Nintendo President Saturo Iwata spoke yesterday at a Japanese marketing event (Japanese source), revealing information about "virtual console" pricing and the Wii's relationship with the DS. Iwata revealed that games for Nintendo's "virtual console" that will allow Wii owners to play old titles on their consoles will be priced at ¥500 and ¥1,000, roughly US$4.50 to US$8.99. For reference, classic retro games for the Nintendo GameBoy sold for upwards of US$35 for some titles, US$19.99 for others. Uptake was understandably low, as gamers were reticent to pay that much for old content.

Retro gaming may prove to be a big boon for Nintendo. Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace has already captured the attention of many gamers with games costing 400 to 1,200 Microsoft "points," which translates to US$5 to US$12.50. Nintendo's pricing is roughly competitive with Microsoft's, but the ability to launch with a massive library of retro games could easily overshadow Microsoft's service, which has been anemic in terms of new titles since launch (though we wait in anticipation for Paperboy, Contra, and others). Are gamers more likely to buy Zuma for US$10, or Majora's Mask?

Iwata also talked about ramping up production of the DS Lite from 1.6 million units a month to 2 million. Demand for the system in Japan has been near insatiable, and with a June 11 launch in the United States, the added production will hopefully keep the system on store shelves so it can take advantage of the success of the New Mario Bros. and Brain Age. The system has been a license to print money for Nintendo, with ten games in Japan that have already sold over a million copies.

Iwata talked up the Wii's capabilities in terms of DS connectivity, including the ability to share demos and the fact that the DS could also be used as a touch screen controller for Wii games. He also hinted that future DS games will be able to be played on the Wii, with added or expanded content as a teaser.

Downloading DS demos via the Wii is a nice touch, but not that surprising. Being able to use the DS as a touch screen for the Wii, however, offers up the possibility of being able to use the Wii to play DS games on your television. The GameBoy Player was a successful product for the GameCube, allowing gamers to play their GBA games on their televisions, and if the Wii features such an ability, Nintendo has a better chance of converting DS gamers into Wii owners.

From the picture Iwata is painting, it's clear that the Wii is designed to profit not only from new games sales but also by working closely with the DS, and placing an emphasis on inexpensive classic games purchased online. It's hard to underestimate the worth of Nintendo's back catalogue, and the addition of classic Sega and Turbografx titles adds considerable appeal for gamers who cut their teeth on Nintendo's early consoles.

Unfortunately, we still don't know when the Wii will launch or how much it will cost. Iwata said the launch date and final pricing for the Wii will not be announced until September.

Arstechnica.com

Famitsu (Japanese Source)

ROM manager

3.89

 

* added: zip option OEM/ANSI conversion. This enabled/disables conversion of non standard filenames in zipfiles. Keep it enabled as long as you don't use any non standard characters. Remember, conversion results depend on your currently used codepage. If you got problems renaming roms, you should toggle this option. This is a per-profile setting and enabled by default.

* misc: zip option "mark useless zip structs as unneeded" is now a global setting

* misc: unneeded diskimages will be listed as 'diskimages' instead of file/folder

* misc: diskimage + unneeded detects unneeded diskimages even if 'roms' isn't selected (official chd storage method only)

* misc: when using sysdefpaths, chds optionally have to use the sysdefpath now, too (e.g. btchamp should be in a subfolder of the konamiGV assigned path) Added a scanner advanced option for that. Use it in combination with the warning about wrong sysdefpaths option there.

* misc: changed the layout in scanner advanced a bit

* fixed: FolderBrowser can trash memory when COM library was closed 'too early'

* fixed: some OEM/ANSI conversion can cause DOUBLE FILEENTRY IN ZIPFILE issues

* fixed: toggling fix-all toggles the tree which isn't needed

* fixed: previously loaded setselection is falsely applied to next loaded profile

>> Get it HERE.

The Atari++ Emulator is a Unix based emulator of the Atari eight bit computers, namely the Atari 400 and 800, the Atari 400XL, 800XL and 130XE, and the Atari 5200 game console.

 

* This release is mainly due to Mark Keates (thanks, Mark!) by emulating the flash process for Steve Trucker's flash ROM carts. That is, Steve's software is now able to erase and re-flash the flash ROMs.

 

* Added emulation code for the Phoenix, Blizzard and ATMax cartridges.

 

* New cartridges (for the Flash code) and new disk images can now be created by the emulator on the fly. For that, just type in a non-existing file name in the file requester and either format this virtual disk, or set the cart type to Flash and supply a flash image.

 

* The FMS directory operations were complete rewritten, reducing the amount of required buffer memory by 128 bytes. Furthermore, the default number of buffers was reduced to the standard set of two drives, three files, again leaving more memory to BASIC.

 

* The FMS is now even more compatible to Dos 2.0S by offering the same memory locations for the drive write mode, the number of drive buffers and the number of file buffers. All these are now available by standard peeks/pokes documented in Dos 2.0S.

 

* The FMS is now read compatible to Dos 2.5 and makes the extended files visible in the directory listing.

 

* This release fixes a couple of minor bugs in the OS implementation. The text window modes of Graphics 9,10 and 11 flickered during SIO operation, and the ROM got streamlined a bit.

 

* The monitor offers now a command to log the commands executed by the CPU to a file. Check for the ENVI command. Note that the logs can grow very fast very long.

You can download the emulator HERE.

Credits: E-lation.net for the changelog.

We thought every pcb was converted to Hot Mind and that we would have never found it, but after years of research, the MAME Italian guys found it and now every known Playmark games is emulated!

Here you are...

 

Hard Times - 1994 Playmark

 

Right now it has no sound because the PIC isn't dumped yet, but it'll probably be read protected, so it'll have to be simulated.

If you think it looks like Blood Bros., well it's hacked from Blood Bros. program code In fact you can find Blood Bros. text inside Hard Times roms.

>> Pictures HERE.