Hiya, its me, shadowhunter again! I think I am going to start something new for now, I think I will call it Fun To Read Blogs! My goal is every day or two, I will post a new blog article about something really random that is on my mind! Oh wait… my weekends are really busy so I may not get much done… we’ll see how things play out. This is probably not going to do so hot once school comes around, but for now, this will be something fun. And without further ado, I present to you Fun To Read Blog Article No. 1: Summer Activities and Fun!
Guys, we’ve been on summer vacation for a few weeks, maybe a month and a half for some. As we say our farewells to July, we see August, which kinda means school is almost here. It also means time to do summer homework and I can’t loaf around anymore. But in between these bouts of homework, there’s still time for activities and fun all around! Did any of you guys go on vacation? Are you guys planning vacations? Me, I’ve got SAT Prep classes until August 24, and then I have a two week break period and then I take practice tests every Friday and Saturday until October 8, when I actually take the SAT. Oh no! And then my buddies start whining about how I never go around because of my SAT school, not my fault! I think I’m going to Vegas after my school gets out for break session, but I really have no plans yet. Let me roll of what I did this summer: since June 19, I have been loitering, going to SAT school 4 days a week, playing and “finding” NDS games to play, and playing Warriors Orochi 2, with my XBox 360! I just got Warriors Orochi 2 days ago and I seriously love it. I still don’t understand why people hate this game so much. Yeah, so what if its a Dynasty Warriors type game. I’m kinda the UBER fanboy for these games! Here’s a screenie of it in case you guys are curious:
Hiya to the folks of DSDatabase! I’m shadowhunter, and I’m a new blogger here to help PharaohsVizier make DSDatabase a more active community (It’s big already hehe). Now, I happen to visit many different anime forum networks, and one particular topic came up that got my brain running and now I want to know an answer to it. The question was, “How old is Ash Ketchum?” For those of you guys who do not know, (I’d be shocked if you didn’t) Ash is the protagonist in the popular series Pokemon (duh). It’s mainly about Ash trying to become a Pokemon master, by catching all these Pokemon and competing in a league the region offers. I do not know what season the Japanese anime is on, but the dub series is on Season 12. This chum started his journey all those years ago as a 10 year old kid, and being on Season 12, it looks like he hardly aged at all, with the only sign of his aging being a voice change (maybe to signal his puberty?). Look at him then, look at him now.
There is a new DSi update floating around in Australia, Europe and Japan that is blocking out ALL DSi flash carts. Currently it is not yet available in North America, but please be aware that this update BLOCKS ALL DSI FLASH CARTS.
I will update this post when or if there are updates for flash carts to regain their ability to boot.
Working: EZ Flash Vi (first updatable cart with an update)
Hyper-R4i (updatable)
R4i Gold Box (they are not updateable, you need to purchase the news one that are being released from August 10th and on)
AceKard 2i (fully updatable)
R4 Ultra (stole the update from the AceKard team, but works)
Doesn’t work, has updatable boot-loader, possible that an update may fix it:
M3i Zero
Supercard DS ONEi
Doesn’t work, not quite sure what the status is. No official word on whether it has an updatable boot-loader or not (unlikely though):
iPlayer: Doesn’t work
Doesn’t work, unlikely to ever work again, perhaps new batches in the future will work, but all old batches are most likely dead:
iTouch2 most R4 clones
DSTTi most DSTTi clones
We’re hosting yet another tournament and raffle. I guess for the casual viewers, I’ll talk about the raffle first. It is open for registration right up until the end of the Jump! Ultimate Stars tournament, and requires 5 posts. You can make the posts betwen now and the time the raffle begins, so there is no rush. The prize is one Supercard DS ONEi flash cart kit.
The tournament is just like the old ones. The game is Jump! Ultimate Stars, and in order to combat unfair combos, Shadz and jincongz have agreed to help me out. All registrants must include 3 teams. You can post them now or edit your signup post before the tournament begins.
Looking for something to do over the summer? And you happen to also be one of those people that never played Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or perhaps never heard of it?? Well it seems like now is a great time to pick up the game because Djipi finally finished his hi-resolution cel-shade mod for the game and released it 5 days ago. (http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?t=49340) I had a bit of spare time, so I put together a quick video of various locations and how the game looks now.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was first released on the N64 in 1998 and is often hailed as the best game of all times. The game was re-released on the Gamecube and Virtual Console with identical graphics, but in two flavors, one original, and one with a higher difficulty level (Master Quest). Needless to say, after 11 years, the graphics, no matter how jaw-dropping they were when first released, were getting bland. Djipi’s cel-shade mod is one of the most extensive retexture projects out there.
To explain what hi-resolution retexture is, some N64 emulators have the ability to replace every single texture of a game with custom ones, and as a result, over the years users have created mods that enhance the game’s visuals. One of the best packs I’ve found was Djipi’s “Celda”. Djipi retextured the game to look as similar to Legend of Zelda: Windwaker as possible, and the results are fantastic.
Hey! The raffle that had far too many entries and took way too long finally came to an end. The odds were 0.57% with 352 entries and 2 prizes. Anyways, here is the raffle video, I hope you all enjoyed it. And remember to try and stick with your summer goals!
As usual, if you want to skip the video, just read the first comment below for the winners.
I’ve had the iPlayer for 3 days now, and I have to thank our newest sponsor for providing it. So if you want to support future reviews and projects at DSDatabase, head over to www.4CoolDay.com and buy some stuff.
So a few days back, the cart arrived at my door, I was extremely happy to receive it. There has been a lot of negativity surrounding this cart, and also a lot of hope. The iPlayer is a flash cart device that does something pretty extraodinary, it plays videos and music. Now before you go on to say “you must be mistaken, any other flash cart can do that”, you should ask yourself, can any flash cart play .avi files without conversion? Can they run video off an .mkv container or perhaps play a few .wmv files? No.
The truth is that video support on other flash carts aren’t great. They practically require conversion because the formats they support such as .dpg or .dsm are so rare and pretty much isolated to only the Nintendo DS. The iPlayer can play .avi files, .flv files and even those pesky .rmvb files without conversion. It is a special flash cart because it claims to have extra hardware to decode the video. I was pretty excited to try it out, but honestly, I wasn’t expecting much, it just didn’t really seem possible for me. When I finally got to test it myself, I was blown away. It is an amazing device that is worth every penny.
Just wanted to make a really quick post about the key winners. I did an excel file with the 37 entrants’ emails and used random.org to generate 3 numbers between 1 and 37.
I didn’t take a video or anything since this is a small raffle. Winners should check their emails now. There should be an invite in their inbox. So the winners are:
I finally took the time to finish off the review for the AceKard 2i. Despite being my main cart for the longest time, I didn’t really have the time to do the tests. So now that it is finally up, I think all I have to say is that it is THE budget cart to get. If you are looking for an AceKard for your DS Lite, get the AceKard 2i still, it’s only a few dollars more and the build is much better.
So today I was excited since I knew that the M3i Zero would arrive. The M3 team kindly sent me a sample and it even arrived before the release date, so that’s pretty cool (especially since the packaging was marked EXTREMELY URGENT).
Anyways when I opened the packaged I saw the M3i Zero box for the first time. It is quite similar to the M3DS Real, I actually prefer the lighter color on the M3DS Real box, but who cares. Opened it up, it has the same clear case as the M3DS Real, but in it was the M3i Zero. There was also a tray with the USB cable and MicroSD reader.
The odds were 0.57% with 352 entries and 2 prizes. Anyways, here is the raffle video, I hope you all enjoyed it. 
