One Louder…

After a month without playing any xbox 360, I thought I’d fire it up to get into Halo 3. After about 5 mins the whole thing just froze. On the reboot, it started freezing on the dashboard before the game even started up. Not a massive suprise as it’s a release day xbox and they all have a design fault. Last thing to try was to unplug everything, leave it all overnight and see what happened - Unsuprisingly it was the same.

Back to Microsoft then for a replacement? Well perhaps there is one more trick to try first. Crazy though it sounds someone suggested unplugging everything bar the power lead and leaving it on for 30 mins wrapped up in a couple of towels.

Result - One working Xbox 360 and an afternoons Guitar Hero 3

Equipment Needed
Computer with internet connection
Pencil and Paper

Rules
The rules for this game are very simple.
First point your internet browser in the direction of www.ebay.co.uk
In the top right hand corner on the page displayed, players will notice the search box. In the box, type the word “Playstation 3” – You may be creative here and use your imagination, for example “Playstation 3 console”, or perhaps misspell the word in the hope of finding an unlikely seller who will not receive many hits on his auction.

When you click search, you will be presented with a list of auctions. The next rule is important. In the search options bar down the right hand side, check the box marked “Show Completed Auctions only” and refine your search.

Next, take your pencil and paper and use your maths knowledge (You should have been taught this at school). First of all write down the numbers you see in the field marked “Winning Bid” and the field marked “Postage Costs”. Next, add these 2 numbers together (you may use a calculator if necessary). Now, right down your total on a new line and after it write “- 425” and subtract 425 from your total.

The goal of this game is to end up with the largest negative number, and the winner is determined by the person who ends up with this number.

My best so far

Hope this is of use to some of you guys :D. Dunno what happened to number 26! 

1. Press the home button on the main menu. Next click on the controller image. You can adjust the wii-mote volume and rumble functions

2. Hold a and b down and you can move the windows on the main menu around.

3. In order to add someone to your friend’s list you BOTH have to enter eachother’s Number ID and Console Nickname to be able to send messages and Mii’s

4. Want your plain-looking Wii to have some style? Add a blue light around you CD drive anytime the console is on by doing the following:

Go to your email from the home menu, and add your personal computer email address to your address book. Wait ~1 hour for the email (mine took at least this long) Reply to the email from your computer. In a few minutes, you will have an email waiting for you on your Wii. Don’t read it! As long as it remains new, you have a pretty blue light!

5. In wii sports bowling, you can release on the back swing and throw the ball backwards. It scares all the miis behind you.

6. Email A Wii: You can email any Wii that you know the Friend code for. The Email address will be w(Wii Number here)@wii.com. For Example: w123456789012@wii.com

7. Get rid of Generic Teammates/Spectators: The Wii will automatically use the other Miis in your Plaza as teammates and spectators in certain Wii sports games. Create friends and family, and you can get rid of the generic Miis.

8. Register and Extend Warranty: Register your Console on Nintendo.com, get a free 90 day extension to your warranty.

9. Get Free Nintendo Power: Register 3 Nintendo products on Nintendo.com, and get 3 months of Nintendo Power free.

10. Extra Parts: There are two parts to the Wii in your box that you may either not find, or never know what they are. The first is a Clear Disc piece. This piece fits under your Wii stand to Stabalize it’s balance. The second is a Small(1″ - 1.5″) plastic Piece. This piece is the stand for the Sensor bar. It puts some disntance between your TV and the bar. In theory, that should give you a better angle reception.

11. Get Miis in your parade: Setting your Miis to Mingle, and having your friends do the same thing will soon have Miis walking around in your parade. Your friends’ Miis will wonder over to your console and parade around, so long as they are set to Mingle. You can then grab them and send them to your Plaza so you have a copy.

12. In Zelda, the direction Link spins when doing a spin attack depends on which way you spin your nunchuck

13. In Wii Sports Bowling, when you press up on the Directional Pad, it will zoom in on the lane. The zoom in sound is the exact same sound from Super Mario 64 anytime you moved the camera.

14. If you go to the Channel section in your menu you can choose to save VC games on a SD card….

15. In LOZ:TP if you keep it at the start screen for an extended period of time, it plays an extremely extended trailer that they didn’t show to the general public which is pretty cool.

16. On hole 3 of Wii Sports Golf, there is a small section of fairway at about a 45 degree angle to the left from the tee box. It is a small patch surrounded by Out Of Bound-ness. If you can land your ball on there, you can easily make it on the green in 2, to to Eagle the course.

17. Wii Video 9 - Wii Video Converter

Wii Video 9 is a free video conversion application developed by Red Kawa. It allows you to convert your computer video files (like avi, divx, mpeg, etc.) into the specific video formats that are playable on the Wii.

Wii Video 9 can also be combined with Videora, another software application, and together they can let you automatically download and convert video for your Wii using BitTorrent and RSS technology.

18. In the Wii menus, turn your wrist and the hand cursor will also turn.

19. from Varelse: I just found and confirmed a little easter egg. I’m not sure if it’s already known, but while your Wii is powered down you can press any button on your Wiimote and lights will flash. The number of lights flashing is the amount of charge left in your battery (1 is least charge, 4 is most charge)

20. In Wii Bowling, if you aim right to any lane near you, you can throw your ball there, but you won’t hit any pins unless you aim right.

21. Zelda. You can skip cutscenes in Zelda by hitting the - button

22. Black Ninja Wii Bowling easter egg YouTube - Wii Sports Bowling Easter Egg

23. When you purchase a virtual console title and Mario runs across the screen, if you happen to get fire flower Mario, you can shoot fireballs with the A button.

24. Omie When looking at your messages press a+b and you can move the messages around. If you have A LOT of messages like me then you can arrange them in this manner or you can just delete them

25. order a nice wii sports case from here: eBay: Wii Sports White DVD Case - Store your game in style (item 320053039034 end time Nov-29-06 18:24:43 PST)

27. In the Photo Channel, you can catch the evil cat that runs across the screen to get tips! It appears in the Fun option, and you can grab the cat with the A and B button.

28. You can have a 194 piece puzzle by holding down the 1 button before selecting any piece amount.

29. when you get an e-mail, not only does the disc drive light up and pulsate blue, but your Wiimote sends out a little chirp

30. when you’re in the Mii channel and you don’t use the Wiimote for a little bit and your Mii’s start walking around, if you then suddenly use the Wiimote, all the Mii stop and follow the ‘hand’ for about 3 seconds….

31. Classic controller has analog shoulder buttons. With the GC “click” at the bottom

32. If you hold the SYNC button down on the Wii for 15 seconds, it will clear all synced Wii Remotes from the console.

33. Hold the B button and point to the direction you want to go in the Mii channel and you can scroll around the screen. You can see all the Miis without arranging them.

Console launch days rock. Although I’m terrible with money and organisation, when it comes to pre-ordering, I’ve always got in early with a deposit at GAME East Street, and never had a problem. Friday was no different. I didn’t really fancy the 7am queue this time as I was working all day, so spent the morning giggling at stories of people queuing for 24 hours outside only for some non-disabled git to barge them to the back of the queue, therefore missing out. After picking it up at lunchtime, and an excruciatingly slow Friday afternoon, I was able to unpack it all and have a play.

The console and the packaging owe a lot to Apple and the Ipod brand, which is no bad thing. Setup out of the box is very simple, most of it done the first time you switch it on. It found my wireless AP first time and updated its firmware without a hitch (although it seems to do two updates for some reason.)
The first thing to do is create Wii Mii. There are lots of options to change, like hair style, eye colour etc that personalize your Mii to yourself, or any anyone else. You can create as many as you like, and the cool thing is that when you play any Wii Sports game, your character is the Mii you choose, and any other Mii’s from you or your friends consoles are the background characters.

Wii Sports

Obviously the bundled game with the console. My favourite is the bowling game. The wii-mote just feels spot on for this game. You angle your shot with the direction pad and “Bowl” with the wii-remote just as you would a proper ball. The follow through dictates the spin applied to the ball meaning you can curl the ball in from the side like a pro

The principle is the same for all the other games. You hardly need any of the buttons at all; virtually everything is done by the wii-remote, for example in the tennis you serve by throwing the wii-remote up, and then bringing it down to hit the ball. There is also a really cool “Fitness Age” test. Very similar to Brain Training on the DS you have to do a series of tests using the games to determine your Fitness age, with 20 being perfect. I got 50 on my first go :p

Wii Play, is just a series of mini games really. As they only cost a fiver, on the top of a controller, they are probably worth it, although it feels like a series of free games. They can all be played with 2 players which could be pretty good for deciding who has to do certain chores, but I can’t really see it lasting for any great length of time. Pretty good for a fiver though.

The other game we got is Zelda. I’ve never played one before, and have always been a bit apprehensive about these games. I only managed a couple of hours on Oblivion on the 360 before trading it in - Far too “Wizardy” for my liking. This seems ok though, decent puzzles right from the start and a great control method. Using the Nunchuck to move around and the buttons like any normal game of this genre, the wiimote is used to great effect when it comes to fighting. You make slashes as you want to use your sword, and Link follows the movements on screen, very cool :D. If you have seen the advert of the guy making calm and precise movements, it bears no resemblance to Joy when a monster comes onscreen screaming, panicking and generally waving the wii-remote round an Oxfam volunteer without their morning dose of sedatives.

So yeah, the Wii gets a big thumbs up from mii. If you’re buying one for next gen graphics and sound, you’re going to be disappointed, but if you want the most innovative and fun console on the market at the moment, get queuing

Well this game has been sitting on the table for a week now, so last night Joy and I thought we’d give it a quick run-through to see how it compares with the real thing.

So, first things first, what do you get for your money? As you would expect, there are 22 boxes and 22 amounts of money (exactly the same amounts as in the real thing) and also 3 spare boxes, should you lose any. There are also 22 black pieces of card which cover up the amounts of money on the board as and when they are revealed. The board itself contains the amounts of money, a coffee cup where your chosen box sits and a telephone. This brings us to the piece de resistance which is the telephone itself. The telephone is the same as the real thing, except it has a button for each amount of money (to be pressed as it disappears) and a “Confirm” and “Cancel” button to be used if in your excitement, you make an incorrect selection. 

Upon turning the phone on (batteries not included) alarm bells start ringing. A friendly voice greets you to the game, but the voice is unfamiliar, certainly not that of Edmunds. Panic sets in. Surely there is nothing that Edmunds would not put his name to for the sake of a fistfull of coins, yet examination of the entire contents of the game reveal the only evidence of his existence is his curmudgeonly face on the games packaging.

The game begins regardless. I play the role of the contestant; Joy plays the role of everyone else. It is a good start though. 4 blues and the £10,000 go. The phone rings but those alarm bells are off again. “You have 20 seconds to decide whether to accept the offer below” announces the man who does the “Mind the gap” announcements on the London Underground stations. Again it seems more questions are being asked than answered. “Who is this man?”, we know it isn’t Edmunds, and we know it isn’t the banker. Why 20 seconds? On further investigation it seems that after each offer, you have a randomly determined amount of time between 10 and 30 seconds to decide whether to deal or no deal. The other worry is the offer itself. It quickly becomes clear that the formula is very simple

x=∑(a+b+c+…..)/n

where x is the offer, n is the amount of boxes left and a,b,c… are the amounts left. For the simplest example, if you are down to the last 2 boxes, £1000 and £5000, the offer will be £3000. This is fairly unrealistic to the TV show, as it is the maximum the banker can ever offer and is only used in fairly rare exceptions. It also removes psychology and mind games as you always know what your offer is going to be.

Although these points sound very negative, the game itself is still great fun to play. The random element is still there (although I suspect if you were to play enough times, you could tell the difference between the boxes by wear and tear should the money not be changed each time). Graphically, everything is true to the TV version and the game play is as close as I can imagine you can get on a board game to the real thing. It is a shame though that with a bit more thought into the banker/offers and the prevalence of Edmunds, this game would truly have been a challenger for Trivial Pursuit et al for the dinner party game crown.

7/10

PS - I won £22025, Joy won a tenner

In 1982, the first video game based on a film was released - E.T. for the 2600. It was the first example of a game to be produced that the developers (Atari in this case) thought would sell purely due to hype from the film. At the time, Atari owned an amazing 80% share of the video game market and were expected to increase their expected earnings by another 50%

Atari was desperate for ET to launch in time for Christmas and so rushed the dev team into completing it in time. The result was what many gamers and reviewers have branded as the worst game of all time.

The biggest criticism of E.T. the game was the infamous wells or holes. The vast majority of the gameplay involved falling into and getting out of the wells that were scattered on 4 of the 6 screens in the game - Video footage here. As E.T. moved, his health would be decreased from 9999 to 0, at which point he would turn white and die. Fortunately Eilliot would revive him 3 times to 1500 before the game ended. Energy could also be regenerated by collecting wilted flowers. As the flowers could often be located at the bottom of the wells, this meant players would just keep deliberately falling down them to regenerate their energy leading to a self-perpetuating cycle of getting in and out of wells.

If you had the willpower to collect the 3 pieces of the phone, you could call in the mothership and progress to the next level. Unfortunately, every level in E.T. was identical - there were still only 6 screens and the difficulty did not increase.

The result was that Atari’s idea that a game would sell out of brand loyalty backfired spectacularly. Virtually all 5 million copies of the game were either unsold or were returned. Atari was left with tons of copies of E.T. that were worthless. The EPROM cartridges were read only and could not be used to flash new games on. Atari decided to dump the entire supply of E.T. cartridges in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico - This also meant they were able to write off the tax they would have paid had the games been party of their stock.

Atari could see that profits were going to be crippled. In a controversial move, the president and CEO sold off 5000 shares in Warner (the parent company) 23 minutes before announcing the sales figures. Two thirds of the value of the stock was wiped out overnight. In 1983, Atari racked up over $500 million loses and was sold by Warner the following year.

Was E.T. really responsible for this? probably not, it was more a catalyst for the inevitable. Video games in the early 80’s were the like dot com businesses in the 90’s. There comes a point when the bubble has to burst. Was E.T. as a game truely the worst game of all time? Again, probably not. There are more frustrating games on the 2600 alone. But it is a combination of appaling gameplay, failed brand loyalty and the catalyst effect to the video games crash that earn it that special acolade.

Although I’ve had most consoles from the NES upwards, I missed out on the DC the first time round, although an ex-housemate did have one. Joy spotted one in a charity shop in Portswood for £10 with 2 controller and snapped it up From there, it was a case of getting a VMU and video lead from ebay for a couple of quid each.

In the late 90’s, plasma screens and amps weren’t the norm for video games, but fortunately a guy on ebay was selling a lead for £1.99 that takes the video through SCART, but splits the audio off before, so I can run it through my amp.

It’s a shame the DC never took off because it looks and feels very close to the PS2 in terms of power, I much prefer the controllers as well. Unfortunately for SEGA, it is very easy to run copied discs. To test, I downloaded a copy of REZ and burned to a CDR. The whole thing took a few minutes, and this was the result (no mod chip)

Apparantly hacking group Kalisto were offered stock options by SEGA to stop ripping playable games and releasing booters. It didn’t really help as other groups quickly took over and SEGA had to drop production as they were losing too much money. Amazingly, there was actually a Dreamcast release last month, but the homebrew scene seems pretty strong and if we get bored of it, we can use it to run DivX on a 14″ TV!