Author Archives: Benjamin Nied

If you’re one of the very, very few people lucky enough to have snagged a PlayStation 3 at this stage of the game, Sony has just released their latest firmware update, designed to bring new features and bugfixes to your ubermachine. One thing of note: the new update does NOT take care of the 1080i upscaling issue that we reported last month, so if you’re still running your PS3 on an older HDTV that doesn’t support 720p (but supports 1080i), be prepared for your games to still run at 480p. Bummer. For a complete list of changes, hit the jump!

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Yesterday, we posted an impressive video showing how the Nintendo Wii’s Wiimote can be used as a Windows mouse. That isn’t just restricted to Redmond disciples anymore; now Apple users can enjoy the same hack for their happy little operating system. I say give these guys another year and the Wiimote will be the most versatile piece of electronics available. Enjoy!

If all you Wii owners out there didn’t feel lucky already, now you should. Hackers have discovered a way to use the Wii’s controller as a Windows mouse, basically making any and all other kinds of pointing devices obsolete. It’s not clear just how well this works, but how cool would it be to do your next presentation using Nintendo’s little Wiimote? Enjoy!

If you’ve been waiting for Sony’s uber-racing sim Gran Turismo to finally hit shelves again, we have some good news and some bad news. Gran Turismo HD, a souped-up Gran Turismo 4 that was supposed to allow players to buy other cars via the PlayStation Network, has now been reduced to a “concept demo” that will be available for download on December 24th. Sony has instead decided to focus on Gran Turismo 5, feeling that a full-blown sequel might sell better and give their shiny new box a chance to show off what it can really do. However, this new GT won’t hit shelves until at least 2008, so if you need to get your racing fix sooner, you’re gonna be stuck with the demoted GTHD. Bummer. At least we can still look forward to the PSP Gran Turismo, right?

[via GamePro]

Well that didn’t take long. Less than three weeks after its debut in the US and Canada, our first group of hackers have discovered a way to rip Blu-ray movie discs to their PlayStation 3’s hard drive using Yellow Dog Linux 5.0, which is the first step to completely defeating the Blu-ray’s “improved” security features. Right now, the hackers have only figured out how to extract the disc’s information; someone still needs to figure out how to burn these images back to disc. So the ongoing battle between hackers and multimedia providers continues on, with the hackers making another monumental leap. And at this rate, it won’t be long before Blu-ray’s secrets are completely unlocked.

[via IGN]

Wii owners everywhere have a trifecta of games that everyone seems to be waiting for. We’ve gotten one part so far, Twilight Princess, and we’ve been waiting for Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy to hit early next year to make everything else in life seem unimportant by comparison. While Metroid seems to still be on target to come out first- or second-quarter 2007, it appears that Super Mario Galaxy might have gotten pushed to late 2007, meaning we’ll all need to wait longer to play the true sequel to Super Mario 64. It could be that we’re just misreading Nintendo’s own Reggie Fils-Aime’s comments; he stated that he expects SMG “sometime between March of 2007 and Christmas 2007,” so it’s possible that it’ll hit sooner rather than later. Oh well, there’s always Super Smash Bros. Brawl, right?

[via GamePro]

If you’re an old-school gamer, chances are that you spent many a quarter (and many NES hours) playing Double Dragon, kicking ass and taking names to save your girlfriend Marian from the Black Warriors. While the plotline might not have stood the test of time well, the game itself defined the beat-’em-up genre of gaming for years and gave many gamers (myself included) their first experience with a multiplayer fighting game. The classic is now coming to Microsoft’s Xbox Live! Arcade, meaning that all you Xbox 360 owners can once again take to the mean streets of New York and do battle.

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Here at Slashgear, we advocate safe gaming protocol in every aspect your life. If your Xbox 360 is flashing three red lights, you’re better off taking it to an Xbox service center in order to avoid, ya know, voiding the warranty. But if you’re the adventurous type, you can try what these guys did; when faced with the triad of red flashers, these guys simply take their misbehaving console and start smacking it around. Again, there are better ways to fix your system, but if this suits your fancy, here’s the how-to. Enjoy!

[via Gizmodo]

If you’re one of the millions of people left out in the cold (literally) trying to obtain a next-generation gaming console last week, and you don’t know any friends who had better luck, then the United Kingdom has your back. While the Wii isn’t launching over in England for another two weeks (followed by a four-month wait for the PlayStation 3 in March), the Science Museum in London is hosting its Game On exhibition, highlighting games from the PDP-10 era to today’s ultra-modern technology. Over 120 games will be available for people to play, so if you’re still hankering for that Virtua Fighter fight or to see how weird the original Street Fighter was, head on over, since the exhibit will be running until the end of February. And if you live in the UK, the exhibit ends right before the PS3 comes out. Try before you buy?

Game On [via IGN]

Well that certainly didn’t take too long. 3.0 hasn’t even hit the Internet yet, and already Sony has pushed out the PlayStation Portable’s System Update 3.01. Apparently this is a last-minute security fix, as there was a fairly large hole in the 3.00 update. No new features have been added, meaning that you’ll still need one of those expensive PlayStation 3 things if you want to enjoy PSOne emulation on your diminutive little handheld; the next major system update should bring PS3-less emulation your way. So, for all you happy PSP owners out there, grab the update via the link below.

US PSP System Update Site [via IGN]

Hackers will take apart most anything electronic, and since the Nintendo Wii is probably one of the coolest – and oddest – gadgets to hit shelves in recent memory, of course the first thing a hacker’s going to do it dissect it. That’s what these guys did, ripping the Wii’s sensor bar apart to find nothing more than a couple of IR transmitters, meaning that the Sensor Bar does very little sensing and most of the Wii’s motion processing is handled by the Wiimote. Of course, now that hackers have a better understanding of the Sensor Bar, I’m hoping we see this nifty little technology ported elsewhere; nothing would be quite as cool as using the Wiimote as a computer mouse. But I digress; enjoy the video!

[via Engadget]

Gaming and Linux are among my two real joys in life, and when someone manages to bring them together, I starting pinching myself to wake up. While we knew that Sony was going to allow users to install Linux on the PlayStation 3, no one realized that it would work so well, as the following video shows. The only downside seems to be the low video resolution, but that’s what those nifty HDTV things are for! Enjoy the video.