Game Console Hacking: Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Game Boy, Atari, & Sega
Posted on 12.17.10 8:55PM under Console Games
Game Console Hacking: Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Game Boy, Atari, & Sega
The worldwide video game console market surpassed billion in 2003. Current sales of new consoles is consolidated around 3 major companies and their proprietary platforms: Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. In addition, there is an enormous installed “retro gaming” base of Ataria and Sega console enthusiasts. This book, written by a team led by Joe Grand, author of “Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty”, provides hard-core gamers with they keys to the kingdom: specific instructio
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Fallout 3: Game of The Year Edition
- Take in the sights and sounds of the vast Capital Wasteland! See the great monuments of the United States lying in post-apocalyptic ruin!
- Vault-Tec engineers bring you the latest in human ability simulation – the SPECIAL Character System! Utilizing new breakthroughs in points-based ability representation, SPECIAL affords unlimited customization of your character.
- The wizards at Vault-Tec have done it again! No longer constrained to just one view, experience the world from 1st or 3rd person perspective.
- Feeling like a dastardly villain today, or a Good Samaritan? Pick a side or walk the line, as every situation can be dealt with in many different ways.
- Rain death and destruction in an all-new cinematic presentation featuring gory dismemberments and spectacular explosions.
Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition PC
List Price: $ 29.99
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Posted by Dale F. Farris "leado" on 12.17.10 9:30 pm
Major Hacks for Game Console Machines,
This is a fascinating, over-sized book that is filled with major hacks for various of today’s video game consoles, including the Xbox, PlayStation 2, Nintendo NES, along with the Atari and Gamepark 32. The material assumes some degree of comfort with electronics and electrical engineering, although you do not of course have to be an electrical engineer to perform the hacks. You will need to be comfortable with working with integrated circuits, electrical assembly, soldering wires, and dis-assembling electronic devices. Of course, you will also need to be comfortable with possibly ruining beyond repair the discussed device, if you fail to successfully complete the described hacks.
This is a highly specialized book that specifically targets a unique audience, namely those confident in their skills and abilities to follow the excellent hacking instructions and step-by-step “how to hack” photographs that are replete throughout this important book.
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|Posted by Joseph Duart "JD" on 12.17.10 10:19 pm
More hardware hacking books pleaseeeee!,
I just received this book days ago and I have read it cover to cover, of course I haven’t been able to do all the hacks since it means cracking open many of my systems, but I was especially excited about the Atari 2600 stuff, since I am more into old programming and hacking. This book is one of a kind and I am glad people are starting to write books and develop products that show people how the hardware works as well as the software. I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to experiment with hacking their consoles, also the book is fascinating as a general read. And if you liked this definitely check out “Hackers” by levy, “supercade” by burnham, “once upon Atari” DVD and definitely check out the XGAMESTATION retro game system at http://www.xgamestation.com if you want to build some oldschool game hardware.
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|Posted by Thomas Duff "Duffbert" on 12.17.10 10:56 pm
Breathe new life into your old classics…,
Have you got an old Atari 2600 sitting around that you don’t know what to do with? Game Console Hacking will give you some interesting ideas on how to recycle those old gaming consoles.
Chapter list: Tools of the Warranty-Voiding Trade; Case Modifications: Building an Atari 2600PC; The Xbox; PlayStation 2; Nintendo Game Boy Advance; Gamepark 32 (GP32); Nintendo NES; Atari 2600; Atari 5200; Atari 7800; Electrical Engineering Basics; Coding 101; Operating Systems; Index
Although I’m not into gaming so much any more, my kids have had most of the more recent consoles at one time or another. And growing up, I had one of the Atari 2600. But after the latest and greatest comes out, the older gaming systems end up gathering dust. Game Console Hacking is an interesting book on things you can do to breathe new life into the old classics. This book is heavy on altering hardware components, so you need to be comfortable with a screwdriver and a soldiering iron. But even if you’re not as experienced in that area as you’d like, the book has an abundance of photos to show exactly what you should be doing at any given point in the process. At the end of each chapter, there’s also a section on homebrew game development as well as additional resources on the Web for that particular console. So even if you’re not wanting to hack your hardware, you will be able to find information to push your gaming fun even further.
For me, my favorite hack was using an Atari 2600 console to contain a full-blown PC. I thought that was just too cool. I could imagine showing up at a user group meeting to do some software demo with an Atari 2600 under my arm, and blowing people away when I boot it up as a regular PC. I don’t know that I’ll get around to doing it, but it’s an intriguing idea.
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|Posted by NeuroSplicer on 12.17.10 11:22 pm
THE BRAND NEW POSTAPOCALYPTIC DAWN IS NOW COMPLETE!,
I am old enough to have played the original game when it first came out in 1997. I was a great fan of the series that followed and, thus, was very eager to get my hands on this latest installment. In a short sentence: FALLOUT-3 is A DREAM COME TRUE! And now the dream is complete.
It is a cRPG game in which the player can alternate between the First and Third person perspective roaming a world comparable in size with OBLIVION. The action has moved from Vault 13 and Southern California to Vault 101 and Washington, D.C. and the story brakes away from the previous bloodlines. However, the atmosphere of the original has been maintained and its scents sharpened: veterans will find it fitting like and old glove – whereas the new gamers are in store for a bag of pleasant surprises.
The graphics are wonderful, the guns detailed and the environments highly interactive. Short of a screenshot, imagine what would HalfLife-2 would look if released today. And similar to HL2, FALLOUT-3 does not require an…ubercomputer to run smoothly. Once you see a NPC move though, you understand where the corners were cut.
Character customization is carried out in great style using the new and improved PIP-BOY at the beginning. You exit the vault and the harsh reality of a world that barely survived annihilation slaps you on the face. Adapt or perish.
The main storyline is there to be followed but FALLOUT-3 offers the greatest number of alternative choices I have ever encountered in a game! There is always a great number of paths to follow in order to achieve any goal – but every choice comes with a consequences tag. This is common feature of most classic cRPGs but in FALLOUT-3 I saw it implemented like never before. If nothing else, this sends replayability through the roof.
Side-quests offer little besides distraction and experience points (XP) to be spend on character improvement. XP are gained solely by completing quests, emerging victorious from fights, finding locations, picking locks and hacking terminals – and they are not limited by the action they were earned. Leveling up is based on 7 basic attributes [Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility & Luck - acronym?;)] that, in turn, affect your (13) specific skills. Leveling up used to be capped at Level-20 (increased to 30 by installing the DLCs), as the game designers wanted to encourage replaying the game. However, with this increase, now your character can realize its full potential. Replaying the game is still a joy though.
The game is violent and gory but well within tasteful limits. Not so with the language – but it is trade off with realism. In a radioactive world, Sunday-school niceties are bound to go out the window.
What deserves a special mention is V.A.T.S. (:Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) which opens new vistas in cRPG design. It is an ingenious system which lets you pause the game and target specific body parts of your opponents. The success of your attack still depends on your skills but the end effect is cinematic and amazing (remember SWORDFISH?).
This GOTY edition includes all 5 DLCs released so far: OPERATION-ANCHORAGE, THE PITT, BROKEN STEEL, POINT LOOKOUT and MOTHERSHIP ZETA. Compared to the basic FALLOUT 3, applying the above improves the experience immensely! As mentioned above, since one used to reach the Level 20 cap long before the endgame, increasing this by 10 levels will give you a brand new ballgame.
Augmented weapons, new territories, novel foes and unexpected story branching – all for the price of the original game. I own the original game and coveted after these DLCs in the past months, waiting for a complete edition such as this GOTY one. When it became available I jumped at the opportunity to get them all. And did not regret it for a moment.
After the nuclear summer of 2008 (with all the Limited-Installation/defective EA releases), this seems like a post-apocalyptic dawn indeed! BETHESDA decided to listen to the gaming community and did NOT cripple this beautiful game with any idiotic DRM scheme. Inputting a serial number and a DVD-check is more than reasonable.
The publishers of FALLOUT-3 understand that there is a fine balance between “protecting the product” and…”insulting your own customers”. And they obviously view respect as the two way street that it is – and for this they deserve our support: buy this game, today.
Voting with our wallets is the only argument the gaming industry cannot afford to ignore. And it is about time to cast some well deserved positive votes.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
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|Posted by Alabaster Jones "perpenhopher" on 12.18.10 12:03 am
Great game. One of the best ever.,
Fallout 3 is just an amazing game in every respect. If you’re familiar with Bethesda’s other RPGs, you will have a fair idea of what to expect. It is an open world “sandbox” RPG with elements of a FPS. When it was released a year ago, Fallout fans somewhat derisively called it “Oblivion with guns”. Truth be told, on the surface, it is a very fair assessment of this game, but that’s not a bad thing at all! It’s definitely a similar kind of game, but the setting and humor are quite unique. At no time does it feel like any other game you’ve played before, other than the fact that it’s got Bethesda’s signature style all over it. There is so much to do in this game that you can easily get as much or more playtime as a normal game without even touching the main storyline quests. When you take into account the 5 add-on packs that come with this GOTY edition, the “bang to buck” ratio is increased quite a bit in favor of the bang. The add-on packs alone retail for the price of this package. If you already have Fallout 3 without the add-ons, you may as well get this edition and sell your original. If you don’t already have Fallout 3, then there is absolutely no reason to pass on this edition of the game. It was named Game of the Year for a very good reason. In fact, it’s easily one of the best games of the last 10 years.
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|Posted by Nelson F. Puig "nflps" on 12.18.10 12:07 am
rated 4 stars alone,
Rated 4 stars alone but with the all the expansions (and including broken steel that like magic
wil make the games fantastic by adding 10 more levels and increasing the degree of difficulty a lot
from the beginning of the game not the expansions only) So you install all of them and start the
game from the very beginning and it becomes more difficult a lot faster. Stronger enemies, Great new weapons, and fantastic variety of locations, etc. to me there is nothing out there that can match this game as a total package. So I rated 5 stars. This will only apply to the PC version… NP
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