NDS Emulation - Roms, Games, Reviews - Home

I’ve been away from the DS scene a little while. Are there any new games that I should be truly excited about? A new Mario game perhaps, or the next Zelda universe to explore? If so, please tell me here and I will see if I can source some roms.

What’s your favourite DS game of all time? When I think of the DS games that really stand out I think of ones from quite a while ago. Super Mario Cart and New Super Mario Brothers are up there for sure. Zelda was good. In more recent times nothing really stands out. Chrono Trigger is great, but that was made decades ago on the Super Nintendo. I think Nintendo should look at the DS’s strengths, it’s ability to run pixel based old school games well, and stop trying to be fancy with 3D graphics on a system that can’t really handle it. To be fair I think the DS is in need of a processor upgrade, maybe in the form of an add on cart. I’ll give you an example. I’ve been playing Zelda Age or Seasons and Age of Oracles (a truly great couple of games by the way!). They are old Game Boy Color games. The DS just can’t handle it when there’s lots of music and sprites all over the place. So instead I’m running them on my PSP. Imagine that. A Sony hand-held better at emulating an old 8-bit Neintendo hand-held from 10 years ago than the latest Nintendo handheld. There’s something wrong with that.

Dialaphone Review

It’s like that film, 28 days later…

I recently decided to get a Sony PSP. I still love my DS but I was lured by the power of the PSP and frankly I haven’t seen any good DS games for a while. Anyway I decided that instead of just gong out the shop or buying one online I would renew my mobile phone contract. Dialaphone had an offer that would get me a new phone which I could give to my partner as I already have a fairly decent Nokia N95, £70 cash back and a Sony PSP. Now I realise that you are essentially still buying the PSP but the contract was actually cheaper than I was currently paying so it made sense.

I had problems from the word go. When I added the phone I wanted to the shopping cart, the PSP and all other offers strangely disappeared and I became a tiny bit suspicious of the website. I decided I better make my order by phone. I thought there might be a catch of some sort so I carefully checked the terms and conditions that are on every page. See below

You will notice there is no mention of the free gift but there is mention that you will be getting free next day delivery. Great! Well actually not so great because only when you purchase your phone and sign up to your contract do you get to find out that you have to wait 28 days before they will part with any free gifts. You see, the thing is they get a commissions from orange, o2 or whoever you go with and use part of that free commission to entice you in. Its win-win for them. They don’t want anyone closing their contract with the phone provider otherwise they will be out of pocket. The problem is people tend to do a lot less impulse buying when they find out their “free” PSP, Wii, Playstation or whatever will take over a month to arrive. So they carefully omit to tell you this.

Is this deception? I’m not sure but all I do know is that I genuinely thought I would have my PSP within a couple of weeks and it turns out I will actually have to wait over 5 weeks. I wanted to clarify the situation so I phoned their support system. Unlike the nice people in sales, the support system is run a robot called Rachel. Rachel recognises voices commands and understands your post code and date of birth. I am not taking the mick – she really is a robot, a very limited AI program, possibly running of one of the old Nokia 8210’s they have lying around. Anyway, I was getting nowhere with Rachel, she was severely lacking in charisma so I decided to email a support request in:

Hi

I am just wondering, am I likely to have to wait the whole 28 days for my free gift? My contract is connected now and I don’t intend to cancel.

Many thanks

I received and email the next day stating:

Dear X

Customer Reference: xxxxx

Thank you for contacting Dial-A-Phone Customer Care.

Unfortunately for security reasons we ask that all customers must wait until 28 days after their 7 day peace of mind period before any free gift will be despatched.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Kind Regards,

Dial-A-Phone Customer Care

Yours sincerely,

Dial-a-Phone Customer Care.

I’m not sure why they said kind regards and your sincerely, but anyway I emailed back:

Read more

Last night I saw an amazing film called The King of Kong. It’s a documentary about various people trying to beat a high score on the retro arcade game Kong. I wasn’t sure what top expect with this film - although I love computer games, and particularly retro gaming I thought maybe this film wouldn’t hold my attention. Luckily I was dead wrong. Just as with a fictional movie this film contain goodies and baddies, trials and impossible odds that must be overcome by our hero.

If you have ever watched the incredibly funny film, Grandma’s Boy (also about gaming) you will notice that there are many parallels with this film. For a start off, although The King of Kong is a factual documentary, it is extremely funny. You couldn’t make up characters as typecast and hilarious as the ones in this film. The villain is a guy called Billy Mitchell, who after watching this movie I hate with a passion I cannot describe with mere words alone - I would quite happily punch this guy in the face if I saw him. (Well ok, I’m exaggerating a bit here!) Interestingly, he reminds me of the evil guy from Grandma’s Boy too - except he’s not made up.Watching this film you see our Hero Steve Wiebe, fight against a corrupt team of gamers lead by evil and spineless Billy Mitchell – desperately trying to prove his skill as a hardcore gamer. I should point out that this movie does seem to be edited in a way the enhance the positive and negative traits of a persons character - making the baddies seem more evil than they possibly are, and the good guy completely innocent.

Evil Billy Mitchell

The other people in this film as just as funny sporting Doom t-shirts and getting so hyped up about a game, these middle aged, sunlight deprived men make me smile and remember the good old days when games were all that mattered. It is literally like going back to the 80’s – in a funny, tacky kind of way.

I cant say too much more without spoiling it, what I will say though is rent, buy or steal (not literally) a copy of this film as its a must see!

I would rate this movie 8/10

As some of you may know I have recently ordered an EZ Flash 3 in 1 tool for my Nintendo DS. Well that’s not strictly true. I have now ordered two of them. The first one was ordered quite some time ago and I still haven’t received it. I am filing a case with PayPal so I can’t give any more details until the case has been resolved and I have been refunded.

I’m not 100% happy with the service I have received from the other store either, but again I will give this more time before writing a full review on these stores and of course the 3 in 1 tool itself.

I guess the real problem here is that many of the bigger and better known stores like to steer clear from modchips, flash cards and anything that could void the warranty of a games console. There has always been a link between emulation and piracy, so really I can’t blame them for making that decision.

With the void of these bigger, well established online shops and stores we are left with the only people willing to take the risk in selling such products, the small or one man band companies. Unfortunately, a lot of these people don’t seem to have the staff, training or systems in place to make the process of actually ordering a product and receiving it easy. I am not criticising all small online shops, far from it: I think its a great thing, but I really believe a bit more effort in the customer services department wouldn’t go a miss. I guess this is probably true for bigger stores also. To me, and I believe most shoppers, whether its online or down the local high street, decent customer services is of vital importance. Read more

One of the things I love about my Nintendo DS is the great build quality. Apart from 1 dead pixel that I have had from the start (and doesn’t bother me anyway) my DS is the same as when I received it one Christmas. I wish I could say the same for my Xbox 360. Not only has it previously suffered the fabled “red rings of death” but I have had a total of 4 Xbox live headsets due to the fact that they all break. Of the 3 headsets that I have had previously, the longest lasting one was a non-official one brought off ebay, the official ones broke within a couple of months each. The last one I brought cost my a mere £4.00 ($8.00) and it made me laugh when I read the extremely bad translation from Chinese to English on the packaging.

Here are some of my favorite examples:

• “You can make server to record for friend or family and stay the speech message through the free X-box Live letter, can also replace telephone and good friend contact.”
• “Open loudly or adjust the small voice, make experience personally the most vigorous game career to make possible.” (Sounds exciting hey? I want a game career!)

and my favorite:

• “The ear Michael with put X-360 hand handles or the X-box lead-in hand handles of X-box very easy and directly”

Such gibberish is known as the slang term Chinglish. I reckon in this example the producers of the packaging used some sort of online translator.


Click to enlarge

Have a look at the the big sqaure at the bottom right of the page. Its an advert provided by Google Adsense. When people click on it, I get a couple of pennies. Anyway, we all know this. What I really wanted to point out is that on this review (I wont put the review name in because I dont want the same advert appearing on this page) I get a very silly advert of a brick. Thats just daft!