Hasta La Gadget!

Looking forward to the Wii U’s incoming Virtual Console update? No need to wait — despite the service’s post-spring update launch announcement, Nintendo is already rolling out fully functional (and Wii U enhanced) Virtual Console games to the eShop. It’s part of the Famicom’s 30th anniversary celebration, and gives gamers a chance to sample a handful of Nintendo’s best at a hefty discount — only 30 cents a pop. We tossed a few dimes toward a copy of Balloon Fight to give the upcoming service a quick look.

Like all Wii U downloadables, Virtual Console games take up residence on the system menu, flaunting a thumbnail of the game’s title screen underlined with a Virtual Console banner. While loading, players are treated to a preview of the game’s vitals — year released, originating console and number of players supported. Easy enough for Balloon Fight: 1984, the Nintendo Entertainment System and two. Within 15 seconds (we’re looking forward to that speed update, Nintendo) the game’s title screen is mirrored across the gamepad and TV. This is the basic, pure experience — press start, twiddle the thumbsticks and play the game.

Tapping the gamepad’s screen or pressing the ZR button brings up the Virtual Console menu, laying bare the Wii U enhanced features Iwata told us about: restore points and controller settings. 3DS owners should be familiar with the former — restore points allow you to save your game at any moment and restore it without penalty. Little has changed in the feature’s jump to the home console, and usage is straightforward — just tap the onscreen buttons to save or restore. The Controller settings menu, on the other hand, is new, allowing users to remap the game’s controls to their liking. The menu’s capabilities are limited, however — analog sticks and the d-pads won’t tolerate reassignment. As promised, playing on the Wii U gamepad is an option, but it isn’t necessary. Traditional Wii remotes work just fine (for both single and multiplayer), and the tablet-controller’s screen can be disabled through the regular Wii U menu. Miiverse is supported too, of course, dropping users into a Balloon Fight community when launched from the game.

The Wii U Virtual Console’s official launch may still be a few months off, but based on the first game in the Famicom 30th Anniversary Virtual Console trial campaign, it’s shaping up to be a strong evolution of its predecessor. Controller mapping allows users to manually sidestep control issues — something select games suffered from on the Wii VC when paired with a Gamecube controller. Save states have been a boon to 3DS owners not accustomed to the challenges of classic Nintendo games, and is a welcome addition to the full-sized Virtual Console setup — after all, how else are we supposed to get a decent score in Balloon Trip mode?

Filed under: Gaming, Nintendo

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NAMM is yet to open its doors fully, but we managed to sneak a hands-on with the freshly announced Orbit DJ controller from Numark at the press preview. As you can see, the wireless device looks like a game controller that crashed into a disco — it’s certainly distinctive. This is no accident, and the design is purposely built with quick and easy button access in mind, letting DJs (and any MIDI-based performers) step out from behind the DJ booth, and onto the stage. The portability of the Orbit is further amplified by the inclusion of a clip-mount on the rear, as well as lanyard-style strap hoops. It feels light yet solid, and the soft-touch finish means your hands won’t get tired gripping this thing in the throws of a drum-pad solo. The name Orbit also evidently refers — at least in part — to the near-symmetrical design which lets you hold it either way with the same comfortable access to those brightly-lit, colorful controls. Those pads feel smooth, yet tactile — and most importantly — responsive. Tap past the break for more impressions.

That central dial you see in the middle is designed to be used as a multi-purpose knob, and is big enough for you to comfortably thumb it, while still reaching the side controls. There are four buttons which can be assigned as “virtual rotaries,” and once selected, spin that wheel to modulate whatever you have it assigned to (filters, reverb amount etc.). The other set of four buttons let you expand those 16 pads out to a potential 64, so if you want one bank for controlling lights, one for sample triggering, and another for hot-cues, you can do this all from the one small device. It’s not just the external controls that make this interesting, the internal two-axis accelerometer, which can be assigned to parameters of choice, will definitely add a new dimension to what’s possible. Sadly we weren’t able to try this out, but already we’re thinking of some interesting uses. There’s a micro-USB port on one side for charging and tethered use. We only had a short amount of time with the Orbit, but already we could see its potential for enhancing performance. It’s not meant to replace anything in your existing set-up, rather to enhance it, and given the flexibility of MIDI, this could mean a whole host of interesting uses. The crowd of folk waiting to get a closer look behind us certainly showed that it’s piquing people’s interest. Set to be released in spring for a reasonable $100, this looks like a promising start to 2013 for Numark. Check the video tour below for more.

Billy Steele contributed to this report.

Filed under: Misc, Peripherals

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While many of us love playing games on the iPad, we often lament the lack of physical controls inherent to the platform. Audojo is hoping to change this with an iPad gaming case which is launching today on Kickstarter. The accessory works with any iPad 2 or newer, and features a pair of analog joysticks, two shoulder buttons and stereo speakers. Unlike other mobile game controllers like iFrogz’s Caliber Advantage or PowerA’s Moga / Moga Pro, Audojo skips Bluetooth for a low-latency microphone-based interface.

The case slides open just enough to accommodate an iPad and, once closed, wraps around both ends of the tablet without interfering with any of the cameras, buttons, or the 30-pin / Lightning port. Audojo automatically connects to the iPad via the standard 3.5mm audio jack, which is replicated at the bottom of the case next to a power switch, LED and mini-USB connector (for charging). It’s important to note that the accessory is not designed to charge the iPad, something that would require a larger battery and increase complexity / cost. We spent some time with a prototype iPad gaming case and came away pretty satisfied — head past the break for our impressions.

At first sight, Audojo’s prototype looks a little clunky since it adds quite a bit of bulk to the iPad’s figure. Once you pick it up, however, that’s all quickly forgotten — it’s light and well balanced and feels comfortable in hand. The analog joysticks and shoulder buttons are in just the right place — if you’re used to playing console games, you’ll be right at home. If there’s any room for improvement, it’s with the pods that house the shoulder buttons, electronics and batteries at the back of the case. These are currently too wide but Audojo plans to remedy this before production thanks to an improved circuit board layout. We were impressed with the prototype’s build quality (it’s CNC machined), especially the design of the sliding mechanism used to capture the iPad. Production units are slated to be thinner, with flush PSP-like analog joysticks and two headphone jacks (instead of one). Battery life presently beats the iPad when blasting the built-in speakers, and stretches to several weeks (!) when listening with headphones.

Audojo currently integrates with Unity (with a package available in the Unity Asset Store) and provides a native Objective C SDK. The company is very interested in connecting with developers and is offering special packages ($600 and up) that include prototypes as part of its Kickstarter campaign. A few games already support the iPad gaming case, including 1948: Dawn of Future and Cowboy Guns (both available in the App Store) plus the Unity demo Angry Bots and the unofficial iOS port of Quake III — it’s even been used to control Parrot’s AR Drone and Sphero. The accessory is expected to ship in July 2013 and retail for $99, but Audojo is making it available today on Kickstarter for $55 (first 200 backers) and up. Take a look at our gallery and hands-on video above, then follow the source link below to check out the campaign.

Filed under: Gaming, Tablets, Apple

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Source: Audojo (Kickstarter)

Today Facebook’s Android iteration has hit version 2.1, bringing with it a variety of features like Voice Messaging and the ability to share in a more wide open way. This upgrade’s ability to record and send voice messages is easily the most important upgrade to the Android version of this app in several weeks, with the ability to open and view photos “faster” being lower on the list. You’ll be able to download this upgrade to Facebook for free from the Google Play app store right this minute.

For those of you unaware, the messaging portion of Facebook in its app form on both Android and iOS is now more diverse in its newest iterations than ever before. In addition to being able to send voice messages, you’re able to type, add emoticons, add a photo from your own gallery, and take a new photo to insert. There’s also an Image Search function that uses – you guessed it – Bing!

When you do an Image Search and find a Bing Images result, you’re able to simply tap that image and have it planted in your message like a pro. Simple and clean indeed. This is one of several ways in which Facebook is working with Microsoft and their Bing search engine here in 2013, their connections rising up in Graph Search most prevalently this past week. Keep an eye on Bing and Facebook for news about one from the other and vice versa in the very near future.

Be sure to check out our SlashGear 101: What is Facebook Graph Search? to see the future of the social network!

Sharing has been updated in this Facebook 2.1 upgrade for Android allowing you to share your friend’s posts (or Stories, as Facebook calls them), to your Timeline, Pages, and Groups galore. Now we’ve only to wait for the rest of the features that the iOS version of the app has – soon, soon! Anyone hear of Facebook staff members being relegated to Android devices until this version of the app is up to snuff? Keep it classy!

Facebook 2.1 hands-on with Voice Messaging for Android is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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We’ve seen a handful of rugged Androids in our time, but none are as affordable and as weird as these ones at CES. The backstory here is that a couple of Chinese guys in camouflage gear approached us at our CES stage, and after an awkward conversation, it turned out that they just wanted to show us the three rugged phones they brought all the way from Shenzhen. Starting from the right we have the Runbo (like Rambo?) X1 IP67-certified featurephone cum walkie-talkie, which packs a 2-inch 176 × 144 display, a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera, a laser pointer, quad-band GSM plus 800MHz CDMA cellular radios, 400 to 470MHz range for the software-configurable walkie-talkie, a surprisingly loud speaker and a 2,200mAh battery. This will be available for ¥980 or about $160 on Taobao online store (the Chinese equivalent of eBay) in the next couple of days, and we’ve been told that there will also be a variant with GPS added.

But the real stars of the show are the two brick-sized vanilla Android 4.0.4 devices. The phone pictured in the middle is the Runbo X5, a device featuring a 1GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 MTK6577 chipset, 1GB RAM, 4GB storage, microSD expansion, a 4.3-inch 800 x 480 IPS display, an app-triggered laser pointer, an eight-megapixel main camera, a 0.3-megapixel front camera, a super loud speaker (again) and a massive removable 3,800mAh battery. And yes, this also comes with a 400 to 470MHz walkie-talkie radio (up to 10km range; with detachable antenna), along with the additional 850/1900/2100 WCDMA radio, two SIM slots (WCDMA plus GSM), WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS. These specs are the same for the Runbo X3 on the left, except for the smaller 3.5-inch 800 x 480 IPS panel to make space for the QWERTY keyboard below it. The best part here are the prices: both of these IP67-certified devices are available on Taobao or the official website for just ¥1,999 or about $320, which is a bargain for both the ruggedness and the fact that these double as standard walkie-talkies. US folks can also order directly from eBay for $380, which is also a steal. But does this surprisingly low price reflect the quality? Find out in our hands-on after the break.

Continue reading Runbo X5 and X3 rugged Android phones moonlight as walkie-talkies, cost just $320

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Runbo, eBay