You know a game has managed a real interface breakthrough when engineers are cracking it open to see what it can do. Some engineering students in France, for example, have figured out a way to use a Nintendo DS to control this adorable off-the-shelf Pekee robot. (DS Fanboy has a translation of some of the info up, for those of us who don't speak French.)
When Gizmodo ran this story, they mused on the possibility of a DS controlled R.O.B. 2. Hey, he's making a big comeback with Smash Bros. Brawl, so why not? A R.O.B. who did more than play Gyromite would be the absolute perfect way to scare my cats.
Both Brain Age titles have sold millions of units worldwide and feature Dr. Kawashima's digitized floating head, so you'd think he was turning a pretty penny off of software sales, right? Well, wrong. According to a recent AFP article, Dr. Kawashima is absolutely uninterested in taking even a single yen from Nintendo.
Asked whether he ever thought of taking the royalty money and moving to a tropical island, Kawashima simply said: "I wouldn't know what to do there. If I had such time to spare, I want to do my research."
Indeed, it seems like nothing gets in the way of work. When for instance he decided last year to lose 20 kilogrammes (44 pounds), he just cut down on food, he says, adding: "If there is time for physical exercise, I want to use it for research."
Kawashima became interested in brains when he was a teenager, saying that he "wanted to put my brain in a computer so it would be around to see the last day of humanity".
You know, if a character acted exactly like this in some anime or manga story I was following, I would find him a little implausible.
Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day
Once a system gets popular, there's a mad rush to break it open. Importers want to be able to play their games without keeping two machines in the house, pirates want to steal, and hobbyists want to play with homebrew software. Well, only a few days ago, a group of hobbyist hackers have gotten all three groups closer to their goals with the Wii.
Atomic MPC covers the hack and how it works in detail, and it's really an elegant approach. The same hackers who got modified code to boot on a Wii via a disc-swap method found out that you can use Twilight Princess's savegame data to basically trick the console into running potentially anything off of an SD card.
If this hack took off, it could be big enough to really kick-start a Wii grey market that has, up to now, mostly just allowed for slightly doctored, pirated game images to be played on a machine. Atomic MPC also has an interview up with the hacker, Bushing, although it's pretty brief.
Well, it's official. We live in the future now. Cynergy Labs has built on Johnny Chung Lee's Wii head-tracking hack to create a hack that uses the Wii Remote and special gloves to allow for gesture-based interaction with a program. Ah, the next generation of games is going to be freaking fantastic.
It's easy to fall into thinking that the Wii is some sort of miracle tool that invigorates the elderly, heals brain damage, and helps you recover from a broken wrist. The therapists in the Metro Detroit health system, however, think that's so much empty hype.
Instead, the facility decided to invest an estimated $7,000 in another interactive virtual reality video game, the Cybex Trazer, because it tracks movement in the entire body, said Sharon Angeline, assistant director of the Troy Beaumont rehab services who works out of the Macomb Township office.
"(The Wii) is a good, fun way to do some initial exercises with the upper extremities," Angeline said. "The concern is it doesn't simulate the whole sports exercise, and we're concerned that there is overuse of the arm. In therapy, we want more functional movement."
When fans decide to hack ROMs to make their own Mario games, the results are usually pretty painful. Occasionally you get a gem like Super Kaizo Mario that push gameplay to the limit, but more often than not you get something with terrible stage design and crappy physics, if indeed physics are there at all.
This makes Super Mario Fusion all the more remarkable. Superficially it has every hallmark of a terrible ROM hack, featuring Mario fighting the Covenant, fighting of Cyberdemons with a rocket launcher, and even mixing it up with Mega Man 2's Bubble Man. Where it isn't terrible is the tremendous care going into the level designs and the game's sense of physics.
Levels in Super Mario Fusion are tough but fair and feel "right" in how they blend platforming and shooting. I find the most impressive level to be the Bubble Man fight; since it uses most of the original stage layout from MM2, you clearly see how different the new gameplay options make it feel. The actual Bubble Man fight is really nothing short of brilliant.
Check behind the cut for videos of the game's three demo levels, and you can also download the demo to try for yourself.
The fact that Kororinpa: Marble Mania didn't make more of a splash in the US has always kind of bummed me out. This is a fantastic game that gets everything just so: not too long, not too short, not too easy, not too hard... it's something anyone can play and enjoy on many levels.
Shallow bastard that I am, my response to this scientific news was not "Wow! Surgeons perform better after playing Wii games!" but "All glory to Kororinpa!" That aside, the article's explanation for why this tilt-intensive Wii title helps a surgeon more than, say, Wii Sports is pretty interesting
Certain games, such as Marble Mania, in which players guide a marble through a 3D obstacle course, were found to be particularly good because they involved small, precise movements of the controller.
Others were less useful. Dr Kohel told New Scientist magazine: "The whole point about surgery is to execute small, finely controlled movements with your hands, and that is exactly what you get playing.
"But you don't gain a lot from swinging an imaginary tennis racket."
Kororinpa Marble Mania
A lot of sources have incorrectly reported that Pat Goschy, who invented a controller remarkably like the Wii Remote while working for Midway, is either suing or planning to sue Nintendo for patent infringement. I can't blame them, isn't that what most people would do?
For various reasons, Goschy isn't going forward with a lawsuit, even though Nintendo's North American patent for the Wii Remote references his patents and he has prior art. For now, he only seems interested in telling his story to the world. Check out this Fox News Chicago (local news, not the 24 hour network) report that succinctly details what Mr. Goschy went through, and marvel at what dicks his bosses at Midway were.
Check below the cut to see the video that serves as Goschy's "prior art", showing his invention being used to play the Dreamcast title Ready to Rumble 2.
sambrown36 by wesburt
Want to see some beautiful, 100% DS-generated artwork? Look no further than the Colors gallery, which showcases digital art created with the DS homebrew painting application of the same name. You need an R4 card to run it, but Colors is by itself completely worth the price of admission. The piece above is just one sample I found on the front page, but the gallery is absolutely loaded with more stuff.
Have you seen this Mario Doom thing that's floating around? You need to take a look at it if you haven't. It's an interesting collision between the needs of the traditional 8-bit platformer and the grandaddy of modern FPS gaming.
What's really interesting is that, unlike some other Mario-themed Doom mods, Mario Doom actually retains platforming elements and a definite sense of the level design that made the original Mario so distinct. The Mario Doom levels frequently aren't direct adaptations, but it's usually easy to tell how it's based on the original Super Mario Bros level.
For your viewing pleasure, vids made by the mod's creator are embedded behind the cut, showcasing the three mostly-complete levels. I tried to find DL info for the mod, but it doesn't seem to be complete or available for play yet. It's interesting to see how much more sophisticated the mod has become from the first level, which is fairly crude, to the third level, which is remarkably sophisticated. First person platforming shouldn't work, but this guy may be close to making it possible.
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