I know what you’re all probably thinking, and no, that is NOT a typo in the title of my post! Homebrew developer Wololo has created a game based entirely on Magic: the Gathering to play against an AI opponent on your PSP called Wagic, The Homebrew ?!.

You start the game with a random collection of cards to use to build your first deck. As you play against the computer and start winning, you’ll be earning credits to use to buy additional cards in the Shop. There is an incredibly detailed instruction manual that comes when you download the game, so be sure to read it! Having played Magic: the Gathering in actual card form before, this game looks to have a lot of promise and is definitely visually impressive!

A lot of work has gone into the game since it’s initial release, check out the full list of extensive fixes after the jump.

Download: Wagic, The Homebrew ?! v0.1.0

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

Here is a complete list of all of the errors that have been corrected since both the alpha and beta releases of Wagic, The Homebrew ?!:

• Mana abilities of special lands such as Cascade Bluffs
• Problems when Ascendant Evincar and Goblin King are in play at the same time
• Problems with wither sending a creatures to the graveyard several times
• Volcanic Eruption
• Mana ability for creatures such as Llanowar elves or bird of paradise is now subject to summoning sickness
• Shop bug when buying a booster/starter after playing
• The AI can now use a few spells with one target, such as lightning bolt, or a few auras, etc…
• Some graphical improvements in the game screen (shadows, background, targetting…)
• Added between 150 and 200 new cards from 10th Edition, Eventide, and Shards of Alara (ok, I’m cheating, some of these cards are just available in Revised with a different design)
• Improved the _cards.dat configuration files, allows a bit more scripting without recompiling (destroy, bury, damage,…)
• Added new card abilities : Persist(untested),haste,Exalted,Legendary(Untested), Wither
• Now possible to play without the card pictures (I plan to do releases without the pictures in the future, for bandwidth and legal reasons)
• You can now sell cards in the deck editor with the X button (not extensively tested). Do not forget to save before going back to the main menu, even if you didn’t update your deck.
• The shop now shows you the contents of the booster/starter you just bought (not very usable yet). Click X to close it !
• (Internal/windows version): Added a small test suite for automated tests
• Hybrid Mana cost
• (Internal): Counters system. No cool graphical representation yet.
• Bug Fixes:
  • Auras should now go to the graveyard if their target goes to the graveyard
  • First strike/double strike should now work correctly
  • Activated abilities : can’t use activated abilities with a Tap symbol for creatures that have summoning sickness (except in some specific cases where the bug remains, such as mana producers)
  • Birds of Paradise: can now add green mana
  • Animate Dead
  • Drain Life
  • Goblin Balloon Brigade now doesn’t have automatic flying
  • Keldon Warlord’s power/toughness decrease if a creature is put into a graveyard
  • Paralyze is now put into the graveyard if its target is put into a graveyard

One of the reasons that the PSP is still doing so well in the Japanese market is due to Capcom’s Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G. It’s an immensely popular game, selling a whopping 2.4 million units in Japan since it’s release back in March 2008. That particular game never made it to the North American market, but the few that did weren’t very well received (Monster Hunter for PS2 and Monster Hunter Freedom 2 for PSP, for example).

One of the new elements that gamers can expect with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite is the existence of a customizable companion, named Al Felyne. The other newly announced feature comes in the form of a media install, allowing you to save your game directly to your memory stick, giving you faster load times.

Monster Hunter Freemdom Unite should be hitting store shelves in North America and Europe sometime in Spring 2009.

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

The hook-up is a little convoluted, but Sony announced earlier this week a way to use a PS3 dual-shock controller with your PSP, giving you both a second analog stick and rumble capabilities. You will need to hook your AV cable up to your TV and then connect your PSP (2000 and 3000 models only) to your PS3 via a USB cable. Once you’ve set the controls to your liking, off you go! You’ll be able to play your PSP games on your television, using the PS3′s Dual-Shock 3 controller. 

It may take some time before there are many games on the market that are able to use this feature, seeing as Resistance: Retribution is the only one to be currently announced. Just keep in mind that you will also need to have a copy of Resistance 2 on hand for your PS3 in order to do this, as “PSP Plus” is activated through that game.

After the announcement of the PSP-3000 back in August, a lot of people were disappointed at the lack of physical improvements on the handheld system. Gamers have been clamoring for a second analog stick for the PSP for quite some time now. “PSP Plus” isn’t quite the same, but it comes close! It’s just too bad that we’ll all have to wait until sometime in 2009, when Resistance: Retribution is released, to try this out!

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

LocoRoco first came out for the PSP two years ago and captured the attention of a wide range of both casual and hardcore gamers. Sony Computer Entertainment followed up with LocoRoco Cocoreccho! for the PS3 almost exactly a year later, leaving the PSP crowd out in the cold.  Fortunately, at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, creator Tsutomu Kouno brought all sorts of new information about the next PSP-exclusive title in the series.

The mechanics of the game will remain the same: using the L and R buttons causes the world to tilt, making your Roco move around the screen. You will also have several new abilities while navigating through the levels: being able to grab things with your teeth (to grab onto levers, switches and swings, for example), dig to hide from enemies, and even go underwater for a swim.

There will actually be less levels in LocoRoco 2 than there were in the first game, but the developers are making each of those levels so incredibly jam-packed full of action that I highly doubt that anyone will complain. You’ll be so busy with brand new quests and challenges to notice: you can try your hand at a hide-and-seek challenge, fetch quest or a race challenge.  And I haven’t even gotten around to the mini games that are included! I won’t go into too much detail here except to outline that there will be a version of Whack-a-Mole, along with a side-scrolling shooter, a stamp and sticker collecting game, and one called Mui Mui House, where your Mui Mui’s will live and you can interact with them (a la Sims).

LocoRoco 2 is set to hit PSP’s in both Japan and Europe later this year, and North America at some point in 2009.

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

There are some pretty interesting benefits to owning both Resistance 2 for your PS3 and Resistance: Retribution for the PSP. You’ll be able to connect the two systems together via a USB cable, choose to “infect” your PSP and gain all sorts of extra goodies for the game on your PSP.

Once the systems are hooked up, navigate over to the Resistance 2 option menu on your PS3 and choose to “Infect Your PSP!”, which causes your character in Resistance: Retribution to become infected with the chimera virus.  The infected mode will only last until you power down your PSP, so keep that mind.

Here are the benefits of the connectivity for your game on the PSP: you will gain a new uniform to use, access to various weapons that were previously unavailable in Retribution, along with the abilities to heal yourself and breathe underwater. These added elements allow your character to reach areas that were inaccessible before, opening up all sorts of side stories.

What are your thoughts? Will the added elements through connectivity make you run out to pick up the PSP or PS3 to do?

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

Homebrew developer dark-jey has released his second version of PSP Royal Casino. For those of you who may not have heard of the title before now, it consists of three typical casino-style games: Blackjack, Poker and a slot machine.

In version 2, a lot of the bugs concerning RAM and the music have been corrected, the menus have been improved, and the spelling errors have been removed. Keep in mind that the game is in French, but that shouldn’t be too much of an issue, as the games themselves are pretty straightforward. 

Download: PSP Royal Casino v2

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

I never got around to checking out the first Patapon game for PSP when it was released earlier this year, but got to live it entirely through Lloyd as he quite frequently played it with the sound turned way up! Nevertheless, I found it quite catchy and still get the riffs stuck in my head from time to time (pon pon pata pon) and am looking forward to all the new content that will be available in Patapon 2.

The biggest news comes in the form of the added multiplayer mode, with up to four players being able to join in and work together. Along with the added mode, gamers can expect new units to control (the Hero, mage, robot and flier) along with almost twice the amount of levels, items and even game time.  The original title boasted a game time of approximately 10 hours, the developers expect the sequel to run you 20 hours.

For those of you who played the first Patapon, don’t go and delete your save game yet!  A little tidbit to keep in mind is that your save file can be used in Patapon 2 to carry over special items, gold and medals. No release date has been published as of yet, but I will keep you posted as further news comes out. I can tell you that I will definitely be giving this one a try when it comes out!

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

Nintendo has decided to take the money-printing abilities of the DS Lite and put them to good use. They have paired up with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer charity and released a limited edition DS Lite. While there is no word on exactly how limited the edition is, I think it’s quite beautiful: a Polar White DS Lite sporting the universal pink logo for breast cancer awareness.

The special little handheld went on sale late last week on Amazon.com, retailing for the usual price of $129.99 USD.  The extra special part comes with the knowledge that Nintendo will be donating a whopping $5.00 USD  per unit sold to fund breast cancer research, with a minimum donation of $100,000 USD.

That is fantastic news Nintendo!  Way to go!!

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

So now it’s official.  The North American DS gamers crowd will finally be joining the ranks of those in Japan, South Korea and Europe in receiving their nice and shiny new Metallic Silver DS’s. This will be the seventh color that becomes available to us in North America, joining the veritable rainbow of colors as Onyx, Pink, Cobalt and Crimson.  See the following quote from Nintendo’s press release:

The new Metallic Silver version makes a nice addition to any tech collection, whether you’re a gadget hipster or fashionista.

It will be available for purchase starting on Sunday, September 7th for $129.99 USD.  Personally, I don’t think this particular color will be making an appearance in my household, mostly due to the fact that we already have two DS’s: white for my husband and pink for myself.  Not taking into account that the Metallic Silver color makes it look quite a bit like the DS Phat that we retired some time ago. What are your thoughts on this new color?

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

Sometime this fall (the date has yet to be announced), PSP owners in Japan will be able to connect directly to the PlayStation Store through their PSP’s without the use of either their PS3′s or computers. You will be able to use this feature, regardless of the version of PSP you currently have, but keep in mind that you will have to upgrade to the latest firmware in order to do it. To commemorate the launching of the PSN store for the PSP, Sony is making a game downloadable for free: Mainichi Issyo Portable, which roughly translates to Everyday Together Portable.

In conjunction with this, Sony has also announced another new feature that will be available to gamers who own both a PSP and PS3.  They have created a new Infrastructure Mode which will allow you to connect the two systems together, using the PS3 to set up multiplayer online matches for certain games.  One of these games is Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G.  A second bonus to this feature is that players will be able to add voice and text capabilities through this service.

No further information is known at this time, but I will keep you posted as more details are released, hopefully in the form of an announced date for the North American crowd as well!

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

Activision has officially announced that their latest title in the Tony Hawk series of games will be called Tony Hawk’s Motion and it is coming out for the DS.  There are a couple of surprises in the announcement of the game: it is not only a skateboarding game, and there will be a motion-sensing peripheral included.

For me, and pretty much everyone else in the known universe, Tony Hawk is synonymous with skateboarding. This is why it’s a little confusing to me as to why several snowboarding events have been thrown into this game.  You’re going to see Pro Snowboarder Todd Richards work his stuff in the 20 or so snowboarding challenges that are included. 

Now we get on to the good stuff.  The game will ship with an accelerometer-based ”Motion Pack” that will slide into the GBA slot of the DS, so you’ll be able to twist, tilt and turn your way through those grinds like a pro! Activision has teamed up with Kionix, Inc. to create the accessory (Kionix is a developer of all sorts of motion sensing technology).

Apparently, the game will ship with a second title, an action puzzle game called Hue Pixel Painter, that will also take advantage of the Motion Pack. The game will have you tilting your DS all over the place to re-colorize a dull and drab world. 

Tony Hawk’s Motion is scheduled to be released sometime in November.

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

Seeing as I’m a huge user of the Google Maps application on my Mac, I think that PSP-Maps is an excellent homebrew application for when I’m planning to be on the move. Developer Royale has gone ahead and written a program that incorporates three different mapping programs: Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth and Yahoo! Maps to generate the information.  

PSP-Maps v1.4 fixed up a couple of major problems with the software, including crashing whenever you requested t “Get Directions”.  You can also now save your favorite locations with names. Check out the full tutorial on PSP-Maps here. One thing to note when using this application is that if you get a “Image not Available” image on the screen, then you have either zoomed in too close or there isn’t any information available for the selected location.

Download: PSP-Maps v1.4

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

Jagged Alliance is a tactical RPG series that first saw the light of day in the mid-to-late 1990′s on the PC. This game was originally announced quite some time ago, but disappeared off the radar when the publisher, Strategy First, cancelled all of the DS titles that they had in the works.  

The good news is that publisher Empire Interactive has picked up the ball and is running with it, being backed up by Cypron Studios handling the developmental end of things. The game has you controlling various squads of mercenaries, with each unit in possession of their own unique personalities and skills to take on the various challenges presented in-game. Jagged Alliance for the DS is slated for release sometime in 2009.

Check out the full press release after the jump.

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

London, UK – 26 August 2008 Empire Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of Silverstar Holdings (NASDAQ: SSTR), has today confirmed that Jagged Alliance for the Nintendo DSTM is currently under development with Strategy First Strategy First Inc. and Cypron Studios and is due for release in 2009.

Jagged Alliance is an explosive fusion of a role playing game mixed with turn-based tactical combat, allowing gamers to become fully immersed in their characters. A new generation of gamers will be invited to liberate the Island of Metavira in the nonlinear game play that made the 1994 original so popular amongst gamers.

“Jagged Alliance provides an exciting blend of RPG and turn based action, which has already won fans and accolades worldwide. The time is right to bring its frenetic battles to Nintendo DS and allow a brand new audience the experience the exhilarating game play.” commented, James Spice, VP of Marketing for Empire Interactive.

“Jagged Alliance DS is one of the many forthcoming highlights in our new release pipeline and this announcement augments Empire’s commitment to bringing quality titles to a global market,” said Clive Kabatznik, CEO of Silverstar Holdings. “The title will prove to be a truly entertaining experience for DS gamers.

Earlier this month I made mention of a homebrew title called Age of Nations. I’ll give you a very brief synopsis of the game in case you missed my earlier article.  Basically, it’s a real-time strategy game that been coded in Lua for the PSP by homebrew developer seanpaul223.

A lot of work has gone into this next edition of the game, including an entire rewrite of all of the programming.  A lot more functionality has been added in the form of resource gathering abilities. Another major change has been made to the actual controls of the game, so if you’ve been playing previous versions make sure to check out the QJ.NET PSP Development Forum to get the latest control details. You can read up on all the changes made in v3 after the jump.

Download: Age of Nations v3

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com

Here is a list of all the changes and updates that have been made to Age of Nations v3:

• General
  • Code rewritten entirely
  • Added basic AI
  • Added Age-Update feature
  • All bugs have been fixed
  • Added music
• Gameplay
  • Player has resources to manage: food, gold, wood and stone
  • Possibility of creating new units: each units created requires a certain quantity of food, which reduce food resources
  • Each units created is independent from others. It has its own health and job, along with many other things
  • Each unit can look for food and wood on a map to increase the player’s resources. Just give him the order
  • All natural resources such as wood and fruit are limited. When there’s no more resources on a tree, it disappears from the map
  • Natural resources now regenerate automatically
• Units – four types of units can now be created:
  • Peasants: they deal with collecting natural resources and building tasks
  • Soldiers
  • Archers
  • Riders
• Buildings
  • Peasants can build Houses, which increase the Population Limit
  • Peasants can build both Barracks And Stables, are used to make military units

For those of you who may not have heard of this title as of yet, Everyday Shooter was originally released for both PS3 and PC and has gotten fantastic reviews everywhere for it’s incredible usage of music paired with a fairly basic shooter. It sounds fairly run-of-the-mill, but anybody who has played the game will be quick to assure you that it’s not!

You control a ship that changes shape with every level, shooting your way through graphically amazing scenes to the sounds of an all-guitar soundtrack.  Instead of the destructive sounds that usually accompanies shooting enemies in these types of games, each enemy you shoot adds harmonizing guitar riffs. 

Unfortunately, there is no separate release date confirmed at this point. The only way announced so far to snag a copy of the game is via a PSN voucher that is included with the PSP 4GB Memory Entertainment Packwhen it is released this November.

Re-blogged from our sister site: Nukoda.com