Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

After months of keeping an eye peeled, we finally came across the white albatross of gaming consoles. While grocery shopping last week, I stopped to take a peek at the games and saw one lonely Wii sitting in the display case.

I had Dawngrrl stand post at the case while I quickly located an associate to open the gates and give us the sought after Nintendo Wii game console.

We also added in the “Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” game and were on our way. We had also hoped to get an extra controller but it appears they are also in very short supply.

The console itself is quite diminutive. It’s about the size of a PC DVD drive when not mounted in the computer. It has a USB connection, WiFi, SD slot and two GameCube memory slots along with four GameCube controller slots. Hooking it up was a no brainer. You connect the power and video obviously, and the sensor bar for the Wiimote. The graphics were pretty rough looking at first on our 65″ HDTV. A $20 Component Cable brought it to 480p giving it a much clearer but still quite jaggy look. But let’s be clear folks, this game system’s talent is not graphics. The Xbox 360 and PS3 clearly blow it out of the water, but that is to be expected from systems with drastically more power…and a price tag to match.

My first impression with Wii Sports was golf. I can’t even explain how much I was impressed. This game is the definition of fun. Your involved and active and the controls are phenomenal. I wasn’t overly excited with Baseball or Tennis, Golf is amazing and Bowling is fun as well. I felt boxing suffered from some control problems making it difficult to play without getting a bit frustrated.

I know this is an add in game, a freebie, but the games also suffer from some depth. While I love the golf, you have one course, and can play either 3 or 9 holes. That makes it quickly tiring and wanting more. We will be picking up the Tiger Woods 07 on the quick.

Zelda so far is a good bit of fun. It makes quite a variety of uses for the unique control system. I think as I go I will feel this a welcome addition to the Zelda family.

Overall I am in no way disappointed with the Wii purchase. While we only have two games, it is getting it’s fair share of the household gaming already. We have played a 9 hole round of golf pretty much every day since we got it.

Time will tell how the games fare, I have only been looking for the Tiger Woods game so far, none of the rest have caught my fancy, but that is the same story with the shiny Playstation 3 that is collecting dust. (until James Bond: Casino Royale comes out on Blu-Ray this week!)

To end, I thought I would offer my thoughts if you are looking but can only buy one. I know it’s a bit more expensive, but Dawngrrl and I both agree, buy the Xbox 360 premium. Currently our game catalog for 360 is getting close to 30 and we both play it all the time.

This week Andy had to have a surgery procedure that required an overnight hospital stay. While in, they brought him a Super Nintendo cart to play games on and he was soon addicted to “Super Mario World.” I also loved these games, but it’s really fun to see kids today fall in love with the same games we loved as a kid.

Now keep in mind that Andy has a Playstation2. Also in this house are a couple Nintendo DSes, an Xbox 360 and a Playstation3..not to mention several PCs, including his own that are more than powerful enough for gaming.

When he got home, I connected an Xbox 360 controller to his PC, installed zsnes, the Super Nintendo Emulator, hit up Pirate Bay for some good Super Nintendo Roms and he was off. Now he hasn’t delved into the library very far yet, Super Mario World still has more than it’s share of his attention.

The point to this post is that today, even with high end gaming machines around, these old classics still hold their own. I can still play the Mario and Zelda games today, all of them. The original Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior are still favorites of mine.

If you haven’t gotten into the gaming phenomenon, let me give you all of the details you need to get started on your own retro gaming escapade.

A quick spin to www.emulator-zone.com will give you all of the info that you need to emulate the following systems, and more. (with different degrees of success)

• GameCube
• Nintendo 64
• Gameboy
• Gameboy Advance
• Super Nintendo
• Classic Nintendo
• Nintendo DS
• Sony Playstation
• Sega Saturn
• Sega Genesis
• Sega Master System
• Arcade Systems

There are more of course, even some of the newer consoles, but in my experience those emulators are unstable and support a very small subset of games, such as the Xbox Emulators that exist just to play Halo.

Personally I have tried the MAME arcade emulator, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis and Playstation emulators, all with good results. Of course a gamepad is a must for these games. You can play them with a keyboard, but why?

Literally thousands and thousands of games can easily be found on http://thepiratebay.org/ in ROM format. A ROM is a dump of the original cartridge or cd/DVD that allows you to play the game on the emulator.

A word about legality. To put it straight, this is NOT legal. Nintendo and such companies have long since quit policing these, although that is subject to change with the emergence of classics on newer systems such as the Nintendo Wii.

That being said, in a little over two days, I had over 1500 games for the Nintendo, Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64. Andy has been playing his heart out and hasn’t touched his other systems once. The Xbox 360 Controller for Windows (or an Xbox 360 wired controller) can be connected with no trouble and work flawlessly for these games.

If you are really needing to get a fix of some old classic games like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid….why does it seem all of the Classics are Nintendo games??? Then head over to the sites listed above, download an emulator, find some ROMS on Pirate Bay of some of the sites linked below, and get your Retro Gaming on.

http://www.romnation.net/

http://romhustler.net/

http://www.rom-world.com/

Enjoy!

Ok, so maybe not officially released ones, but working ones none the less. I finally found a way to get this driver installed and wanted to share it with those of you that are using GeForce cards that you haven’t been able to get native drivers for Vista for.

This is specifically for those laptop users with Go cards like the 6xxx and 7xxx series.

The driver setup is straight forward and simple. It turns out the nVidia driver itself works fine with Vista, the problem is the .inf file that tells the installer which cards it works on doesn’t contain compatibility records for the cards. The .inf file I am including with this post contains nearly a hundred cards, download the file and open it with notepad to see if your file is in the list. The file itself comes from laptopvideo2go.com and I have installed it and tested it with fantastic results.

World of Warcraft was running around 45 frames per second on this laptop with marginal settings. With the updated driver installed I am getting just short of 60 frames per seconds with all settings on high. That’s a huge difference.

The details are simple, download the driver installer, extract it, over write the nv_disp.inf with the one at the bottom of this post, install the driver from the folder (run the setup) and reboot. Once your done, you will have the new control panel and a major increase in graphics performance. If you missed my last posts about WoW, the latest is here.

The files you need to perform this update are 10065_vista.exe, the 100.65 driver and nv_disp.inf, the update .inf file.

Thanks again to laptopvideo2go.com for this great update and let’s hope nVidia get’s their act together and has a nice installable for us soon.

Banking on Direct X 10, the new gaming interface and a bevy of new Direct X 10 hardware, Microsoft will be using the Vista platform to really push Windows Vista computers into true “platform” style.

Including kiosks in the stores, Microsoft will push the PC to feel like a console segment in the store just like Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo do.

Many of the newest Windows games will take full advantage of the next-generation graphics technology in Windows Vista called DirectX® 10. DirectX® 10 will provide an incredibly detailed experience for gamers of every type, and will enable game creators to increase a game’s level of realism, enhancing details and complexity in gaming worlds, apply effects like dynamic lighting and weather, and much more.

While Windows Vista is fully compatible with games and hardware that use older versions of DirectX®, the new DirectX® 10 features are available with a DirectX® 10 compatible graphics card and games designed to take advantage of this new technology. Existing games (most of which were written using DirectX® 9) get world class performance, while unlocking the new generation of gaming graphics with DirectX® 10 optimized games.

From Microsoft, the Games for Windows brand on games means four key things:

• 1) Quality. Games for Windows branded titles undergo extensive testing, and not just by the publisher. Microsoft also invests in quality checking each title to ensure they meet performance and reliability standards.
• 2) Compatibility. Games for Windows branded titles work on Windows XP and Windows Vista based PCs, including both 32 and 64 bit editions. Games for Windows titles that support controllers are also compatible with the Microsoft XBOX 360 controller for Windows, including the XBOX 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows. They even support widescreen resolutions and more.
• 3) Safety features. You can be confident that any title carrying the Games for Windows brand will support the new parental controls and family settings features in Windows Vista.
• 4) Easy to Play. Games for Windows branded titles are easy to install, find and remove, especially in Windows Vista. Every Games for Windows title appears in the new Windows Vista Games Explorer (no more hunting around the start menu for that game you just installed). And Games for Windows branded titles all offer some form of “easy install”, putting you in the game more quickly.

It may take you awhile to find the games you install on Vista if your still in XP mode, it took me quite a few to find World of Warcraft after I installed it and removed the desktop icon.

I will be curious to see how this unfolds over the next few months, but the biggest key is bringing Live! to the Windows platform for cross system gaming. It will start small with games like Uno and Xbox Live! Arcade games, but the future is being able to play games like Gears of War, The Halo Franchise and Shadowrun.

Shadowrun is slated to be the first cross platform Live! enabled game, including acheivments that will count on both Xbox and Windows.

One last hardware note to mention, Windows Vista also includes native support for the XBOX 360 controller for Windows. Plug in the XBOX 360 controller to your Windows Vista PC’s USB connector, and you’re ready to go. Microsoft is also introducing new gaming accessories for Windows Vista, such as the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows. This lets you take your wireless gaming experiences available for the XBOX 360 and experience them on Windows Vista, including the XBOX 360 wireless controller, wireless headset, and wireless racing wheel.