Hasta La Gadget!

Like most gamers, I have a love-hate relationship with game publishers. I love that they bring cool games market for us to enjoy, but hate the often idiotic ways they try and prevent piracy and secondhand video game sales. One of the most irritating ways that game publishers like Ubisoft try to squeeze money out of gamers who purchase a used video game was by requiring them to purchase an online pass to play any multiple player aspect of the game.

These games come with an online code when purchased new, but that code is only good for one console. That means if you take the game to a friend’s house or give it away, the second owner can’t play it online without spending money. Ubisoft has now announced that its Uplay Passport online pass system is no more.

The game publisher has eliminated that online passport on all of its future games including the soon to launch Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag. That means these games will be playable online even if you buy them secondhand. I’m not a big supporter of secondhand video game sales mostly because for an extra few bucks, I’d rather buy new. I’ve sold use games to places like GameStop before so I know what little money they actually give you for the games to turn around and sell them at a very small discount compared to a brand-new version.

Ubisoft said, “The Uplay Passport program was initiated as a means of giving customers full access and support for online multiplayer and features, along with exclusive content, bonuses, and rewards,” Ubisoft said in a statement.

“However, games today are blurring the line between offline and online, between what is ‘single-player’ and what is ‘multiplayer,’” the statement continues. “Based on that and on the feedback we received from you, we recognized that Passport is no longer the best approach for ensuring that all our customers have the best possible experience with all facets of our games.”

I say good riddance to all such systems.

[via GameSpot]

A couple of years ago we featured the HandyNES, the portable NES console by Sharon Smith aka lovablechevy. Earlier this year she got her first commission, and it was for another HandyNES. But her client had a great idea: to make the handheld look like the NES controller. Behold!

This unit is very similar to the original HandyNES. It’s also based on an actual NES motherboard, has a top-loading cartridge slot, a 3.5″ LCD screen, a 1500mAh battery that should last about 3 hours and is one of the smallest portable NES mods around. This time though the buttons and d-pad are from a NES controller, and it doesn’t have a USB port for a second NES controller.

Sharon shows off the new HandyNES in the video below, demonstrating features such as its A/V-out and low battery indicator.

If you’re interested in asking Sharon to make you a HandyNES, just contact her on her YouTube channel or on her Facebook page. She says she charges $550 (USD) for the basic unit. Check out Sharon’s thread on the Made by Bacteria forum for more on her mod.

EA Sports has announced that it and Tiger Woods have mutually agreed to end their partnership on golfing video games. At the same time, the company has announced that it will be continuing to make golf video games and its partnership with the PGA will continue.

EA Sports has offered up an image comparing a screenshot of the same course taken from a current generation game compared to a next-generation golf title that is currently in the works. One look at the image and it’s clear that the visuals in the next-generation golfing game are significantly improved and offer much more realism than the current generation game.

EA Sports will be making PGA Tour golf games for consoles and mobile devices. There’s no indication of when the new game will launch at this time, but it sure does look good. EA promises that more news on its next-generation golf game will be coming soon.

Link isn’t known for being flashy or even stylish, but fans still associate him and his series with bling, thanks to Nintendo’s tradition of releasing gold cartridges and systems for The Legend of Zelda games. The talented console modder Zoki64 and his customer steal that trick from Nintendo and then some by making a sparkly Ocarina of Time-themed Nintendo 64.

Zoki64 gave the console a metal flake finish, causing it to twinkle in direct light like an angsty vampire.

Put your shades on and skip to about 0:30 in the video below:

Zoki64 also made a more subdued gold Zelda casemod but with a Famicom console. Check that out and the rest of his eye-popping work on his deviantART page.

[via it8bit]

There are many areas around the US that have speedy broadband Internet service, but some of us still labor behind incredibly slow connections that take forever to download large files.

With the impending launch of the PS4, the premier launch title Killzone: Shadow Fall is getting a lot of press. Incredibly, the original size of the game files before compression was used was a whopping 290 GB according to details recently published. Considering the game has always been intended to be offered as a digital download, I can only imagine how long that download would take at my house.

Shadow Fall was eventually compressed down to 40 GB to enable it to fit on a Blu-ray disc. That said, 40GB is still a massive download for people who opt to purchase digitally. One reason the game was so large was because all of the textures are incredibly high resolution. The game also reportedly has a very large surface area around 5 to 10 times larger than Killzone 3 offered.

“I think at some point the disc image that we were generating was around 180 gigs,” said Guerrilla Games’ technical director Michiel van der Leeuw. “And if we would have put all the levels in, which we didn’t, because then the disc image generator broke, it would have been around 290 gigs of data.”

The good news for people hoping to purchase the game in digital format is that the PlayStation 4 will have the PlayGo system that allows you to download only a portion of the game before you can play. The bad news is that portion is still 7.5 GB meaning many people will wait many hours just to download the first portion of the game. Probably better to just buy the game on disc, if you ask me.

[via Forbes]