Another major gaming event coming up - the Tokyo Game Show is prepping to get its game on this year. Publishers are starting to whip out their lineups for the said event, and today's lineup comes from Square Enix. To No surprise at all, they'll be taking a very FF-clad lineup to TGS 2009.

Hi folks, thanks to all of you for taking part, and a big thanks to the wonderful folks at Digital Innovations for sponsoring this awesome contest. After a couple of days of furious commenting we finally have a winner, that winner is...

Square Enix's newly patented title, Lord of Vermilion, has launched its website. Although the website is still currently in its native Japanese, the main page does promise that a "special movie" is coming out soon.

Follow the link for the website.

Another "Woot!" moment brought to you by the folks over at Nintendo. PALGN Australia reports that Nintendo have three new (old?) titles from the old Sega system (the "Megadrive") shipped right to your trusty Wii via Virtual Console: Streets of Rage, Sword of Vermillion and Bio-Hazard Battle. Now you can get right down to gaming, unless you're one of those plagued by PAL video issues.

Streets of Rage is definitely a keeper. If you don't know tough-kneeing Axel Stone, swift high-kicking Blaze Fielding, or karate-kicker Adam Hunter in this side-scrolling beat-em-up game, here's a chance to give them a try. Oh, just don't use the Special Attack right away...it may look cool, but it's a one time gig.

Sword of Vermillion, for those who don't remember, was that RPG game that borrowed a lot of names from so many fantasy stories, it's hard to keep track of the game's history. It's also the name of the most powerful weapon in the game, but that doesn't surprise you does it? Plus, it's one of the first RPGs that didn't sport timed combat like those in the Final Fantasy series. You fought enemies in real time.

Bio-Hazard Battle, before Capcom's Biohazard, was one of those weirder side-scrolling shooters that are so popular in Japan. It sported you on a mutated beast that could shoot and power up shields. What? We did say it was weird. The game had a really awesome soundtrack. If you have great speakers on that television of yours, you can check the thumps on those bass chords.

    

Sega America and Sega Europe just announced that they will soon be adding four retro Sega titles to the Wii's growing Virtual Console line up. The titles that they will be releasing in one of the Wii's regular VD updates would be Sword of Vermillion, Vectorman, Sonic Spinball, and Beyond Oasis. All titles can be purchased for 800 Wii Points.

Sword of Vermilion was originally released in 1990, and is remembered as the first game that was designed by the game designer Yu Suzuki, who later went on to create Out Run and Virtua Fighter. It was also the last RPG for the Sega Genesis that came with a guide book. As for Vectorman, it was released in 1995 and was known for the use of pre-rendered 3D models in its level and character designs, even though the game itself was actually a 2D platformer. The game consisted of 16 levels.

Sonic Spinball was released in 1993 for the Sega Genesis, but was later ported to the Game Gear. It was also released on the Master System in 1994. Lastly, Beyond Oasis first made its appearance in 1994, and is also known by its other name, The Story of Thor, in Europe and Japan. It is a prequel to the Sega Saturn title Legend of Oasis which was released in 1996. Another notable bit about Beyond Oasis is that its music was composed by Yuzo Koshiro who is known for his work on Streets of Rage, Super Adventure Island, Shenmue, Namco X Capcom, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin and Etrian Odyssey.

When it comes to some games, it seems that the Japanese have all the fun. Especially now that Nintendo has released the VC titles set for February. We want them too (insert puppy dog glazed eyes here.) Until Nintendo realizes that - we're stuck to waiting and hoping.

Famicom (NES) - Galaga, Kirby's Adventure, Mighty Bomb Jack

Super Famicom (Super NES) - Fire Emblem: Genealogy of Holy War, Kamaitachi No Yoru, Shin Megami Tensei, Super Ghouls 'N' Ghosts, Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV

Nintendo 64 - The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time

Mega Drive (Genesis) - Bonanza Bros., Gain Ground, Comix Zone, Bio-Hazard Battle, Streets of Rage, Beyond Oasis, Vectorman, Sword of Vermillion

PC Engine (TurboGrafx 16) - Soldier Blade, Vigilante, Chew Man Fu, Shadow Land, Wonder Momo

Ahh, nostalgia strikes again. Now, it's time to play the waiting game with Nintendo. We can hope to see some of these titles in the near, err... well in the future.

One of the most highly addictive game genres are puzzles. You gotta admit, the gameplay is real basic, yet there's just something about puzzles that holds our attention at deadlock.

To further aggravate this welcome addiction of ours, Highsight has just informed us via our forums about his homebrew puzzle game PSPOmok, which he describes as a "much cooler Tic-Tac-Toe from Japan." The basic objective of the game is to arrange five pieces to go diagonal, horizontal, or vertical.

Current game features include Player vs Player games, a 15x15 grid of pure puzzling fun, and - the cool part - customizable pieces and boards. We know you're curious as to how this can be done so let's get to the how-to's now, shall we?

Make your own Pieces:

• Make a Directory named "Piece" (without the quotes).
• Replace with the highest number of pieces already made. (Example: if there is a folder named "Piece3", your folder must be named "Piece4".) If the folders are not in linear order, your new piece will not show up.
• Within the new directory, you will need to put the piece in there.  The Piece's name has to be Piece1.png and 15x15.
• Then, make a text file named Piece.txt, in the folder, it must say "frames = <# of frames>" (without the quotes) and "delay = ".  If your Piece is not animated, then set the frames to 1, and the delay to 0. If it's animated, place all the frames into the directory named "Piece1.png, Piece2.png, Piece3.png...".
  

Make your own Boards:

• Make a directory named "Board" and Within this folder, you need a few files: Board1.png (not animated yet), DrawGame.png, Player1Wins.png, Player2Wins.png, Selector1.png (animated), Selector.txt, Turn1.png (animated) and Turn.txt.
• If you want to make the Selector or the Turn Marker animated, you have to do it the same way you would do the Pieces. And make sure that when you make the board, the grid part of the image should start at 8x6, and end at 260x262, with 16x16 intervals. Otherwise the Pieces won't be aligned.
• Also, the Player 1 Pieces Preview starts on 325x44 and ends on 339x58, and the Player 2 Pieces Preview starts on 417x44 and ends on 431x58.

Highsight says that he's yet to add AI, WiFi (Infrastructure) games, and animated boards so while we wait for that, why don't ya check out this version first, see if you'll like it. Highsight would also like to give kudos to Vermillion, Grimfate126, and Omok for being his "inspiration" for this game.

Oh, make sure you check out the readme, alrighty?

Download: [PSPOmok]
Discuss: [Forum release thread]

After releasing his Drum Simulator v0.2 just yesterday, LUA coder (Drum Simulator)">Vermillion is back once again with another music-themed homebrew app called Instrulator, the Instrument Simulator.

As the app's name says, what Instrulator basically does is that it simulates musical instruments, allowing users to learn how to play certain musical instruments even if they don't have the real thing. The app is coded in Lua and Vermillion would like to give muchos kudos to TacticalPenguin for helping him enable multiple sounds to play simultaneously. Here's the list of stuff that's changed for this Instrulator update:

Changelog:

• Sounds can be played at the same time
• Now includes a menu and trumpet simulator
• Better Bass Drum Sound
  

Vermillion also says that he needs more requests for instruments, so hear ye all music lovers out there! Make sure you drop Vermillion a line in our forums to request for your desired instrument. If he doesn't get any requests, Vermillion says he'll probably just push through with his piano idea. Anyway, there ya have it. To get the Instrulator, ya know what to do, just click on the link below and you're all set.

Download: [Instrulator]
Discuss: [Forum Release Thread]

Over at the QJ forums, Vermillion has just released Drum Simulator v0.1. As can probably be gathered just by looking at the title, this is a LUA-coded drum simulator for the PSP.

Right now, you can only play one sound at a time (no hitting the high-hats while banging on the snare yet). According to Vermillion, this is due to a delay that he put in between sounds. Without the delay, Vermillion says that the simulator tends to sound like "Joey Jordison on double jump." The coder hopes to sort this out in the next version along with making the sounds better.

For comments and suggestions, click on the 'discuss' link below. Vermillion also says that he'll be doing other instruments that people might want to request, so give him a shout out if you have something in mind. Keep checking back here on QJ for more updates.

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Update: Vermillion has just updated his Drum Simulator to version 0.2. The most (and only) notable change in this version is that it allows sounds to be played at the same time. Makes one think what this dev will be doing next with this app...

Download: [Drum Simulator v0.2]
Download: [Drum Simulator v0.1]
Discuss: [Forum release thread]