Remember Moon Books? It seems they've gotten pretty popular, since mastermind Brandon is in the process of upgrading to an expansive new site. Since we first reported on the project, several new titles have been added for use with the homebrew text viewer; no matter your pleasure, from Herodotus to T.S. Eliot, if you're a litgeek, this is some of the best stuff the homebrew scene has to offer. For now, it looks like most of those archives are on the old site, but we expect they'll be moved over directly.
If there's a title you'd like to request, or if you have questions about Moon Books, it's probably a good time to ask, before the spankin' new forums get cluttered.
Why haven't we seen more rhythm platformers since Donkey Kong Jungle Beat? And while we're at it, how come there aren't more games that feature primates? We were on the verge of sending out subpoenas and demanding answers from the video game industry's "top people," but then we stumbled upon Everlasting Love, a charming, monochrome game from homebrew developer Mia (Ninja & Zarbi, Oil Panic DS).
Following the single-song soundtrack (from We Love Katamari) and the monkey protagonist's head movements, players tap the A button to the beat. Just hitting the A button at all makes the simian character bounce around, but he jumps higher depending on how rhythmically accurate you are. You can use the directional pad to face which direction you want to pounce, but all movement is limited to hopping around.
While there's a lot of emphasis on staying with the rhythm, jumping as high as possible isn't the goal of the game -- you're actually meant to complete the levels with as few measured hops as possible. Some of the portions actually require you to jump off-beat, keeping your head down to avoid low-hanging spikes.
Everlasting Love can get pretty frustrating at times, but we're not sure if it's the fault of the game's or our own lacking abilities. Clearing the first pit took us a few tries before we could put it behind us, and the obstacles get exponentially harder after that. At version 0.1 though, Everlasting Love has a lot of potential to be the rhythm platformer we've been waiting for all these years.
We've always equated PictoChat with the banana peel in Mario Kart DS. It might be better than nothing, but we were really hoping for something a little more useful when we opened up that item box. Despite its polished interface and availability with every Nintendo DS system, hardly anyone uses PictoChat regularly. This can be attributed to the application's limited functionality and lack of online support. Unless you're sending phallic doodles to a nearby friend, there's really no reason for using the communication utility.
Thankfully, there are several homebrew projects that better realize the DS' potential as an instant messenger or a canvas for digital artists. Pictoblog is another application that extends the system's capabilities, enabling users to sketch something out on the handheld's touchscreen, and upload the picture to a post on their blog. Pictoblog works with a number of CMSs like WordPress, Movable Type, and many others.
Developer 0xtob has set up a test blog for users to experiment with, but it probably won't be long before the site is flooded with crude illustrations of the male anatomy.
A homebrew gamer named GPF ported the GP2X version of 3D Realms' Duke Nukem 3D to the DS as an entry in a coding contest, and released it to the public yesterday. So, in the time since the announcement of Duke Nukem Forever, the following events have occurred (developments not directly related to this port, like the Saturn Duke and the N64 spinoffs, have been left off).
The Game Boy Color was released.
The Game Boy Advance was released as a followup to the Game Boy Color.
The Game Park GP32 was released.
The followup to the GP32, the GP2X, was released.
The Nintendo DS was released as a followup to the GBA and GBC.
Duke Nukem 3D was ported to the GP2X.
The GP2X version of Duke Nukem 3D was ported to the DS.
See you in 20 years, when Duke Nukem Forever shows up on the Hyper QS (Quad Screen)!
The rewards for a homebrew developer's labor are few. The majority of their games and applications will never see a commercial release or any cash return. The number of people who can even appreciate their work on the DS is limited because of hardware requirements (i.e. third party storage carts). To find out why these programmers pour countless hours into projects that they won't likely profit from, Modojo interviewed the minds behind four of the homebrew scene's most visible games: Tetattds, Tower Defense, The Lemmings Project, and QWAK.
Tetattds is a polished clone of Tetris Attack/Panel de Pon for the SNES, adding online support to the puzzler. Tower Defense is an adaptation of the popular Warcraft 3 mod. The Lemmings Project jerry-rigs the PC classic to work with the DS' touchscreen and resolution limits. QWAK, a GBA puzzle platformer reminiscent of Bubble Bobble, was actually self-published with a small run of 300 carts.
So what is it that drives these homebrew developers? Several of them cite community participation or the need to fill a gap in the DS library. Others have a reason that's even more simple and obvious: They just want to make the best games they can.
We can't tell you to download them (in fact, we'll tell you not to), but we can definitely applaud the technical achievement. A homebrew genius called papafuji has ported a massive selection of classic textadventures and early graphic adventure games to the DS, including all of Infocom's text adventures and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams' interactive fiction.
These aren't just barebones ports, either: you can save games, and you can choose to enter text via an onscreen keyboard or handwriting input! And the game engine contains shorthand functionality for common commands like cardinal directions and "get".
Some of the games are public domain, but most aren't, and we aren't sure which games fall in which category. Therefore, we're officially warning you: if you download these games, there's a good chance that you are a pirate.
Having created Rotoshop, the software behind uniquely-animated films like Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, Bob Sabiston is no stranger to new ways of manipulating media. His latest project, Fatbits Pocket Painter, takes advantage of the Nintendo DS' hardware features to create both pixel-based and vector-based illustrations.
The DS' top screen shows the entire canvas while the touchscreen displays a close-up view for editing.
Fatbits won't replace your copy of Adobe Photoshop, but with features like color palette mixing, variable thickness paintbrushes, and opacity sliders, the program is a lot more sophisticated than MS Paint. The application even supports an animation mode and playback for recorded sound effects (via DS mic) just like Mario Paint. Users will be able to share their complete creations or works-in-progress by uploading them to a web server with the DS' WiFi feature.
While Nintendo is aware of the project, there are no cemented plans for a commercial release. Sabistan admits that he might eventually cast the program loose for the homebrew community to play with if he is not able to find a publisher. For now, a brief user manual and a gallery of images created with Fatbits are available.
We are sure that Natrium42 had the best of intentions when he put together RoboDS, an open robot platform that uses a Nintendo DS as an electric brain to receive commands via its Wi-Fi Connection, but we fear his creation might be what eventually spells mankind's doom. The homebrew superstar has not only brought this mechanical monstrosity to life, but he has ensured the robot army's dominance over earth and the enslavement of the human race by allowing curious tinkerers everywhere to pre-order their own RoboDS war machines.
Natrium42 has a prototype RoboDS in his basement that you can watch and control from your internet browser. With the three-camera setup, you can either view snapshots of the wheeled handheld's movements or watch streaming video from its two affixed webcams when it's your turn to navigate the futuristic beast. There is even an attached laser that would be perfect for PowerPoint presentations or tearing down our cities.
At this early stage, the prototype RoboDS is prone to malfunctions which can leave the platform moving in circles or completely unresponsive. While we would like to attribute these glitches to coding errors, our distrust of technology has convinced us that RoboDS is actually reprogramming its AI ... for murder!
It's been a while since we heard anything about the homebrew OKiwi browser, but developer Pedro J. Estébanez announced yesterday that the alpha is "imminent." While this will truly be a test version,Estébanez wants to be able to demonstrate how the various parts of the browser will come together to utilize the DS. It's not available yet, but we'll let you know the moment it's ready. We can all wade in together to see what we can break ... er, we mean test the alpha release.
The tech experts over at Engadget have got something very cool to present. In the above picture, you can see the DS Lite using WiFi triangulation (rather than GPS) to determine geoposition and relay the data to the user. Being a lone snapshot sent in to the blog, we cannot comment on any plans for a commercial application allowing users to ... well, use this. Instead, we'll quietly pine for such a thing and leave the rest of the commenting in your wonderful hands.
Seriously, those hands are immaculate. What kind of hand soap are you using? They smell nice too ...
We've had a few discussions about homebrew in the course of our daily topics, but there's something we haven't asked that we're curious about. What do you go for? Are you interested in homebrew games? We're not talking pirated games here, but original material created by armchair developers. Or are you more about using homebrew to expand your DS beyond the limits of gaming? We suspect that more of you are into the latter, but we've been wrong before!
It's been a while since we heard about the homebrew DS port of Quake. But now the coder, Simon Hall, has emerged from his Tower of Porting Ordeals and made his work available for public consumption! If you have a DS flash card and a copy of Quake for the PC (shareware or full version!) then in just a few short minutes you could be on your way to playing a flat-shaded, slow, imperfectly-emulated, but still undeniably QuakeyQuake!
We are willing to cut them some slack on the technical issues, since the release is still a work in progress, and the fact that it works at all is keen. They've also added touchscreen camera control and the ability to toggle god mode with the R button!
We have great memories of playing multiplayer Quake at one of those pay-by-the-hour LAN gaming centers at our 16th birthday party. We also have great memories of playing our DS earlier today. Seeing the two come together is just blissful. We love the ingenuity of the homebrew community.
We're going to crank up the Nine Inch Nails and get to installing.
Not to be confused with the PSP game Every Extend Extra, this is actually Every Extend, the game for the PC that paved the way for the PSP version. As of now, the game is in the very early stages and lacks any of the specific DS functionality that sets it apart from its competitor, like stylus use. Also, no word on when this project is going to be complete, either, but you can bet that we're interested.
First the DS gets turned into an iPod, now flickr user sirljohns has managed to transform the original Game Boy into an iPod, effectionately calling it the iBoy. The folks responsible for the DS mod provided a video, something which sirljohns did not do, so we cannot comment on which has the better functionality. However, the geek-cred that comes from lugging the OG handheld itself around is something that one cannot easily ignore.
Anyone interested in doing this to their old Game Boy?
So we already found out who is and isn't into homebrew, but for those of you who are -- what do you like? Dislike? We're curious about your favorite hardware selections are. What have you found to be reliable and worth the money ... and what needs AVOID, AVOID, AVOID stamped across its packaging?
For those of you who confessed to not knowing what to do when it comes to homebrew, we're gearing up for a series of features on the subject, which is part of why we're looking for recommendations from our favorite fanboys. So bear with us a little longer. For you salty dogs ... tell us what works for you!
Remember Moon Books? It seems they've gotten pretty popular, since mastermind Brandon is in the process of upgrading to an expansive new site. Since we first reported on the project, several new titles have been added for use with the homebrew text viewer; no matter your pleasure, from Herodotus to T.S. Eliot, if you're a litgeek, this is some of the best stuff the homebrew scene has to offer. For now, it looks like most of those archives are on the old site, but we expect they'll be moved over directly.
Why haven't we seen more rhythm platformers since 
We've always equated PictoChat with the banana peel in 
The rewards for a 
Having created Rotoshop, the software behind uniquely-animated films like Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, Bob Sabiston is no stranger to new ways of manipulating media. His latest project, Fatbits Pocket Painter, takes advantage of the Nintendo DS' hardware features to create both pixel-based and vector-based illustrations.
We are sure that Natrium42 had the best of intentions when he put together RoboDS, an open robot platform that uses a Nintendo DS as an electric brain to receive commands via its Wi-Fi Connection, but we fear his creation might be what eventually spells mankind's doom. The 
We've had a few discussions about homebrew in the course of our 
Not to be confused with the PSP game Every Extend Extra, this is actually Every Extend, the game for the PC that paved the way for the PSP version. As of now, the game is in the very early stages and lacks any of the specific DS functionality that sets it apart from its competitor, like stylus use. Also, no word on when this project is going to be complete, either, but you can bet that we're interested.
First the DS gets turned into an 
So we already found out who 
