Nintenblog The Super Gaming Blog for Nintendo News and Opinion

Source: Youtube

Super Mario 64 with textures from classic Super Mario Bros.

Source: via Kotaku

A prerelease version of QuakeDS - a homebrew port of Quake - is now available.

You do need a flash card for your DS to be able to play QuakeDS on your DS.

Current Status, as of 18/02/07

This port was started in mid-October 2006. It is not yet finished, however it is nearing completion.

The game

* the program, working state and game data have been squeezed into the four megabytes of main memory
* it requires either shareware or commercial pak files, Amiga and PC paks have been successfully used
* total conversions and mods should work, assuming they respect the tiny memory size
* networking currently has been removed, but will return at a later date

Graphics

* the majority of the software renderering has been moved over to using the 3D hardware
* world textures are display nearly-correctly, there are however still plenty of texture-coordinate bugs!
* fake-lightmapping is currently broken, and needs some time spent on it. As a result, the game is flat-shaded
* there's no dynamic lighting yet
* there are no textures on the Alias models yet
* sprites and particles got hacked in yesterday (17/02/07) and are only partially hardware-accelerated, and have no textures
* no water, teleporter or sky animations yet

Sound

* sound effects support is about 80% finished, so expect to hear pops, clicks, the occasional screech etc
* CD music is currently being investigated
o the existing solution requires the CD soundtrack to be ripped to your flash card
o uses an MP3 decoder, running on the second processor
o ...but the file streaming slows down the primary processor a bit too much

Tech info

* uses the libfat DLDI interface, so should hopefully work on all supported flash cards
* built using the latest toolchain, devkitARM r20
* in-game performance is still not hot, but is being actively worked on - expect to see it run twice as fast in the finished build
* performance is timed using a custom function-instrumenting profiler (a bit like gprof)

Source: QuakeDS

Zelda retrospective from GameTrailers.com.

We take a look at the humble beginnings of the boy dressed in green, and the adventures he found on his quest for greatness It continues with a look at Link’s return to his roots, and his first handheld outing. Then we find Link riding his way onto the Nintendo 64, and becomes the ultimate master of disguise. After that Link brings us back to the handheld market where Link meets a few new friends. Lastly, ventures onto the GameCube where he undergoes an extreme makeover, and meets a talking cap that’ll change his world perspective.

As our retrospective comes to an end, we try to make sense of the history of Hyrule and it’s ever-present green-clad hero.

Source: Google Video

UK based artist Jeremy Gibbs has turned a broken Gameboy into art. His creation the Qee sells for more than $300.

Source: I4U News

This interesting BBC documentary has some great information about the game Tetris and how Nintendo won out over Atari to secure the licence to this addictive game.

A hard to find documentary about Tetris and its creator Alexey Pajitnov. Also covers the rivalries between Nintendo and Atari and the ... all » absurdities of buying copyrights for software from a country that doesn't believe in property, much less intellectual property. Ultimately, a great documentary about a very important game.

This is easily the best Nintendo themed tattoo I,ve seen so far. It's go everyone; Mario, Samus, Link, Donkey Kong and Yoshi.

Click image for larger view.

Source: ModBlog

Zack Kim plays the Super Mario Theme using two guitars at once.

Zack Kim's Website: http://zackkim.com