Code Retard

You can catch sick air off massive jumps in Mario Kart 7 by using your automatically deployed hang glider attachment.
Image courtesy Nintendo

Here is the best thing about Mario Kart 7: This time, Nintendo didn’t screw it up.

When you think of Nintendo’s hit products, you don’t necessarily think of the Mario Kart racing games (specifically) as a dominant part of the 3DS maker’s business. But the series is colossal. Mario Kart Wii has outsold every other standalone game on the home system, moving a staggering 28 million copies. That’s one game for every three Wii consoles.

Any other publisher would put out one of these every year; Nintendo does one per console and then sells it for half a decade. So the development team generally plays it safe, as is the case with this 3DS installment, to be released on Dec. 4. Now, when Nintendo played it safe with the Wii version, it crafted something amenable to the console’s fan base: a madcap fun-for-all in which anyone including your triplegic maiden aunt Tillie had an equal chance of winning the race. (She and her 28 million friends say I was wrong to dislike it.)

But nowadays Tillie is too busy playing another round of Pissed-Off Parakeets on her iPhone 4S to bother buying a 3DS. So this time, “playing it safe” means embracing the early-adopter hard-core gamers. This has resulted in a Mario Kart more tuned to our sensibilities, which is just as well since Tillie can barely see the 3-D graphics, what with her glaucoma.

The Mario Kart series may appear at first blush to be racing games, but in fact they are a carefully crafted videogame version of Harrison Bergeron. You can’t simply outrace the pack of Mario characters through the 32 different cartoon courses. You have to use items to attack them and defend yourself. The Handicapper General distributes the items, giving lead racers the crappy items (a tiny banana peel that you can drop on the track in hopes that someone will at some point be dumb enough to drive over it) and the racers in the back get shitkicker death cannons.

Here is a typical scenario: You are in a tenuous first place, just barely holding off the guy in second, carefully considering your racing line and drifting corners to edge him out. Suddenly, the last place person accidentally drives into an item box and fires off a Blue Shell, which zooms out to the front of the pack and explodes on you for the crime of doing slightly better than the guy right behind you. You go out in a blaze of glory and second place zooms into first place. The guy who fired the shell? He’s still in last, of course, but he gets to hear you scream some unrepeatable words, and isn’t that fun for everyone? Except you, but who cares about you.

Mario Kart 7‘s idea of customizable racecars is slightly different than, say, Gran Turismo‘s.
Image courtesy Nintendo

Anyway, the basic formula is still in place in Mario Kart 7 but it’s been toned down considerably. It’s possible, both against the computer racers and against other humans, to get far enough ahead that you can maintain first place after a Blue Shell bombing, which is better than nothing. I’ve still lost a fair few races I should have won (and vice versa), but it all felt a lot more fair.

That’s good because Mario Kart 7‘s pure racing can stand on its own. The controls are tight. The gameplay looks simple but has a lot of depth: You can drag items behind you as shields, tap a button to get a burst of speed every time you catch air on the undulating race tracks, etc. Yes, it feels pretty much exactly like 2005?s Mario Kart DS with better graphics. But it’s still too good to put down.

Silent Friends

Mario Kart 7 has online multiplayer, Nintendo-style, which means you can neither speak with or send texts to the people you are racing for fear that you may say something unsanitary. Given the language that I have used in front of Nintendo employees at various game preview events, I am probably the reason for this rule and I do apologize. It still seems a bit like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer.

There are other ways to customize your experience. You can tweak your go-kart’s frame, wheels and glider (used to float down speedily off the courses’ bigger jumps). You can form a “community” of like-minded racers and adjust the game modes and the items that appear, although you can only pick from general categories (“Shells Only,” “No Items,” etc.) rather than individually turn items on and off.

After getting ruined in the Wii game, Battle Mode is mostly back in fighting form for Mario Kart 7. You still zip around a wide-open arena firing weapons at your friends. But while previous games gave each player three hit points and the winner was the last man standing, the Handicapper General has now decreed that everyone must always get to play for the entire match. So players now score points for hitting others, and lose them for taking too many hits. This is actually a good idea, but it would have been better had it been an additional option rather than the only one.

Another arena battle mode, Coin Runners, is also a good idea: The aim is to putter around the battlefield collecting up coins, which can then be extricated forcibly from other players by blowing them up real good. It’s not an original idea (I’m pretty sure I played something similar in Halo: Reach) but it’s a rare breath of fresh air.

Which Mario Kart sometimes seems to be gasping for. In the latest edition of Iwata Asks, the regular series in which Nintendo’s CEO quizzes his employees on the development cycles of their latest games, Mario Kart‘s team is clear that this was not an “it’s done when it’s done” vanity project: This game had to be out in 2011 as part of the company’s all-guns-blazing plan to kickstart the 3DS business. In other words, there was no time to dream too big even if they wanted to.

That said, if a Nintendo with its back to the wall produces games that are more tuned to core gamers’ sensibilities, I’ll take it.

WIRED Clever course design, tight racing control, easy to learn but has lots of depth, fixed Battle mode (mostly).

TIRED Nintendo’s bare-bones online, general play-it-safe design mentality.

EXPIRED Blue shells.

Rating:

$40, Nintendo

Read Game|Life’s game ratings guide.

Note: The original version of this story incorrectly stated that the “Coin Runners” mode was newly added to Mario Kart 7. In fact, it appeared in Mario Kart Wii. Wired.com regrets the error.

Apple released
Safari 5.1.2 (Mac or Windows) to users today, adding some fixes and stability improvements to its official Web browser.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

A must-download for any Safari user, the update includes various improvements to stability, addresses issues that caused hangs and excessive memory usage, and will now allow PDFs to display within Web content.

The update also addresses an issue that would cause Web sites to flash white while browsing.

The full list of feature enhancements and fixes is not yet available at Apple’s Web site at the time of this writing, but we’ll update the Safari listing at Download.com when we receive more details.

Nintendo hasn’t been doing so great as of late, but most people figured they’d see a pretty nice boost once the holiday season rolled around. Well, the holiday season is here, and so is the predicted Nintendo boost. The company boasted astonishing sales numbers for the Thanksgiving weekend, fueled by Black Friday sales and the recent releases of two very good games.

Nintendo is reporting that since the launch of both games, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has sold over 535,000 copies and Super Mario 3D Land has sold 500,000, both with big surges during the holiday week. The Wii also saw the best Black Friday numbers since its release, with buyers purchasing an astonishing 500,000 units. I’d love to see how Microsoft and Sony did – I’m sure they crushed as well.

Perhaps the most important data for Nintendo, however, is the increased sales of its 3DS handheld unit. Sales of the device tripled in the last week, going up by 325%. The 3DS has now officially sold more units than the original DS managed to snag in its first year of release. Whatever Nintendo needed to happen with the 3DS, it looks like it’s finally happening. The 3DS will likely continue to sell well, with Mario Kart 7 on the horizon.

We’ll just have to wait and see how Nintendo carries this momentum into the holiday season. The Wii has always been a big Christmas buy, and the 3DS is fresh enough to be on some holiday wish lists.

What’s on your holiday wish list? Do you want a Wii, a 3DS, or something else entirely?

[1Up]

C4eva shared with us in private today some further details about the upcoming iXtreme LT+ v3.0, which is now targetted for release sometime after December 6, 2011. Earlier this week, Microsoft’s Major Nelson announced December 6 as the official release date for the final version of its Fall 2011 Dashboard Update. Scheduling LT+ v3.0 for release after this date will allow c4eva and the team a chance to analyze the final update so as to ensure no additional changes to v3.0 are necessary.

With the new iXtreme LT+ v3.0, original game discs will need to be analyzed by Xbox Backup Creator in order to gain disc topology data. This data replaces the need for AP2.5/dae.bin data and enables any AP2.5 challenge to be answered correctly. C4eva noted that the topology data method is very efficient — using only 24kB of space — and extremely accurate. Due to differences between them, each game will require its own individual set of topology data. A risk of backups being detected poses itself if the same topology data is used between two different titles. This risk is mitigated by using abgx360 to make certain that the backup contains the appropriate topology data.

Sodasynth, a music-looping app, is built using Google’s Native Client and available through the Chrome Web Store.

(Credit:
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Native Client has taken only baby steps in its first three years of existence, but Google evidently is hoping its browser-boosting technology will take larger strides soon.

The company has sent out invitations to a Native Client event on the evening of December 8 at Google’s Mountain View, Calif., offices, where “we plan to share some news about Native Client,” show some demos, and share some wine.

Native Client, aka NaCl, lets Web-based software run natively on x86 processors–and therefore run more quickly than traditional Web apps. That’s what Office and Photoshop do, too, of course, but NaCl comes with security protections designed to let people safely run software they just downloaded over the Web, not just trusted software they install themselves.

NaCl now is built into Google’s Chrome browser. But because other browser makers range from uninterested to disapproving, NaCl doesn’t show many signs of extending any farther at present. Its future therefore hinges on how well Google can generate programmer interest and excitement that will bring others on board.

“It’s great technically, but it’s only running on Chrome,” said David Helgason, chief executive officer of Unity Technologies, in a recent interview. Unity plans to support NaCl with its cross-platform videogame development technology.

“Now they’re really close to being ready, and so are we. It’s great technology, something we hope other browser vendors would adopt,” Helgason said. “It’s the ideal way of putting rich content and game engines in the browser.”

But winning over those allies won’t be easy for Google–in particular with the improvements in the incumbent programming technology for Web apps, JavaScript.

“We’re not sure it’s really needed,” said Jan Standal, vice president of desktop products for Opera Software, of Native Client. “In many ways, JavaScript is becoming ridiculously fast. With what we observe with JavaScript, we’re not sure we’re going to need the next level beyond.”

Native Client’s advantages
Ordinary Web apps, written in JavaScript, run slowly but safely on a software layer called a virtual machine, but NaCl permits lower-level access by screening out any programs that use banned commands and by confining software to a sandbox. Programmers who want to try it out only can distribute NaCl software through Google’s Chrome Web Store for now.

Native Client has promise as a way to expand what browsers can do–for example, to run physics game engines fast or to boost Web-based video chat with a new high-performance encoding technology. For example, Zipline Games’ cross-platform Moai game foundation now can reach Chrome through NaCl. Using NaCl developer tools, existing programs and software libraries written in C or C++ can be rejiggered for NaCl.

One example of a Native Client application is SodaSynth, a very basic synthesizer Chrome app that can create looping music melodies. The app’s developers boast, “The lowest-latency keyboard on the Web!”

And Google, which sees NaCl as a security technology, is rebuilding parts of Chrome itself out of NaCl.

Not an easy sell
The biggest barrier to NaCl’s success so far is the lack of support from other browser makers.

Without that, NaCl runs the risk of introducing a technology to the Web that fragments it as a programming platform. After years of concerted effort, browser makers and Web developers are only now building HTML, CSS, and JavaScript into a heavy-duty foundation to rival proprietary alternatives such as Adobe Systems’ Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight.

Those plug-ins require browsers to have an interface such as NPAPI (Netscape Plug-in Application Programming Interface). Native Client needs an interface, too, but NPAPI isn’t up to the challenge, so Google created a new one instead called Pepper. (NaCl is the chemical abbreviation for sodium chloride, more commonly known as table salt. Get it? Salt and pepper.)

But as the Web matures–and as Adobe scales back its Flash Player ambitions–plug-ins are being put into the doghouse.

“There’s no way browser vendors are going to carry NPAPI support forever, or add any new NPAPI features now, just to run Java and some other relatively little-used plugins,” said Mozilla programmer Robert O’Callahan in a personal blog post. “Eventually we’ll be able to disable plugins and rip out a lot of code.”

And Microsoft barred plug-ins from the version of Internet Explorer 10 that will run in the new “Metro” interface of Windows 8. “Plug-ins were important early on in the Web’s history. But the Web has come a long way since then with HTML5. Providing compatibility with legacy plug-in technologies would detract from, rather than improve, the consumer experience of browsing in the Metro-style UI,” Microsoft said.

Without a plug-in interface, Native Client would have to be built directly into the browser to work. That’s an even greater challenge than convincing browser makers to update their plug-in interfaces to accommodate NaCl’s needs.

And allies are hard to come by.

“NaCL in its current is actively bad for the Web because it enforces hardware platform lock-in,” Mozilla programmer Boris Zbarsky said in a personal opinion on a Mozilla mailing list. Lock-in refers to the fact that NaCl today requires computers using x86 chips–the variety Intel and AMD sell for use in personal computers. “We (Mozilla) should certainly not be supporting it; we should be opposing it, because it is the antihesis of what we stand for.”

The mobile challege
NaCl requires an x86 chip today. Those are all but nonexistent in
tablets and smartphones, though, and attracting programmers to NaCl will be harder if those programmers are shut out of the hot and fast-growing mobile segment.

Google’s solution to that problem could help allay Zbarsky’s lock-in concern: on a variation called PNaCl that brings Native Client to the ARM processors that dominate the mobile realm.

PNaCl, which stands for Portable Native Client, uses a technology called LLVM (low-level virtual machine) that makes NaCl client code portable by adding a new layer to the execution process.

Instead of a NaCl program being translated directly to the machine-code instructions a chip understands, as with NaCl, the program is translated first to an intermediate “bitcode.” A virtual machine then runs the bitcode on the ARM device by translating the instructions into native instructions for the chip. That hurts performance, but Google still thinks it’ll be worth it.

Of course, there’s more to getting a standard into the Web than building the technology. Zbarsky, for example, remains concerned that even with PNaCl breaking the hardware lock-in, the technology still is Google’s baby. It’s open-source, but it’s “not open contribution and not open control,” he said.

JavaScript
Perhaps the biggest NaCl challenge is JavaScript itself, though. Fueled in part by competition with Chrome, other browser makers have been working hard on speeding the performance of Web apps written in the language that today supplies the Web with the ability to think.

And it’s not just JavaScript. Google–willing to back multiple horses–also has a JavaScript language alternative called Dart.

One of Dart’s performance advantages comes from the fact that it uses “typed” variables. That means that when programmers declare a variable, they must say what type of variable it is–a string of text or an integer, for example. That declaration means that the compiler, which converts the human’s program into machine-readable instructions, can produce a much more efficient software.

But Mozilla is bringing to market a new feature for its “SpiderMonkey”
Firefox JavaScript that does some of what Dart does. The new IonMonkey just-in-time compiler includes a technology called type inference that lets the browser figure out variable types, even though JavaScript itself doesn’t require programmers to do so.

It’s unclear how well JavaScript will overcome performance challenges–and which other browser performance bottlenecks will hold back Web apps.

It’s clear, though, that tremendous energy is being poured into the problem. Each advance helps millions of Web pages already built with JavaScript. It’s got an incumbent advantage that’s hard to beat, and that’s probably Native Client’s biggest challenge.

The new OOptOut extension for Chrome adds toggles to the top of the Facebook permissions window for locking down apps of dubious origin.

(Credit:
OOptOut)

Still in rough development, a new extension for Google Chrome puts in your hands a useful power tool for separating your data from Facebook apps of dubious origin. Called OOptOut (download), the add-on by Chad Selph helpfully lists above the Facebook header for you any permissions that a newly-installed Facebook app requests.

Check boxes next to each let you toggle the select permission. Keep in mind that this extension isn’t for casual enthusiasts. Disabling permissions can prevent an app from functioning properly. A gaming app that wants your location data may seem strange at first, but it’s possible that the game has a legit reason for the request, such as finding other players that are nearby.

Another problem with the extension is that the developer freely admits that it’s in rough shape as it now. As the instructions on the download page indicate, sometimes it breaks sites, but it requires a certain degree of savvy to even install. You must be comfortable creating a git clone of the extension repository and working with Google Chrome in developer mode, since the more usable public build of the extension isn’t ready yet.

Along with a better name and look, and a standard installer, Selph says that he is considering other options for future versions, such as allowing people to add permissions that an app hasn’t requested. That might be the first time in the brief recorded history of Facebook that anybody has expressed the desire to give Facebook apps more access than they already have.

Assassin’s Creed  has nailed down free-running and sneaky stabbing, but one of the most interesting facets of the franchise has always been its interactions with history. While the game boasts plenty of mindless assassinating and exploring, there’s always a significant historical tone to each game, as well as cameos from some of the most famous names in our collective past.

We’ve explored renaissance Italy, hung out in Constantinople before it became Istanbul, and skulked around during the Third Crusade, but where are we going next? That’s just the question posed by a survey from Empire State Gamers, sent out to a bunch of Assassin’s Creed fans. The survey asks where gamers think the next game should take place and poses some interesting options.

Check them out:

•  
  • The violent conflicts of the Imperial Dynasties in Medieval China
  • The advent of the mighty British Empire during Victorian England
  • The culmination of the Pharaoh Reign in Ancient Egypt
  • The invasion of the Americas by the Spanish Conquistadors
  • The confrontation between British colonists and native Americans during The American Revolution
  • The overthrow of the Tsar Empire by the Communists during the Russian Revolution
  • The Warlord Battles in Feudal Japan
  • The rise of Cesar’s Empire in Ancient Rome

Of all these locations, I think the Tsar Empire and British Empire sound like the most plausible options. Sure, Ancient Egypt would be fun, as would the American revolution, but there isn’t much room for free running in those areas and times. At least, not in the scale we’ve seen in previous games. Then again, Ubisoft can always fudge the architecture a bit, right?

Which option do you think is the most interesting?

[PC Gamer]

C4E’s iXtreme LT+ in association with Team Jungle Team Xecuter

Official release of the iXtreme LT+ v2.0 for Hitachi drives
- Support for XGD3 ixtreme backups using LT-MAX for maximum capacity on standard DVD+R DL discs.
- Support for large capacity DVD+R DL media (no errors when burning)

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has been commercially successful since its release last week.
Image courtesy Nintendo

Each of the new entries in Nintendo’s flagship Mario and Zelda series has sold around half a million copies in the U.S., according to a report from USA Today.

Super Mario 3D Land has sold more than 500,000 copies since its launch for Nintendo 3DS on November 11 and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has hit 535,000 since its launch for Wii on November 20, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime told the newspaper.

Fils-Aime says this makes Skyward Sword the fastest-selling Zelda game in history. It also helped propel 500,000 Wii sales on Black Friday alone, he said.

The Adobe Flash Player plugin is use for viewing multimedia, and streaming video and audio, on a Firefox web browser. The same plugin is used by Google chrome and other browsers. Keeping your third-party plugins such as flash player up to date helps Firefox run safely and smoothly.

As explained earlier you need to install the flashplugin-nonfree package under Debian and Ubuntu Linux to get flash support for Firefox and other browsers. You can check plugins status by visiting the following url:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/

Fig.01: Check Your Plugins

How Do I Update the Adobe Flash Player Under Debian or Ubuntu Linux?

Open a terminal window (select Applications Accessories Terminal). Switch to the root user by typing su – and entering the root password, when prompted:
$ su -
# update-flashplugin-nonfree --install
OR
$ sudo /sbin/update-flashplugin-nonfree --install
The update-flashplugin-nonfree command takes care of downloading, removing the installed Adobe Flash Plugin if it has been reported as insecure, or, if a newer suitable version is available, downloading a newer Adobe Flash Player and its installer from the Adobe download site. From the man page:

       --install
              To install, update or remove the Adobe Flash Player depending on
              downloaded  last  minute  information from Debian about suitable
              versions.
       --uninstall
              To remove the Adobe Flash Player.

(Fig.02: update-flashplugin-nonfree command line options)
Next, restart the Firefox and all other browsers. Again, check plugins status by visiting the following url:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/

Fig.02: Up To Date Flash Plugin Reported By Mozilla

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