Homebrew developer Sektor, who has ported a number of classic games for the DS before, has done it again with C-Dogs for the Nintendo DS. His previous releases include Flashback, Hexen and Digger and CdogsDS v0.3 marks the latest of his retro ports.

According to Sektor, this version can only run at FPS and can't run sound yet. If you don't remember C-dogs, here's the gameplay in a nutshell, courtesy of the developer:

You can customize your character and select from a variety of weapons. You walk/slide around, collect keys and you have to kill the weird looking enemies or destroy things and make your way to the exit. Leave the humans alone, they are just there to get in your way!

As always, users are encouraged to go over the readme file, which contains the controls and installation instructions. Also, some may need a patch that is available through a link in Sektor's site.

Download: CdogsDS v0.3

  

Thank goodness for homebrew remakes, else we'd never see some staples of the good old days. Sektor has released a port of the SDL version of Digger Remastered, which he now calls DiggerDS v0.1.

In DiggerDS, your job is to either eat all of the emeralds in a level or defeat all of the baddies to pass the level. It's simple gameplay, but as far as some of the QJ folks can remember, it got difficult pretty quickly.

He does note some problems with the game at present, mostly because it causes freezing after a limited play duration: "I have not added sound to the DS version yet. I think fixing the memory leak that causes the DS to freeze after approx 10 minutes is more important. "

In any case, give it a try. If you like it, it should give you incentive to wait for a new update to reveal itself. Enjoy!

Download: DiggerDS v0.1

 

The results have been tabulated, and the counts have been done, so let's figure out who's become number one! The best and the brightest NeoFlash apps deserve more than just hearty claps.

Here are the results for the different homebrew categories:

PSP Applications:

1. AFKIM v3 By: danzel
2. Old School Library (OSLib) Sprites Lib By: phosphorous
3. ThemeFlasher By: ai3gtmc
4. PUNANI v1.0 By: hallo007
5. metronomPSP By: saulotmalo
6. COW TIPS By: Sektor
7. Sheep Machine By: miNi

Before the winners can get their prizes, however, they have to do one last thing. As it notes on the bottom of the page,

Click here to submit your address follow our format,we will send the prize from April.10th , and if don't follow our format or submit in time,the winner will lose his(her) prize forever.

In any case, congratulations to the winners!

The rest of the winners can be found after the jump!

This writer is actually old enough to remember Heretic. This writer's old enough to remember calling Heretic "what happens when Merlin bonks his staff on Doom." Well, this time it's Sektor and Rich Whitehouse who bonk their staves on the sidequel game Hexen, conjure the HexenDS port, and bring it up to v0.26.

Sektor's contribution to v0.26 consist of updated libfat and some additional tweaks which correspond to the use of Slot-2 devices and DS-X. Other than that, save and load are still broken (but the game will sleep/powersave if you close the DS).

Requirements to use this are still the same from the last version, such as the wad from the full version of Hexen (read the Readme for the rest).

Download: [HexenDS v0.26]

Version 1.0 of SpoutEX for the Nintendo DS is now out and waiting for you guys to try it out. SpoutEX is a DS port by Alekmaul based on Kuni's Spout for the GBA. The goal in this game is to move the small square without making it collide with any of the other pixels on the screen. Those who've tried out Sektor's SpoutDS should be familiar with the gameplay.

Controls are very simple: the START button pauses the game, the A and B buttons are used to accelerate, and the D-pad is used to move the square. SpoutEX can also be used with the DS Motion Card for some motion-sensing fun. If you have a DS Motion Card, you can actually move the square by moving the DS itself.

Download: [SpoutEX v1.0]

  

Whoa! Now how's that for retro? This homebrew takes me back - with a flashback - figuratively and literally. For the sentimental gamers out there, some of you guys might want to have a little trip down the memory lane and check this out.

Using the code from Gregory Montoir's earlier REminiscence engine rewrite, Sektor has ported an NDS-version of Flashback and now it's on v0.23.

Here's the changelog for FlashbackDS v0.23:

• Added a version with GBA_NDS_FAT from picodriveDS 0.1.6. Use this on MMD, EZ4 and SC miniSD. Untested.
• Support for Italian language files.
• Updated libcartreset to 0.72 (fixes return to menu on SC Lite). Return to menu only works on libfat version.
• Level select. You can now scroll through level codes on the password screen. Up/down for skill, left/right for level.

Some instructions:

• You will need the data files from the PC DOS version of the game. Copy the Flashback files to X:dataflashbackdata , replace X: with the drive letter of your DS media device.
• To hear music, you need the mod.* files from the Amiga version. They should be named like mod.flashback-introb, without a .mod extension.
• It should work on M3CF (tested), GBAMP and Supercard. Backup anything important before using any homebrew that writes to your media device. I haven't had any file corruption but I haven't tested every device and backups are always a good idea.

Sektor says that he plans to improve the sound quality and music playback, as well as speed up the cut scenes. There's the scaling issue still needing to be address, and he's already planning to tweak that soon, among a lot of other things.

Download: [FlashbackDS v0.23]
Download: [FlashbackDS v0.23 src]

You're probably familiar with REminiscence, a rewrite of the engine used in Flashback, the game from Delphine Software. Thanks to Sektor, we have a DS port of this engine (the engine was originally coded by Gregory Montoir).

Anyway, we got word that v0.2 is now out, and here are the things that you should expect from it:

v0.2 libfat version:

• Sound effects are now working (thanks to GPF's SDL updates)
• Music plays but not very well
• Added Lick's libcartreset to allow returning to M3/SD/GBAMP menu without powering off the DS
• Resources and music are read from /data/flashback/data/ on a compatible media device
• Saves are stored at /data/flashback/

Check out the dev's notes after the jump!

Download: [REminiscence DS v0.2- Flashback for DS]
Download: [REminiscence DS v0.2- Flashback for DS Source Code]

Developer Sektor has his hands full these past few days developing and improving on several homebrew titles. First, he gave everyone a scare with the release of HexenDS.

This time around, going a little more retro, Sektor presents SpoutDS. A bit of history first, Spout is actually a caveflier shooting game first created for a handheld LCD console. It was ported then to Windows/SDL and after that to Unix/SDL. The first DS version was actually done by Birslip.

Much like the first version, the objective of the game is to get as high as possible without crashing or the time running out. To get out of the caves, players must use the ship's exhaust to erode the surrounding areas. The detailed controls of the game are as follows:

• A/B/X/Y - shoot, accelerate, spout, start
• left - turn left
• right - turn right
• start - pause
• select - LCD swap
• L - toggle top backlight
• R - toggle bottom backlight

A reminder to those players who own a GBA flashcart, please know that the game will be saved to the SRAM. CF/SD FAT users on the hand, will have SpoutDS saved to the root (spout.sco).

Download: [SpoutDS (.ds, .gba and .nds binary)]
Download: [SpoutDS (source code)]

Hexen: Beyond Heretic first haunted gamers back in 1995. It was an FPS game that features mythology-derived creatures and a trio-demon brothers known as the Serpent Riders. Actually, it was first ported to the DS August of last year. Rather in time for Halloween, developers Rich Whitehouse and Sektor update this hair-raising homebrew to v0.25.7z.

According to Sektor's site, much of the hard work was done by Rich and his participation includes adding support for more devices and modified the controls. While sound and touchscreen functions are now supported, the save game option still doesn't work. Saves are written to /data/hexen/ and trying to load them will result to error that reads: "Corrupt save game: Segment [108] failed alignment check."

Sektor added that the game needs the retail of hexen.wad and that it uses Chishm's libfat to read it. Accordingly, libfat is compatible with MK2/3, GBAMPCF, M3CF, M3SD, SCCF, SCSD and NinjaDS. Those who own a G6, EZ4Lite or a 256mbit flashcart will be needing the GBFS version (requires the .wad file to be attached to the .nds).

Another new feature is the special DS menu that allows for changing the gamma and other things such as level warp and cheat codes. Controls of HexenDS v0.25.7z are as follows:

• dpad to turn and move
• touch screen to look around
• A button fires
• Y button jumps
• L button cycles through inventory
• R button cycles through weapons
• X button uses objects (doors, switches)
• X button + dpad to strafe
• B button uses the selected inventory item
• Select brings up the menu and exits out of it (acts as escape)
• Start selects menu items, or toggles the automap when not in a menu
• X+Up/Down on dpad flies up/down while in fly mode

Download: [HexenDS v0.25.7z]

Sektor has released a "partially" playable version of C-Dogs for the DS. It's more like a demo version than anything, as he hasn't completed much of the porting yet. The file he has just released for download is still a work in progress, and he himself admits to the game's slowness. Well, releasing a homebrew in the middle of development does that, after all. But still, we're happy that he's on the move to finishing the homebrew.

Here's some stuff from his notes that you might want to know:

• There's no way to exit the game over screen (so try not to die).
• Automap doesn't work yet.
• The font is unreadable.
• Uses Chishm's libfat to read the data files and save settings.
• Compatible only with devices supported by libfat-nds-20060722 (won't work on G6).

Ok, so there might still be some issues to work out, but we're definitely looking forward to the final version of this game! And at the rate that he's updating the game (he started development around two days ago), we're hoping that the fully playable version will be out within the week!

Download: [C-Dogs]