Konami will re-release the three Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side games for Nintendo DS as Tokimeki Memorila Girl's Side Triple Pack on September 26.
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Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 1st Love Plus, Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2nd Season, and Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 3rd Story are part of the trio. The triple pack of romance games will cost 5,800 yen ($59).
Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies takes place one year after Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, so a lot of the returning cast in this game—such as Phoenix and Apollo—have grown and changed a little since we last saw them. Producer Motohide Eshiro tells us that the same will be true of Miles Edgeworth as well.
“Miles Edgeworth in this game has changed,” Eshiro shared with Siliconera in an interview. “For one thing his position has elevated quite a bit. He’s been promoted. [Note: Edgeworth is now a chief prosecutor.] As far as his personality goes, the experiences he’s had have changed him as a person. I don’t want to give away too much. You’ll have to play the game to see how he’s changed and how he behaves.”
Eshiro also revealed that he would like to continue Edgeworth’s own line of Ace Attorney Investigations games in the future.
“As far as a continuation of the Investigations series goes, I would love to do another one, personally, and I know [scenario director] Mr. Yamazaki would also be interested in getting something like that spun up,” Eshiro revealed.
“It would be a matter of securing the appropriate personnel within Capcom and getting everything planned, so I intend to try to do something with that in the future, but I can’t make any promises.”
Look out for our full Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies interview this week.
This year marked the 20th anniversary of Nippon Ichi Software (NIS), and to celebrate they launched a few new games, one of which is Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness. Disgaea has always been NIS’ bread and butter, currently being one of the company’s main franchises, and the franchise they’re best known for in the west. D2 brings us back to the original game that started it all, for a fun trip down memory lane.
Being a direct sequel to the original Disgaea, the game picks up right after the original with Laharl becoming the Overlord, and having Etna and now fallen angel Flonne, by his side. Life should be smooth sailing for our main trio seeing as the central conflict of claiming the throne is over, but as it turns out, trouble is just starting. Even though Laharl has claimed the throne and title of Overlord, it seems that most of the demons in the netherworld are still loyal to his father, King Krichevskoy, and find Laharl an ill suited replacement, or just flat out don’t even know who Laharl is. It looks like Laharl will have to start flexing his muscles again to put everyone back in their place, a task constantly undermined by Etna and Flonne for hilarious results.
Disgaea D2 still has all the charm and comedic timing of the original Hour of Darkness, with lots of humor focused on our favorite Prince turned Overlord. It seems it is not easy to be Laharl. One of his plans for greater recognition in the first chapter of the game involves the building of statues of himself to be placed all around the Netherworld. Too bad that all the statues have incredibly odd-looking faces, but Etna and Flonne say there’s no need to worry, since the hair antennae on the statues are all that matter anyway. Later, we see one statue is also a fountain and the water comes out of the crotch area. Laharl screams, “What!? It looks like I’m pissing my pants!” while Etna and Flonne remark how the monsters seem to like the fountain—as a line of them are using Laharl’s crotch fountain to fill up their water bottles.
This is the kind of humor you can expect out of D2; crude, over-the-top, and a large majority of it makes Laharl the butt of the joke. The chemistry between the main trio remains intact and as fun as ever, and there’s plenty of it to go around. From the story, to talking in the castle hub, even talking in the midst of battle, there’s lots of interaction between our cast of loveable demonic misfits. Perhaps the biggest change up in the roster is the introduction of Sicily—an angel trainee, who may or may not, be the daughter of King Krichevskoy.
Initially Sicily is just another thorn in Laharl’s side, she shows up unannounced (via the mail no less) in Laharl’s castle, and tries to take the title of Overlord. Not standing for this, of course, Laharl and crew chase her down. How can an angel even dream of being the Overlord of the netherworld!? Following Flonne’s' uh, kind words (and a flogging at her hands), she decides to follow Laharl, and begins to call him “Big Brother”.
Story aside, there’s plenty to do and see in the game, but boy oh boy, is it a grind fest. The Disgaea franchise has always prided itself on the sheer amount of content it has, and D2 is no different. Just about everything is customizable. It’s actually quite absurd, and I don’t even know if I can even scratch the surface of all the content.
From the return of the Dark Assembly, where you can make characters, evolve your characters, set battle conditions, to the way you can change how you walk and jump around your castle, and even customize the looks of your party’s sprites. To customizing your gear you have and using the Item World, where you can dive into a long chain of battles through examining said gear. There’s a lot of meat here outside of the main story’s battles. And if that’s not enough, you can always redo any of the story-based battles over and over again to your heart’s content. You can even change a bunch of small little things in the menus, such as what the save icon will look like on your Playstation 3, and set up if you want auto-save or manual save. You can of course pick between Japanese and English audio, and change the combat speed, too.
The simplest way to put it is to say that Disgaea D2 bombards the player with as many options as possible, both big and small. I think it will be impossible to ever have two play-throughs that are exactly the same.
The animations in the battles are just as over-the-top and hectic as the humor, and often time’s fun to watch as characters go flying across the screen unleashing all hell. That said, for those who get tired of the flashy animations, you can skip them by pressing triangle. The story segments can be skipped as well with triangle, so getting a Game Over won’t force you to sit through all that talk again, and you can get right back into the fight.
The fighting being the main core of the game is as intuitive and fleshed out as ever. Long term Disgaea fans will feel right at home, with geo panels, combination moves, lifting and throwing—as well as mounting, using Prinnies as suicide bombers' the list goes on.
On top of the large amount of customization and grinding, and the over-the-top humor and battle animations, there are the sprites, which are gorgeous. It is to be expected from NIS now, but the sprites in D2 are beautiful, and look great no matter what angle you see them from. Having missed out on Disgaea 3 and Disgaea 4, I was just in awe at how good the sprites were, and how fluid they looked moving around. The over-all aesthetics of the game are top notch. The portraits of the story sections are large and take up a good chunk of the screen. They show plenty of emotion and have the charm of veteran NIS character designer, Takehito Harada. The environments don’t fare as well as the characters and art design, but get the job done and look fine, if not a little basic and barren. Regardless, Disgaea D2 is easy on the eyes all the same.
Disgaea D2 delivers on all the staples that the franchise is known for, and offers its long time fans a second adventure with the original trio that started the franchise over ten years ago. It’s a fun—or maybe I should say funny—grind fest with hundreds of hours of content to keep completionists happy.
Food for Thought:
1. I found myself debating over whether or not players who missed out on the first Disgaea could enjoy this direct sequel. I think for the most part new players can still jump in, but they will be missing out on a lot. Players who experienced the first game will enjoy D2 the most. And really considering how many versions of the first Disgaea there is—two print versions on the PS2, Afternoon of Darkness; the enhanced PSP port, and even an DS port—there are plenty of ways to acquire the first game even ten years later.
2. I personally didn’t like the Opening for Disgaea D2. I found the animation nice, but the song never managed to grow on me. I also felt that the song didn’t match the animation on the screen very well.
3. I used the Flonne icon as my save icon, and I also implemented the auto-save feature as well.
4, The new male healer is a total trap, and I kinda dig it.
5. As someone who sat out previous Disgaea titles this generation, I felt at home again with D2. It might have to do with revisiting the original cast, but ether way, Disgaea D2 might be a good title to get you back into Disgaea if the previous entries on the PS3 have not interested you as much.
Not to be confused with the PlayStation Vita game, Yu-Nama: The Puzzle, Sony Computer Entertainment Japan is making a traditional evil lair defending Badman game for PlayStation Vita. Badman G adds a new element of monster fusing to strengthen creatures in your lair.
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Badman G is slated for release this winter as a free to play game.
With less than a week to go until the official launch of Intels new 7-series chipset, the first pictures of Sapphires upcoming Pure Platinum Z77 motherboard has appeared and one thing is certain, its not the same board as the one that was touted as the Pure Black Z77 back at CES in January. The Pure Platinum Z77 appears to be a different breed of motherboard compared to what Sapphire has come up with to date and one of the first boards from the company that wed seriously consider owning.
This time around its the little things that make a big impact and compared to the Pure Platinum Z68 it almost looks like Sapphire has found itself some new engineers. For starters the board mostly use regular chokes instead of the ones with small heatsinks cut out of the top, alongside various other changes to the general PCB layout. Visually the biggest change is the heatsinks and we have to give credit where credit is due, as the new heatsinks look so much better than what Sapphire has used to date. The MOSFET heatsinks are connected via a small heatpipe, whereas the chipset heatsink appears to be screwed in place rather than using plastic push-pins.
Sadly the colour scheme is still fairly un-coordinated and could do with some work, but its really a minor issue. The Pure Platinum Z77 sports a rather unusual slot layout, as it has no less than four x16 PCI Express slots, yet it doesnt have a bridge chip of any kind. This is done by splitting the 16 lanes from the CPU into a x8, x4, x4 configuration for the three blue slots and the grey slot is connected via four lanes to the chipset. The board also has two x1 PCI Express slots, but these are inaccessible if more than two graphics cards are being used.
The only reason this kind of configuration works is because the board has very few peripheral chipsets. In fact, weve only been able to spot two. Unlike its previous motherboards, the Pure Platinum Z77 sports a Qualcomm Atheros Ethernet controller, but Sapphire has also kitted out the board with one of the new Killer NIC E2200s, the same chip used by Gigabyte on its G1.Sniper 3 board. The board also sports the standard six SATA ports, four USB 3.0 ports and whatever else comes courtesy of the Intel chipset. Sapphire has added a POST80 debug LED, Voltage readout points, power, reset and clear CMOS buttons and a manual BIOS switch.
The rear ports are made up out of a PS/2 port, four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, 7.1-channel audio, an optical S/PDIF out and a DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI and D-sub connector.
The people from Sapphire we spoke to at CeBIT didnt sound too optimistic about Sapphires upcoming motherboard models, but the Pure Platinum Z77 is a big step in the right direction for the company. Its not a mind blowing product, but its at least a competitive product that has been given a much needed facelift in terms of the heatsink design. Well have to wait and see what else the company has in store for us, but we know that theyre working on at least a B75 motherboard and potentially also that Pure Black Z77 model, although we have a feeling that might have been canned by now.
In a recent paper titled, “Coexistence of High-Bit-Rate Quantum Key Distribution and Data on Optical Fiber”, researchers say they can protect these networks without the need of dedicated fiber optic links. The synopsis of the paper reads in part:
In the world of traditional communications, it is impossible for one person who receives a set of encryption keys from another to know whether or not the keys have been seen by the eyes of an eavesdropper. However, quantum key distribution (QKD), which encodes keys in the quantum states of a medium, can achieve the impossible by exploiting the fundamental quantum property that any eavesdropping on a quantum state always leaves a trace.
Telecoms networks are often prey to malicious hackers trying to cause mischief or even harm to Internet data. Using new advances in quantum cryptography, the researchers have come up with new code encryption that is theoretically un-crackable by malicious hackers. Furthermore the new encryption supposedly lets one know if someone was trying to decipher it.
The encryption research was done by Cambridge University in conjunction with Toshiba European research laboratory. They claim this research will eventually be protecting all manner of data ranging from private company data, personal identity and credit card information.
It is said that many military agencies and governments may already be using a very similar type of encryption technology. However, the information taken from the research states that the quantum keys are being sent on separate lines carrying the information to be decoded or encoded.
The research on the new encryption techniques can be found in the scientific journal, Physical Review X.
Developers who worked on WebOS have revealed that HPs rival to Apples iPad, the TouchPad, was doomed from the start, thanks to a number of design flaws.
Paul Mercer, the former senior director of software at Palm, which HP acquired for $1.2 billion in 2010, said that his company was ahead of its time and just was not able to achieve the ambitious outcome it aimed for with the mobile operating system.According to Mercer, who previously worked on a number of Apple products, one of the fatal mistakes of WebOS was its reliance on the open-source software engine WebKit, which ultimately slowed down apps, making it less appealing to opt for WebOS over faster rivals like iOS and Android.An unnamed former member of the WebOS app development team said the main problem was not WebOS itself, but a leadership and engineering failure to secure outside programmers to develop apps for it.Another issue was the numerous shortcuts taken over the nine month development period it took to give life to WebOS, including leaving app development kits until the last minute, which were then overhauled twice, which meant programmers had to relearn how to make apps for the platform several times.Other problems included a lack of staff to appropriately deal with such a large-scale project, with particular difficulties finding programmers who really understood WebKit. This shortage led to a situation where the initial launch was achieved, but updates and bug fixes could not be developed at a quick enough pace. When HP bought Palm many of the core team left, leaving the company with an even bigger manpower problem on its hands.Given these blunders with the software it is no surprise that the TouchPad failed to compete with Apple and Google based products. Mercer said that as long as WebOS depends on WebKit it will continue to linger far behind its rivals.Source: New York TimesSANYO has announced a new addition to its DLP projector line-up, the PDG-DHT100JL projector which claims to be the brightest of its class with an incredible 6,500 lumens. Itis also compatible with Full HD signalto providebright high definition image projection atsuperior quality, whichis perfect for digital advertising (electronic advertising) and design/CAD applications.
Compatible with SANYO's optional Uncompressed HD DATA WIRELESS Transmission System, the projector can project over long distances of up to 30 meters without cable extension.
In addition, the PDG-DHT100JL has been designed to have higher resistance to dust with the newly designed encapsulated optical engine and the use of SANYO's proprietary 'Active Maintenance Filter' (AMF) for the industry's longest-lasting filter, It allows enough airflow to keep lamp area cool without bringing in all the dust.
The SANYO PDG-DHT100JL will be on sale in Japan starting from the end of March 2009.
Main Features
1. Brightest of its class at 6,500 lumens, and Compatible with Full HD video for bright and beautiful high definition and high resolution projection
- Bright 6,500 lumens projection answers growing needs in the digital signage market area when used in brighter environments
- Brightest of its class*1 projection made possible from two UHP lamps, each outputting 330-watts, and a twin color wheel system which have largely increased the light output efficiency
- Designed to handle Full HD (1920 x 1080) high quality resolution image projection, meeting the changing needs of the marketplace from to the more widespread use of high definition input signals
- Attention to detail and accuracy in image projection allows use of the projector in more demanding situations, such as design or CAD specialized fields and applications
2. Compatible with latest in uncompressed HD*2 DATA WIRELESS transmission optional adapter allowing incredible image quality even from long distances
- New projector compatible with uncompressed HD*2 DATA WIRELESS Transmission System announced by SANYO in August 2008
- The Uncompressed HD*2 DATA WIRELESS Transmission System allows pure uncompressed data transmission without delays between the video and sound
- Technology in wireless system allows uncompressed data even from distances of up to 30 meters*3 away from the input source
- Easier set-up for place such as large event halls and other large rooms/theaters as it eliminates the need to feed cables and run wires from sources to projectors
3. Equipped with new, dust-resistant sealed optical engine and the Industry's longest-lasting*4 30,000 hour-use filter 'Active Maintenance Filter', for cleaner and highly durable projection
- New, improved sealed optical engine cooling design to prevent dust build-up, maintaining optimal brightness and contrast, problems that traditionally are difficult to overcome, causing reductions in projection quality
- Improved air control for more flexibility in using the projector in a variety of environments
- Equipped with replaceable 'Active Maintenance Filter' for the Industry's longest lasting*4 30,000 hour-use automatic reel filter cartridge to prevent dust from entering the lamp area, while still allowing enough airflow to help the area to remain cool
- Longer durability and reliability from the increased dust resistance and longer lasting filters
4. Other Features- Compatible with 2 different types of user-changeable color wheels allowing high brightness and rich color reproduction
- Equipped with 'Edge Blending' function that allows what feels like boundary-less images with multi-image display possibilities
- Built-in 'Color Matching' function correcting variations in color reproduction when using more than one projector
- Realizes vertical 360 degree tilt angle projection allowing projection positions from the ceiling or floor, breaking from traditional projection settings
- Advanced lens functions with 'power vertical/horizontal lens shift' function and 'lens center layout' symmetrical design
- Capable of projecting two images simultaneously either using built-in picture-in-picture mode or picture-by-picture mode
- Open expansion Interface Board allows for a variety of optional products
Source: SANYO
The Galaxy S smartphone launched in June 2010 has garnered 10 million unit sales in less thanseven months, selling an average of 1.4 million smartphones per month. The Galaxy S is driven by a 1Ghz Cortex A8 processor, 512MB of ram and also a capacitive AMOLED screen, making it one of the best phones out there. Samsung has also incorporated its TouchWiz User Interface on top of Android for better integration between productivity and lifestyle.
Apple has sold 14.1 million iPhonesby the end of Q3 in September, and its latest iPhone 4 wasalso introduced in June.
Galaxy S owners can also look forward to a better experience with the smartphone as Samsung intends to create unique mobile experiences for its users. Samsung's collaboration with NBC Universal Studio in August last year, to produce the scripted comedy "FCU: Fact Checker’s Unit" for mobile viewing has been successful, making it one of the top 3 web series to watch in 2010 (by Ad Age). Users of the Galaxy S were also invited to participate in creating user-generated commercials, showcasing how the Galaxy S has enabled them to to live a Smart Life.
Source: Korea IT Times
