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

There has been keen rivalry between the two top football ( sawcer!! ) simulators for the platforms. Fifa Football, published by EA Sports and the Pro Evolution series, published by Konami. Both games had their good points…..Fifa had quicker, more arcade-like games, where Pro Evo had better depth and more realistic gameplay. For the last few years I have been firmly in favor of the Pro Evo series, mainly because of the realism of the gameplay. In the Fifa you could score the same type of goals over and over again..your center half could score overhead kicks from the edge of the area . Whilst Fifa undoubtedly had the better presentation, Pro Evo was always the essential purchase.. well no more!!
This year the depth of Fifa 07 is a huge improvement on previous years. There are two huge improvements in the game.
Number one is a hugely improved player-manager mode..whilst this has been in previous releases ( and featured in Pro Evo first ), the new all singing all dancing manager mode is excellent. You get a choice of teams from all four English leagues and at least two divisions from all the other top European leagues. All domestic and European cup competitions are included ( have a Carling cup game in midweek?….send out the reserves!! ). There is also an in-depth scouting and transfer system..plus a youth academy at each team, giving you the chance the mould the next Steven Gerrard.
Number two is the vast improvement in overall gameplay. Gone are the days of simply giving the ball to your quickest player and bashing the sprint button. In this new version the CPU defenders are too clever for that, and even if a trick works once against them the chances of it succeeding the next time are very slim. Scissor-kicking center backs are truly a thing of the past.
The presentation of Fifa’s games has always been top class and that remains the case here, but there has been a big improvement to the camera options available in the game mode, which were always under par. The commentary is also very good, and the same “Great save/goal/tackle/pass Clive!” comments aren’t repeated ad nauseum. The only minus point is that the music in the menus is rubbish…but you can’t have it all!
And so to Pro Evo 6 , the thinking man’s sim. With the gauntlet well and truly thrown down I was interested to see what Konami could come up with. Unfortunately the answer is “not much”. The presentation ( which was never its strong suit ) is absolutely amateurish and the in-game graphics look like a PS1 game. The game play and options are as good ( but the same ) as ever, but given the leap forward taken by Fifa, it seems the Pro Evo team have really taken their eye off the ball ( pardon the pun ). None of the depth added to the EA title is evident in its Konami counterpart. Hopefully they’ll come up with some fresh ideas for the next release, but in the meantime, it looks like for the first time this century EA Sports has the bragging rights in the footie sim market.

Which has the better gameplay? It basically depends what you are looking for. If absolute realism, in unique player movements, and shooting dynamics, pick FIFA. Recognition of players is pretty easy, especially players like Wayne Rooney, as a lot of time was spent with him in a body suit doing footballing stuff like tricks and shots- and it shows. Wayne runs like Wayne (well, if the real Wayne runs, anyway). The graphics are a shade sharper, a shade better as well, with better celebrations to boot. Pick of the celebrations is (I kid you not) Peter Crouch’s unique robot dance- superbly recreated, though possibly a very last minute edition, if the standard of finish is anything to go by.

Also, through balls on PES are pretty poor in comparison, with FIFA’s tending to be better by better players such as Alonso or Gerrard, and better control is shown by those who you would expect- Rooney being a good example.

Shooting is good on both, and with practice goals wouldn’t be too hard- strikes are more manageable on FIFA, long range efforts less likely to hit row Z, an annoying part of PES meaning the perfect strike is far less likely.

One on one multiplayer is as you would expect, with no odd tricks of the trade, but annoyingly if you press start mid game your opponent can use the menu to change his team first- something that can’t be done on Pro Evo. I have only played a four player (2 on 2) on Pro Evo but player switching and interplay was fairly good, and good fun.

Evolution has not been made in swathes on either game, so it seems at first pointless buying the new versions of either, but the revisions are plenty good enough and numerous to keep you entertained on either game.

FIFA team starting line ups offered another weird anomaly- Peter Crouch does not start for Liverpool, and Fowler and Garcia are not even on the bench- annoying, and this is just one example. Also annoying are the ’signing in’ and ‘profile’ sections, and it’s hard to see why these are really necessary, and the oddly complex menus. Making a sub could be much easier, but the menu is either looking at subs or on-pitch players, making substitutions are hard ship not a joy like on Pro Evo.

In short, if you are a person who doesn’t really spend a huge amount of time playing, and just wants to have a bit of fun, FIFA is probably the better pick. But if learning and improvement over long periods of time are your thing, then buy P.E.S.

Technorati Tags: Pro evolution soccer, FIFA 2007, PES, soccer, football, video game

The latest Pro Evolution Soccer is still the pinnacle of virtual footy. Touch, feel, movement - PES6 has it in spades.Enhancements include refs who actually allow some physical contact and more player control over shooting and heading. This is especially true of the sublime PS2 version, which packs in a lot more content than the 360 effort.

The Master League is genius (first you have to rack up some points tho if you want to set out Premiership/Serie A/ La Liga or you get jumbled up with anyone) and returns with no big changes tho I haven’t gone through it fully yet. The International Cup comes in a new form which you play qualifying games to qualify for the Worl…er.. I mean International Cup. And the best thing is your not resticted to the set team anymore. If Peter Crouch doesn’t do it for you, you drop his ass and bring in someone who does, or you can give some international call ups to someone at your favoriate club who’d normally never get a look in. If someone impresses you and (provided you qualify of course) you can pick them for your final squad.

Game play wise I feel evo has gone for a Arsenal/Man U approach (funny their the only two licenced Prem teams in the game) to the game in that they want to see you pass it around, open up the opposition with overlapping full back runs, etc… Its is quite difficult to score 30 yard screamers but they do come around. Free kicks also but its getting used to “the old mark on the power bar doesn’t get it in any more” and finding where they have hidden it. Goalkeepers are better but still are pron to make mistakes (but it doesn’t help if you come steaming out with them leaving an open goal). The annimation is better (attackers that go over goalkeepers bring out spetacular rolling on the floor falls) and the good players can run on to a high ball and bring it down (hurrah). But heres my moan, the quick start FK’s was a good idea but I feel not excuted to full effect. Referees were criticised (when aren’t they) in the last game for giving too many free kicks and now at times they don’t give “stone wall” penalties which can be frustrating. Corners I can also moan about cause surely your centre-backs should go up for any set pieces around the box as their the most likely to get their heads on it, But Konami think that Micheal Owen & Rooney will do. What’s up with that!

The Licences are what some people complain about but with Full French, Dutch, Italian, Spainish and then some from all around the world (including some internationals teams) their really is little excuse for people to stick with the FIFA alternative (Yes I did buy and play this year’s, and yes it has got alot better but I brought it back because its just not to the very high standard PES is at).

Technorati Tags: Pro Evolution Soccer 6, PES 6, football game, soccer game, konami

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

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

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

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