Code Retard

Guerrilla striked a deal with gamespot that gave them exclusive Killzone 2 demos to give out to those who preordered the game.  The rest of the people who did not preorder the game will have to wait until release date (2/26).  The only way for those in the America to play the demo early is to make a PSN account that belongs to a  different region.  Simply go to the UK PSN page and make an UK account.  Log into your UK account on the PS3, and the Killzone 2 demo should be on the download list.  Enjoy!

To get Pokemasters hyped over Pokemon Platinum which will be released next 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 until Saturday February 14, 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 grass Pokemon Shaymin can be downloaded for free. Shaymin, Pokemon number 492 on your Pokedex, cannot be obtained any other way. This is the only legit way to get Shaymin into your collection. Shaymin will be gifted in land forme but can be evolved into sky forme when you trade it into Pokemon Platinum. Hurry up because this special download event ends this Saturday.

After hours of zombie killing in Left 4 Dead versus, we are finally ready for valve to release new campaigns for versus.  Not only will this new update add two more campaigns for versus, the update will also introduce a new mode called “survivor.”
Read more »

Seeing companies trying to bring 3D imagery from movies into gaming is certainly nothing new.  The last contender in the 3D business was Zalman with their ZM-M220W 3D display.  ZM-M220W depended on Nvidia drivers to reproduce 3D images, and games had to be individually supported for the feature to work.  While it successfully reproduced passive 3D images that may suffice for movies, some kinks that come inherently with passive 3D imagery made the monitor a nightmare for gamers.  The reproduced text, HUD, and crosshairs that gamers depend on were difficult to read and often induced headaches. Read more »

Animal Crossing: City Folk is the latest Animal Crossing iteration out on the Nintendo Wii. With huge successes first on the GameCube and later the Nintendo DS, Animal Crossing City Folk offers the same aimless fun that fans have come to expect. The problem with the latest Animal Crossing is that it isn’t a straightforward burn and play for WiiKey users. Animal Crossing itself ships with the 3.3 Wii menu update, which is safe to install with WiiKey. However, the update alone is not sufficient to get your backup copy of Wii Animal Crossing to play nice with WiiKey. The missing step is actually getting the IOS38 wad installed on your system before it will work with the WiiKey.

This guide covers all the steps from how to burn the Animal Crossing ISO image to how to install the Wii Homebrew Channel via Twilight Princess hack to how to use Wii WAD Manager to install IOS38 to enable compatibility with WiiKey. This was testing working on Wii 3.3 firmware update but should work on 3.2 as well.

Read more »

It’s no secret that women are the minority in the game industry but that hasn’t stopped them from earning more pay over their male counterparts in the UK. According to a survey of about a quarter million men and women conducted by MCV, women are earning salaries that are on average about $2840 more than men, with women averaging respectable salaries at $47,237. With the UK gaming industry average salary at $44,958, that makes women the top dogs earnings-wise. Though either a man or woman’s salary is well over the national average salary of $35,375, it seems like young women seeking to maximize their potential would do well to consider entering the gaming industry. In fact in the national average statistics, women actually do make less than men but the trend seems to be reversed for the gaming industry.

Read more »

Tribes 2 was an awesome FPS back in the day when Dynamix was still around nearly 8 years ago. However, age hasn’t made this game any less fun and now that it’s absolutely free and legal to download, Tribes 2 is a great game that any FPS lover should try at least once. Sure, players have known about the Tribes 2 free download for years now, but multiplayer hasn’t worked since November 2008. Tribes 2 is set in the future and emphasizes teamplay (just try capture the flag) with the nifty ability to fly in the air. Its best feature was undoubtedly the online multiplayer gameplay which was unfortunately terminated last year when Vivendi’s Tribes 2 servers were shut down… but not any longer. Beginning on January 2009 this year, a patch was introduced to support multiplayer once more and players can once again get together to reminisce while playing a great FPS classic. And another great thing besides an officially sanctioned free download? Less stringent hardware and video card requirements compared to today’s average equipment.

Read more »

Someone was actually dumb/brave enough (you decide) to get into a Mario costume and go cruising the streets on his go kart for a Mario Kart style adventure. It’s actually pretty funny and you’ll see Remi getting power-ups during the "race" and even manage to throw a banana under a motorcyclist’s wheel complete with the familiar Mario Kart soundtrack playing in the background.

GripShift has a buffer overflow vulnerability when loading savegames. The savegame contains the profile name which can be easily used to overwrite $ra. The savegame file is pretty big (25kB) so you have lots of space to put your code there. I wrote a simple blob of code to paint the framebuffer completely white (to just indicate that arbitrary code is running). The return address is located at offset 0xA9 in the file. In this poc it points to 0×08E4CD50 (which is only a few bytes after the return address), and the code starts at 0xCC in the file.

It was tested on 4.01M33-2 with US version of GripShift (ULUS10040), and psplink.prx, usbhostfs.prx and deemerh.prx loaded (also without psplink and usbhostfs). The decrypted savegame (sorry, couldn’t [be bothered to] get Shine’s savegame tool working so it’s in plaintext form) is in the SDDATA.BIN form which Hellcat’s Savegame-Deemer produces (thanks to him, if the program didn’t exist I wouldn’t have bothered with this). Just copy the ULUS10040SAVE00 directory to /PSP/SAVEPLAIN/ and run the game. EDIT: yeah, don’t forget to have Savegame-Deemer working, duh.

The Nyko Frontman wireless guitar is an excellent affordable alternative piece of hardware to first party Guitar Hero and Rock Band wireless guitars, which cost a lot more. For budget shoppers though, you just can’t get a better feature set and play experience than the Nyko guitar for the money. Available in black or white for $20 a pop, it’s over $30 cheaper than either Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitars. This hardware review is for the PS3 platform, but Xbox 360 and Wii versions are expected to be similar. Below is a shot of the back of the box:

Read more »