160GB PS3 Arrives in UK!

The Latest version of Sony's Playstation 3 has finally arrived in the UK (aswell as europe) - Welcome the 160GB PS3!

The History of Sony's PS3's back catalogue is that Back in March 2007, Sony released its 60GB, which features backwards compatiblity (if thats what you called it) and a card reader a few months later sony released the 40GB PS3, which was basically similar to an Xbox 360 Pro (20GB Version), just double the storage. However the 40GB did not have backwards compatability with PS2 Games or a Card reader. Most recently released was the 80GB PS3, this was released as people were complaining they didnt have enough storage for their downloaded games, this 80GB Console was also used to counter-act Xbox 360's recent 60GB Console.

Now with Xbox 360's Elite being a 120GB HDD, Sony decided to release the 160GB PS3, which will couter-attack the 360's massive 120GB HDD. However in a sense this is all pointless as if you read the manual it tells you that you can install a bigger hard drive into the PS3 and its legal.

Anyway the new 160GB is exactly the same as the 40GB and 80GB Console's, it has no backwards compatiblity with PS2 Games, however it does play PS1 Games. It does not feature a SD Card reader and only comes with 2 USB Ports. The new 160GB PS3 Does come with a Dualshock 3 pad and vouchers (for a limited time) to download games off the playstation store (which include: Gran Turismo Prologue, The Last Guy, Super Stardust HD , Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty).

The Package itself costs £339.99, however the price of the 4 games included makes it a real bargin, because if you were going to buy them games off the playstation store it would cost you around £40, so in a sense your still only paying around £299.99 for the console itself and getting a larger hard drive.

For more information on the 160GB Playstation 3, check it out over at gameplay.

EA Announces More Games For N-Gage!

Shortly after the announcement of 5 New games heading to the N-Gage, EA (Electronic Arts) have released another press statement on their website stating that they will be releasing even more titles to the N-Gage platform.

Titles from EA include Fifa 09, Monopoly, Tiger Woods PGA Golf Tour, Spore Origins, Bloom Box and Sims 3.

However in the same statement they also announced that they will be releasing games in conjunction with brtish developer EIDOS, and they will be bringing a few more games to the N-Gage platform, games including - Tomb Raider Underworld and another adaptation of Pandemonium.

no details on release dates yet, however the statement said that majority of these games will be released later this year, while the rest will be released in 2009.

For more information, and further links on these new games by EA, click here.

Be The "ONE" Tournament 2008

With ONE now officially released onto the N-Gage platform a "Be The One Tournament" has now begun!

To put it straight its "survival of the fitest" as in the game your character is ranked by ELO points, so every match you fight you risk winning (or losing) these ELO points and this new N-Gage tournament is based upon the ELO point system.

For Example when you first start ONE your character has 1000 ELO points, however if you win a fight you will recieve around 45 ELO points, so your characters rank goes to 1045, then if you loose, your character looses 25 ELO Points, so the rank of your character goes down to 1025, however all Point gains and losses are random, depending on how many times youve fought that character or how high that fighters rank is to yours.

So all you have to do is play the game as much as you can and get your ELO Score as high as you can, then every so often post your ELO Score online to the online leaderboards, seems easy but there is ALOT of competition, so good luck.

The Whole Purposes of the this tournament is to find the strongest player with the most ELO Points and he will be declared the ONE, the winner! The ONE (aka the winner) will recieve a stack load of prizes including a brand new N96, there will also be 2nd, 3rd and 4th place prizes.

For more information regarding this tournament, click here.

Banjo Kazooie Demo Arrives on Xbox Live Marketplace

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is the latest game to come from viva pinata creators RARE, however Banjo Kazooie was originally on the Nintendo 64 and what a game it was, so after a few years have the characters lost the plot or have they arrived safely found a new home? Well i dont know for sure but the Demo is now out in the Marketplace.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts isn't released until 14th November 2008, which is in about 3 weeks time, however the Demo is now available on the UK Xbox Live Marketplace, and i presume it will be on the US Severs aswell, the demo itself is 1.07 and will take around 2 hours (if not less) for it to download (i should know as ive been sat here paitently waiting for it).

Another new surprise is the fact that the original N64 (Nintendo 64) Banjo & Kazooie game will be released within the next 2 weeks to Xbox Live Arcade and if you pre-ordered (from selected places) the Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts game then you will automaticlly recieve a FREE Promotional Code to get the XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) game for FREE!, which is a BIG Help, since the official price of the XBLA Banjo Kazooie game is 1,200 MS Points, which is around £7.50.

Anyway - What are you waiting for? go and download the demo now!

New N-Gage Games Announced At Nokia Summit.

The Noka Games Summit has finally started over in Rome, and its only been 1 day, yet Nokia have announced 5 NEW Games heading towards the N-Gage platform, and most of these games arent even first party titles either.

EA (Electronic Arts) are planning to bring 3 Games to the N-Gage Platform and these are Fifa 09, Need For Speed: Undercover and The Sims 3. Gameloft have also announced that they will be bringing Asphalt 4: Elite Racing to the N-Gage platform.

So far these titles (for me) do not come as a shock as Fifa usually gets released on every platform - as its one of the greatest football games available, Asphalt 4 has already been released on standars symbian and is also available on Iphone, so im not surprised that that is coming to the N-Gage either. However i am surprised to see the new Need For Speed game coming to the N-Gage, as we have never had a NFS (Need For Speed) game on the N-Gage Platform before, im also surprised to see the new Sims game to appear on N-Gage, though looking back we have had 2 previous sims game on the n-gage before and majority of people did enjoy them both.

The 5th game to be announced at the Nokia Games Sumit so far is "Dance Fabulous", which is basically a dancing game for the n-gage, from what ive seen you create a character (or an avatar) and you control this character with dancing moves that appear on the screen, however a cool option about this game is that you can either dance freely and make up your own moves, or dance to a certain set of foot patterns and not only that you can listen to any song that you currently have on your phone - so the games setlist is never ending. The people at AAN have posted up a little page for it here.

There is still a few days left at the Nokia Games Summit, so there is plenty of time for new games to be announced. For more information about the Nokia Games Summit, head over to its webpage here.

One - Now Available On N-Gage!

ONE, The highly anticipated N-Gage Game from Digital Legends has finally arrived onto the N-Gage Platform - and as i said in my little preview a few weeks back it was definately worth the wait!

ONE Features over 30 opponents, customisable characters, 7 different locations and smooth 3D Graphics.

ONE Costs £8 (as to be expected, with such a high quality title) and is 13mb to download, however it only requires 13mb of instalation space on your phones memory card (or hard drive).

At the moment i have only got the trial version of the game, so i cant play story mode, however you can do some training, to learn the basics of the game and you can also challenge the CPU to a few fights - however do not be put off at first, as the game may seem hard and realistic - but thats what the developers intended, a realistic, portable fighting game and thats what we got.

To put it simple, ONE (on N-Gage 2.0) is similar to the original N-Gage version of ONE, except it has smoother graphics, more opponents and a better layout - not to mention some new fighting styles and movements. So all in all its the game everyone has been waiting for, it is the ONE.

If you still dont appreciate the game, then check out this small "making of one" video that was posted onto the N-GAGE's official Youtube video page a few months back, it show's that they used skills that are commonly used on the most popular fighting games on consoles - so the N-Gage "one" is getting the same treatment (if not more) than the console versions of fighting games, such as Virtua Fighter, check it out below:

Cafe Solitaire Now Available On N-Gage!

Cafe Solitaire has arrived on the N-Gage platform and its true what they say, never judge a book by its cover, as this game may look dull but it screams out community fun!

Cafe Solitaire costs £6 for the FULL Game (or trials at £1.50 for a day or £4 for 7 days), the game itself (download wise) is 2mb - however the full installed size is only 3mb - judging by this you think the game is going to be basic, cheap and nasty - well your wrong, most of us on the n-gage arena are surprised by how much fun this game actually is.

To start off with the game is what is says on the tin, its 12 different types of card games - the main one being solitaire, but their is different varriations of it, aswell as a small poker version - each game is "on your own" however this is when it gets interesting.

You can create a Cafe toon, which is basically your avatar, as this little guy can get invited to other peoples rooms (called cafes) here you can challenge people to games or (i presume) sit there and chat. Also if your friend is not online and you want to invite someone to your room you can send them a text message (via the game) to let them know that you want to play a game of solitaire with them. Each room is automatically passworded (random passwords) so you would have to let the other player know what the password is - can be a pain at times (as the text is a little be small) but at least you dont get unwanted people in your room.

As you guessed majority of the features and harder game types are LOCKED until you buy the full game, and even when playing a game (solitare) there is a time limit (around 10 minutes). Online modes i guess will be battled out score and/or time wise, meaning the player with the highest score in a certain amount of time wins.

Basically if you like card games and online communities, this is the game for you, if your not too interestedt in card games you might want to give it a miss - but its still worth checking out,its a very interesting game and be warned, it could get you hooked!

Cafe Solitaire is now available on the N-Gage application, and should appear on the N-Gage website within the next day or so.

New Look, New Features, New Links!

As you have probably noticed i have changed the look of the blog and added some new features to the blog - mainly because i felt like it was time for a refresh and a change.

The old layout was good, but seemed basic and annoying that it only posted down the middle and never the full page (espically if your viewing on a 19" Widescreen Monitor like i am), so now the conents of the blog are spread out through the entire page. Making it more easier and professional to read, in my opinion.

New features include a music player (top right) - i will not be hosting any NEW tunes on this music player and at the moment ive only uploaded insturmentals to anime songs (Gundam 00, Seed, Seed Destiny & Full Metal Alchemist) . I may add more songs over the coming months, however this feautre may even be removed if any "legal" requirements come into it, as you probably have guessed i do not own the legal rights to these songs, but they groovy (hence why i used the instrumental versions) as its easier to listen to when reading.

Another new feature ive added is the PC Version of Reset Generation, this is the COMPLETE Game ,which you can play on this web-page. You can play the story mode or if you like you can create an N-Gage Arena player name and play online with other n-gagers around the world, so in a sense your getting a taste of what its like to be an N-Gager. The Reset Generation game is further down the page, located under-neath the links part.

Also ive added a few links to a few other blogs that maybe an interesting read for you guys out there, anyway Enjoy the new look!

Gears Of War 2: Midnight Launch Special At Gamestation

Gears Of War 2 is soon to be amongest us and if you have pre-ordered it from gamestation you are in for a little treat.

Majority of Gamestation stores (if not all) nationwide will be opening their doors on 6th november at midnight to celebrate the release of Gears Of War 2, so in a sense you could be playing the game earlier than some of your friends, however to tip it all off - if you come and collect your game at midnight you will be given a special promotional code to unlock a new weapon.

I can not remember what the weapon is called however they are only giving out these codes if you collect your game at midnight (and for pre-orders only) - if your lucky you might still be able to get the code in the mourning when the shop opens up for general sale, however the chance of that happening is very slim.

Either way there is still 3 weeks left to pre-order Gears Of War 2, so their is still chance to pre-order the game or one of its special packages.

N96 is Similar To N81 - Peroid!

Over on the N-Gage Arena forums, and im guessing aswell, various other forums and chat-rooms - some small debate has been going off whether or not the N96 is similar to the N81 and the my answer, which (judging from the picture) is the YES they are similar.

These 2 phones are similar by design, not by specification, for example the new "beast" of an N96 has a 16GB intergrated Hard-drive, and a 5 Megapixel camera (Carl Zesis Lens). Compared to the N81 which only has a standard (but effective) 2 Megapixel camera and 8GB intergrated hard drive.

The specifications are different, however as you can see in the picture the way they look are EXTREMELY similar and for some-one not used to phones it might be hard to tell which is which.

The Phone on the left is the N81 8GB (My Phone), the phone on the right is the N96 (Norman's (Symbian World)) - the only other "main" difference is that the N96 is abit flatter, but more wide and the N96 is alot lighter than the N81. If the N81 was flattened, it would look the same.

The only dislike i have about the N96 is that it feels too light and too cheap compared to the N81 (as i like to know that my phone is in my pocket), apart from that N96 is a beast, and if your looking for the best high-end nokia device on the market, the N96 is the way to go!

Video Interviews With Womworld Regarding The Experience In New York City!

During my trip with Womworld (Word Of Mouth World) member Colin and Symbian World creator Norman we were asked to take part in a few mini-video interviews on the spot in location of london, new york, photo shoot and hotel reception area.

The Videos are only a few minutes long each and we basically share our "first impressions" of the events that happened are or about to happen. If your hoping to see any new games / devices in these videos, then sadly you wont, just videos of us (Me and Norman) talking (or in my case trying to talk), you can check em out below:

Heathrow Airport - Leaving London - Initial Thoughts Interview:



New York - Arrived At Photoshot - Initial Thoughts:



New York - After Photo Shoot - Thoughts & Impressions:



New York - 70 Park Avenue Hotel - Meet Up Thoughts & Impressions:



Im usually on the right side of each video (apart from the airport one), but either way all Videos were recorded (some were originally streamed onto the internet) on a N82 (silver edition) so in other words, no special recording equipment is needed for interviews, anyway enjoy the show!

Introduing The "Zeemote"

Introducing the Zeemote, a bluetooth gaming controller for your phone.

To some this may seem like rather old news, however i have (and a few other people) only recently stumbled across it, so i thought id point it out.

As you can see from the picture the Zeemote is shaped much like a knuchuck for a Nintendo Wii and im guessing handles the same way. You would connect this controller to your phone via bluetooth , and im assuming the red circle button below the analog stick would be the bluetooth connect button (aswell as power it on).

To use the Zeemote obviously the analog stick would do the moving, the A, B and C buttons would be used for certain actions in a game, such as jump and shoot - this controller (in my opinion) would come in handy for fast-paced games such as ONE on N-Gage.

According to Zeemotes official website (which can be seen here). The Zeemote device has already got support from various different game developers and already supports a fair few amount of java and sis games including Sonic The Hedgehog, Time Crisis and Moto GP, below is a little preview (taken from the zeemote website) of how it would look to play games using the Zeemote Controller:



Now as you can see in the video, devices such as Nokia's, Sony Ericssons and Samsungs are used to play games, so its obvious that this controller works with near enough any device that supports bluetooth signals.

Now the next step would be to see if this Zeemote would work on N-Gage Games, instead of the java and sis games and the answer to that is YES, symbian World (earlier in the year) uploaded a video of a Zeemote Connected to a N95 8GB and gives us a quick demonstration on how the zeemote works on the N-Gage Games, you can see the video below, now i definately have got to get my self one of these, that way i might stand a chance in ONE. Enjoy!



As the video shows above the Zeemote works with N-Gage Games and i have just found this rather interesting blog post on the N-Gage Blog, stating that N-Gage games WILL SUPPORT the Zeemote - you can read more about it here.

N-Gage Meet With Jen (Public Relations) - Mini Play Test with 2 New N-Gage Games!

Last Night (Monday 13th October) me, Norman and Colin met up with Jen from the N-Gage Public Relations team, but we also caught up with some other local bloggers, such as nokiablog.com.

Either way we were all their to see what Jen had to show us and she showed us some pritty sweet things.

Jen had brought with her 2 N81 8GB phones and both phones had 2 NEW un-released games on them, 1 being ONE, the most anticipated N-Gage game of all time, the other being YAMAKE - which no-one other than 3 people knew how to say.

We were told not to take any pictures of the in-game action and that we were only allowed to take the picture of the title (hence the picture above just saying ONE), but we did manage to have little goes on both games and they were rather fun. The reason we were allowed to take in game photos was because the games were still un-finished.

ONE, as most of you will know is a full 3D fighting game and is very similar to the original N-Gage version however, the graphics have improved (not as blockey), frame-rate is good and the storyline continues from where the original left off - other little additions include better layouts, either way the game is shaping up to look awesome! So if you are waiting for it, please wait longer as i am sure it is going to be the BEST N-Gage game yet.

YAMAKE came to us as a surprise, not many people in the room had heard of it, and none of us were expecting to see it. Yamake is mainly a user-generated game, the game itself will most likely come with a host of pre-made games on it, such as jigsaws, word-searchs, trivas, personality quizs - however the most fun to be had is with its user generated content - basically you would take a picture, upload it to the arena and then within a few hours (or days) that picture would be turned into a jigsaw puzzle. So in a sense the game never ends and is alot of fun, espically the trivias.

It was a rather interesting night - but details on upcoming games and recent problems with ngage games (for example my Reset Generation closure error) were just "im sure they are working on it" - and no news on the N73 or N93 N-Gage applications either, but playing ONE was a big hit and playing Yamake was rather fun - definately two games to keep an eye out for.

No dates have been announced for Yamake or ONE, so we will just have to wait and see - the only thing she did say was that these two games should be out this year, but it wasn't a definate date.

Video Interviews Throughout The New York Experience

As i mentioned in previous posts, me and Norman (owner of symbian world) went to New York city with womworld (world of mouth world) members colin and mike and throughout the trip they have been interviewing us about our experiences and have been making little video posts on their blog and on their qik profile page.

All these mini-video interviews where filmed on location, usually after something had happened, for example our "first impressions" after the photo shoot and after the talk with Jen from N-Gage.

You can check out the videos of me and Norman and womworld qik's page here. Im usually the one on the right with green top / white shirt on. Enjoy!

N-Gage Photo Shoot Thoughts

So the N-Gage photo shoot has come to an end, yet the fun is not going to end anytime soon - espically with so much stuff to write and ive also yet speak with an N-Gage PR later tonight, either way its all good fun.

The Picture above (or maybe to the left) is a picture of the main "photo shooting" area, this is where the majority of the magic was made.

So The photo shoot was for a New N-Gage FACE Campaign, basically photos and video expressions are used to promote n-gage devices and games, so my face (which got dolled up by make up) may appear on adverts and billboards across the globe, aswell as website stuff, but thats if one of my pictures is chosen, as alot of different people had their photo and video taken.






In my opinion the photo shoot staff were laid back and very friendly, maybe thats what happens when youve been taking photo's 4 days straight, either way all the staff their were great and we all got along great - was a great laugh.

Well when me, Norman, Colin and Mike got their we were introduced to the majority of the staff, afterwards we watched what was happening and we got told what to do - after a conversation me and norman got our make up done (full works).

We then had our photo snapshots taken - was really fun and hilarious, then we took the video shots, in between shots we kept chatting and playing around with N85 and N96.

After we left we all kept talking about the afternoon and from reaction we assumed that they were surprised by how good we were at posing for the camera, and to be honest i got the same feeling, espically the way they kept saying "hey look at this" - so im quite pleased at the pictures that came out.

To put it blunt it was a great experience and a great laugh, - to be honest i would'nt have minded staying longer but their is still more to come - espically with the conversation with the N-Gage PR later tonight, which should be interesting. Well either way more to come later - most likely tomorrow afternoon, happy gaming!

So Here I Am - New York City!

After 12 hours (if not more) of travelling i finally made it to New York City (Big Apple) and what a wounderful city it is, every corner you turn you see a building thats been in a film - but im not here for the sights.

Womworld Website Members (A Blog that posts about the latest N-Series phones and news) invited me and Norman from Symbian World to go to New York City to take part in a new N-Gage Campaign, at the moment the details of the campign are still tight - so i'll find out more later today and hopefully be able to post up my experiences later tonight, but so far its been a fun roller-coaster ride.

So in a weeks time i went from a holiday in spain, to a day home, to a 3-day n-gage trip in america. Can life be anymore fun and interesting than this, well ill definately find out later on, either way heres a few dodgey pictures i took on my N81, enjoy!

A Standard Yellow New York City Taxi cab, just like in the movies and TV Programs.














Picture of the two guys i caught a plane with, on the left is Colin (from Womworld) and on the right is Norman (from Symbian World).

N-Gage Past-week Sum Up

Some of you may have noticed that my blog wasn't updated last week (and a few days prior to that), the reason for this was because i was away on holiday, so now, while ive got abit of free time im gonna post up some snippets of what happened last week around the N-Gage Universe.

N-Gage App 1.10 Released:

The N-Gage Application (when released) was pritty straight forward and worked fine until alot of people noticed errors, such as random crashes, the 10k achievement bug and the 50 friends bugs - well the N-Gage team have now released an updated version (v1.10) which fixes all the current problems, so head on over to the N-Gage website and download it. You can just install the N-Gage app directly on top of your existing n-gage application and everything will be ok.

Pro Series Golf Update Released:

Upon installing the new N-Gage App Firmware people noticed that Pro Series Golf would randomly crash and exit after 2 shots, well the patched version of the game has now been released, so to install it just go to the Pro Series Golf game on your N-Gage device, and select "REMOVE GAME", then go to the showroom and download and install the game as normal, this way you wont loose any of your saved data or the NGP Stacking list.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed Update Released for Spanish Users:

This is news to me, and may not really effect many users, however if your playing the Spanish version of this game some levels will be mroe harder than what they are supposed to be, due to a few bugs, however like PSG a new updated version of the game has been released and is now available in the showroom. To Make it work properly go to the star wars game, select "REMOVE GAME" and then download & install the star wars game like normal from the showroom, this way all your previous data is kept safe.

Original N-Gage is 5 years old!

Not exactly news, but its worth a special mention, the Original (taco) N-Gage is now 5 years old and even though the hardware and the mmc games arent in production anymore, people continue to play, buy and sell them - and alot of old n-gage users still have their original taco's stored away somewhere - this is proof as on holiday i saw a fair few BRAND NEW N-Gage games for sale in a proper games shop in spain.

Well thoose were the "key" new updates for N-Gage, however i bet their was a tone more of interesting stuff - either way im now in New York with some womworld buddies so ill be sure to post up my experiences soon.

The N-Gage Arena Medal Games 2008 Winners!!!

The N-Gage Arena Medal Games 2008 have officially come to an end (well technically it finished last saturday), even so after a short wait the final results have been posted up onto the N-Gage Arena wesbite.

After a whole month of tournaments, trivias, disconnections and arguements the gold place winner is ZERGUS!!, with an amazing lead of 225 Medal Game points, near enough a whole 100 points ahead of 2nd place winner WIEJU, in 3rd place (Bronze Medal) we have brainimpactrush, So Congratulations to the winners, and all the other individual winners as the competition was tough, i should know as i also took part.

Anyway, i came 4th (overall) in this Medal Games compeition, 2 points away from 3rd place, so i didnt do too bad, however to view the complete list of winners (for each individual event, phone draws and the overall standing list) then click here. To view the "congratulations" thread in the N-Gage arena forums click here.

Either way congratulations to all the winners and to the people that didnt win, good luck in the next compeition, while will probably be sometime next year.