Opoona is a role-playing game developed by ArtePiazza and published by Koei for the Wii. It was released in September 2008 and is an exclusive to Wii title that is easy to play and suitable for ages 7 and up but enjoyable for all to play and watch with a soundtrack produced by Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy XII) it keeps you involved and you don’t want to let go.
The player follows the story of Opoona a descendant of the brave cosmo guard as he attempts to find the location of his family from which he was separated after the occurrence of a mysterious accident during their travels.
We’re only a few days away from Wrath of the Lich King, the hotly anticipated 2nd expansion to World of Warcraft and to coincide with its launch, strategy guide publisher BradyGames have announced their 352 page official strategy guide.
The book will be your essential companion as you navigate the deadly new continent of Northrend, discover the many new features the expansion offers and put a stop to the deadly Lich King Arthas. Available from November 13th, the same day the expansion launches, the guide retails with an RRP of £16.99.
Follow the jump for details about what’s in the book and also how you could win a copy in our competition…
Stretching the term “portable” somewhat, Edifier have produced a zero compromise 2.1 portable audio solution that includes a discrete subwoofer and two satellites in a nifty little carry case.
It’s all really rather pretty, with the 9w subwoofer made from brushed aluminium and two tasteful satellite speakers in a spherical design with metal weave speaker grills.
The speakers take 12v of DC, meaning they’re not feeble USB powered nonsense and use a standard 2.3mm stereo line in so you can use them with pretty much any audio source.
16:9 aspect ratio displays are looking like the next thing in line to sweep over modern computing and gaming. With movie aspect ratios growing ever wider and shorter our 16:10 screens are looking somewhat narrow and leave us with some serious letter boxing. Ick!
ViewSonic have pushed out the VX2260wm, a 1080p, 16:9 display packed into 22 inches of screen real-estate and boasting a 1920×1080 desktop resolution which is fairly rare in a computer display.
Despite its inherent unsuitability for desktop work, at 22″ that 1080p is going to cause some serious eye-strain, the VX2260wm is looking like a fantastic companion to a bedroom Xbox 360 or PS3 and gaming PC. Judging by the specifications, however, it looks like it’s lacking an HDMI port or two.
You may, or may not, have noticed that we’re getting fairly close to that most wonderful time of the year, when radio stations start playing Mistletoe & Wine, scarf and gloves become a daily necessity and mince pies are back on the supermarket shelves.
It’s also a time of the year where a fiercely drawn out competition takes place on both the real and virtual high street between the manufacturers of toys, games and other technology wonders.
The Gadgetoid team was kindly invited down to the St Martins Lane Hotel, London to get a hands-on look at some of Microsofts games and gadgets that will be available in stores in time for christmas. Follow the jump for our thoughts about the New Xbox Experience, Live Mesh and more…
Samba De Amigo was released on the 26th September in the UK and is The first entirely Wii based rhythm driven game. Developed by Gearbox Software and Published by Sega the game was sure to be very popular with all audiences.
The game was originally released back in 1999 by Sega in Arcades and then released on the Dreamcast in 2000 before being given a makeover by Gearbox Software and released on the Wii in 2008. This Latin music based rhythm game will make you want to shake your maraca’s until the sun goes down and then on even longer.
Alas, I’ve been so addicted to actually playing with it, and so busy traveling down for the Microsoft Christmas Showcase that I didn’t have time to crank out a review to coincide with its release, rest assured a review is on its way for this fantastic iPhone synth- if you’re in a fit of indecision about whether or not to purchase it that must be resolved immediately then take my advice and do so!
I can say, with absolute certainty, that if you have any interest in sound design or synthesized music then this is an absolutely essential iPhone purchase that will blow you away with its sheer power. The idea of turning your iPhone into a pocket-sized synthesizer with this much power seems like a pipe dream, Noise.io has not only gone and done it but set the bar so absurdly high for competition it’ll likely be unchallenged for months, if not forever.
The concept of an iPhone Synthesizer is pretty brave, the memory management issues in the iPhone’s firmware are a pain to deal with and cause every single application to experience periodic crashes. You’ll be using Noise.io so often that you will, unfortunately, experience crashes and perceive them as being more frequent. Rest assured, though, that Noise.io is freakin’ stable and rebooting your iPhone before (and after, if you want other Apps to run without crashing) using it is a good idea.
From my first tentative try of the disappointing and absurd Band for iPhone, to immediately googling “iPhone Syntheszier” it’s been about two months with quite significant delays to the release of Noise.io. But those delays have more than paid off with some of the functionality they took the extra time to include, the step sequencer for example, being instrumental to my love of the app. What we have now is an absolutely genuine iPhone Synthesizer that looked so good on paper that people claimed it was vapor-ware. The reality of Noise.io is, however, beating all but the wildest of expectations and the only serious complaints I’ve seen thus far are lack of WAV export and crashes due to the iPhones rather unfortunate take on memory management and Noise.io’s heavy use of the iPhone’s resources. Perhaps a firmware 3.0 will make things better, only time will tell.
I will continue to tinker with Noise.io and create patch banks, but I’m sure there are sound designers out there who will massively eclipse my skills and come out with some awesome content for Noise.io that will go down a storm with the less tech-savvy owners and with those who just want to use Noise.io as a live performance tool.
Episode 1 of our Audio Podcast is up on t’internet ready for you to listen in. You can subscribe to our podcast with the following URL http://www.dxdec.com/gadgetoid/gadgetoid.xml
In this first episode we take a look at some notable games in the first half of 2008. It’s our first ever episode, so bear with us, we’ve made every effort to achieve good sound quality and, with the help of some Sennheiser microphones, a generous amount of filtering and some miraculous almost uninterrupted peace and quiet, we believe we’ve achieved it.
Outdoor security monitoring just got tougher, with Swann’s entry level, solid metal OutdoorCamT. With full colour day mode and black and white night mode you will be hard pushed to find a time or place that you can’t watch comfortably from the sofa in your gadget infused home.
11 infra-red LEDs provide the light necessary for night-time monitoring up to about 5 meters.
The metal casing and sun shield keep the camera secure against the elements but aren’t likely to stand up to an intentional attack, so you’re going to need barbed wire, trenches and attack dogs to back it up.
Super Smash Bros Brawl is one of the big named games to hit the Wii in 2008 and needless to say, it lives up to all expectations.
Super Smash Bros Brawl (or SSBB as I will call it from now on) was released for no other platform than the Wii; hence I have the awesome job of reviewing it. SSBB was developed by Sora and Published by Nintendo, it’s the Third game in the Super Smash Bros series, with new characters, new levels, new missions and new bad guys as the game goes through.
When I first heard about SSBB I decided that it was a title that would need looking into so on that note, I had a look to see what people thought of it. The findings were impressive, so I decided it was about time I got a copy and reviewed it, so would you believe it that there just happened to be a copy floating around to be reviewed, what luck!
Opoona is a role-playing game developed by ArtePiazza and published by Koei for the Wii. It was released in September 2008 and is an exclusive to Wii title that is easy to play and suitable for ages 7 and up but enjoyable for all to play and watch with a soundtrack produced by Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy XII) it keeps you involved and you don’t want to let go.
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We’re only a few days away from 
You may, or may not, have noticed that we’re getting fairly close to that most wonderful time of the year, when radio stations start playing Mistletoe & Wine, scarf and gloves become a daily necessity and mince pies are back on the supermarket shelves.
Samba De Amigo was released on the 26th September in the UK and is The first entirely Wii based rhythm driven game. Developed by 
games to hit the Wii in 2008 and needless to say, it lives up to all expectations.
