Bacteria’s disciple improves upon technique, crafts N64 handheld capable of GoldenEye split-screen

This isn’t the smallest portable Nintendo 64 we’ve seen, nor the most elegant, creative or complete — in fact, it’s pretty much a straight clone of Bacteria’s iNto64, but with a spiffier paint job and one critical improvement. Yes, that is an extra controller port you see in the foreground of the image above, and if you click your way below, you will indeed be able to watch its creator engage in some wonderfully retro split-screen Mario Kart 64 and F-Zero GX races, not to mention the obligatory GoldenEye death match and a wee bit of Quake 2. Ahhh, memories.

• [Thanks, Alon T.]

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Japan’s Love With the 3DS Over? Boatloads of Used 3DS in Stores

It looks like the honeymoon with the Nintendo 3DS in Japan is already over, while folk in the U.S. are just getting their hands on the glasses-free 3D handheld. Several Japanese blogs are reporting that there is an abundance of used 3DS systems being sold back to stores. Is the 3DS really just a gigantic gimmick? Hard to say. Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft says that lots of 3DS units were purchased with the intent of making a quick buck in light of system shortages, but it looks like the plan might have backfired. We’re thinking that along with Ashcraft’s assertion that the 3DS units were bought for resale, that anecdotal evidence that stated some Japanese folk experienced bouts of dizziness after short play time with the 3D effects turned on might also be the culprit. Or maybe the Japanese are just saving all their bucks for the NGP and its big bad 5-inch OLED screen. A month’s worth of evidence isn’t conclusive. We’ll know the 3DS is a flop, if in six months, sales of it stop selling like hotcakes and topping the weekly sales charts. Until then, reports of the 3DS’s early demise are premature.

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3DS Hit With “Black Screen of Death” Crash Error

After what appears to have been a very successful launch for Nintendo in both the U.K. and the U.S. over the weekend, it appears reports of a “black screen of death” are plaguing many new 3DS systems. The black screen of death reported on popular game forums such as NeoGaf are stating that when games are put into “suspend mode,” the 3DS locks up and crashes, resulting in the error message you see in the pic above. Games with the reported problems include Super Monkey Ball, Street Fighter IV 3D, Pilotwings, Ghost Recon, Lego Star Wars III and several Mii apps. An official fix from Nintendo has yet to issued, but gamer solutions seem mixed. Some report that turning off the 3DS fixes the crash error, while others report that reformatting their SD cards to FAT-32 solves the prob. If you bought a 3DS over the weekend, let us know whether you’ve hit the black screen of death, and if so, what’s your fix?

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Real Racing 2 HD for iPad 2 Can Support Full 1080p Video Output

Say hello to Firemint’s Real Racing 2 HD, the one of the first iPad 2 games to support full 1080p HD video output without upscaling. When Apple unveiled the iPad 2 earlier this month, it also announced a new iPad HDMI adapter that lets you mirror your iPad 2′s screen to a larger HDTV or monitor. Because the iPad 2 tops out at a 1024×768 resolution screen, the mirrored video would be the same resolution, meaning you’d have unused black bars on the left and right side of the screen. Well, Real Racing HD can run full screen at 1920×1080 when attached to an external display without those annoying black bars. Firemint credits the feature as possible thanks to the iPad 2′s powerful PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU that can provide nine times the graphics performance over the first iPad. Apple’s already proven that its iOS devices are worthy game platforms, but this just takes the cake. With 1080p high definition games that don’t require upscaling, Apple doesn’t need to release a game console, that $39 HDMI dongle will do just fine in making any iOS device a living gaming hub. Video of the action after the jump. Watch The Video From Here

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Kinect Used to Teach Kids in South Africa

Microsoft’s Kinect is taking the world by storm. Not only have 10 million Kinect’s been sold, but its also gained a slew of unofficial hacks that move it beyond a gaming peripheral. Take for example, Microsoft’s new trial at the Lakeside Park Primary school in Vyrheid, South Africa that is using Kinect to stimulate and encourage school kids to learn English by engaging them in motion-controlled games. The trial is a small case study, but the teachers at Lakeside are already seeing positive results. Lakeside’s Deputy Principal, Karen Kirsten said, “Shy learners, who take months to speak up in class in their mother tongue – let alone in English, were already shouting out to classmates to ‘jump’ and ‘duck’ with no inhibition.” In Japan, Nintendo’s DS has been used to teach children and in the U.S. iPads in the classroom are all the rage, so why not Kinect? Should Microsoft’s project be a success, we wouldn’t be shocked to see Kinect spring up in classrooms across the world.

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Nintendo 3DS Region Lock: Confirmed

Console and DVD users are very familiar with the region-lock concept: companies divide the world into sub-regions, and make sure that content bought in one region only works there. There are many reasons, but it mainly has to do with price control. This allows the company to sale games for a higher price in countries where the market can afford it, and lower the price in places where the market can’t bear higher prices. But for this to work, one needs to avoid imports from lower-priced regions, hence the lock.


The Nintendo 3DS has been confirmed to be locked. Those who have tried buying games from another region have found that 3DS games don’t work (DS games do). It’s usually not a big deal for most users, but it could be an annoyance for the enthusiast who can’t wait to get a console, or a new game which came out abroad.

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