The guys from Hotelsinus Sound Design has released the first test version of TonesynthDS, a matrix-based synth sequencer for the Nintendo DS. This public test release has added some new features and various other improvements.


Download: TonesynthDS v0.21

If you've been around YouTube enough, you may have seen Matrix Ping Pong from the Japanese variety show called Kasou Taishou. Well, don't look now, but here we have a Super Mario Matrix skit that has our Italian plumber going through World 1-1 and meeting Bowser. But that's only half of the interesting things crammed in there - especially since one of the pipes becomes a portal to New York! Ha! See if you can spot Barack Obama! Weekend videos in the full article!

We don't know if you've already heard about this, but Matrix-creators Wachowski Brothers are currently developing a movie adaptation of the 1960s Japanese animated series Speed Racer.

We just got word that video game players will also get some 60s love as Warner Bros. Interactive is also planning to release Wii, DS, and PS2 titles based on the film. The Wii and PlayStation 2 build of Speed Racer is being developed by Sidhe Interactive.

The Wii and DS versions, furthermore, will be released in early 2008 to coincide with the film's release. According to Warner Bros., players will be able to take on the role of their favorite characters from the movie as well as get the chance to ride on their signature vehicles.

The Wachowski brothers said before that most of the original characters from the animated series will be retained (even mysterious arch rival Racer X) so players can expect that this game will be packed with a lot of adrenaline and "car-fu" action. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Development and Production Senior VP Samantha Ryan added:

Speed Racer is an exceptionally creative property and teamed with the Wachowski brothers' vision, it makes for action-packed racing gameplay. The game will capture the intensity of the racing in the film to give gamers and movie fans a chance to take the wheel after the experience the film.

Warner Bros. gave word that more details will be released as we get closer to the release date.

The hits just keep on coming with Day 2 of the legendary Mecca of videogames, E3, and this time it's Ubisoft strutting its stuff for all the videogaming world to see. We give you the facts and just the facts, directly from their exclusive E3 2007 Conference.

The little shindig of Ubisoft's started the crowd off with casual games - namely the MyCoach series, the Petz series, and the rather revolutionary guitar simulator on the DS, Jam Sessions. They then finished up with big three bombshells, all of which with the hardcore gamer demographic's name written on 'em. More about those three later, let's tackle the casuals first.

The full E3 update after the jump!

Atari's Shiny Entertainment Studio has recently been acquired by Foundation 9 Entertainment, the largest independent game developer in North America.

Shiny Entertainment is best known for its work Earthworm Jim which will remain an Atari property unlike the two games that were based on the hit blockbuster, "The Matrix." They join the incredible F9E studios family which includes The Collective, Backbone Entertainment, Pipeworks, ImaginEngine, and Digital Eclipse. The team will co-locate with The Collective in 2007.

"Shiny Entertainment fits well with the current studios of Foundation 9 Entertainment and aligns with our long-term goals for the future. The studio has tremendous talent and experience working with big Hollywood franchises and will be working with us on a major, as-yet-undisclosed day and date release. The Shiny team will only add to our capabilities and technology base." said Jon Goldman, Chairman and CEO.

The company is currently at work on more than 20 titles including two new editions of its original property, Death, Jr., to be published by Konami; Dirty Harry to be published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment; and, Sonic Rivals to be published by Sega. The company’s Backbone studio recently shipped MechAssault: Phantom War for the Nintendo DS, published by Majesco Entertainment.

One of the more known rogue-like computer games is Linley's Dungeon Crawl. Originally released in 1997, the game attributes its popularity to persistent maps and the much varied systems (religion, magic and skill).

Now homebrew coder Sasq is porting it over to the DS. And this independent developer assures that DSCrawl v1.0 BETA2 is an enjoyable handheld experience. All in all, it contains close to 400 monster types and over 200 spells.

Sasq suggests to have a libfat compatible memory card. Accordingly, the game loads and saves itself from here. Playing from a GBA cart is just as fine as it will use the SRAM anyway but its capacity is rather small. To install, select one of the two NDS files. The "rein" file seems to be most compatible with SD-cards, not to mention it also works on MP2. Furthermore, three versions (blue, gray, green) of libfatdragon were included, so you might want to search first what each supports.

The gameplay and controls are good and Sasq claims to have exerted much effort to give the game a natural feel by utilizing the buttons available on the NDS. The controls are as follows:

Left and right shoulder buttons acts as SHIFT (the same as pressing the up-arrow at the lower left of the keyboard matrix).

 
General
    SELECT = Inventory ('i', or '?' if at a prompt)
    Shift-SELECT = Escape
    START = Fullscreen map ('X')
    Shift-START Quit ('Q')
    Dirpad+A = Move in that direction
    DirPad+B,X,Y = Shortcuts

In Menus
    A = Select
    B = Cancel
    Y = SPACE ("More" - when menu doesn't fit one screen)

Download: [DSCrawl v1.0 BETA2]

Camp Hyrule, an online virtual camp held by Nintendo every year, is under full swing. Every year, Nintendo invites people to take questions from the campers. We had featured here at QJ transcripts of the chat with the Nintendo Senior Online Producer, Senior Vice President of Operations for Digipen, George Harrison, and the NOA Localization Staff. Now, we continue our Camp Hyrule updates with an interview with the NP Krew aka the talented (but not as talented as moi) writers of Nintendo Power Magazine.

For those overseas, Nintendo Power is the official magazine of Nintendo. Although there are a lot of responders again, it's a bit more organized than the Treehouse interview. They were a bit slower so not as much got asked, unlike that crazy George Harrison review in which Harrison used his Jedi PR abilities...

Click "Full Story" for the transcript. Please excuse gramattical errors as well as typos. It is a live chat.

Team Neo Flash has been on a roll lately. After parading their recent innovations such as NEO MD 3in1 flash cart that can support up to 1GB of NEO2 serial and announcing to the whole world what the specs of their monster creations - NEO2-TF and the NEO2-SD flash carts - are. They are releasing pictures of the demo screen of one of their babies-- the Neo2 Serial Loader. The screen has a Matrix feel to it which is really awesome, but somehow the awesome-looking background makes the text hard to read. But nonetheless, this is quite a feat, so feel free to look at them screens.