Guess who is at E3 today and tomorrow? Mr. Darren Kitchen and Mr. Paul Tobias! While I’m back in the Bay Area holding down the fort and taking care of the HakShop, Darren and Paul are covering E3 from the show floor.
So if you’re at E3, make sure to say hi! You can probably find Mr. Kitchen somewhere near Lego games, Super Mario, or Hello Kitty. And Paul is probably either rocking out with music games, giving plenty of headshots in the newest FPS, or filming Darren talking to Hello Kitty.

If they inform me of any meetups to be had, I’ll be sure to post it here.

E3 Expo is the world’s premier trade show for computer and video games and related products.
The show is owned by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the U.S. association dedicated to serving the business and public affairs needs of the companies, publishing interactive games for video game consoles, handheld devices, personal computers, and the Internet.

Shannon Morse is a co-host of Hak5 on Revision3 and she is on the audio podcast Bite Club Show. You can also find her guest hosting various other internet shows now and then. When not geeking out with work, Shannon enjoys video games, anime, manga, traveling, building computers, and spending time with family and friends. Find more info about Shannon here.

I’ve always been a fan of music video games, from the early days of Dance Dance Revolution to the newest and greatest in Rock Band. But, I am finding that this genre has a ton of variations and ‘types’ of gameplay. Not only are there the popular rhythm games, but also several pitch, volume, music memory, and sight reading versions.

My favorite, the rhythm game, can be best described with three words- ‘Dance Dance Revolution‘. This highly popular game started a huge trend (especially in my geeky neck of the woods) of arcades and house parties with the main ingredient being an expensive dance mat and loud music. You could generally view a somewhat tired and sweaty gamer pounding the dance mat with his feet in the rhythm of the music on the screen.

Eventually, I got bored of dancing around like an idiot – because I never got the hang of DDR – and I switched to something a little easier, guitar games. Guitar Hero and Rock Band have become so popular, that it’s rare for me to walk into a house and the owner to not have one of the several versions of those games. Rock Band has let me become a rock star, touring the country and playing hundreds of songs in expert mode. I honestly couldn’t ask for more.

Along the lines of Rock Band are pitch games, where a player must sing or use their voice at the proper pitch to receive points for a given song. Pitch has been included into the Rock Band games, and also in karaoke or sing-along games such as Karaoke Revolution. I have found that when playing a pitch game, it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the words as long as you sing in tune.

But if you can’t sing and you’d rather not play a plastic guitar, there are games such as Myst that incorporate eidetic memory, the ability to memorize a series of notes and play them back to the game.

No matter what kind of music game is your favorite, they all do one important thing: they make you learn. Each of these variations take concentration, practice, and focus. With Rock Band, everyone starts at beginner level (I did!), but eventually you can practice your way to expert mode and show off to all of your friends. You have to focus your attention on the music in the game and concentrate on creating the best score. Pitch and memory games help you learn about tone, pitches, and other musical concepts usually only found in a choir or band class.

Obviously none of these video games can really take the place of a classic classroom setting, but they all strive to teach you something. I recently bought Rock Band 3 which incorporates a ‘Pro’ setting. The Pro setting lets you play the music like a real life guitarist or bassist. The new guitar has frets and strings instead of plastic buttons, and you have to match the finger placement on the strings as well as match the timing of notes to score a higher rating.

I’m looking forward to seeing music video games that are more involved and harder to learn and I think Rock Band 3 makes a good example of where this genre is headed.

If you want to add me as a friend on XBox Live, my name is Snubsie and I’m open to requests.

Shannon Morse is a co-host of Hak5 on Revision3 and she is on the audio podcast Bite Club Show. You can also find her guest hosting various other internet shows now and then. When not geeking out with work, Shannon enjoys video games, anime, manga, traveling, building computers, and spending time with family and friends. Find more info about Shannon here.

It’s ridiculous. I’ve been playing with it off and on since it got announced and I’m still surprised that the 3D works as well as it does, which is pretty damn well.

The first boot process is completely idiot-proof, as Nintendo has basically perfected, and it’s about damn time they had a device that supports WPA2 wifi connections. With the Wii and my older DS units (original, imported Lite, and the XL), since my no longer supported Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector was a pain to keep working on non-XP systems, I had to ‘borrow’ from an open access point. Thank you, dear neighbour, for being so clueless and/or generous, and providing fantastic signal strength. I used to worry that it was a honeypot, but I’m not too concerned that someone is snooping my connection to the Dragon Quest IXshopping network.

Sellma is still a brutal name, even for DQ puns.

How many people in the area abuse that default settings router? I’ve been tempted to try and login, just to see if I can, but I wish I knew whose it was, to let them know that it’s not the best idea to leave it like that. I’m a jerk for connecting to it at all. Using it sparingly does not make it better.

• the Augmented Reality Cards are cool. They’ll be even better when I learn to hold it the proper 14 inches away. It helped a lot when I finally converted that to 35.56 cm. Stupid Imperial system. Why do people still use it??
• Have yet to play Face Raiders. It kinda creeps me out.
• I am bemused that Nintendo has listed the Store, Browser, and System Transfer on their Built-In Software page. Should it actually count as ‘built-in’ if it doesn’t exist yet?
• The retractable stylus is not nearly as annoying as expected. The fine point tip is most welcome.
• I honestly regret picking up the Black version. Initially, black was the way to go since I thought I’d skin it. I have the ugly launch XL and it was impossible to skin because it ended up just looking wrong. The Aqua version is nicer than I expected it to be in person and looks even better with the Nyko battery(scroll down a little).
• I am likely getting that Nyko Charge Base later.
• The black is driving me crazy right now because ZOMG FINGERPRINTS. Putting on a screen protector (the first time I have ever used one for a portable device), was also a pain and I don’t think I like it. The bottom one came out alright*, but the top one is unlikely to remain because I keep staring at the imperfectness of it.

If you would like to be added to my Friends List, drop a comment, tweet, or email with your code.
Mine is 1934-0678-7701

* by ‘alright’ I mean that the first one I put down ended up with dirt underneath and it was a mad scenario to get the sheet off the screen. No damage was done, but I loathed to pick at it to peel it up again. I like the ideaof a screen, but I don’t know if it’s for me.

Jenn Cutter focuses on all aspects of gaming and gaming accessories with Hak5. She has also appeared on G4TechTV, CP24, HowTo Australia, and TVTokyo when not working on her side-project, OpenAlpha.tv. When not writing or dreaming about gaming, she’s playing hockey and saying ‘eh’, like all stereotypical Canadians

Originating in the 1970s, Snake has become a classic of simplistic video game design. With merely two controls to speak of, turning left and right relative to the direction of the main character, Snake has found its way into popular culture and ultimately our hearts.

Play is fairly straight forward. Navigate a game board without running into obstacles, such as walls and ones self. Score points by running into or “eating” pieces of food. Each piece of food accumulated causes Snake’s tail to grow, thus increasing the complexity of the game board. With no way to stop or reverse, Snake is fundamentally a game of finite length.

For some Snake might be most known as the game that comes with most Nokia phones. Debuting in 1997 on the Finnish candy-bar style 6110 series handsets, Snake consisted of monochrome squares controlled by a rudimentary D-pad. Since then Snake has found a massive audience with Nokia users with new versions including Snake EX – a 16-bit color quality versions sporting multiplayer support over IR and Bluetooth. More recently Snake has evolved to include 3D graphics on Nokia phones.

In 2005 Taneli Armanto, Nokia engineer responsible for Snake on Nokia devices, received an award and special recognition for his pivotal role in embedding Snake on the 6110 from the Mobile Entertainment Forum.

For me Snake was first known as Nibbles, a Qbasic sample program included in MS-DOS version 5.0. This ANSI color graphic Snake variant included 9 levels and featured multiplayer support where by two players could use a single keyboard to navigate individual snakes across a game board. For me Nibbles served as a gateway to programming as the source code, freely modifiable, made the game easy to hack.

Today Snake lives on in many forms. Some of my favorites include Youtube and Gmail. To play Snake on Youtube one must hold the left key for two seconds and press the up key while a video is loading. The video loading throbber will then become the familiar always hungry creature.

To play Snake in Gmail one must visit Mail Settings and activate Old Snakey from the Labs menu.

Darren Kitchen has been exploring underground scenes since his first 1200 baud modem. He first found technolust after writing a BBS dialer in BASIC on a PC-XT. Since then he has made a career of his self-taught tech skills in the field of Systems Administration. After founding Hak5 in 2005 he has become fascinated with new media. Darren also pwns you in Unreal Tournament.

Jenn Cutter joins us to talk about the no$gba emulator and her favorite community rom – Colors.

Gran Turismo 5 is finally out! You want to play with a wheel, don’t you? TOO BAD. There’s a massive shortage right now thanks to late adopters, people needing replacements (like me. I apologise to the rest of you short one), and those that bought early to give out as gifts. Don’t you wish you had a friend or relative willing to drop oodles of cash on peripherals? I do. But only if they buy the right ones! If you’re just starting out and want a quality wheel with lots of features, you can’t go wrong with the Logitech Driving Force GT.

For a reasonable $149.99 USD, the wheel has full 900 degree rotation – you can spin it around 2.5 times before it locks – and comfortable rubber grips that don’t feel cheap. Though I often race with gloves on, which is not entirely for immersion, rather because I love my wheel and don’t want to sweat on it, the rubber grip is extremely comfortable through long play sessions. I wish the dimensions of it were a little larger, but that’s easily forgotten as you’re flying around the Nürburgring, feeling every bump in the road as you slide your car around corners, feeling exactly how far you can push it before your wheel grip gives out. For the record, this is why people get wheels. They can be overkill for most arcade-style racers, but anything that even pretends to be a sim can benefit greatly from a wheel. I sometimes wonder if picking one up before I learned how to drive would have made things any easier. It was easy as is, but it probably helps establish a comfort level with any other wheel and how to vary foot pressure on pedals. If nothing else, it effortlessly demonstrates whether a car is over or understeering.

The Driving Force GT is considered more on the basic side of sim racing wheels due to its lack of a clutch, no paddle shifts (or flappy paddles, as you may better know them), and the decision to bolt the sequential shifter to the right side. Advanced wheels will often have the flappy paddles and a detached H-Shifter, for that real car feel. Not all cars are left-hand drive, especially supercars, and hardcore players want to keep things as true to life as possible in one’s living room. The main benefit of the DFGT’s sequential shifter, aside from being accurate for certain rally cars, stems from not having to worry about what to do when you’re in a car and need to hit 7th gear. Done. No mapping ‘gear up’ to a wheel button to compensate. Granted, that’s not something you’re going to run into terribly often

My main beef here involves the plastic pedals. It’s not an expensive wheel, I know, but some weight or some grip on the base would have been extremely beneficial. You could claim that this lets people customise their base to their local setup, but it feels a little lazy, too. It’s not a bad idea, if not downright necessary, to get some weight behind it or you’ll end up driving like I do: since there’s no clutch I use my left foot to anchor it as best I can, and curl my top right toes around the gas pedal to pull it towards me when I have the chance on some straightaways. It’s a completely unconscious maneuver to me now, but worth mentioning to potential buyers.

There are some very good reasons I’m choosing the Driving Force GT as my go-to ‘middle of the road’ wheel. Being a GT product, the horn has the Gran Turismo logo front and centre, it’s completely compatible with Gran Turismo Prologue and 5. You don’t have to fiddle with a single thing, unless you want to re-arrange some buttons or tone down the force feedback. As a silly-yet-awesome perk, the horn works. Not locally, of course, so you don’t bother anyone else in your space, but digitally you can annoy other racers as much as you please. That is not a reason to buy the wheel, the 24-position dial is. While ordinary people have to select and lock in their driving setups before the race, you get to adjust the important stuff on the fly, while driving! ABS, traction control and other driver assists can be tuned up or down, depending on how you find the car reacting under you. It’s almost unfair, really, and it’ll be a feature I’m sure to miss when I inevitably upgrade a year from now.

PC Compatibility is the main reason that I want to upgrade. DFGT connect through USB (and has to be plugged into the wall), so it’s simple to move to your desk, especially if you have space since the built in clamps are strong. I haven’t pinned down the cause of my issue, but though the PC drivers claim to be working fine on Win7 Ultimate (64-bit), I have to manually adjust the bias so I’m not swinging right all the time. I don’t mean a little right, either. I mean that any gas and my car will dive to the right as close to 90 degrees as the car’s turning radius will allow. This makes racing difficult. Note that this is absolutely a personal issue and does not appear to be endemic with the wheel.

The Driving Force GT is worth the price and, honestly, you may never go back to racing with a controller again. Be warned: it’s a gateway drug. Next you’re going to want a racing seat.

Jenn Cutter focuses on all aspects of gaming and gaming accessories with Hak5. She has also appeared on G4TechTV, CP24, HowTo Australia, and TVTokyo when not working on her side-project, OpenAlpha.tv. When not writing or dreaming about gaming, she’s playing hockey and saying ‘eh’, like all stereotypical Canadians

Cave Story, originally released in 2004, is concrete proof that a single talented individual can create a solid, engaging feature length game.

It seems like everyone that even remotely follows the independent computer gaming scene has heard of Daisuke Amaya’s creation, which led to the formation of a very devoted fan community developed around this freeware game. Better known by his handle, Pixel, Daisuke Amaya is known for his cute style even back in 2000 with Ikachan, a game about squid navigating through water filled caverns. There are many similarities between the health and inventory system as well as the wonderfully catchy tunes.

All of Cave Story’s attention has been well-earned and soon(-ish) console gamers will get to share in the love. The WiiWare port was first announced in October of 2008 but delays from Nintendo’s approval process have pushed the release farther and farther back. Nicalis, the developer working with Pixel to bring the console version to life, has also included new difficulty levels and character designs and also plans on several DLC packs to support the release once it is available to the public. Their blog also contains a FAQ section addressing that the new version will contain the original artwork and music as well. Then, of course, there’s the obligatory “When it’s ready” game release timeline.

Who wants to wait?

No one likes waiting when you don’t have to and we, being the homebrew enthusiasts that we are, don’t have to. The PC version, with or without the English language patch, can play right now, yesterday and tomorrow and whenever. I highly recommend using a controller with the game as platformer with the keyboard just feels awkward. The last time I played these types of game with a keyboard it was, well, back in the day with Commander Keen and Jazz Jackrabbit. People running Macs and Linux are not left out since the game can be enjoyed on just about every platform available. Minus WiiWare, XBLA, and the PlayStation Store. For now. If you are a hardcore homebrew enthusiast and math student, you can even experience Cave Story on the TI-83/84! Go on, look at those screens. I wish I hadn’t given my calculator away when I passed my last Calculus III exam so I could give that a shot, just to say that I have. The truly enthusiastic among you would also enjoy the modding tools available.

The DS and PSP versions take more effort to get up and running. Though the DS download link has been removed from cavestory.org, it can be located with some effort *cough* or your search engine of choice. Note that the DS release was just a demo, no hit points or weapons or sound effects. The touch screen contains a menu to jump between several different areas of the game. If you have not played Cave Story already and want to experience the story as it unfolds, please don’t jump in with this version. Instead grab it for your computer or just keep on waiting for the WiiWare version! You have been warned. For homebrew DS users that go through a Supercard, you may find that you’ll be stuck in the loading screen if you use the software to move the .nds package to your card. In that instance just manually copy over the file and run it on your DS just like any other piece of homebrew software. This version was created with Pixel’s knowledge (how much do I want that DS? let me count the ways…) but development, sadly, stalled and was eventually abandoned.

The PSP version is an entirely different beast. PocketGamer.co.uk’s guide mirrors my own experience attempting to run the game. My homebrew PSP runs on the 1.5 firmware and the best I’ve been able to manage brings up the title screen and the beginning of the story but it’s.. so… slow…. that.. it.. was…. unplayable. I hope that those with supported firmwares have better luck since Cave Story is a wonderful game to have available on the go.

Jenn Cutter focuses on all aspects of gaming and gaming accessories with Hak5. She has also appeared on G4TechTV, CP24, HowTo Australia, and TVTokyo when not working on her side-project, OpenAlpha.tv. When not writing or dreaming about gaming, she’s playing hockey and saying ‘eh’, like all stereotypical Canadians

It was only a matter of time before we put Doom on The Zipit Z2. The recently unlocked linux-based wireless device is a prime candidate for fragging, what with it’s QVGA color display, WiFi and all. After unlocking, installing Doom is simply a matter or launching Fluxbox with startx and downloading PrBoom, a cross-platform Doom Source Port, with apt-get install prboom. The trick in launching PrBoom from /usr/games/ is to add the -width 320 -height 240 parameters. While PrBoom comes included with Freedoom, a free and open source Doom compatible IWAD, you may provide your own doom or Doom2-iwad parameter.

It is also worth noting that PrBoom comes with it’s own tcp game server for deathmatch. If anyone wants to try a little Zipit Z2 deathmatching hit us up. Or if you’re looking for some Doom goodness on the PC check out my favorite port, Skulltag.

If it begins with a #include and ends in a semi-colon our friend Jason Appelbaum is all over it. This week he’s in studio covering a subject near and dear to our hearts — Nintendo DS Homebrew.

Let’s face it, the Nintendo DS is a happy little platform full of hacking potential. And with a well established homebrew community it’s the perfect device to start your next weekend project with. Jason takes you from Homebrew 101, including carts and roms, to getting the Dev tools and building your first Hello World app.