PLACE AND DATE
The 7th Kick Off 2 Gathering World Cup (aka WC) will be held in Rome, Italy, the 10th (aka Day1, Saturday) and 11th (aka Day2, Sunday) November. Players may qualify to Day2 matches ONLY attending Day1. On contrary, it is possible to partecipate on Day1 and withdraw from games on Day2.

CONFIRMED PLAYERS ATTENDING THE WC:
TOTAL PLAYERS CONFIRMED: 11

ITALY
1 - Gianluca T - “Foxsoft” - confirmed 24/05/07 - Rank: 1
2 - Marco S - “Stox” - confirmed 24/05/07 - Rank: 92
3 - Filippo D - “filippodb” - confirmed 25/05/07 - Rank: 47
4 - Giacomo T - ?? - confirmed 25/05/07 - Rank: 35
5 - Franco C - ?? - confirmed 25/05/07 - Rank: 77
6 - Fabio A - ?? - confirmed 25/05/07 - Rank: 106
7 - Francesco L - ?? - confirmed 25/05/07 - Rank: newbie
8 - Lorenzo L - ?? - confirmed 25/05/07 - Rank: newbie
9 - Daniele B - ?? - confirmed 31/05/07 - Rank: newbie

NORWAY
1 - Jorn F - “Freshmaker” - confirmed 24/05/07 - Rank: 33

GREECE
1 - Alkis P - “Alkis21″ - confirmed 25/05/07 - Rank: 4

TO BE CONFIRMED PLAYERS:
1- Mark B - “Bounty Bob” - ENG - Rank: 40 (trying to buy tickets…)
2- Rollo T - ITA - Rank: newbie (as reported by filippodb)
3- Francesco D - ITA - Rank: 50 (as reported by filippodb)

Ranks are indicated at the date of registration.

GAMING ROOM AND SCHEDULE
Address of the venue and schedule of Day1 and Day2 will be posted ASAP

FLIGHTS AND HOW TO REACH THE CITY / THE VENUE
Rome is very well connected especially by air.

www.ryanair.com
www.easyjet.com

A detailed map of the venue location and how to reach it from the airport and/or train station will be prepared soon.

HOTELS
Two hotels of different class/price will be proposed ASAP near the venue or connected to the venue by quick subway trips.

TOURNAMENT RULES
These settings will be used in every game, with no exceptions:

- NO WIND
- PBD MIX
- NO RANDOM PITCH
- NO LINE UP CHANGES AT START
- RANDOM REFEREE
- AFTERTOUCH

Please refer to the forum for details on these keywords.

TOURNAMENT FORMAT
Seeding and group forming:
Seeding will be done as usually by the “seeding experts” on the KOA forums. Groups will be formed by the seeding results and extraction on Friday evening, at the Day0 dinner. Location will be posted ASAP.

Day 1 Format:
Groups depends mainly of the total number of players, but the target is to create groups of 8 players. The format will be TEAM A = TEAM B, 2×5 MIN, 1 LEG.
Each player should have the same amount of TEAM A and TEAM B matches.

Day 2:
This match day is charachterized by three parallel competitions, all TEAM A > TEAM B, 2×5 MIN, 2 LEG knockout matches. Both playoff and playout will be fully played until each player will have its unique ranking position (like Koeln05 and London06).

The TOP16 players will have access to the WORLD CUP.
The MID16 players will have access to the KOA CUP.
The other will access to the FUN CUP.
Qualifiying mode depends of group of day1. Generally, the same qualifying rules as London06 will be used. Organizers will post the final format for discussion after the preregistration.

In case of tie matches, extra times will be played. In this case, a coin will be tossed to decide Team A. The extra times are played in TEAM A = TEAM B mode, 2×5 MIN EXTRA TIME, PENALTY SHOOTOUT.

These games will be displayed on screen:
- SEMI FINALS WC
- FINALS WC (both 1st/2nd and 3rd/4th place)
- FINAL KOACUP
- FINAL FUN CUP
- GAME OF SHAME (1 leg TEAM A = TEAM B match, organizzers will decide the conditions, camber-windy game possible )

PRIZES
The prizes are:
1st WORLD CHAMPION the shield and a golden COLOSSEUM CUP
2nd RUNNER UP CHAMP a silver COLOSSEUM CUP
3rd a bronze COLOSSEUM CUP
4th a smaller bronze COLOSSEUM CUP

KOA CUP WINNER a small golden COLOSSEUM CUP
RUNNER UP a small silver COLOSSEUM CUP

FUN CUP WINNER a even smaller golden COLOSSEUM CUP
RUNNER UP a even smaller silver COLOSSEUM CUP

There will be THE GAME OF SHAME with prizes (Tshirts).

Obviously some special prices for best attack and defense too… and a special price to the 3 best ranked NEWBIES (definition of newbie: rome2007 should be your first WC attendance).

PS: gold, silver and bronze mean that the cups are painted not that they are made of 24k gold, pure silver or acient bronze

Registration
Each person can preregister at website. No fee payment is required. We’ll setup a website form to handle all the registrations.
Registered players can vote for the introduction of

- EXTRA TACTICS

This is the ONLY ONE RULE that can and will be polled. The rule will be voted by preregistered users.The poll starts on 10 July and ends on 10 October.
Please register also in this post so that I can keep the player list updated by posting: KO2 name - KOA forum name (if available) - nation - KOA rank (if available)

WebSite
http://kickoff2worldcup.org

Main reference to the Worldcup with this post.

Fees
Calculations in progress. They will be not that high, no need to frighten up for this…

A new MAME has been released, bringing it into line with the regular version:

• xMAME for Linux
• MacMAME for Mac OS X
• MAME OS X universal binary for intel Mac
• Mame32 for Windows
• MAME Plus for Windows
• VectorMAME for vector games
• EEMAME, MAME for Symbian Mobile Phones
• PocketCultMAME for Pocket PC
• PalmMAME for Palm OS
• MAME4ALL PSP for Playstation Portable
• MAMEPSP for Playstation Portable
• PSPMame for Playstation Portable
• XMame PSP for Playstation Portable
• MAME has a sister project called MESS which applies the MAME philosophy to emulating home computers and consoles.
• MAME arcade cabinet, homebuild replicas of arcade cabinets to run MAME software.

As usual you can download from it’s home

Technorati Tags: MAME, 110, emulator, arcade

Dave Dribin announced the released of a new OS X port of MAME that will run natively on Intel based Macs. The port is implemented using newer OS X technologies such as Core Audio, Core Image, Core Video, and OpenGL, and requires OS X 10.4 to run.Here is an example of using the Edges Core Image filter on Ms. Pac-Man:

Astute readers will also know that there is currently no Intel port of MAME for OS X. The MacMAME project has been dormant for most of the year, and is PowerPC only. SDLMAME does compile and run fine, but as with most cross-platform projects, there are a couple minor things that would be nicer if it could target OS X only. After a couple months of work in the background, it is finally ready for general release. Now we can officially annouce the “MAME OS X” project, so check out the this page for download links to a universal binary.

It definitely has some warts and in need of some spit and polish, but at least it’s not embarrasing. All video and sound emulation should be working, and it shouldn’t crash. Enjoy, and please report any problems you find on the web forum. I’ll describe some of the behind the scenes tech details in the next few paragraphs.

The MAME project is well abstracted to be OS agnostic. On OS X, the sound is implemented with Core Audio and the graphics are implemented using Core Video, Core Image, and OpenGL. This not only ensures the best performance, but allows real-time Core Image filtering on the emulation output. While mostly pretty useless, it can add a new twist to an old game. The screen shot above is an example of the CIEdges filter applied to Ms. Pac-Man.

Download MAME OS X

Technorati Tags: MAME OS X, MAME, OSX, MAC OS, Apple, Intel, universal binary, Macintel

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

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

Everyone’s favorite arcade emulator is hitting the PSP thanks to all the homebrew stuff going on. Here we have the best MAME emulators for Arcade games on Sony Playstation Portable:

• MAME4ALL PSP
• MAMEPSP
• PSPMame
• XMame PSP

Technorati Tags: MAME4ALL, MAMEPSP, PSPMame, XMame, PSP, MAME, Playstation portable

Arcade emulators on Personal Digital Assitant are very sofisdticated thanks to the increasing power of this Handheld Devices processors. There’re good MAME emultors for Both Pocket PC and Palm OS, download theme from here:

• PocketCultMAME for Pocket PC
• PalmMAME for Palm OS

Technorati Tags: PocketCultMAME, PalmMAME, Palm OS, Pocket PC, MAME, PDA

A new version of the MAME emulator is out as well as some of it’s alternative versions. As always you can download the new version from here

Other version of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator:

• xMAME MAME for Linux
• MacMAME MAME for Apple Mac OS X
• Mame32 MAME for Windows
• MAME Plus MAME for Windows
• EEMAME, MAME for Symbian Mobile Phones

Technorati Tags: MAME, XMAME, MacMAME, MAME32, MAME plus, EEMAME, E2MAME, emulator, emulation, arcade

VectorMAME is a special build of MAME that allows vector games to be displayed on a vector monitor using Zektor Vector Generator.

It is available for download from here

Technorati Tags: vectormame, zektor, vector, generator, mame, vector games

Those are all the best emulators for Nintendo Entertainment System, download and try them from here:

• BasicNES
• FakeNES
• FCE Ultra
• FCEUXD
• Jnes
• Mednafen
• MESS
• nemulator
• Nessie
• NESten
• Nester
• Nintendulator
• NESticle
• Nestopia
• olafnes
• RockNES
• Sega Li
• UberNES
• VirtuaNES

Technorati Tags: BasicNES, FakeNES, FCE Ultra, FCEUXD, Jnes, Mednafen, MESS, nemulator, Nessie, NESten, Nester, Nintendulator, NESticle, Nestopia, olafnes, RockNES, Sega Li, UberNES, VirtuaNES, emulator, emulation, NES, Nintendo, Windows