News
Jack and the Beanstalk (Build 31) (A2600 Game)

atari2600land has posted an update of his Atari 2600 homebrew game “Jack and the Beanstalk” which is based upon a fairy tale with the same name.

Release notes:

i think i fixed all of them. i also improved the castle rooms some more, i fixed the right side of them to match the left.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=118991&st=125

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WiiLander v0.1 (Wii misc)

Wiilander is a clone of the popular classic 70s Lunar Lander game. With a big different,you don’t use buttons.. instead just hold the wiimote vertically,and rotate it to control the angle of the ship, and twist it to control the throttle of your rocket.

Isn’t playable yet, BUT you can navigate trough the planet. Zoom, scroll and collision detection are working 100%

Thanks to http://www.tehskeen.com for the news.

http://wiibrew.org/wiki/User:Manny2008/WiiLander

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Phantomas v1.8x (GP2x Game)

Phantomas is a remake of the platform game “Phantomas” by Enric Cervera which was published by Dinamic Software in 1986. You have to get into a millionaire’s mansion and steal as much as possible from it.

Thanks to www.gp32spain.com for the news.

http://www.phantomaspc.org

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MoonShell v2.00 (Beta 1) (NDS Application)

After a long time of silence Infantile Paralyzer is back with another update of his legendary shell application “MoonShell”. This is a BETA of the upcomming v2 branch.

Thanks to http://www.gbatemp.net for the news.

http://mdxonline.dyndns.org/2008/12/moonshell-version200-beta1.shtml

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Happy New Year 2009 (misc)

Dear all, Happy New Year 2009!

Kojote, kedo and celeth wish you a successfull happy new year 2009!

Now a few uninteresting words from Kojote:

2008 has been a busy year, the busiest so far in the history of PDRoms. We served you with more than 6000 homebrew related news for handhelds, consoles and other mobile software.

The Nintendo DS scene has become very active and there were many high quality releases. It’s amazing to see what people were able to produce for it – from games to admirable technical demos, but even emulators, hit this sweet handheld.

The GP2x is getting few and fewer releases and can be considered dead already. In fact companies such as Gamepark Holdings don’t deserve such a loyal community staying behind anyway. Their marketing is a true pain and getting in touch with them is even more pain. We hope they will improve and do better with the upcoming Wiz.

While we are at GP2x and Wiz, the most wanted item of 2009 is probably the Pandora – which is dealt as unofficial successor of the GP2x. The Open Pandora Team is doing a great thing in the history of video gaming and their goal will be reached soon. Let’s look forward for Q1/2009 and see if the Pandora will change the world of homebrew.

Sony’s Playstation Portable is a nice homebrew toy too… but there are so many people who probably think, that this is a portable LUA interpreter only. It’s actually quite sad to see such potential power wasted. PSP Hero of 2008 is definatly Dark_Alex with his custom firmware – Thanks for all your hard work!

The launch of the Apple-Store pretty much destroyed real homebrew on the iPhone, but there are also programs offered for free – most of them are fun programs. No one can be blamed that most people try their luck now and at least charge 99 US cents per download. Still shocking to see, how fast things can change.

Another positive surprise of 2008 was the Wii scene. With the hard work of Team Twiizers the Wii has been exploited to run almost anything. With the futuristic control mechanism of the Wii also new homebrew concepts have seen the daylight, which was truly a fresh wind in the homebrew scene in general.

Android by Google is another interesting phenomenon, but it hasn’t really kicked in yet. Maybe 2009 will be the homebrew year of Android?

The ones who love Linux on their cellphone might be familiar with the NeoFreeRunner which runs the Openmoko Linux operating system. I tried to gain one of those babies but failed, because they were simply sold out. The community is pretty small but steadily growing. Still it’s hard to believe this stuff could get mainstream one day.

If it comes to very old consoles, we can’t leave out the Atari 2600. Most homebrew are nowadays made with BATARI Basic, a basic variant, which compiles into an Atari 2600 binary. Most active guy there is probably atari2600land, who updates his games on a regular base – some bad tongues even say too often.

The rest of the systems we cover are more or less alive, but struggling in favor for other, newer, systems.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts of homebrew for 2008 – the steadily increasing amount of homebrews indicates that homebrewing is getting a more popular sport, which is good for all of us.

On a side note I would like to thank a few brother and sister sites, who are directly or indirectly releated to PDRoms. In particular:

* NintendoMaxhttp://www.nintendomax.com – They are blazing fast at times, they really deserve our all respect.
* PlayerAdvancehttp://www.playeradvance.org – The community of PlayerAdvance has been quite active the past years, but 2008 was a bit poor release wise. Nevertheless it’s a great addition and they also index all of their homebrew releases for everyone. A worthy resource of many years of homebrew scene.
* Dev-Frhttp://www.dev-fr.org – Splitted from PlayerAdvance dev-fr got their own community and also has the one or other quality release by one of it’s members. They don’t update too often, which is probably their only weak point.
* Tehskeen – http://www.tehskeen.com – Brakken is more into console modification but also likes the homebrew scene a lot and he shows his support regular. Recently with his recently held Wii coding competition.
* GBAdevhttp://www.gbadev.org – GBAdev are a great community, but the GBA part has become pretty obsolet, which is a sad but true fact.
* DCEmuhttp://www.dcemu.co.uk – Even if I and Mr. Wraggster didn’t had the best relation recently, he is still an important factor for all homebrewers. His crediting strategy could be a bit different, but for now this issue is solved. DCEmu also managed to gather the one or other hammer release during 2008 and has a large community.
* Drunkencodershttp://www.drunkencoders.com – An important community, but almost no news 🙂
* GBAtemphttp://www.gbatemp.net – GBAtemp has a focus on mainly commercial releases without downloads, but they also show that there is homebrew. Every site more reporting about homebrews is a profit for the scene. Someone got to show the ware…kidd…uhm… that there is legal stuff too 🙂
* DS-Scenehttp://www.ds-scene.net/ – pretty much the same as GBAtemp 😉
* WiiBrewhttp://www.wiibrew.org – WiiBrew is THE source for all kind of Wii homebrews and a big and useful resource. What the scene would be without WiiBrew?
* PALibhttp://www.palib.info – PALib is one of the easier ways to get into Nintendo DS coding and a lot of quality homebrews for NDS were made with the help of it. Also they do have one of the most helpful communities.
* GP32x.comhttp://www.gp32x.com – GP32x has been the main head office for the GP32 and GP2x scene, but the guys who acknowledge the news there are getting lazier and lazier 🙂
* GP32spainhttp://www.gp32spain.com – This community is of course important for our spanish speaking GP32 and GP2x guys. They do have a proper news service, but a big lack of giving correct credits.
* XDA Devershttp://forum.xda-developers.com/ – If you are into Windows Mobile stuff, XDA devers is the way to go. Many people with rank and name publish their stuff on their boards.
* Openmoko Projectshttp://projects.openmoko.org/ – The place to go for all your Openmoko needs, they also do have a Planet and a Wiki reachable trough the main page.
* ANDdevhttp://www.anddev.org/ – If you are a freak of Android stuff, Android Developers might be your home base. After checking several pages of the Android community, this one seems to be the most useful one.
* OpenPandorahttp://www.openpandora.org – The upcoming Pandora console already has it’s base and people should be keeping their eyes on it! We lay our all hopes into the Open Pandora development team to recieve a kickass toy!
* Emuboardshttp://www.emuboards.com – Emuboards, formerly known as Emuholic, deals with emulation and homebrew, but doesn’t have too many updates recently.

Let’s bundle all our powers and bring homebrew to new heights!

HAPPY NEW YEAR AGAIN!

http://www.pdroms.de/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=2219

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Idealist (28-11-2008) (Symbian OS Application)

Using Idealist you can easily drag and drop events, stretch the time they take and change the order in which they take place.

http://code.google.com/p/idealist/

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S60 HTML Editor v0.7 (Symbian OS Application)

S60 HTML Editor is a simple but useful editor for HTML code on Symbian smartphones. Write and edit your HTML pages directly on your smartphone!

http://code.google.com/p/s60htmled/

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symwiki v1.0 (Symbian OS Application)

SymWiki is a personal Wiki application for Symbian S60 devices. It supports a subset of emacs-wiki syntax. It is written in Python for S60, so it runs on every platform where Pys60 runs.

http://code.google.com/p/symwiki/

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Escarpod v1.10 (Symbian OS Application)

Escarpod is a podcatcher for cell phones that run the Symbian operating system.

Presently Escarpod is only available for the UIQ graphical environment. This includes all newer phones in the Sony Ericsson P-, M- and G-series, as well as W950 and W960 and Motorola Z8 and Z10. See supported phones below for a list of phones Escarpod is known to work on.

http://code.google.com/p/bergamot/

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CSPSP v1.6 (PSP Game)

CSPSP by elite999 is a 2D version of the first-person shooter Counter Strike.

Changes:

– Fixed the majority of freezing bugs
– Removed the 64 maps limit
– Fixed the bug where all weapons were dropped on death
– Implemented buyzones
– Fixed the bug where your own ammo would increase when someone else was buying ammo
– Added a simple loading bar
– Implemented a new animation system for players (which also means slightly different player gfx)
– Added “Overwrite Map” option when your map differs from the server’s.
– Added bullet speed to the guns config file (sniper rifle bullets are now as default 2x as fast)
– Added some alert messages when buying (not enough money, buying time ended, etc.)
***Redid most of the Online Lobby; implemented an account system (with friends lists)***

http://forums.qj.net/showthread.php?t=146626

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