Dr. NEO's NeoFlash Spring Coding Competition 2008 has finally come to a close with the announcement of the winning homebrew applications and games for the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS. Some 76 homebrew applications and games were entered into the contest. Head over the full article to see the cream of the crop.

Crash may be the naughty and fun-loving critter that we love for most of the time, but there are times in a video game character's life when he has to stop, think seriously and take the side of the angels in a noble cause. He's set to stop Dr. Neo Cortex in Crash of the Titans on the Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation Portable and mobile platforms later this year but before he does, he's got more important things in mind.

Crash is currently involved in the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's School & Youth program which aims to raise awareness and support from America's youngsters about various blood cancers. He'll be appearing in posters, leaflets and different activities to drum up the campaign and get help where it's needed.

If you haven't heard, Crash has been part of the same movement before. Last year, the Society and Vivendi Games have joined forces in a similar plight and ended up with US$ 18 million in funds to donate to research institutions. They hope to top that this year by bringing in more kids to the scene.

Vivendi's executive vice president of Human Resources expressed the company's sense of honor in the part they are playing to fight blood diseases and said, "Crash is a bandicoot with a big heart; he’s brave, he’s loyal and he’s always ready for a good fight and a great cause. We feel this is a winning combination for a tremendous cause."

Crash Bandicoot is one of the most popular platform-type video game franchises of all time, selling more than 35 million copies of its games ever since its field day in 1996.

Homebrewers, it's time to get those programming books out, those photoshopping skills at the ready, and those tutorials from the devs at hand, because Dr. Neo's released the first info for this year's Spring Coding Competition.

Here's the information he gave for people, with a little sprucing up to make it easier to understand. There'll be a ton of winners, actually, with only a handful of people winning the grand prize: a Wii unit, a PSP, a DS Lite, or US$ 200. There are four divisions, two each for the DS and PSP: a game division, and an application division. The rules are simple, according to Dr. Neo: 

1. You can enter the GAME contest and APP contest both.

2. You must put the splash screen of "NEO spring coding contest 2007" to your production.

For the NDS App, the main concept is for MK5 GIGA system / MK motion cart and NEO2/3 applications,it's mean you will have more chance to win with an Apps using the full hardware function.

Second and third place finishers can choose any NEO product as their prize, while fourth to tenth in each division gets a "MK5-8G one set OR NEO2 one set OR Neo-PSP 8in1 Joypad one set OR SNK Converter one set" of their choice.

We advise you to check out the source for the latest updates on the info, but just remember that the contest will end on March 20, 2007, with prizes given out on April 20. Good luck!

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UPDATE: Well, in case you haven't noticed, the NeoFlash penguins are back. Now, for those who have yet to submit their entries to the competition, take a good look at those penguins because you're going to need them. NeoFlash has released the banner that coders have to include with their creations for PSP, NDS, or GBA, and we're guessing this may be NeoFlash's way of reminding contestants that the competition ends on March 20, which is only a few days away. So, better start wrapping up that code!

The Neo team just made an update over at the Neo Flash forums, and it's about the NEO2-SD/TF Menu v1.2 beta release. Dr. Neo says that some memory bugs have been fixed, and it supports more games like Pokemon, so you might want to check it out. We're hosting it here, so you don't have to worry about looking for a particular site to download the said update *winks*.

Aside from the memory bug fix and more game support, we didn't notice other modifications in this one. If you notice something that we're missing out, please do let us know.

Some of the forum members mentioned freezing and saving problems, so you might want to take note of that, too. Of course, there are others who attest to the opposite, like dratersnis who says that he "hasn't noticed any freezing at all yet", or sven, who applauds the Neo team for making the update "a day after the testers' release".

Download: [NEO2-SD/TF Menu v1.2 beta release]

QJ first featured NEO2-Lite when it first came out all its Ice Blue glory. It's currently making a huge comeback, as it is now interchangeable. As much as I would want to have more colors included, the interchangeability part comes in the form of memory sizes.

You can now use the extension case to turn Neo2-Lite to the size of a normal GameBoy Advance cart, as well as a flush fit with the Nintendo DS Lite. All you have to do is open the Neo2-Lite and install the extension case on it. It's a simple way to make it compatible with different consoles. Those that want to know if this is available for the TF model, Dr. Neo, apologetically posts: "TF mode is difficult to design the extension case...."

Dr. Neo from the NeoFlash Team, the brains behind MK4 devices such as MK4-Mini and MK4-Key, is giving us another addition in their line of amazing products. The first version of the MK-4 Mini Patcher was released yesterday on the team's official website. All you have to do is patch the ROM and then copy it to the GBA using Neo Power Kit. Unfortunately, this doesn't work with FlashMe.

Changelog:

• Support MK4-mini only.
• Support NEOFlash and XGFlash 2005 serial only.
• All save data will keep to MK4 inner EEPROM
• Not support all games in this beta version yet.

In the future, the team hopes to make it 100% game compatible. Help the team with their earnest endeavor by downloading the patcher and letting them know which games work and which ones don't. So far, games like Metroid Prime Hunters, Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and New Super Mario Bros don't seem to work. And also, keep your heads up for a possible release of a new GST Patcher 4.0.

Download: [MK4 Mini Patcher v1.0]

Dr. Neo from NeoFlash is at it again! Earlier we saw the announcing of Myth, a mysterious, unknown project in which all that was given to us was a blurry picture. We had to guess what the Myth was, and a lot of people are still guessing on it, but this product needs no guess work. The new Neo2-Lite is one of two products in the Neo2 series and will be one of the smallest flashcarts to date! The Neo2-Lite will be the same size as the NDS Lite filler cart (the GBA slot cover). The Neo2-Lite's final design is a jaw-dropper and will be one of the first NDS Lite-specific flash carts. There will also be a different version of the Neo2 which would accept memory cards instead of built-in flash memory, thus allowing you to store more (product is still in development). This product will feature the following technical specs as provided earlier -

• Built-in 3 set separate RTC
• Built-in flash memory, from 128M up to 1Gb (note: measured in bits, not bytes)
  
• Built-in 8Kb inner high-speed buffer
• Built-in 16 bit DMA
• Built-in 16M flash menu
• Built-in 2M sram
• Built-in battery AD monitor
• 100% hardware save

Dr. Neo and neoflash.com have released Neo Power Kit v1.1 for the Nintendo DS. Changes in this release include:

– Fixed one bug of PocketNES,thanks Loopy debug it Smiley

– Upgrade PCEAdvance to V7.3 and Goomba to V2.2,thanks FluBBa's
wonderful EMU Smiley

– Added the SRAM backup and restore function(but for english
module only), now you can backup your NDS/GBA save to PC and you
can modify it then restore to the NEO cart,in this version just
support whole 2Mb save data backup and restore,and we don't make
the backup progress bar yet,it'll take 10 seconds to backup 2Mb
data to your PC.
– Can support XG2005 serial now.

You can get it in our NDS Download section.
Or you can buy the NeoFlash Flash cart [here].