Code Retard » Nintendo

Coolest Crochet Super Mario Amigurumi Ever

adm_snackbar — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:24:28 +0000

If you’re a big gamer fan like we are you’ll definitely appreciate this: a custom made 110% accurately crocheted Super Mario amigurumi in the raccoon suit!! This is from the classic NES game Super Mario Bros 3 which pushed the limits on the gaming console’s graphics, playability, and fun factor. You know what happens when Mario touches the feather, he transforms into Raccoon Mario and is able to fly high into the sky, extending the gameplay beyond the ground and opening an entire new world of bonuses and hidden secrets. These factors all made Super Mario Bros 3 a truly awesome game, and this super-awesome crochet Super Mario is just as awesome. It’s so accurate down to the “M” on the cap and perfect proportions, it makes you wonder if this Mario doll simply popped out of your TV screen. No word on whether this will go on sale or not, but you can check out the creator’s website Cute Amigirumi for more video-game inspired crochet amigurumi creations and check out more Mario crochet pics while you’re at it. We also featured her R2D2 crochet and Waluigi on Code Retard previously.

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App Store Price Drops: Angry Birds, Texas Hold ‘Em, TripDeck, more

adm_snackbar — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:25:53 +0000

Get them now while they’re hot! These iPhone apps have been recently reduced in price! There’s no word when these app prices will shoot back up (usually these price drops are only good for a couple of days as app publishers try to get a little publicity) so make no delay and point your iTunes to the App Store and get to downloading!

Angry Birds for 99 cents ($1 off): Physics-based game
The Escapee for 99 cents ($2 off): Port of Super Nintendo Game
TouchText for 99 cents ($4 off): Alternative input method
Stride 2 for 99 cents ($1 off): Pedometer
Age of Tribes for 99 cents ($1 off): Puzzle game
Scany (networks and ports scanner) for 99 cents ($1 off): Network exploration and security tool
World Poker Tour Texas Hold ‘Em! for $2.99 ($1 off): Card game
TripDeck – Travel Itinerary Manager for $4.99 ($5 off): Travel organization assistant

Image/Apple

Black Wii, Red DSi to be Released by Nintendo

adm_snackbar — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:50:32 +0000

If you check out Nintendo Japan’s corporate press release for today, you’ll find something quite interesting that WASN’T revealed at E3, the biggest gaming convention of the year- a stunning picture of a slick black Wii. While it’s certainly not the biggest news of the year, the fact that the Nintendo Wii is getting a new black paint job is still pretty big news. Just like the old DS Lite got a color makeover from the original polar white, the polar white Wii will now be sold in black as well. It goes on sale in Japan on August 1 later this year. Not to leave those who seek absolute matching accessories in dismay, Nintendo will also release black Wii remotes and classic controllers.

Also making headlines is a new color for the DSi. Though the news isn’t as big as we already get our choice of two DSi colors, the bold red portable gaming device would make a handsome addition to any gamer’s collection. Though on second thought if you had to stare at it gaming for a few hours you’d probably tire your eyes out.

Images/Nintendo

Punch-Out!! Pre-Order for Nintendo Wii Now Available – $40

adm_snackbar — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:15:03 +0000

Punch-Out!! was a much beloved game on the original Nintendo Entertainment System, and now the highly anticipated reintroduction on the Wii is now available for pre-order on Amazon for the low price of $39.99 with free shipping. The game is set to hit store shelves in a few days on May 18th.

What’s cool about this game is the controls. You can opt for the Wii Sports boxing inspired control where in one hand you hold the remote, and in the other you hold the nunchuk while you punch away into the air like a maniac. For those who want that old nostalgic feeling of the original game, there’s a special control for them too. You can simply turn the remote sideways and use the NES controller style of punching with the 1 and 2 buttons along with the direction pad.

Another great thing is the return of the original hero: Little Mac along with 12 familiar old enemies. This game looks to be a blast to play, and the cel-shaded 3-D graphics aren’t shabby either.

Images/Nintendo/Amazon

Wii Hard Drive Hack: Load Wii Games Off a Hard Drive

adm_snackbar — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:07:00 +0000

Nintendo’s system menu 4.0 update provided a long-awaited storage solution in the form of SDHC support up to 32GB. Whoopee. Now we’ll tell you how you can actually load Wii game backups off a hard drive with this Wii hard drive hack for a real storage solution. Taking advantage of Nintendo’s 4.0 update support a costly solution since you are required to buy pricey SDHC cards, and it’s limited in size as well. With the Wii hard drive hack we’re about to discuss, you can load games off any USB hard drive with much higher storage capacities. Expensive 32GB flash? Psh, try cheap 320GB HDD. And not only that, if you’ve got any USB stick pen drives lying around, they will work just as well. Plus to top it all off, you will see a huge performance benefit as your games will load much faster as they’re being read off the hard drive compared to the slower DVD disc drive.

First of all, let’s list the hardware requirements for the Wii hard drive hack:

Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess (if you don’t have Wii Homebrew Channel)
SD card
USB hard drive
Wii system menu 3.3 (3.4 and 4.0 were untested as our Wiis did not have these installed, but anything 3.3 and prior should work)
Wii mod chip

And now, here are the much anticipated steps:

Install the Wii Homebrew Channel. If you don’t already have the Wii Homebrew Channel manager installed, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. It’s an absolute must for running great user-contributed homebrew apps on your Wii. If you’ve already got it installed, you can skip ahead to step 11. Otherwise to install it you’ll need to use the Twilight Princess hack. This means you need to have played Twilight Princess at least once on your Wii and had a game saved.
Format an SD card to FAT16 or FAT32.
Pick the proper game save to load based on the Twilight Princess version you played. More details can be found in our Twilight Princess hack guide.
If it does not already exist, make a directory called “/private/wii/title/RZDx/” on your SD card; replace “RZDx” with RZDE (US), RZDP (Europe) or RZDJ (Japan) as appropriate based on the inner circle text which varies depending on the version of Twilight Princess you played. Copy the correct “data.bin” file you chose from the hacked Twilight Princess gamesave package with the matching directory path into the directory you created on your SD card.
Copy the Wii Homebrew Channel hbc101-boot-dol.zip file to the root folder of the SD card (note that this is for 3.3 menu update and earlier, other versions can be found here). Extract the file which should be named boot.dol. You can delete the .zip package after you extract the boot.dol file.
Now, put the SD card into your Wii and turn it on. Go into Wii Options –> Data Management –> Save Data –> Wii.
Find your Zelda save, click on it, and click “Erase”, and click Yes.
Now, go into SD card, and select the “Twilight Hack” save (the icon says “Wiibrew Loader”). Click copy, and yes. Now, go back out of that menu.
Insert Zelda, and run the game. Load the file corresponding to the correct save slot as indicated in the table here (US only), and either walk backwards, or talk to the guy that’s standing in front of you. Worst case you picked the wrong file and try the other one.
Now the Wii Homebrew Channel will install itself as its own channel in your Wii menu. Follow the prompts to complete the install. You can delete the boot.dol from your SD card now.
Download Waninkoko’s custom IOS36-rev10 installer.
Create a directory "/apps/cios36r10" on your SD card.
Extract the cIOS36 zip to a directory. Grab the cIOS36_rev10-Installer.dol file and copy it to the "/apps/cios36r10" on your SD card.
In the "/apps/cios36r10" folder on your SD card, rename cIOS36_rev10-Installer.dol to boot.dol.
If your Wii has a network connection to the Internet, you can skip this step. Otherwise, download the IOS36-64-v1042.wad file and save it to the root of the SD card. You will have the option to install this later.
Now create a directory "/apps/usbloader" on your SD card.
Download WiiShizzza’s USB Loader Ultimate v7 homebrew to "/apps/usbloader" on your SD card.
In the "/apps/usbloader" folder on your SD card, rename UltimateV7.dol to boot.dol. For extra credit, you can read up on how to set up a config.txt for the USB loader, or else just use ours. Yes the screenshot’s directory name doesn’t match up, but we’ve changed the folder name in case you wish to go the extra mile and install the USB loader wad which is hard coded to look in the usbloader directory. WAD installation is covered in our Animal Crossing/WiiKey guide from step 13 onward.
Insert the SD card into your Wii’s SD slot and turn it on. Then open the Wii Homebrew Channel and start it.
The homebrew channel detects any homebrew you’ve saved to the SD card. Load the cIOS36-rev10 installer by clicking on it.
At the prompt, click “Load” to run the cIOS36 installer.
You’ll hear some cool music. Read the disclaimer carefully, and if you agree press the A button on your Wii remote.
At the next screen, choose whether you wish to perform a network install or not by pressing left or right. Then press A to continue.
As the install commences, do not panic if the music stops. Once the install completes (about 2 minutes), restart by pressing any button.
Now let’s test if the USB loader homebrew will work correctly. Load it from the Homebrew Channel.
If the install went through correctly, you should see this:

Now your Wii is ready to load games off the USB port in the back. Getting games onto the USB hard drive is a whole other process. You will need to have Wii game disc ISO backups available if you wish to play them off the Wii hard drive.

Download WBFS Manager 2.2.2 (other editions available here). Believe us, it’s the best WBFS game hard drive manager we’ve tried and we’ve tried a lot.
Extract the zip to a folder and open it. Double click setup.exe to install it. Note that it will install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 if you don’t already have it installed.
Connect your USB hard drive or USB stick to your computer. Note the drive letter that Windows assigns it.
Now launch WBFS Manager. Select the drive letter of your soon to be Wii hard drive and click the “Format” button.
At the lower right of WBFS Manager, click the “Browse…” button and browse to a valid Wii ISO file.
Then also on the lower right, click the “Add to Drive” button and it will begin copying the ISO file over to the Wii hard drive.
Even if your Wii ISO’s are full 4.7GB images, the WBFS manager is smart enough to strip out the empty unused bits so many games will actually be less than 4GB. Keep repeating steps 5 and 6 until you’ve loaded as many ISO game backups as you wish. Keep your eye on the free space of your hard drive though.
Your Wii hard drive is now ready to be used. Load the USB Loader homebrew and when it displays “Waiting for USB device,” connect your new Wii hard drive and the USB loader will show all the games you’ve copied to your Wii hard drive in the menu. To play any game, just press the A button on your Wii remote.

Now you can play any game as if it had been inserted through the DVD disc drive except with better load times.

Images/Code Retard

Wii System Menu 4.0 Update Breaks Twilight Hack, Homebrew Channel Survives

adm_snackbar — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:32:15 +0000

If you’ve been thinking of updating to Wii System Menu 4.0 you may want to hold off. Despite the greatest improvement offered by the 4.0 update – a storage solution for Virtual Console and WiiWare games (up to 32GB possible with SDHC) – it may come at a cost to some Wii gamers. If you’ve been relying on the famed Twilight hack to launch your own homebrew, it won’t work any longer as the exploit has finally been patched by Nintendo. Considering that homebrew gamers have been able to use the Twilight Princess hack for a solid year, it has definitely served its purpose for the homebrew community well even if it’s permanently gone.

And speaking of homebrew, if you have the Homebrew Channel already installed, the Wii system menu 4.0 update will actually still allow you to run homebrew via the channel so you can still run awesome hacks like the Wii hard drive hack. It won’t work if you try to install it after updating to 4.0, so if you must upgrade then do yourself a favor and install the Homebrew Channel before you update at the very least. Consider it your last farewell to the TP hack.

Image/Nintendo

Nintendo Updates Wii System Menu 4.0 with SD Card Channel

adm_snackbar — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:16:04 +0000

Check out Joystiq’s video walkthrough of the newest addition to the Wii system menu 4.0: the SD Card Channel. It is available on the Wii Shop Channel and is Nintendo’s answer to the lack of a storage solution for games on the Wii. With the SD Card Menu, you can now launch channels saved on the SD card directly from the SD card without first having to drag and drop it over to the system menu. The SD card menu also supports deletion natively so there’s no need to go to the data management settings. One final note: the system menu 4.0 update also brings compatibility for SDHC cards up to 32GB in size, finally it’s time to buy one!

Nintendo to Launch App Store for DSi

adm_snackbar — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:54:50 +0000

According to Develop magazine, Nintendo recently held a top-secret Nintendo Developer Conference earlier this week and asked its attendees to think of the DSi as the “first choice above any others for those looking to pursue new avenues for games design and ways for developers to make money.” That sounds very much like Apple’s App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which has been a huge boon for Apple and SDK developers. The Nintendo DS/DSi has long been the king of the handheld console market, but now it seems Nintendo too wishes to venture into the general app market and cash in on its newfound popularity.

Despite what the NDC implies, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata continues to firmly claim:

It seems some people have the impression that we want to compete with cell phones or the iPod. Nintendo doesn’t have any intention of directly competing with existing products.

But opening up an app store for the DSi seems to be a great way to get current DS owners to adopt the new console. Two cameras and an SD slot doesn’t seem like a good enough reason for a $169.99 upgrade, but an Apple-like app store would definitely make it worthwhile. And it’s not just for the consumer either, the DSi developer market may experience a similar boon that Apple has proven can be successful for publisher and application devlopers.

DS-Lite Out, and DSi In!

Son Riku — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:05:59 +0000

According to Nintendo UK general manager David Yarnton, the company will most likely phase out the DS Lite handheld if the upcoming DSi ‘thrives.’

Yarnton would not commit the company to any such plans, but did note that if enough buyers purchased the updated handheld, the DS Lite would most likely be discontinued, just like its fatter brother, the original DS, was.

“We’ll let the market decide,” he said. “We expect some people will upgrade, but we also anticipate that we’ll win over people who were still undecided on DS — the extra features will help convince them. There’s an extra incentive.”

The DSi is slated for an April 3rd release date in Europe followed by a North American release two days later.

The system will cost $169.99 USD in North America and will cost around GBP 149 in Europe, both 50 dollar premiums over the current model, the DS Lite.

Catch Regigigas at Toys R Us Pokemon Download Event

adm_snackbar — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:16:20 +0000

To get Pokemasters hyped over Pokemon Platinum which will be released this month for the Nintendo DS, Nintendo has teamed up with Toys R Us to bring a special download event to avid Pokemon fans. For a limited time from March 8 until Saturday March 21, Pokemon gamers can bring their Pokemon Diamond or Pearl games to their local Toys R Us to take advantage of TRU’s Nintendo Wifi hotspot where the rare golem Pokemon Regigigas can be downloaded for free. Regigigas, Pokemon number 486 on your Pokedex, cannot be caught easily unless you want to gather a Regirock, Regice, and Registeel and trek your way to Snowpoint Temple. This is by far the easiest way to get Regigigas legendary Pokemon just in time for you to transfer to Pokemon Platinum when it launches the day after this TRU Pokemon event ends. So hurry up because this special download event ends in two weeks!

Image/Nintendo