When Sony released the portable screen attachment for their first Playstation, fans immediately lapped it up. For once, there was a real 3D gaming solution on the go (of course, the PSX’s new, slimmer clam-shaped design wasn’t too shabby either).

Naturally, with the PSP and the DS you’d think that we’re coming even closer to having home console quality titles in her hands. Then, some dude on the Net (referred to as ‘Pirate’ on PS3hax.net) goes ahead and builds this monster. Yes, that is an actual working PS3 in laptop form. It has a 17 inch LCD screen, built-in speakers and headphone jack, custom cooling, and weighs about 15 pounds, less than twice as much as the original XBox (how’s that for broken toes once dropped?). Click here to continue reading ‘PS3 Portable: One Side, PSP’

Squaresoft (the makers of Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger) and Enix (the creators of Dragon Quest) have dished out every single RPG generation technique in their repertoire since their union. Ten years ago, no gamer would have ever dreamed of seeing a direct sequel to a Final Fantasy game or this many Dragon Quest spin-offs for so many systems (then again, they didn’t see the confounding collaborations that were Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within coming either, the poor souls).

Final Fantasy, however, is still the flagship brand. The maximum number of prequels, spin-offs and remakes from the company in the past 12 months have borne the FF insignia in some form or the other. Click here to continue reading ‘Final Fantasy IV - DS hands-on experience’

by gSathe

Okay, so it’s been a week already, and most of you would have heard about the Okami Wii cover mix up and the quick fix solution that followed. For those of you who hadn’t been listening (why? why why why?) here’s the short form text: The box art of Capcom’s upcoming game Okami for the Wii had been cribbed from the IGN website. Maybe whichever designer they’d hired didn’t want to take the time of going through his own client for promotional images and just Googled for the first file he could find. Whatever the case though, Capcom has moved quickly to fix things, by offering whole new covers and artwork for us, the victims.

But then poking through my DS titles I hit upon Apollo Justice and out of random curiosity, and the fact that there had been no electricity for a while and so I couldn’t play anything, not even the DS which had been discharged through the day, I pulled out the instruction booklet. Click here to continue reading ‘Capcom’s cut-and paste covers’

by gSathe

I grew up with eight bit consoles. The first game of Contra I played, I honestly said wow. I’ve still got fond memories of those days, and I still have old DOS games with me, hoarded for these many years and run with much careful tweaking, which leave me grinning like an idiot.

And for the longest time, I believed that all a handheld console could offer me was a watered down version of that same experience, trading on my nostalgia and slapping on a little paint to cover up the fact that there’s a tiny screen with strangely placed buttons in my hand in an oversized gadget which will power down in half the time it’ll take for me to start to enjoy myself. Click here to continue reading ‘How I learned to love handhelds’