vio2sf: Nintendo DS Music Player

Never heard of a 2sf? Well neither had we until our friends at Zophar’s Domain brought it to our attention. 2sf is an emulated sound format for Nintendo’s popular handheld–think NSF or SPC for the DS. vio2sf is a Winamp/Foobar plugin that allows you to play these files back. You can grab it from Zophar here. Though Zophar doesn’t have any 2sf archives yet, a quick google search yielded us a number of sites, so it shouldn’t be hard to find your favorite DS music. Enjoy!

Guitar Hero: On Tour – Coming this Summer

Source: IGN

Activision is finally making good on its promise to expand the Guitar Hero franchise to handhelds with the announcement of Guitar Hero: On Tour, a DS version of the popular game. The game uses a special 4-fret addon that goes into the GBA slot of the DS, and a special stylus to strum. The game will feature around two dozen songs and Wifi multiplayer.

“Face Training” game, DS Camera announced

From 1up:

In your face“If you thought the cook book software, eye training and common sense training were all bizarre, think again. Face Training DS is the latest release in the Touch Generation series from Nintendo.

The software will come with a stand for the DS and a Facening Scan camera that will display the player’s face on screen. Players will follow the text and voice instructions accordingly and proceed to flex those facial muscles.”

Perhaps the most important part of this story is the DS camera, which opens up the platform to even more interactivity. The game ships August 2 in Japan, and has an official website here.

virt Composes Contra 4; Still Working on VGMix3

On the OverClocked ReMix forums today, Jake “virt” Kaufman posted this little nugget of joy regarding the upcoming Nintendo DS game Contra 4:

Yep! I did music and sound design. I couldn’t confirm it until Mr. Bozon outed me himself, and I’m REALLY glad he did. I was worried that they’d think I violated my NDA if word got to them that people knew I was involved, even though I didn’t spill it.

(and yeah, it’s a big reason VGMix 3 isn’t done yet – my freelancing is sucking up TONS of time.. Gonna have to start snorting meth and/or build a flux capacitor. But this is a big chunk of time freed up, anyway.)

virt’s music is influenced by that of old Konami games and shows powerfully in his chiptune works like FX3, so his soundtrack should fit the Contra feel very well. Even better news is that VGMix3 has not been abandoned. Hopefully he’ll be able to devote more time to its development now that the Contra 4 soundtrack has been finished.

Virt and Christian Pacaud Work on TMNT DS

The new TMNT DS game, aptly titled, “TMNT,” has been released this week. What makes this game so special, other than it being a Ninja Turtles game? Jake Kaufman and Christian Pacaud were involved! Yet another high profile game to add to Jake and Christian’s resumés.
IGN sums up the videogame:

“This Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is
based on the CG animated movie produced by Imagi Animation Studios and based on Mirage Studios’ Foot Clan-kicking Turtle heroes. The game takes place in a New York City plagued by secretive villains and
strange, otherworldly creatures. Faced with these perils, the Turtles will experience their most trying time as heroes and as a family, as Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo lose their focus and struggle to
maintain their unity and ninja discipline.”

Let me tell you now though, those people expecting classic TMNT rock will be disappointed. Virt writes:

“If you’re looking for nostalgic rocking out, you’ll be incredibly disappointed – this is a much darker game than the old ones, so I wasn’t allowed to unleash the Konami rock fury, it’s mostly orchestral/electronic underscore and beats, with guitar in only a few tracks (as a motif for a specific character) Decision from up high, nothing we could do.”

He goes on to say more in this VGMix thread, which also has links to videos on IGN, showcasing the game and its music.

SimCity Coming to DS this Summer

From GameSpot:

“Before Will Wright concocted the PC juggernaut The Sims, his previous masterpiece was the metropolis-building SimCity. The franchise has evolved onto several systems since its debut on the PC in 1989 and was recently announced for release in Japan for the DS under the very workman-like name SimCity DS.”

The game appears to be somewhere in between SimCity 2000 and SC3k in terms of features and graphics. The article also mentions use of the DS’s unique features to expand on the original game. WiFi gets some use, but it’s not clear how it will be integrated into gameplay.

SimCity DS will see a worldwide release this summer.

Absolute Tetris DS Destruction

So yesterday I decided to start a game of Endless Marathon mode in Tetris DS, just to see how far I could make it. That a was around 6:30 PM, and I’m still going. I’m at level 165…
I can tell you right now that the game can’t particularly get much faster. The blocks kind of just PLANT themselves, and you have to spin them to get them where you wanted. >_< The people over in #ClanOCR (the IRC channel for all OCR related DS-ing), wanted a video so I upload it over at YouTube. Check it out!

NitroTracker – A Tracker for Nintendo DS

Scene on the go? That’s right. NitroTracker
is a tracker created by Tobias Weyand in the style of FastTracker II for the Nintendo DS.
NitroTracker can load and save XM modules, and use .wav files off your
flashcart or SD card as samples, or even record your own samples using the built
in microphone.

Check it out here!