Do you love Nintendo, silly comics and especially a certain pointy-eared, skirt wearing hero? Well then you’re way over do to check out the deviantart gallery of Hail-NekoYasha. Not only does she have a fun, clean art style, but a very uplifting sense of humor. Plus, where else can you find art that was done using a pencil, a goat, and three flamethrowers?

Some favorites of mine: Farore’s Withdrawl, The Pirates Life, or Not, Backup Fuel, and In Lieu of Paperman.

-JENNI CHASTEEN

Starting Monday December 4th you will be able to go to http://www.halo3.com, and register for the chance to be included in the Halo 3 beta scheduled to begin in the spring of 2007. Blah blah blah blah…. you’ve seen the press release, and you’ve heard about this on every gaming site you visit every ten minutes. What I really want to know is will they be charging people to participate in this beta? That SHOULD be a silly question, but MS recently polled xbox live users about whether they’d be willing to pay to participate in a beta test, and let’s face it…. what other game could they possibly have been referring to?

Charging for a beta is a dangerous idea. Beta software of any kind is, by it’s nature, flawed. It’s a prerelease version of the software, and as a beta tester you are doing the developers a service by testing it out and looking for flaws.  Things change when you put down money. When you put down money you become a customer, and as such you have expectations regarding the quality of what you payed for. When a flaw pops up that ruins the gaming experience for you, you now feel you have a legitimate reason to be mad because you paid for it. This would lead to angry letters as opposed to constructive criticism.

The second problem here is that beta programs usually have specific requirements, for example, a strong knowledge of how computers work. If the only requirement set forth is money, then the constructive criticism that bungie would get would be more along the lines of “yo dawg, that shit over there looks all fucked up” as opposed to “The texture on the third building on the left looks blocky when you get up close to it”. Alright, that may be a bit drastic, but you get my point - charging for a beta would hurt everyone in the long run. Gamers would feel that they were paying for an imperfect experience, and devs would have to sort through a lot of angry and/or unintellegent feedback to find something useful to them.

So is there any way this pay to test beta system could work? Yes. First, they’d have to set strict requirements for who could participate….. cash alone couldn’t get you in. Second, they’d have to apply any money you spent on the beta towards the purchase of the retail version of the game. Alternately, they could provide you with some exclusive downloadable content (maps, weapons, ect) that wasn’t available to others. That would lead to sore feelings from anyone that wasn’t a beta tester, but it is still a possible solution.

Your thoughts?

-MIKE KURZ

I’ve been spending some time on the 1UP.com forums discussing their “what the cell is going on?” article, which compares the graphical achievements of the PS3 (or lack there of) to those of the Xbox 360. The one thing I’ve taken away from talking to PS3 fanboys on those, and other forums is that I’m tired of the “The 360 had a head start… it’s not fair to compare them” arguement. I wrote the following post in the 1up forums to vent, and realized I wanted to put it here for everyone’s enjoyment / hatred, so here goes:

I’m getting veeeerrrry tired of the “the 360’s been out for a year already… it’s not fair to compare them!! Waaaahhhhh!!! ” arguement.

First off, the PS3 was SUPPOSED to be out in March 06….a whopping four months after the 360’s launch…. by that logic, devs should have had the things they needed (dev kits, ect) in hand to work on the games almost as long as 360 devs did….. but they didn’t. Sony fucked up. Production errors and an all around cocky attitude (sony shoots for the sun!) slowed them down. They lost exclusives, and ended up with a half ass launch where they couldn’t even come close to meeting the demand for the console. Hell, they couldn’t even manage a global launch…. MS had shortages, but at least they had them in Europe as well as the US and Japan. Sony and their bungling attempt at a console lauinch are to blame for these comparisons…. if they weren’t shooting for the sun, their launch wouldn’t have burst into flames.

Secondly, How is it unfair to compare a game for the ps3 that I can walk into a store and buy NOW with a game for the 360 that I can walk into the store and buy NOW? The 360 launched a year earlier, and guess what? That’s always going to be true. When the PS3 is celebrating it’s five year anniversarry, the 360 will be celebrating it’s six year anniversary. This will continue to be reflected in the development cycle of games going forward.

It will also continue to be true that the 360 is easier to develop for. So guess what? Even if the PS3 were twice as powerful as the 360 (which it isn’t… they’re on par with one another whether you like it or not) 360 games would probably look as good if not better than PS3 games anyway.

Now, all of that doesn’t mean that the ps3 isn’t a good machine, and it doesn’t even mean that I don’t plan on getting one somewhere down the line, but right now, it’s not worth it.

-MIKE KURZ

As mentioned in a previous article, Sony has been using Resistance: Fall of Man as their poster child for Blu-Ray discs. But as the article points out, it’s got a lot of fluff that doesn’t really need to be there. But the argument stands that “the future” needs a lot of space and that those 25GB discs are a necessity for true next gen gaming. Let’s explore that idea a bit, shall we?

So the idea is that these discs need to be huge for our convenience. No disc changes, little to no loading… sounds great. But as we often learn, most things that sound too good to be true are a load of horse crap. Yes, you will never have to change a disc; that much is true. But Blu-Ray discs tend to load slowly. Not to mention, highly anticipated games like Riiiiiiiidge Racer 7 *cough* cache 5GB of data your hard drive while you play. What’s convenient about having to save so much space just for cache?

Again, this stuff is just about games that exist now… soon we’ll see games that will require Blu-Ray discs, not just make them a “convenience”, right? Perhaps. But perhaps there are other ways of getting full games to us that don’t push expensive technology. Take the Xbox Live Arcade title Small Arms as an example. As reported by 1up, Gastronaut managed to take almost 1 GB of textures and models and compress them (possibly with the use of magic?) so that the entire game fits within the Arcade limit of 50 MB.

So in the end it looks like Sony just really really hearts Blu-ray and chose to shout it from the rooftops via the PS3. Well, shame on you Sony! Next time, date around a little; see what else is out there before you bring a format home.

-JENNI CHASTEEEN

The US version of Playstation.com has been updated to give the details for the 1.11 update to the PLAYSTATION 3’s firmware. Here are the details:

The PLAYSTATION®3 system software version 1.11 update includes the following:

* General
o You can now use PLAYSTATION®Network services.
o You can now use the single tap text entry method on the on-screen keyboard for English and other European languages.
* Settings
o [Audio CD Output Frequency] has been added as a feature under [Music Settings].
o [Enable ATRAC] has been added as a feature under [System Settings].
o [Cross Color Reduction Filter] has been added as a feature under [Display Settings].
o [After 5 Minutes] has been added as an option to [Screensaver] under [Display Settings].
* Video
o You can now select [Full Screen] under [Screen Mode] when playing video files saved on the hard disk or storage media.*
*An appropriate USB adaptor (not included) is required to use storage media with some models.
* Network
o You can now download and save music and video files on the hard disk under [Internet Browser].
o You can now download the following types of content under [PLAYSTATION®Store].
− PLAYSTATION®3 format software
− PLAYSTATION®Network titles*
* The term “PLAYSTATION®Network titles” refers to PlayStation format games (PS one) downloaded from PLAYSTATION®Store and PSP format games distributed electronically.
o Simplified and traditional Chinese characters can now be displayed under [Internet Browser].
o [Online Instruction Manuals] has been added as a feature.
* Friends
o New for 1.11: [Account Management] has been added.
* Other
o The method of calculating hard disk capacity has been changed.
* Free space on the hard disk is calculated as 1 GB (1024 x 1024 x 1024) = approx. 1,073,740,000 bytes. As a result, the free space value displayed may be less than the value that is mentioned under specifications in the product documentation. You can check hard disk free space under [Settings] > [System Settings] > [System Information].
o Playability status with the PS3™ system has changed for some PlayStation® and PlayStation®2 format titles. To check on the latest status, visit the search site for compatible titles.
o New for 1.11: Some PLAYSTATION®Network features have been revised.

- MIKE KURZ

If you haven’t heard by now, DON’T download the update for Texas Hold ‘Em on the Xbox Live Arcade. The “update” (more of a virus if you ask me) has been reported to make the game unplayable over live - it seems everyone who’s played the game post update has been unable to connect to a live match since updating. Even worse, though, is the effect the “patch” has had on other XBLA titles: a lot of people (myself included) are reporting lost data from many many arcade games.

For more on what the virus fixed, check out this post from Major Nelson. Don’t hold this problem against him though, if you have a problem direct it to gamertag SilverSurfer. That’s Greg Canessa, the general manager of XBLA.

Let’s document any and all problems - leave a comment with your patch problems.

[update 1]

Major Nelson had this to say in the comments on his blog:

“Only the connectivity issues have been addresses.

As far not posting today…sorry. Been in meetings and doing my ‘real’ job. Some days are like that.

But if you’ll excuse me, I have to hurry back to being a corporate tool now.”

I take this to mean that the deletion of content from other games has not yet been fixed. If you’re having that problem, sit tight…. I’ll update again as soon as there is more to tell.

-MIKE KURZ

Gamers and techies alike were all starry eyed when they first heard about the Optimus 103 keyboard from Art Lebedev Studios. This state of the art keyboard was going to feature OLED hot keys that would feature the logo to whatever software you assigned to each key. Then they got rid of the launcher keys….. and then they limited the screen size to half of each key that would feature a screen….. then they went from color OLED screens on the keys to black and white…. and now they’ve announced the price: $1200. That’s not a typo. If after all of the cut backs they’ve made to this keyboard you’re still interested in it you’ll have to part with $1200 of your hard earned dollars.

Sooooooo…… anyone still ACTUALLY interested in this thing?

-MIKE KURZ

The Dreamcast just won’t die, and like a hungry zombie biting down on some fresh brains, the undead Dreamcast will be chowing down on Trigger Heart Exelica. This game is a port of a recent Naomi arcade game, and will be out in February 2007.-MIKE KURZ

There’s been a lot of buzz about this lately, and it’s time I weighed in. Sony fanboys would have us all believe that blu ray discs are necessary for next gen games, and Microsoft fanboys would have us believe that it’s all a giant scam set up by Sony to part us with our hard earned money, however, the truth lies somewhere in between. Hit the jump to find out more (more…)

That’s right, We’re back and better than ever. Where’d we go? Loooong story. The important thing is that we’re back, and you can expect more articles and (hopefully) some improvements to the site within the next few months.

The first change you’ll see is the type of content. We’re going to be putting a stronger focus on gaming. The tech articles you know and love will still be there too, they just won’t be the main focus of the site anymore. A stronger emphasis is also going to be placed on editorial / opinion articles. Why? Well let’s face it - you can go to a hundred other sites for your tech and gaming news, but this is the only place you can come for our take on things.

I can’t say too much about it right now, but keep an eye out for some contests as well!