This year’s Nintendo E3 briefing confirmed a few things that I was hoping were on the horizon as well a few things that I really wasn’t expecting. The briefing started with Executive VP Cammie Dunaway telling an anecdote about a recent snowboarding trip that resulted in a broken wrist. She used this story to introduce the forthcoming Shaun White Snowboarding for the Wii. Shaun White Snowboarding takes full advantage of the Wii Balance Board and was developed with extensive input from Shaun. Shaun White Snowboarding is being developed by Ubisoft and will be released as a Wii exclusive by the end of the year. READ MORE
Chris Rasco
E3 2008 Day 1 Preview
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Day 1 of this year’s E3 Expo, I mean Summit, is officially in the books and I can no longer say that I’ve never been to the show. After driving up from San Diego yesterday morning, my brother and I had a full day of gaming and press conferences and I’ll be posting hands on impressions of some of the show’s best games including the following:
Major Minor’s Majestic March
Rock Band 2
Wii Music
Skate It
Fallout 3
We will also have full writeups from the Sony and Nintendo conferences, but here are a few images from the show floor to kind of capture what our day was like.
Ignition Entertainment and SNK Playmore have announced today that Metal Slug 7 for Nintendo DS would be released sometime this fall in the US.
Metal Slug 7 will feature a host of new weapons, bosses, and new Slugs to pilot. New gameplay modes go on to expand the replay value. READ MORE
Like many early adopters of the Xbox 360, my console is severely lacking an HDMI port. It wasn’t until well after release that Microsoft revised the hardware and made HDMI a standard feature of the console. Those of us that got in early were left out in the cold… until now.
MadCatz has heard the call for a resolution and has come to our rescue with the HDMI Conversion Kit. The Kit consists of an adapter that plugs into the AV slot on the back of the console and provides you with an HDMI out and an Optical Digital (Toslink) output for a separate audio feed.
The adapter is small, but very well built. It doesn’t feel like a cheap knock off adapter, and it shouldn’t. MadCatz also went the extra mile and included an HDMI cable AND a Toslink cable. These aren’t your standard cables either. They have an extra tough shield on them that provides extra protection to the cable, making them look pretty slick.
Installation is very easy–just unplug your stock AV plug, insert the Converter and hook your cables up to it. The included instructions explain the exact order you need to do this in, and I had no problems getting up and running in just a few minutes.
I’ve noticed no degradation in picture quality and this Converter has allowed me to move up to 1080p, improving my visual experience.
At $75, you’ll need to weigh the cost heavily. There is no doubt this is a quality product, but many are perfectly happy with component cables and 720p. If you have a 1080p set and an older model X360, this is definitely something you’ll want to consider purchasing.
While I really enjoy Guitar Hero and games that allow me to pretend to be the awesome Rock Star that I’ll never be, I am historically bad at them. The irony in that is that I used to actually play bass guitar and still have a bevy of musical instruments stashed in my closet.
Guitar Hero On Tour is the first mobile version of the Guitar Hero franchise and comes packed with a slick new custom controller and stylus. The controller plugs into your DS’ GBA slot and it comes with adapters for both the DS Phat and DS Lite and is easily swapped with a screwdriver. The guitar pick stylus slides easily into the controller. READ MORE
