Playing on the Go

This past week, the Japanese companies: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched a new satellite into space. This satellite, however, will probably be the most beneficial to rural or mobile gamers on the ground. This because the new satellite boasts 1.2 gb/s internet!

Now you might be wondering, how fast is 1.2gb/s? Well, with that kind of speed, you could probably download files faster than a server can…..well, SERVE them! But keep in mind that this is no ordinary wired internet connection. Blazing fast speeds hundreds of miles from the source of the connection? I wish i could do that with my wireless router.

The coverage of this satellite is projected to reach Japan and Southeast Asia in June this year. It’s going to be hard to believe that it’ll be possible to play WOW in Vietnam Rice Paddies…assuming thats the kind of thing you like to do JUST because you CAN!

Contra 4’s American box art was quite possibly one of the most bad@$$ pieces of art we at Playing on the Go have ever seen. The main character, Lance Bean, wields an RPG as he sneers at his enemies, most likely aiming to obliterate them in the most painful way as possible. The T for Teen logo emblazons the front, letting every passerby know that this game is not for children or the faint of heart (especially considering this is a sidescroller). His partner has his pistols blazing…OK, I think you get the point.

The Japanese title takes a decidedly more reverent, anime art style to it. The main character wields his rifle close to him, staring off into the distance retrospectively, analyzing his past failures and mourning the memories of the many people he has killed. While the game is of great quality, it’s always interesting to see the different ways companies market to different cultures.

Pretty self explanatory. Check the video out for yourself.

Obviously, this is just an emulator that has been given the work over to play nice on the iPhone. Nothing more. So don’t expect to play online or download ROMs via the iPhone itself. It’ll still take a good bit of work and a little bit of magic to get everything to work right. But this is an awesome first step.

The coolest part is the touch screen NES pad on the bottom of the screen. Seriously, that’s just awesome. If you’re adventurous and want to try it out for yourself on your $600 bundle of joy, you can find the code and related instructions here.

nes, mods, iphone

I’d be amiss this week if I weren’t making some mention of the incredible hype machine that is the Apple iPhone. Rumored for years, expected for months, and now forming lines lasting days, the iPhone finally hits Apple retailers this Friday at 6:00 sharp. Which, as pointed out by John Dvorak in the last episode of the This Week In Tech podcast, is ingenious. It’s guaranteed to hit the 6:00 evening news and gives Apple the weekend to fix any bugs with forced firmware upgrades before the eventual bad news hits the stock market this coming Monday morning. They think of everything.

This thing will be monumental in one way or another, either as a huge revolutionary piece of tech, or as an incredible flop. There’s not likely to be much of a middle ground. The lines that you will see in those news reports this weekend will surely remind you of the lines from last November when the Wii and the PS3 were the media darlings. It’s also featuring a lot of tech that is already in the guts of the DS and PSP. While each of those devices have a sprinkling of communication and usability features, this sucker is the full deal.

But the bottom line for gamers when it comes to the iPhone, in the opinion of this blogger, is this… Wait. The thing has been rushed to the market for a lot of business reasons. It isn’t ready for prime time yet. You are likely going to hear of a lot of bugs and problems this weekend. It’s going to look great, and it’s doing a lot of things that your PSP or DS can’t. It even plays some games that have already been native to the iPod. The thing is marketed as a phone, but it’s really a handheld computer. And one that doesn’t run hardly as fast as the commercials would have you believe. And if you are a techie old enough to remember, you’ll remember how that whole Apple Newton thing worked out.

Yes, it looks sexy. And all the chic tech boys will have one in the next week or so. But your time and money will be better spent waiting on the cheaper, better working, and inevitable iPhone Nano.

iphone, apple, psp, nintendods

I had heard a lot of crazy stories about how some of the U.S. Defense Departments and sections of so called “intelligence” within our government use old computers still running Windows 3.1 or even DOS, but I never thought it would go this far. Apparently, the United States government now sees it fit to use the decade and a half old technology of the original Game Boy as a platform for some sensor technology to be used in the near future.

The technology is called STAP-BOY, and the military describes it in a way that only it can by saying that “STAP-Boy will develop innovative geometric algorithmic approaches in order to leverage the revolutionary teraflop signal processor architecture from personal computer gaming chips to enable this vision.” Basically, it’s a low tech GPS handheld coupled with signal sensors. Take that as you will.

Obviously, my knowledge of the technology and its purpose only goes so far. If you are interested, you’d probably be well advised to check out the details for yourself straight from the military. But in the meantime, we’ll just have to wonder why they chose not to go with the DS. It seems as if it would have been a perfect fit.

gameboy, nationaldefense, dumbideas

[from dangerroom]