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Decaffeinated Jedi writes "NFG Games offers an interesting look at the visual evolution of Nintendo's Mario from his humble beginnings as a monkey-chasing carpenter to his more recent incarnations as a Koopa-stomping plumber. The retrospective doesn't stray into 3D Mario territory, but it does include every 2D version of Mario released between 1981 and 2004 -- including early consoles like the Atari 2600 and Colecovision."

Thanks to NFG for its newly published in-depth feature on the Japanese X68000 computer/games system. The author explains: "The X68000 is an unheard-of gem from Japan. Released around the same time as the Amiga and Atari ST, it was leagues ahead of them both in terms of design and capability. Originally released in 1987 with a 10MHz 68000 CPU and 1MB RAM, the series finished six years later with a 25MHz 68030, 4MB RAM and a 80MB HD." The piece ends with a gallery of X68000 game screenshots, often near-perfect arcade conversions, as well as referencing the previously mentioned X68000 floppy disc game warnings.

Thanks to NFG for its newly published in-depth feature on the Japanese X68000 computer/games system. The author explains: "The X68000 is an unheard-of gem from Japan. Released around the same time as the Amiga and Atari ST, it was leagues ahead of them both in terms of design and capability. Originally released in 1987 with a 10MHz 68000 CPU and 1MB RAM, the series finished six years later with a 25MHz 68030, 4MB RAM and a 80MB HD." The piece ends with a gallery of X68000 game screenshots, often near-perfect arcade conversions, as well as referencing the previously mentioned X68000 floppy disc game warnings.

Thanks to NFG.2y.net for its new feature cataloging the amusing-looking floppy disc warnings featured on classic game sleeves from the Sharp X68000 Japanese computer. Highlights include the Capcom sleeve illustrations, where "the Street Fighter 2 characters exhorted you to take good care of your floppies", as well as some strange warnings from Japanese developer Zoom, including the suggestions that users "don't bathe with your floppy", and a cautionary tale about dropping your hardware.

Thanks to NFG.2y.net for its new feature cataloging the amusing-looking floppy disc warnings featured on classic game sleeves from the Sharp X68000 Japanese computer. Highlights include the Capcom sleeve illustrations, where "the Street Fighter 2 characters exhorted you to take good care of your floppies", as well as some strange warnings from Japanese developer Zoom, including the suggestions that users "don't bathe with your floppy", and a cautionary tale about dropping your hardware.

Thanks to NFG.2y.net for its new feature cataloging the amusing-looking floppy disc warnings featured on classic game sleeves from the Sharp X68000 Japanese computer. Highlights include the Capcom sleeve illustrations, where "the Street Fighter 2 characters exhorted you to take good care of your floppies", as well as some strange warnings from Japanese developer Zoom, including the suggestions that users "don't bathe with your floppy", and a cautionary tale about dropping your hardware.

Thanks to NFG.2y.net for its new feature cataloging the amusing-looking floppy disc warnings featured on classic game sleeves from the Sharp X68000 Japanese computer. Highlights include the Capcom sleeve illustrations, where "the Street Fighter 2 characters exhorted you to take good care of your floppies", as well as some strange warnings from Japanese developer Zoom, including the suggestions that users "don't bathe with your floppy", and a cautionary tale about dropping your hardware.

NEOGEOman writes "Something I've been fascinated with for a long time is video signals. On my website I've spent over six years collecting video and other hacks for game consoles. I've recently put together the fourth revision of my video signal primer and it's expanded to six pages now, including strange subjects like chroma subsampling, horizontal colour resolution and rather interesting revelation: your eyes suck at blue."

NEOGEOman writes "Something I've been fascinated with for a long time is video signals. On my website I've spent over six years collecting video and other hacks for game consoles. I've recently put together the fourth revision of my video signal primer and it's expanded to six pages now, including strange subjects like chroma subsampling, horizontal colour resolution and rather interesting revelation: your eyes suck at blue."

NEOGEOman writes "Something I've been fascinated with for a long time is video signals. On my website I've spent over six years collecting video and other hacks for game consoles. I've recently put together the fourth revision of my video signal primer and it's expanded to six pages now, including strange subjects like chroma subsampling, horizontal colour resolution and rather interesting revelation: your eyes suck at blue."

NEOGEOman writes "Something I've been fascinated with for a long time is video signals. On my website I've spent over six years collecting video and other hacks for game consoles. I've recently put together the fourth revision of my video signal primer and it's expanded to six pages now, including strange subjects like chroma subsampling, horizontal colour resolution and rather interesting revelation: your eyes suck at blue."

NEOGEOman writes "Something I've been fascinated with for a long time is video signals. On my website I've spent over six years collecting video and other hacks for game consoles. I've recently put together the fourth revision of my video signal primer and it's expanded to six pages now, including strange subjects like chroma subsampling, horizontal colour resolution and rather interesting revelation: your eyes suck at blue."

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the page showcasing a range of handmade 'plush game consoles', including cuddly, non-functional versions of the Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo GameCube, NEC PC Engine (TurboGrafx), and even the Neo Geo. According to the site: "Zumi [the creator] made these plush game consoles from scratch. They were all made by hand, without any tools more sophisticated than a felt pen or piece of paper." The page was recently featured in UK paper-magazine Edge, and there's now one of a limited edition of plush Dreamcasts up on Ebay, for the committed Dreamcast collectors among us.

Thanks to various sources for their continued Tokyo Game Show coverage, as GameSpot cover the show in full and GameSpy is also showcasing regular TGS updates, with their Tokyo Game Show pictorial giving a good flavor for the sights and sounds of the show. Elsewhere, IGN's coverage is spread all over their console-specific sites, and there's more personal takes from Video-Fenky, who comments that "Sony is to TGS what Nintendo is to E3 - they always rent out huge spaces not to show off new games, but to make a point to the game industry", and NFG, who noted that the "cellular phone gaming sector was booming... [and] is Namco's biggest source of profit by division."

Thanks to NFG Games for their newly-posted detailed look at Ai Cho Aniki for the PC Engine / TurboGrafx, a side-scrolling, bodybuilder-filled shoot-em-up where, as the author explains: "The game starts as many do, in space above some clouds with... floating heads, swords and a strange guy on a half-moon who throws babies at you." The extremely odd graphical presentation, encompassing "burly men, angels, [and] machines with faces", even extends to the game's front cover - and it's not the only version for the PC Engine, even. There's also now a PlayStation 2 sequel, called Mighty Brothers: The Legend of the Holy Protein, due later this year.

Thanks to NFG Games for their newly-posted detailed look at Ai Cho Aniki for the PC Engine / TurboGrafx, a side-scrolling, bodybuilder-filled shoot-em-up where, as the author explains: "The game starts as many do, in space above some clouds with... floating heads, swords and a strange guy on a half-moon who throws babies at you." The extremely odd graphical presentation, encompassing "burly men, angels, [and] machines with faces", even extends to the game's front cover - and it's not the only version for the PC Engine, even. There's also now a PlayStation 2 sequel, called Mighty Brothers: The Legend of the Holy Protein, due later this year.

Thanks to NFG Games for their new feature on a rare Konami arcade board using 3DO's M2 hardware. This hardware was intended to be a home-based console successor to the much-maligned 3DO console during the late '90s, but, as the article explains, "The M2 chipset shown was basically over-hyped vaporware. The actual chipset never made it into any console, and aside from three or four arcade releases and one ridiculous real estate viewing system the M2 was basically quietly forgotten." These photos of the hardware itself, plus screenshots of the Konami 'Polystars' arcade game running on it, show that "...the hardware was nothing special for the time, and the only released games bear all the hallmarks of early 3D games: flat shaded polygons with minimal textures."

Thanks to InsertCredit for pointing to a feature on the NFG Games site discussing the HiSaturn Navi, a rare and bizarre Japanese incarnation of the Sega Saturn from 1995, which included an add-on LCD screen, a car adaptor, GPS navigation software, karaoke compatibility, and lots more. The unit even has some strange car safety features courtesy of a sensor attached to the handbrake cable - "Game playing was prohibited while the car was in motion - without the handbrake sensor installed and the handbrake applied the screen would shut off after a game started to load." Still, at $2000 (with screen) when launched, and $1200 even now for second-hand models, it's only a toy for the truly insane Sega fan.

kcurrie writes "There is now a Trusted Debian project available. This release installs over a stock woody installation, and includes PaX (non-executable data section kernel patch), IBM stack smashing protector patch for GCC and a ton of recompiled programs (BIND, Apache, Postfix and OpenSSH included) that take advantage of this. Running 2.4.20, it also includes the latest Snort and FreeS/WAN support.
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vinsci writes "Sometimes, reader comments to reporter-written stories are just as good as the stories themselves. Such as David Mohring's comment yesterday on ZDNet.com's story Mono & .Net: The odd couple. Since Microsoft are now using their licensing terms to stop GPL and LGPL free software, it would be a welcome sign of free software maturity at Microsoft if they actually resolved the Mono issue. The gist of his comment: 'Microsoft's CEOs have made it 'patently' clear that they intend to restrict competing .Net implementations by cultivating Microsoft's patents, [...] Mono also implements parts of .NET that have NOT been submitted to ECMA and ISO standards. Those parts of Mono lack even the protection for IP infringement with re-implementation that ISO documentation licensing implies. [...] There [are] those that claim that .NET is open to re-implementation, but until Microsoft make a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA, any .NET re-implementation represents a pending legal mindfield.' While on the subject of C# development, users of the GPL'd C# development environment SharpDevelop may also want to try Eclipse together with the Open Source Improve CSharp plugin for Eclipse. Eclipse also support C/C++ these days using GCC and GDB, thanks to the CDT. There are about two hundred add-on plugins available for Eclipse. Eclipse itself is available for many platforms, including Linux with native GTK 2 support."

vinsci writes "Sometimes, reader comments to reporter-written stories are just as good as the stories themselves. Such as David Mohring's comment yesterday on ZDNet.com's story Mono & .Net: The odd couple. Since Microsoft are now using their licensing terms to stop GPL and LGPL free software, it would be a welcome sign of free software maturity at Microsoft if they actually resolved the Mono issue. The gist of his comment: 'Microsoft's CEOs have made it 'patently' clear that they intend to restrict competing .Net implementations by cultivating Microsoft's patents, [...] Mono also implements parts of .NET that have NOT been submitted to ECMA and ISO standards. Those parts of Mono lack even the protection for IP infringement with re-implementation that ISO documentation licensing implies. [...] There [are] those that claim that .NET is open to re-implementation, but until Microsoft make a simliar public legal declaration to Sun's JSPA, any .NET re-implementation represents a pending legal mindfield.' While on the subject of C# development, users of the GPL'd C# development environment SharpDevelop may also want to try Eclipse together with the Open Source Improve CSharp plugin for Eclipse. Eclipse also support C/C++ these days using GCC and GDB, thanks to the CDT. There are about two hundred add-on plugins available for Eclipse. Eclipse itself is available for many platforms, including Linux with native GTK 2 support."

Magamo writes "Console Talk has the story on a settlement between Sony and Nintendo over the rights to the "PlayStation" name, which was originally a joint owned copywrite, given to a CD and Cartridge based system to play SNES games. The settlement is for 10% of Sony's proceeds, past and present on the "PlayStation" name, currently amounting to approximately $2.3 billion. Nintendo is allowing Sony to pay it off in installments over the next 20 years. Nintendo currently plans on using the money to create a new game studio comprised of members of some of the biggest in the japanese industry, in order to create titles exclusively for the GameCube. Hmm, my guess is that Sony's next console will be shying away from the PlayStation moniker..." CD: It seems that I might have fallen for a hoax. Doh!

Bram Stolk writes: "Intel recently released its new C++ compiler for linux. I've been testing it on my TM5600 Crusoe. Ironically, it turns out that Transmeta's arch nemesis, Intel, provides the tools to really unlock Crusoe's full potential on linux." It doesn't support all of gcc's extensions, so Intel's compiler can't compile the Linux kernel yet, but choice is nice.

Delrin writes "This article on Zdnet reports on how Linux is slowly becoming an important player in the high-end graphic design industry. The latest upcoming movie "Shrek" a perfect example. Dreamworks and others are turning to linux for a large portion of their work, turning away from the likes of SGI and Microsoft." The movie looks visually astonishing: I'm definitely checking it out asap. Hopefully the story can live up the credits (Mike Meyers, John Lithgow, Eddie Murphy) and the visuals (the trailers blow away much of Toy Story 2).