Football Manager 2007 is available from today, SEGA and developer Sports Interactive have announced, after several retailers began selling the game ahead of its official street date this Friday (20th).

An official statement released today said: “SEGA and Sports Interactive would like to announce that the official street date for Football Manager 2007 on PC / Mac has been brought forward to Wednesday, October 18th.

The game has been met with mixed reaction at release. Many fans are delighted with the faster gameplay, smoother graphics and scrolling, a cleaner data editor, accurate rosters, realistic scouting, and generally, the more immersive world

On the other end, many fans have complained about the lack of options available in the data editor. Features like changing the colors of a kit, changing the amount of kits of one club, creating a club or a competition were removed. Also, an option to edit the feeder clubs is not available. In defense, the editor was created from scratch and there was not enough time to implement all of the features from the data editor in FM 2006. Also, Football Manager 2007 lacks the “huge” database that was popular with a portion of fans. The developers have stated that the removal of this size database was due to long-term games becoming unbalanced in numbers. The developers have told people who wish to have a “huge” database to utilize DDT retain player files or to select more leagues from different continents when starting a new game. There has also been an issue with the way club finances are calculated for example leaving teams with crippling debt despite making a profit.

Technorati Tags: Football Manager 2007

“Guerrilla in Bolivia” is a strategic, simulation with action sequences. The game in inspired by the diaries of Che Guevara, which were kept during the campaign and start on November the 7th, 1966 in Camiri.

Leading a guerrilla troop is a dangerous and demanding challenge. You must take on government troops and manage the daily survival of your followers.

The simulation takes place across the whole of Bolivia, you have six detailed maps as used by Che himself. you will have to deal with ambushes, clashes with militia, sort out the food and provisions for your men, train any new recruits and run and a Guerrilla campaign. You start with 15 fighting men the core of Che Guevara’s operational unit.

Guerrilla in Bolivia is two games in one, a sophisticated strategic simulation and an exciting adventure.

Download Che: Guerrilla in Bolivia

Technorati Tags: Guerrilla, Bolivia, Che Guevara, Game, Amiga

The GP2X–which stands for ‘Game Park Times Two’–was first released this year as an alternative portable that runs on Linux. The handheld sports two 200MHz CPUs with 64MB of RAM and custom graphics hardware and decoding chips. It connects to a PC via USB and also takes SD cards. It retails in the UK at £124.99 (around $231).

The GP2X.
So far, approximately 30,000 units have been sold in less than nine months, and Craig Rothwell, the Director of GP32/2x Distribution Ltd., is confident that sales will reach 50,000 by Christmas.

Rothwell is delighted at the way that sales have been picking up for the underdog, which can play games, movies, and music as well as show photos and e-books. And although GP2X still has a way to go to catch up with the likes of the Game Boy Advance or the iPod, he thinks things are looking good.

“Things have really sped up in the last few months,” said Rothwell, who attributes this growth in sales to a number of factors. One of the things he firmly believes is that people “have had enough” of larger companies and their restrictive policies on homegrown game development.

“We think it’s [the growth in sales] because essentially the system is completely open whereas Sony and Apple and big companies like that lock down their systems. We pretty much let people run whatever they want on it. We don’t have any secrets about how it works, and we release all the documents. In fact we encourage people to hack the system and see what they can get it to do.”

Rothwell used to own (among other systems) an Amiga, and looks back on the early days of computers, especially the 16-bit era, fondly. With the GP2X, he says that he wants to try to recreate this kind of computing community.

“In the late ’80s and early ’90s, all systems were open like ours. They were all owned by small companies like Sinclair and Amstrad and Tiny. And then the big guys came in and put an end to it. I used to really like doing all that hacking around with the systems and things and it had a huge scene at the time. We know that the market is still there–it hasn’t disappeared–so that’s the market that we’re trying to appeal to now.”

He also revealed his “cunning plan” to make the GP2X easily upgradeable, with plans to do so at some point in the future.

Rothwell believes that there is great gaming potential for his company’s handheld. There are over 200 freeware games for download posted in the files section of the company Web site, and he recently ran a coding competition, and several people rose to the challenge of creating new games and applications. He added: “It’s essentially a PC, so ports are really easy.”

It’s not just indie games and freeware coming out for the GP2X though. Payback, a Grand-Theft-Auto style car game is the first big-budget game to be released for the handheld, and will be available for £24.99 (around $46) this month. There are also a number of other games in development for the system, including an RPG called Elsewhere from Japan.

Technorati Tags: GP2X

The GP2X Console is the Homebrew and Emulation Console of the moment and the tidal wave of releases keeps on coming, heres the latest releases:

GP2X Engine v1.3 (PC Engine Emulator for GP2X)

Hermes has released a new version of the PC Engine emulator for the GP2X he is working on, heres whats new:

- Hu-cards (.pce) compressed in BZIP2 format (.bz2)
- compressor to BZIP2 included (from selector rom screen)
- WAV support for 22050Hz, 44100Hz, 8 and 16 bits and MONO or Stereo files
- Some bugs corrected and others minor changes.
- Display Clock fixed to avoid problems with external software
- New Mode Horizontal-Inverted screen (to use A,B,X and Y as directional keys and Volume selector as buttons I and II)
- Sound speed syncroniced with screen refresh
- You can select a syscard rom from roms/pcengine directory (to avoid syscards clones in ISOS directories) using the symbol # in .toc files. Example: syscard: #syscard3.pce.bz2 (note you can use BZIP2 files too)
- You can use the ‘Pregap’ command to add relative time in a .toc file.
Example: Pregap: 00:03:00 (and in the next line track2.iso for example, to displace 3 seconds the iso begin)
- Added 250Mhz clock for some gpx2 don’t working from 266Mhz

No official Homepage but you can download Here

Vice 2X Alpha 3 (Multi System Emulator for the GP2X)

Snaff has updated the release of Vice2X the emulator which supports Commodore computers including the c64, c128, Plus 4, PET, CBM-11 and the VIC20 .

D64 browsing, loading and attaching options, basic cartridge support. Truedrive emulation works now, though watch out for that option switching itself off still. Make sure you copy all the data files over as there are extra ones since the last release.

SquidgeSnes v0.03

Source - Emuholic

Squidge let us know he has released a new version of his SNES emulator for the GP2X.

I’ve changed the graphics routines on this one, and it seems to be a fair amount quicker. The main problem was trying to sync with the LCD refresh - why oh why can’t we just use a vsync interrupt?

The proper way to exit is to hold down SELECT for at least 2 seconds, as I’ve said previously, but some people may not have read the entire thread. This version also has a frame rate limiter built in, so games shouldn’t run too fast. It uses rlyeh’s timer routines for this however, so I’ve no idea if they handle overclocking.

Next version will have command line support, and possibly a menu :)

No Official Homepage so download from Emuholic or GP2X News

SMSPlus 2x v0.3

efegea has released a new version of the Sega Master System emulator for the GP2X:

Official homepage down but it can be downloaded here.

Outcast v003 (AtariST Emulator for GP2X)

Skeezix has updated the Atari ST Emulator for the GP2X:

Heres whats new:

NEW: Virtual keyboard — needed for entering text or function keys etc of course, but also to get into a lot of games; the crack groups often put loader demos, or multiple games on a disk, and so you sometimes need to hit spacebar, or a number, of function key. Of course, some games require keyboard controls, too.
NEW: Input modes a little more defined
FIX: YM chipmusic is pretty good now, though sample playback is still asshat; I’ll work on that more. Always running out of time ;)
NOTE: Most of the START runtime menu should work fine now; CPU Mhz setting isn’t yet available, but throttle and frameskip and disk management and savestates and control modes should all be working!
CHG: Welcome screen text

Phamicom GP2X v0.2 (NES emulator for GP2X)

Madelman has updated the releas of a Nes Emulator for the GP2X called Phamicom GP2X heres the info:

Using rlyeh’s minilib instead of SDL.
Improved speed. Now all games I tested are playable.

GP2XMess v0.6 (Multi System Emu for GP2X)

Telengard has updated the MESS port to GP2X, heres whats new:

I just added ti99/4a support to gp2xmess. I’m happy to say it runs at full speed w/ the default fs and also has sound.

So this release supports:

Atari 7800
Colecovision
TI 99/4A

EFCS2x v0.1 (Chip 8 Emulator)

Tharos has updated his Chip8 Emulator for the GP2X:

Version 0.1 allows to map the controlls different for each Chip8 game (as Chip8 has often a very strang keymapping). Have a look at the readme.txt and the keymappings files which explain how to do own keymappings.

FCE-Ultra gp2x v0.1

Noname has released a very early port of the Nes emulator for the GP2X, heres the info:

A port of FCE-Ultra, a NES emulator. Very early version, not really usable yet, but it’s WIP.

GNGNeo2x v0.6.6a released

Pepone has updated his NeoGeo MVS (cartridge version) emulator for the GP2X, heres what he posted:

It’s only a bugfix release, but it fixes Samurai Showdown and maybe some other games as well.

Technorati Tags: GP2X, GNGNeo2x, FCE-Ultra, EFCS2x, GP2XMess, Phamicom, Outcast, SMSPlus, SquidgeSNES, Vice 2x, Engine, Emulators, emulation

A really Insane Japanese game. Try it now

read more | digg story

Nutella Football Game is the soccer videogame created by gianluca troiano and Artematica, it was sold on italian big malls as a promotional gift together with a can of Nutella during the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

Now the full version is available for download, for free, also the promotional video is now available on youtube here:

Download Nutella Football Game

Here we have the first video of Kick Off 2 running perfectly on a GP2X! That’s awesome! It’s the first time an Amiga game is running on an handheld device. The emulator that makes the “miracle” is the port of UAE4ALL for GP2X, enjoy:

Technorati Tags: Kick Off 2, Amiga, Atari ST, commodore, Kick Off, Dino Dini, GP2X, emulator, UAE4ALL

Here’s a preview of the new-look menus for World of Football:

(don’t pay too much attention to the actual names or values)

Technorati Tags: World of Football, football game, soccer game, menu

The GP2X is an open-source, Linux-based handheld game console and media player created and sold by GamePark Holdings of South Korea.

Released on November 10, 2005 in South Korea, the GP2X is designed to support video, music, photos, and games in an open architecture, allowing any user to develop software for the device. Room for expansion with future upgrades (new media formats, features, operating system, etc) has been made possible by upgradable flash memory firmware.

The GP2X is able to emulate many different game systems, such as the NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis, Game Boy, PC Engine, Neo-Geo, and Neo Geo CD consoles, as well as various arcade systems via MAME. The very finite processing power of the machine will naturally cap the complexity of emulable machines. There are even PlayStation and Game Boy Advance emulators on the system, though the GP2X has fewer buttons than a standard Playstation controller. However, emulation of 3D systems operates slowly due to lack of a hardware 3D rendering device, and GBA emulation will likely not run at full speed until GBA games’ ARM7 code is made to run natively on the GP2x’s ARM9 processor (a project that as of 2006 is underway in some capacity.)Template:Fact

The GP2X natively supports codecs and formats such as DivX, XviD, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis, but because the player is open-source there is also already support for various other formats, such as SPC, NSF, GBS, GYM, and VGM. The GP2X also supports a variety of picture formats, such as PNG, JPG, GIF, etc.

Technorati Tags: GP2X, Gamepark, linux, console, handheld, open source, game, emulation

Throw In is the tribute to the best game ever, Kick Off 2. It’s developed by Gianluca Troiano,

the 2003, 2004, 2005 Kick Off 2 World Champion. Throw in attempt to reproduce the classic gameplay of Kick Off 2 and is designed to offer fast action with responsive controls. You can do anything on the pitch with just a single fire button.

Download Throw-in

Technorati Tags: Throw in, football games, soccer game, kick off 2, download