Kojote recently came across the article “Nintendo und der Kampf gegen das R4-Schwarzkopiermodul” published at http://www.golem.de/0908/69440.html

The rough translation means something like “Nintendo fights against the R4 piracy module”, where the author Peter Steinlechner mentions, that Nintendo has hired severall people in Germany and UK to go after R4 & co sales. The Nintendo DS software industry suffers from weak sales so the only conclusion is, that “pirates” are responsible for it.

Neil Boyd, previously hired at Warner Bros., already tried to fight movie/music piracy – now he has been hired by Nintendo, to go after people who sell R4 and similar cards.

This should be reached within four steps:

1) Legal possibilities
2) Customer intelligence
3) New technologies (copy protection) &
4) Political regulations

In particular it’s understandable why Nintendo has to be harsh, after all they need to defend their business and also protect their publisher partners. The development of software titles costs a lot of money, but piracy is not really a new problem.

Undiscussable fact is, that flashcards are usually used to play pirated games. Homebrew and piracy have been always close brothers, both software types need “modifications” or “add-on hardware” to be executed, most of the time.

Homebrew and piracy are sitting in the same boat, while Nintendo tries to sink the pirates, they will sink homebrew the same way. Not everyone who owns a flashcard is a bad pirate, but the majority probably is. Up to today, Nintendo refuses to supply hobby coders with a legal way to enjoy their console. There always will be freaks who like to exploit hardware and to do their own non mainstream thing.

The solution might be just, that all the major suppliers of consoles and handhels allow their customer to do with their hardware whatever they want, as they legally paid for it too. This concept works perfect on the GP2x or the GP2x Wiz, so it’s not just an imaginary dream.

Even if you look back into the GP32 days, there was almost no piracy and the homebrew community even tried to blackmark such people without mercy. Homebrewers are against piracy of any kind and might be Nintendo’s long arm, if they would be just getting support for their very own lifestyle.

http://www.pdroms.de/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=7071

Protista is an interactive toy where player-created creatures compete for supremacy of the Petri dish. Protista, an experiment in interactivity, challenges both the right and left sides of the brain. The creative side is unleashed to design and build an assortment of creatures in a full-featured creature editor. Protista tasks the analytic side to program the creatures with a graphical programming language. Then, the whole brain can sit back and watch its creations battle it out in a struggle of microscopic proportions.

Thanks to www.dcemu.co.uk for the news.

https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=436

Fandian (previously known as Sonic) is the development name for ritz’s homebrew Nintendo DS 3D game project.

Some notable features include skeletal animation, static & dynamic point lights, shadow volumes, skyboxes, picking, gravity and object & environment collision detection. In the near future he will build the game logic, a.i., scripting and maybe an interactive 3D map builder for easy world creation and object & creature placement.

There seems to be no changelog (yet).

Thanks to http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=176961 for the news.

http://www.daftcode.net/

ALPHABET ARABE O CLIC is an educational application (created with DS Game Maker) that can help you to learn the Arabic alphabet.

Thanks to wraggster ( http://dcemu.co.uk/alphabet-arabe-o-clic-239723.html ) for the news.

http://www.ds-scene.net/?s=viewtopic&nid=8278

W T N is an early platform game by Delca.

Thanks to wraggster ( http://dcemu.co.uk/w-t-n-239724.html ) for the news!

http://www.playeradvance.org/forum/showthread.php?t=33659

Nintendo Adventure Books: Monster Mix-Up DS is a digital version of the gamebook of the same name written by Bill McCoy and published by Archway Paperbacks in 1991.

It is best described by the book’s introduction:

“Dear Game Player: You are about to guide me through a great adventure. As you read this book, you will help me decide where to go and what to do. Whether I succeed or fail is up to you. At the end of every chapter, you will make choices that determine what happens next. Special puzzles will help you decide what I should do—if you can solve them. The chapters in this book are in a special order. Sometimes you must go backward in order to go forward, if you know what I mean. […] Good Luck! Driplessly yours, Mario.”

http://multiple-option.blogspot.com/2009/08/nintendo-adventure-books-monster-mix-up.html

Deploy your army then try to destroy all enemy ships before your opponent does.

The youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dEHCSoiCpc
Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/?lnn0ytwnkmc
Nightfox’s homepage: http://blogs.gamefilia.com/knightfox

http://forum.palib.info/index.php?topic=7797

Fight on both screens to kick the monsters out of the dojo before your master comes back. Use your shuriken and dashes to increase your chains and fill up your ‘badassery meter’. When your chains go high enough you can activate ‘rumble time’, which allows you to chain even more precise.

Release notes:

While busy doing all kinds of stuff I somehow quite spontaneously decided to go back and polish Dojo Rumble some more. Previously soundless, it now not only features sound, but also some kickin’ tunes, a few updated sprites and a new ‘endless’ mode. Also new is a small reward for finishing easy or badass mode: namely, a red outfit with matching rumbling-red shurikens.

If you are not familiar with any rumbling in the dojo:
Fight on both screens to kick the monsters out of the dojo before your master comes back. Use your shuriken and dashes to increase your chains and fill up your ‘badassery meter’. When your chains go high enough you can activate ‘rumble time’, which allows you to chain even more precise.

Have a look-see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm0lxKkvm9I

Game by Dion Koster. Music by Andras “slyspy” Koever.

Various sound effects picked up from Freesound.org and by:
Syna Max
Mich3D
Schluppipuppie
Abyssmal

Feel free to comment!

http://forum.palib.info/index.php?topic=7803

hoitjuh55 wrote a simple analog clock application for Nintendo DS.

Thanks to http://www.dcemu.co.uk for the news.

http://forum.palib.info/index.php?topic=7792.0

ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games, provided you already have their data files. The clever part about this: ScummVM just replaces the executables shipped with the games, allowing you to play them on systems for which they were never designed!

Some of the adventures ScummVM supports include Adventure Soft’s Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2; Revolution’s Beneath A Steel Sky, Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2; Flight of the Amazon Queen; Wyrmkeep’s Inherit the Earth; Coktel Vision’s Gobliiins; Westwood Studios’ The Legend of Kyrandia and games based on LucasArts’ SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) system such as Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max and more. You can find a thorough list with details on which games are supported and how well on the compatibility page. ScummVM is continually improving, so check back often.

Changes:

– Fixed crash when returning to launcher from AGI games

http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=7838