUST be MUCH CHEAPER than the retail edition!

Let's go back to the Amazon Bluray edition that now you can get for $30. Remove the markup that Amazon is doing on it, marketing, distribution, printing, prepress, etc... how much money is Ubisoft getting? I would be surprised if they get more than $8.

Why, why, why, the digital download, must be sold at the same price level, if it doesn't have any upfront to the seller?

Do you remember the SEGA Toylets? I mentioned it 6 months ago

I found an interesting video where it's shown at Digital Signage 2011 in Tokyo:

This system will retail around 140000 yen, with software sold for 10000 yen..

This is a very good reason to go in Japan: the SEGA Toylet!

Why stop to play when you have "other" needs?

Finally, urinating is no more a boring task!

With two different sensors, an infrared one and a microphone to hear the "dripping", there are many different games, for measuring your "aim", "power", "speed"

Available in some Tokyo bars, I bet that the water bottle sales will skyrocket

I can see a long line for the male washroom...

Let's hope for an "home" edition?

I didn't write about latest Geohot's exploit on this Website (but I covered it on the Italian version of this Website). Essentially his exploit managed to trip the hypervisor and run unauthorized code and get full access to the console hardware.

This exploit was using the linux support feature, a feature that thousands of people are using, both for fun or research purposes. The PS3 doesn't have mush RAM available, only 256MB, but has a very powerful CPU, and it is used in many computer clustering solutions.

Also linux offers some illegal uses, like bluray disc copying, as you can just write dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/imagename.img to have a copy

This feature has been arbitrarily removed on the newer PS3 slim, as Sony said "is not worth the hassle to maintain the hypervisor".

After that, Geohot found an unpatchable bug on the hypervisor, so, how to fix it?

He just found the key of the door, but nobody dared to open the door yet, but they want to keep it close, so they just announced  on their official blog that they will disable linux forever for everyone with the 1st april update!! (Note: it's not an april fool, they said)

It's like to evirate the entire male population of a country, to prevent a potential illness!

And they also have some humour: you can choose to don't get this update, but you will lose access to the Playstation Network, the latest games, and latest bluray movies.

That means that this exploit has potential! Sony knows it, doesn't have any clue on how to fix it, and it's scared

The war has begun! Geohot is angry about this decision, and will release soon a custom firmware to keep the OtherOS option in the menu

Look at this:

Don't upgrade, and wait for Geohot!

With a surprise announcement, with just a brief PDF posted on the Japanese investor relationship Website, here is the Nintendo 3DS! (PDF link)

No pics for now, probably we should wait for June, it will be officially announced at the E3, but that brief document tells us that:

1. It will be sold in march 2011 (in Japan)
2. It will be retrocompatible with DS and DSi games
3. It will have a camera (otherwise, how it could be DSi-compatible? )
4. It will have two 3D screens, with no need of special glasses!!

Yes, you got it right, autostereoscopic 3D screens!!

It's the SHARP screens that I mentioned exactly one year ago (for a cool coincidence, it was my first post on Dandandin.net!) about the new WOOO mobile.

Last time that Nintendo tried to make a 3D portable gaming console, the 1995 Virtual Boy, it was an epic failure, but this time? In my opinion it would rock!

Details like price and if it has a more powerful CPU are not yet revealed...