Most of us are heating up with the impending release of Grand Theft Auto 4, but there's no need to lose your cool. Just like last week, a modest batch of titles will hit shelves as prelude to April's main act. Square Enix is ready to make some noise in The World Ends With You, while Nintendo is letting the Pokemon loose with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness and Explorers of Time. The rest are waiting at the full article.

* Article originally posted Apr 21, 2008 at 12:48AM

Three new entries have found their way into the upcoming NeoFlash Spring Compo 2008 competition: Look Out v0.70, Paper Battle v1.0, and Bumper Harvest. More details in our full article.

Download: Look Out v0.70 NeoFlash Edition
Download: Paper Battle v1.0 (CFW 1.5, CFW 3.xx, Windows)
Download: Bumper Harvest (with LUA player, stand alone Lua version)

Here's the first E3 trailer video of Crave Entertainment's pinball title Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection for the the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo Wii platforms. The video game is scheduled to become available this Summer and is a follow up to Gottlieb Pinball Classics also for the above mentioned consoles.

Anyway, just like the name implies, The Williams Collection features a total of eight classic tables including the first ever talking pinball machine Gorgar, 1984 wonder Space Shuttle, and even the table named Black Knight which introduced Magna-Save and Bonus Ball.

If you want to know more, just watch the video clip below as it also reveals some of Pinball Hall of Fame's added features. The Wii version will be priced for US$ 29.99 while the PSP version will be sold for US$ 19.99.

 

Tons of more info about the upcoming PlayStation Portable title that has heads turning - and rolling - with this QJ exclusive interview of Dead Head Fred. We give you the skinny on what's the absolute latest with this game, with all the facts supplied by none other than Eric Peterson himself, President and all-around bigwig of Vicious Cycle Software, Inc.

For the uninitiated, Dead Head Fred's about gumshoe Fred Neuman who's lost quite a bit off the top after being brought back from the dead. Instead of trying to live a normal life - as normal as someone without a head can possibly be, anyway - Fred's seeks revenge on the people who made him lose his head, and with him on the warpath, heads are going to roll.

The full interview awaits after the jump!

PSP homebrew coder ector has just come out into the open with a release we're sure the PSP community will take a shine to. It's the source codes for the Potemkin homebrew - an experimental Windows-based open source HLE PSP Emulator. Here are the noted features for this app:
 
Features: (end-user point of view)

• Plays Puzzle Bobble Pocket JAP
• Starts AI Go
• Runs numerous demos from the PSP SDK

Technical Features:

• Badly simulated PSP kernel
• Mounts ISOs and CSOs (no DAX!)
• Mounts Windows directories (no good UI yet for this)
  

Now, before you guys get too excited over this release, make sure to remember the following:

• This is a source code release - Potemkin won't work unless its codes are properly compiled.
• Expect plenty of bugs - ector reports that only three PSP games work: Pinball, Puzzle Bobble Pocket, and Puyo Puyo. Compatibility for other games is still under works.
• Homebrew compatibility: There have been reports that Potemkin is currently unable to load .pbp but will run .elf files.
• Potemkin needs Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 - Install this pack before attempting to run the homebrew. We've provided for a download link below.
• Source Codes released under the GPL license - This is an invitation for fellow coders to try their luck with this program.
• Check the README (aka RTFM) - All important author notes should be here

Given that this application's still a rough prototype, we discourage first-time users and non-programmers from trying it out. With that said, we'd like to congratulate ector for this achievement, and hope that a polished version gets released in the near future.

Download: Potemkin PSP Emulator for Windows (Source Codes)
Download: Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1

A fine Monday mornin' to you lads and ladies of the fairest kind, we're here with  a mammoth interview that sheds some light on one of my 15 most anticipated PSP games, Dead Head Fred.

QJ: When we last saw Dead Head Fred at E3 it was already looking pretty polished, what improvements and additions have been made since then?

Peterson: At E3 we demonstrated a level know as Zombietown.  What you were able to play was approximately 30 minutes of gameplay within a level that was strictly built for E3 – almost as a tutorial or intro to the mechanics that players will see at the end of our development cycle.  This demo gave the player a vertical slice of what the final product will eventually become.  Zombietown in the actual game is much larger than and not as linear as the E3 version.  We intentionally blocked off roads and passages so that E3 players could get a good idea of what the game was about in a short period of time.

What has happened since then?  A lot! We’ve been working on mechanics, level design and generation, enemies and mini-activities.  Dead Head Fred is a very ambitious game and we plan to deliver on all fronts.  We want people to buy a PSP just to play Dead Head Fred.  

We are currently heading into final geometry and texture stages of the levels, completing second and third passes on the mini-activities, like pinball, Dirty Pool (billiards), the Feather Dome (mutant rooster arena fighting), fishing (you fish for what else – mutant fish!  And some unique items are also found while fishing), and so on.  As we head into our final portion of development, we will wrap up with game balancing tweaks and cinematics.

       

Come on in and read the rest of the interview after the jump!