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We hear from WiiBrew, center of everything homebrew on the Nintendo Wii, that author Grillo and Wii Tanks are back for another bout. Version 0.3a, though still a proof-of-concept homebrew game, is a culmination of added support for the Wii remote's nunchuk add-on, while knocking them elusive bugs dead.

Not all of them are gone, but it's enough to feel more confident about giving this homebrew version of the arcade classic Tanks another go with three pals. Other changes to Wii Tanks as of version 0.3a are as follows:

• Updated to GRRLIB 3.0.1a
• Fixed bullet coloring Bug
• Fixed Tank coloring
• Spanish/English language detection (thx roto)

On the note of tank coloring, now you can attempt to differentiate your tank's color from the opposing tanks successfully (the selection is more discerning in hues now). Plus, thanks to the bullet color patch, there would be no more shouting, "Who shot me? WHO SHOT ME!?!"

We know, that's happened a lot to us since Wii Tanks first released. But we got over it and even coined up a good name for the code critter: the magic bullet. Well, thanks for all the stealth kills, magic bullet. Nice knowing ya.


Download: Wii Tanks v0.3a

 

Faster and more memory efficient, Missile Command version 0.5a is homebrew developer ulti's latest update to the missile defense classic. The remake of the old arcade classic was granted with some new music as well to accompany the spitting (literally) sound effects, and fonts have been incorporated to add the possibility of more useful drawn text on-screen in the future.

According to ulti, Missile Command v0.5a has been sped up to twice the speed than usual, and it now executes a better memory cleanup for the previous addition of split missiles to avoid the occasional crash. Hearing new tunes? That's Kenny Beltrate's Hydrate, fresh from the Kahvi Collection.

Fonts are now handled via Beardface's FreeType With Libwiisprite and the font used for the game is credited to Ben Nathan's Elements. Coder ulti also tapped in an interface for writing level scripts, which enables the title screen and game-related event queues.

For newcomers, try to get a feel of the controls before jumping in. You can find the key map right at the source link provided below. More updates as we get them.


Download: Missile Command v0.5a (with source code)

Finally, we're on Year 2! QuickJump QuickPeek has indeed been around for fifty-two weeks (which is ... less than nine thousaaaaand!) now, and we're giving each of our blogs the chance to shine in their very own Weekend Warrior post.

As you can see below, QuickPeek's that much more quicker of a peek, as its name should suggest. What with snowballing down the hill of long updates in previous QuickPeek editions, we're reducing things in bite-sized format for all of you guys. If you want a more in-depth look at a certain blog's week in recap, you can click on the links provided.

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We see great strides in custom firmware development this week. With the release of the official PSP FW 4.0 (and its subsequent 4.01 update) comes CFW 4.01 M33 from Dark AleX and the rest of Team M33!

Square Enix has also revealed quite a lot of details about Dissidia: Final Fantasy. There's nothing much new on the side of full character rosters, but speculation in the comments section sure do run deep.

Link: The PSP Weekend Warrior: the FW-CFW update tango, Dissidia mania, and PlayStation Store

Solid Snake's power level? It's over nine thousaaand! Even a couple of weeks after its release, Hideo Kojima's PS3-exclusive is still making waves - selling by the millions, no less.

And though our PS3 blog might seem like it's transformed into an MGS4 blog, we still have a couple of cool updates. Aside from more details on games like LittleBigPlanet and Call of Duty 5, news from Sony's corporate table has its ups and downs - respectively: a) the announcement of the new 65nm RSX Graphics Chip, and b) Sony's loss of US$3 billion since the PS3's launch. But what's this about CliffyB's statement?

Link: The PS3 Weekend Warrior: MGS4 still dominant, Sony on the comeback trail, and a little something from CliffyB

CliffyB is one of today's greatest minds in the video game industry. With Unreal Tournament and Gears of War (not to mention Jazz Jackrabbit from ages past) on his portfolio, he's got quite the two cents on MGS4.

Despite Bill Gates stepping down from his chairman position in Microsoft this week, things are still looking up. We've also got some coverage on the release of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD's beta (some freezing problems notwithstanding), and over on XBL, there's a handful of content to download: a GTA4 patch, a map for Frontlines, and two XBLA titles.

Link: The Xbox 360 Weekend Warrior: Say 'Bye-bye!' to Bill, and other flights of fancy

This week on the Wii scene, we get two Warriors waving the flag for the great waggler. On top of finding more details (and screens, mind you!) for Mario Super Sluggers and Wario Land, there's already talk of E3 line-ups.

Other than Nintendo games, third-party titles like CoD5 (yes! we're getting it this time too!) and Castlevania: Judgment are shaping up pretty well. Not to mention the official confirmation of Mega Man 9 for the WiiWare service!

With the Wii homebrew scene boom like no other, we decided to create a spin-off Weekend Warrior solely for the whole slew of Wiibrew updates we've gotten this week, which include: a new Twilight Hack that's compatible with Wii Menu Update v3.3, some homebrew media applications (the GeeXboX is a sure fire hit!), as well as games and emulators to boot.

Link: The Wii Weekend Warrior: the rest of the year's going to be busy

Link: The Wiibrew Weekend Warrior: the dawn of a new Twilight Hack

The Nintendo DS scene has been quiet of late - everyone's probably busy with Space Invaders Extreme or Final Fantasy Tactics A2. That hasn't stopped homebrew devs from releasing a ton of projects though.

Link: The DS Weekend Warrior: games, games, and more games

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What's new for the PC? In case you've been living in the deepest, darkest crevices of Hades, know you this: Blizzard has finally unveiled Diablo 3! From new NVIDIA and Radeon cards to patches, we got you covered!

Link: The PC Weekend Warrior: shooting for 2 billion in 2014, weighing copy protection

Lots of updates on the MMORPG blog, and as with the Wii blog, we decided to create spin-off Warriors for World of Warcraft and Age of Conan. We're geeks like that too - for sure you've noticed.

SOE's E3 line-up has finally been published, but more importantly, we get some details on their upcoming DC Universe MMORPG. Sweet! You can finally get to live your dream life of wearing undies on the outside.

Meanwhile, Age of Conan's seen quite a(nother) dose of patches - twice this week - and we've got some coverage on the undocumented changes both of them introduce. But in between regular updates for WoW, we hear of where the MMORPG found its roots: a free-to-play model!

Link: The MMORPG Weekend Warrior: DC MMORPG, AoC patches, WoW Free-to-Play, and item giveaways

Link: The World of Warcraft Weekend Warrior: Booze in the PTR, fire in the public realms, and a Lich King for the weekend

Link: The Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Weekend Warrior: patches galore and more

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Our Science blog has been running crazy with a big boom in comments lately - nice intellectual humor on the side too! This week, we hear more about black holes and veggies and chocolate (and Switzerland too)!

Link: The Science Weekend Warrior: black holes and Martian asparagus

What's this? A Trojan... for the Mac?! What's the world coming to? But that's not the only thing spotted this week: on the brighter side of things, we also got to see Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard running in the wild!

Link: The Apple Weekend Warrior: Snow Leopards and Trojan malware for everyone

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It's over nine thousaaaaannnnddd!

And that's it for the first week of our band of Weekend Warriors. QuickPeek sure looks different now, but wait!, we can't just leave it at that, can we? We all know that QuickPeek can't be QuickPeek without a final closing remark from our Comment of the Week!

While the individual Weekend Warriors may or may not have their own blog-specific Comment of the Week, that doesn't mean QuickPeek can't have its own, right?

Pretty tough week on our hands - lots of good comments here and there, probably totally over nine thousand. For one, that CliffyB post was quite a field day for all of us, wasn't it? And every now and then, a science article would explode with so much feedback from you guys.

But now, we turn our eyes to Nathanias who has quite a novel suggestion for Dark AleX's next custom firmware update. Well, what with so many features being incorporated in almost every CFW release, maybe there is room for some certain... changes?

We know our search engine ain't all that great... (not to mention the messy character/symbol transformation in our comments system too)... but we're sure some of you guys might get a kick out of it either way.

Link: Dark AleX releases PSP CFW 4.01 M33; 1.50 kernel add-on to follow

Someday, Mega Man will be a real life human boy. Until that day comes, however, we can expect him to do our bidding as a robotic pew-pew fighter slave who loves humankind. Isn't that awesome?

Seeing as Mega Man 9 has been announced for WiiWare, we thought our coverage of the pew-pew fighter slave would end there, but we were surprised to find out that Mega Man might be making a leap... a couple of them, in fact, onto the Xbox 360 and PS3 as well.

That's the news that Ars Technica is reporting. Capcom has apparently announced that Mega Man 9 is scheduled for release on WiiWare, XBLA and PSN. The game is apparently listed as a PSN and XBLA release on their E3 roster, while we previously found out in Nintendo Power that the game would be hitting WiiWare.

We're currently trying to find a copy of Capcom's E3 roster or word of Capcom's confirmation that the title will be heading to all three platforms. It the rumor holds true, it should be a pretty exciting day, as this looks to be the first game that'll hit all three online gaming services. Stay tuned!

Someday, Mega Man will be a real life human boy. Until that day comes, however, we can expect him to do our bidding as a robotic pew-pew fighter slave who loves humankind. Isn't that awesome?

Seeing as Mega Man 9 has been announced for WiiWare, we thought our coverage of the pew-pew fighter slave would end there, but we were surprised to find out that Mega Man might be making a leap... a couple of them, in fact, onto the Xbox 360 and PS3 as well.

That's the news that Ars Technica is reporting. Capcom has apparently announced that Mega Man 9 is scheduled for release on WiiWare, XBLA and PSN. The game is apparently listed as a PSN and XBLA release on their E3 roster, while we previously found out in Nintendo Power that the game would be hitting WiiWare.

We're currently trying to find a copy of Capcom's E3 roster or word of Capcom's confirmation that the title will be heading to all three platforms. It the rumor holds true, it should be a pretty exciting day, as this looks to be the first game that'll hit all three online gaming services. Stay tuned!

Choices are slim in the US Wii Shop Channel this week. Usually we get three games in a single update, but this week we only get two: one from the Virtual Console and one from WiiWare.

From WiiWare we have Magnetica Twist, which has a DS version out. In the game you have a line of marbles moving down a line. The object of the game is to launch marbles at the line, matching their colors and wiping them out before the line gets too long.

I'm not really that excited for it, since I've quite frankly already have too many color-matching casual games already. And the marble concept's already been perfected by PopCap games' Zuma. Still, Zuma doesn't have my Mii rollicking about launching the marbles, or the instinctive controls of the Wiimote, so the game may be fun for a while. The game is worth 1,000 Wii Points.

On the Virtual Console this week is one of the more beloved fighting games of the early 90s, Fatal Fury 2. Terry, Andy, and Joe are accompanied by five new fighters in the tournament to crown the king of fighters. The game is available for 900 Wii Points, and rated T. To my memory, this is actually the first game on the Wii Shop Channel that's rated higher than E.

Wiibrew coder Beardface has been really kicking it into high gear lately. Fresh from releasing LibOSK, we are given WiiPhysics v1.2. In case you missed the previous release, WiiPhysics is a fun little program where you get to doodle shapes on screen, which are then subjected to the laws of physics.

Some of the things you can do with WiiPhysics is creating shapes and connecting them by means of ropes and pulleys. Perhaps the best way to get an idea of the program is a video though, so here you go:

Now on version 1.2, WiiPhysics has undergone a lot of significant changes. Since the initial release, the program also went through a bug fix that stopped the program from crashing when creating pulleys and joins. Here is the changelog from the author:

2008.06.30 - v1.2

• Changelog:
  • Removed need for /data directory, compacting wiiphysics into single boot.elf file
  • Added Undo Button
  • Pulleys, Ropes and Gears (Pin) work great now
  • Improved Icons and layout
  • Line Drawing works perfect now
  • Many Bug fixes, clean up

2008.06.29 - v1.1

• Changelog:
  • Added Line (Dynamic rectangle) Drawing
  • Clear Screen Button
  • Pulley/joint bug fixes to stop crashing!
  • fixed layout a bit

Download: WiiPhysics v1.2

Wiibrew stalwart Beardface - author of EasyIOS - has released LibOSK. This new dev tool provides an on-screen keyboard to applications written using libwiisprite. LibOSK itself is written from the libmxml, libwiisprite, and libfat libraries.

LibOSK is completely configurable via a config file. You can configure the images, font, and even the language that appears on screen. A demo application is included in the download for easy reference on how to use the tool.

To download the latest libwiisprite library, you can follow this link. Please read the documentation included in the download archive for further information.

Download: LibOSK v0.4.4

You knew it was coming. We knew it was coming. And now it had arrived. Yes, the sequel to Rock Band (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii) has finally been announced and it looks like we're going to to be finding out more about it at E3.

In an interview with IGN, Harmonix lead designer Dan Teasdale gave out a few of details about the game including some of the changes the developers plan on implementing to make Rock Band 2 better.

According to Teasdale, one of the problems they found in the previous game involved the random set lists. He hit the nail on the head when he said that "nobody wants to play Green Grass and High Tides in their first random set list." From what he said it seems that they are going to be doing something about this. Too bad he didn't give out more details on this.

Teasdale also gave out some hints regarding what bands will be making it to Rock Band 2. While he couldn't explicitly give out a band list, he did say that gamers can expect to see some of these bands (this is by way of a wish list that IGN had, to which Teasdale replied with: "Not only have you named some of my favorite bands, but you've also named some of the bands that are on the Rock Band 2 disc."):

• Agent Orange
• The Beatles
• Built to Spill
• The Buzzcocks
• Journey
• Led Zeppelin
• Modest Mouse
• Pavement
• The Replacements
• Tool

If you want to go over the four page interview yourself, then don't hesitate to follow our source link below. That said, keep checking back for the latest updates on Rock Band 2.

Take a look at some of the awesome new features in NBA Live 09!