GAMES OF THE YEAR?

Super Mario Galaxy (pictured) - 97.3%

The Orange Box - 96.1%

Bioshock - 95.3%

Call of Duty 4 - 95.1%

CPS

Halo 3 - 93.2%

God of War 2 - 93%

Mass Effect - 93%

Crysis - 91%

Drake's Progress - 89%

Project Gotham Racing 4 - 87%

Assassin's Creed - 84.5%

Edge magazine is notoriously parsimonious when it comes to handing out 10 out of 10 review scores for video games but in the past three issues there have been three of them.

Halo 3, The Orange Box and Super Mario Galaxy have all been awarded one of the highest accolades in gaming - a perfect score from Edge. And plenty of other games have been given near perfect scores also - from Bioshock to Crysis, Drake's Progress and Call of Duty 4.

The Edge scores are just one of a number of signs that reinforce a growing feeling that videogames are enjoying a golden age.

It is not just that the interactive experiences are getting ever more immersive, or the industry is being taken ever more seriously, but hardware and software sales are up significantly on last year - buoyed by a new generation of consoles and the work of developers who are beginning to exploit the tools they have at their disposal.

[...]

"There are now more ways than ever to spend money on video games - from consoles to handhelds, supplementary purchases online via Live Arcade, Virtual Console and the PlayStation Network to games on your iPod.

"The evidence of what Nintendo has done to attract people to games for the first time with the DS and the Wii is unmistakably clear."

This year will be remembered as the year the Wii took centre stage as the console of choice for families, the year PlayStation 3 finally showed its promise in real terms and the Xbox 360 hit its stride with the 5th anniversary of online service Xbox Live.

It is also the year of the handheld with Nintendo DS and PSP continuing to sell explosively, the year PC gaming began its renaissance and developers got to grips with tools that allowed them to tell stories in new, dynamic ways.

»» http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7107144.stm

lxdream, the Sega Dreamcast emulator for Linux, was ported to x86-64 and Mac OS X.

From the official page:

It must be porting week - both the x86-64 and mac ports should (fingers crossed) work out of the box now. (Note that the mac port is intel only, and still requires X11+GTK 2.0 to build). Real native mac support will probably follow slowly as time permits - I’m getting something of a crash course in mac programming at the moment .

 

Changes

 

* Added x86-64 support to the translator

* Initial Mac OS X support (configuration and translator ABI changes)

* Fix buggy TRAPA instruction (translator only - fixes several homebrew games)

* Improve error handling of a few situations (can’t connect to display, etc)

* Esound is now optional (but without it you’re not getting any audio)

* Re-add the “Load Binary” menu entry that somehow got lost in the GUI revamp.

Arcade emulator for the GP2X

23-11-2007:

 

New MAME GP2X 5.0:

 

- Border TV-Out emulation. See the readme.txt for the information to activate it.

- The controls have been changed for coherence with other applications (B is the first button).

- The PUSH button in the F200 is emulated pressing Up+Down+Left+Right simultaneously.

>> Get it HERE.

Rom Manager

Version 3.00 alpha 7 released

 

This is an alpha version released for testing.

Backup your files before using it.

 

The database structure changed again and, as the update process is modified, you can't use the previously created database files.

 

Bugs fixed:

- Fix captions in file menu.

- Fix problems when updating DB version

- String truncation when loading path with long device name

- Empty CHD folder not handled correctly

- Refresh path always remove and add chd folders

- CHD outside of a folder are not displayed correctly

- "file not found" when importing missing chd in a folder

- Crash when creating chd dummies

- Empty folder sometime not added when adding a path

- CHD folders not updated after fixing the whole path

- Wrong CHD folder status displayed after mode changing (split)

- Empty folder not correctly loaded the first time

- Merged roms with identical name but different crc are deleted in split mode

- Can't create empty folder to move CHD

- Random illegal access error in riched20.dll

 

Features added:

- Split listview 'rom' column in 'main' and 'merge' columns

- Device and database icons in treeview

- New buttons in datafile wizard

- Add more progress info in log for long operations in DB

- Icons in treeview

- Device insert/remove detection

- Change some tools location

- Added bios icons in treeview

>> Get it HERE.