Recently I chanced upon an feature article on the evolution and maturation of video games (both in Japan and in North America) that turned out to be an excellent read. You can learn some tidbits of video game history as well as information on current events in the gaming world!

Politicians and magazines talked about the release of Mortal Kombat as if it were an upcoming plague. The television, on the other hand, started to get kids riled up about the game with a dark, intriguing ad campaign that featured people gathering in the city streets, calling out “Mortal Kombat” as if summoning a greater power.

Read more:

1up.com

You thought you were obsessive with your video games collection? Think again and visit Gibby’s Game room: 5,000+ games within Mario themed walls. In fact, there’s no need for a complete description here: his photos speak for themselves…

When I was younger (10-15yrs) I played the hell outta video games but gaming comes to a trickle once your out on your own, married, have kids, and a social life. Something you don’t have when your freaking 12. I just never grew out of “collecting” games and still enjoy playing them when time to play them is available.
(…)
The themed room was my wife’s idea and perhaps it is a bit overboard but it’s very unique and my son loves it. I have no regrets on how I finished that room.

We don’t want to encourage anyone to steal nor cheat, nor copy illegally. This is not about piracy really, but rather about the size of the developpers community gathering around the PSP. It is almost like Sony wants this to happen, to boost the sales of the device and win the Nintendo DS vs PSP war.

There is a theory out there that one reason of the success of the original PlayStation was that CDs were easily copied. This seems to apply again to the PSP and the use of MemoryStick to copy games and movies and everything. Sony makes money when a blank CDR is sold, and the same applies to MemorySticks too…

Anyway, there are a lot of articles out there about what is happening, and if you are into what is already possible or not, it is amazing to see what people are doing with their PSP a few months after it was released.

PSP Launcher released for Lumines
So the PSP Launcher for running homebrew code on your PSP has been out for a couple of weeks, and now the commercial cat appears to be out of the bag.

Latest PSP firmware apparently cracked
A video file released to a Web site for PlayStation Portable independent developers, appears to show an independently developed “Hello, World” test application running from memory stick, on a newer model PSP with firmware version 1.5.

KXploit (Direct Loader!) v1.50 RELEASED!
As promised once again by the PSP-Dev Team; they’ve now released their non-swap 1.50 homebrew loader entitled KXploit!
This method DOES NOT require you to swap memory sticks.

HomebrewPSP Converter
RnSKSoftronics, the makers of iPSP, have put together a Mac program capable of getting all these homebrew games working on your PSP without having to swap memory sticks: HomebrewPSP Converter. It is free.

xmame for PSP
Arcade emulator for the PSP :)
Only works with Omega Fighter at this time. Left and Right on Dpad is OK :)
(The SlashDot post)

Game Boy Advance emulator for PSP
Next on the block just so happens to be a Game Boy Advance emulator. Sure, it won’t play roms larger than 16MB, but damn if every time a new emu comes out it isn’t a Nintendo console generation more advanced than the last.

PSP UAE v0.1 released
A port of the UAE Amiga Emulator for PSP! It runs at about 75-80% of a real Amiga 500 speed, but some games are definitely playable such as E-Motion and Rick Dangerous. The source code is included, and future versions may include such features as a menu, sound, disk selection, and keyboard emulation.

Oh, and in case you were wondering if you can get into trouble when buying a PSP overseas, don’t worry: apparently not. According to Engadget, Sony is going after the grey market resellers, not the buyers.

Sony is expressly denying the rumors that they’re pressing those online retailers to give them their customer data so they can find out who exactly who has bought one.

Again, it is Sony’s best interest that a few get the device before everyone else, and make street-level viral marketing buzz about how cool it is. Prove me wrong, but I think they would certainly not want this to stop…

1UP.com has this cool feature on videogames emulators by Nich Maragos, titled “Afterlife“, which is an interesting read if you’re into video games.

What looks like a game system, plays like a game system, and yet isn’t a game system? The answer is an emulator, which is a means to make one piece of consumer electronics behave like another. Whether they’re hardware add-ons or clever pieces of coding, emulators have been a part of videogames almost as long as the medium itself — but they’re decidedly the black sheep of the gaming family, for a variety of legal and ethical reasons. (More…)

(Always via Waxy)

Yet again another low-res pixel sculpture system thingy for the nostagic of old skool Mario and Dig Dug… Nothing really surprisingly new here, but the cool thing here is that each panel comes with a set of “pixel” blocks that allows you to make several different images with the same colors. Released this month in Japan. Anyone interested to get one or two?

Phillip Torrone, over at the Make: Blog, published a complete and detailed “how-to” on running emulators, games and homebrew applications on a USA PlayStation Portable PSP. It’s got pictures, screenshots as well as video to watch explaining all the steps. As he writes:

This is really a big deal, we’re all going to be able to play thousands of games, run hundreds of cool applications all for free and all from the community of tinkerers out there looking to do more with their PSP.

Via Waxy

Ok, the exhibition is over now, so this hardly qualify as news. But for the people out there — like me — who couldn’t go anyway, here are links to pictures of this nostalgic art-meets-lowres-videogames exhibition. Hopefully, the curator will have the good idea (and the resources) to make it tour a little. In Tokyo, it would definitely be a hit.

Here is what the official site says about i am 8-bit, the exhibit:

i am 8-bit gathers the talents of over 100 of the world’s top artists, to put their memories to paper, canvas, wood, or somewhere in between, recalling those oh-so-fond gaming moments from the era when pixels reigned king. There are absolutely no 3D-inspired works in the show; just pre-1995 influences, a decadent time when games were flat and flourishing with creativity. Anything goes-from the crazed image of a Burger Time sausage gone ballistic to Space Invaders doing disco- hindered only by the artists’ imagination.

On the official website, you’ll find a list of all of the artists featured in the show, but the gallery is not that great, so I am only posting it now because I came across this blogger who went to the opening night and took many pics. Visit fort90.com to see them.

ign.com also covered the event, but judging from their pics, it must have been an open bar, and their intern had never used a digital point-and-click camera before…

(pictures from fort90.com)

More low-res, old-skool, vintage, and low-tech, here comes the ultimate block for nerds: Pixelblocks. Perfect all the nerds out there who want to re-create the world of Donkey Kong and Ms Pac Man in their living room. If you are a Pong fan, it’s much easier…

Found on a post on the modojo.com forum, via Waxy, along with VideoGameSprites.net.

Posterchild publishes a tutorial on “How to Make Your Own Totally Sweet Mario Question Blocks and Put Them Up Around Town” and adds a subtitle “Because It’s Really Awesome”. Overall it’s about street art (again!) and low tech (again!) and pixelated 80’s videogames (!), and a guy who wants to make people of his town in Ontario smile, and hopes you will do it in your own town too…

Sock Master has published a game console controller family tree (in other words, a visual history of console joysticks and gamepads) with family relations, pictures, and comments.
If you remember your first Atari or if your first console was a PS2, anyway you should go get inspired…

Via Waxy