Negroiso writes "It appears that the folks over at PSP-DEV have created a swap trick for your PSP 1.50 to play your homebrew applications. It requires two memory sticks to use. Please read the included tutorial on how to use the exploit properly." Here is the PSP 1.50 Exploit as well as website mirrors.

nmb3000 writes "MSDN recently put up a case study of Bungie.Net (much more detailed than a previous one), the homepage for the creators of the Halo series, and its transition from Perl to .NET and ASP. From the study: 'The Bungie.net site is the online companion to the wildly successful Halo 2 video game for Xbox, released in November 2004 by Microsoft. The site also acts as the community hub for all things related to Bungie games. Built with the Microsoft .NET Framework, Bungie.net serves up more than 4 million pages per day, accumulating 300 gigabytes of online game statistics per month from more than 1 million games played daily.' This is an interesting look into the creation and integration of the very large and interactive website which was voted 'Most Innovative Design' by IGN Entertainment in 2004."

Press the Buttons has a post about an independently created Mario game which combines elements of Super Mario World and Super Mario Sunshine to create a great 2D gaming experience. From the post: "Equipped with the FLUDD water pack, Mario must collect pieces of a warp pipe, assemble them, and then exterminate the Piranha Plant living inside. FLUDD functions as both a jetpack and a weapon, and when the water supply runs dry Mario must get a refill at the local water hole."

GamePro has a look at the delicate touch needed when balancing classes in a Massive title. From the article: "Bad class balancing has been an endemic problem to MMORPGs--unfortunately especially in games where PvP is a major component. Dark Age of Camelot tanked the usability of the original classes with the emergence of Vampiirs in the ill-reputed Catacombs expansion. Users were incensed when Creature Handlers ruled the universe in Star Wars Galaxies--then angered even more when the class was beat down with the nerf bat in subsequent patches."

Well thought out games blog Lost Garden has a design analysis of Nintendogs. In his estimation, gamers who are shrugging this off as "another Nintendo toy" are doing themselves a disservice. From the article: "There is nothing on that market that compares to Nintendogs. If you dig into the game mechanics at an abstract level, it has surprisingly more in common with a RPG than most virtual pet games. Yet hardcore gamers make a snap judgement and instantly assume it must be a Tamagotchi-style game. This is an unfortunate mistake that limits our understanding of the game design."

ZiakII writes "Endgadget is reporting that the PSP firmware 1.50 has been broken." From the article: "a group called PsP-Dev have apparently confirmed successful a homebrew bootstrap on 1.50 (no word on 1.51 or 1.52). What's that mean for the indie developer/emulation/warez communities? Well, pretty much the same as before--use your hardware the way you want it. For SNES emulation, that is. Obviously." Tom's Hardware has the story as well.

1up.com has a great feature up detailing the exploits of a young woman they sent in to various game stores under the cover of a clueless girlfriend. The results are both informative and hilarious. From the article: "Spy: When are the new systems coming out? Clerk: Sony just came out with a new version of the PlayStation. It's smaller, more compact, that's about it. Xbox--they haven't mentioned anything about something new coming out."

Costa Galanis writes "The LA Times is reporting that a poker tournament will be held where engineers will be able to pit their automatic poker-playing programs against each other in a tournament similar to the upcoming World Series of Poker main event, with a 100,000 dollar cash prize for the winning program. The article mentions how the recent rise in popularity of poker has encouraged many to try and create the poker equivalent of chess' Big Blue, the chess playing computer program that defeated the world's top chess player in a widely publicized event, and also talks about how many engineers also are trying to make bots that are good enough to play and beat human players for money in online casinos."

spizkapa writes "On the back of the story about the Halo competition, Microsoft are reported to have reached a deal with Universal Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox to make a movie based on Halo and Halo-2. Apparently, Microsoft initially wanted $10 million plus 15% of the box office revenue but the deal was struck when the two studios teamed up and offered $5 million and 10% of initial box office revenue. Apparently, the formal announcement will take a further week after creative issues are agreed between the three parties involved."

Remorhaz writes "Some of you may be aware that the finals of the Worldwide Halo 2 tourney over Xbox Live was held on Friday night (10th June) with the 24 Xbox Live Region winners duking it out for ultimate glory. I was there with Cabel (the Australian representative), his brother and Pidge from Microsoft Australia to play the finals - Cabel made it to the grand final round - but didn't take first place unfortunately (congrats to King Tuur from the Netherlands) - but he's done us Aussies extremely proud :) Here's Remorhaz' "writeup of an insider's view of Australia's Halo 2 representative - Cabel's progress to the finals and the night's events at Australian Microsoft HQ."

GameDailyBiz has an interview with Stan Lee that touches on a talk he gave at the 2005 D.I.C.E. Summit entitled "Superheroes - Creating Characters for the Ages". From the article: "I submitted the idea of Spider-Man to my publisher and he hated it. I said my hero was a teenager -- the publisher said a teenager could not be a hero but only be a sidekick. I said he was insecure and had personal problems -- my publisher said a hero does not have personal problems... The lesson to be learned, don't listen to experts because they don't know what they're talking about and just get you down."

Grimwell has up the first in a series of articles from a Massively Multiplayer game that underwent development but was never published. Entitled The Colonies, the game was intended to provide a massive world space where repercussions from player actions could be felt and maintained. From the article: "'It's been 500 years since 1957.' That phrase is what I've always used when describing where the game was to take place. 1957 was the hopping off point to a future that never happened, one that could be seen then. Today we see post-apocalyptic grunge with worn down leftover implements of civilization or we see high technology sterility. In 1957 technology was still magical and the future was an exciting place to be going to. So imagine 500 years post 1957 as seen in magazines like Astounding or in B-Movies of the period. That one simple phrase hints at the tone and style of the game. The name tells you the rest." Update: 06/11 20:58 GMT by Z : Added link. sigh.

Gamecube Advanced has the news that the Revolution will not support HD signals. From the article: "Nintendo doesn't plan for the system to be HD compatible as with that comes a higher price for both the consumer and also the developer creating the game. Will it make the game better to play? With the technology being built into the Revolution, we believe the games will look brilliant and play brilliantly. This can all be done without HD." Sony and Microsoft are hanging the moon on the HD phenomenon, with both consoles supporting at least 720p or 1080i. Press the Buttons has commentary on the announcement.

Gamespot's most informative Rumour Control column this week takes aim at a hilarious GTA rumour floating around the internets. From the article: "According to Gtasanandreas.net, one of its users had 'discovered a few sections of unused code in the PS2 version of San An[dreas] for the girlfriend 'missions.' With a bit of memory hacking and such, he discovered these removed portions of mission scripting were to not only put the camera inside the girlfriends' house when you stop in for 'coffee,' but also to make a little mini-game of it." Their final verdict was that the "mini-game" was, of course, Bogus. Funny, though. They also discuss LucasArts' support for the Revolution, the Sonic MMOG, and Nvidia PS3 real-time demos.

An anonymous reader writes "The PSP Wiki site has posted a release of Mame the arcade emulator for the Sony PSP, heres an english site with Screenshots of the Emulator in action." I guess I won't need to go to such great lengths to play Pac-Man next time.

The second Carnival of Gamers has set up shop, with this one being themed around a text adventure. Once again, bloggers provide commentary on the games of the day. From the article: "> USE TAPE IN VCR The tape clicks for a few minutes as the machine finds the timecoding, then begins playing Foton's Confessions of a Dangerous Guide, apparently taped from AFK Gamer."

Oasis was the winner of the Independent Game Festival's Game of the Year award in the Web/Downloadable Category. To give us some background on how an award winning indie title is put together, Gamasutra has a Postmortem from the folks at Mind Control Software. From the article: "'Life's not fair.' Oasis levels are not fair. They are created randomly, following a complex set of heuristics. It is not a foregone conclusion that a player will win a level militarily. If things look bad, a smart player starts to think more defensively."

bbzzdd writes "Looks like FPS geeks aren't leaving the house this weekend. EA games has released a demo for the long awaited Battlefield 2 . The 547 MB demo is available at: Filerush (Torrent), GameSpot, Filefront, Gamer's Hell, Worthplaying, Download.com, Computer Games Romania .

Mobhunter.com has details from the annual Everquest Fan Faire, where SOE regularly unveils new information about upcoming additions to the game. The next expansion is apparently "Depths of Darkhollow", an underdark-like expansion that will allow for new kinds of gameplay. The other major announcement was the revelation that the new 10 level tutorial will be available as a sort of EQ trial period. From the article: "New players can sign up for a station account and play the tutorial on a special server known as 'escape'. New players can play up to level 10 without having to put in a credit card. The tutorial has all new artwork, mostly from DON but some unique models such as the Kobolds. This lets player get a good taste of EQ without having to commit anything more than download time. This whole package will be known as 'Escape to Norrath'."

Universal and Fox are apparently close to coming up with a deal Microsoft is happy with for the in-the-works Halo film. Gamespot reports that the two movie studios will cofinance the hugely expensive movie title. From the article: "while Universal and Fox's offer is now the only game in town, Microsoft is still unsure if it wants to play ball. Variety and the Times say the agreement is held up on two fronts. First, the two studios requested that Microsoft relinquish its demands and that the Halo movie strictly follow a Bungie-penned "bible," which would ensure that it would not deviate from the Halo mythos or conflict with "sequels" to the game (i.e. Halo 3). The second reported sticking point was Microsoft's insistence that principal shooting begin as soon as possible, possibly as early as this fall."