Exophase have got a few details on a new PS3 pack to be launched in Europe to co-incide with the release of Grand Theft Auto IV.

According to a listing over at big-name Swedish retailer Webhallen, a 40GB equipped Grand Theft Auto IV PlayStation 3 bundle is scheduled to hit Europe on April 29, alongside the launch of the standalone game.

The GTA IV themed bundle is priced at 4499kr, which roughly equates to €399.99 in Euro. While SCEE has yet to officially announce or confirm the bundle, it’s no secret that retailers are usually given advance information on products such as this.

Looks pretty good to me, and another reason to save the pennies to buy a PS3.

Sony have released a new PSP firmware, this time its version 3.95. This update is available via the network update for those of you running a standard official Sony PSP firmware. Those of you using a custom firmware should steer clear (in most cases the custom firmware will block the offical update from being used).

This firmware update has added the following to the PSP’s functions -

* While playing PSone games on your PSP, you can now customize how the buttons are assigned by going to [Controller Settings] > [Assign Buttons] and select [Custom].
* You can now quit Remote Play and choose to turn off your PS3 or leave it on after quitting. This is useful if you are performing a download and want to quit Remote Play, but still want your download to continue on the PS3. Select [Quit and Turn Off the PS3 System] or [Quit Without Turning Off the PS3 System] from [Quit Remote Play] when you press the HOME button on the PSP system.

Its certainly not a list of enhancements to get your pulse quickening, but if you are using a standard PSP firmware then you may want to upgrade to this latest release.

At the moment I’m wondering if we are going to see some big additions for version 4.00 of the official Sony PSP firmware - none of the recent revisions have added a huge amount to the PSP, so hopefully when 4.00 finally arrives, it will have some items that make the upgrade worth it.

Its been a while since I’ve seen a PSP Homebrew game that has taken my fancy, with most released of late being a little lacklustre. Nikwi however, looks to be a great little game to while away ten minutes on.

Your role is to guide Nikwi through all the 30 levels, eat all the candies in each level and avoid the monsters and the hazards that each level has.

INSTALLATION
———-
The game will only work on 1.0,1.5 and custom PSP firmwares.
Copy nikwi_deluxe_psp folder to ms:/PSP/GAME (or ms:/PSP/GAME3XX where XX is your custom firmware’s subversion
1.0/1.5 FW users should copy nikwi_deluxe_psp folder to ms:/PSP/GAME and substitute
ms:/PSP/GAME/nikwi_deluxe_psp/EBOOT.PBP with one from 1.5_EBOOT folder

CONTROLS
——
[TRIANGLE] JUMP / SELECT MENUS
[ARROWS] MENU NAVIGATION/ IN-GAME MOVEMENTS
[O] SELECT ON CONFIRMATION / PASSWORD SCREENS
[START] PAUSE/BACK TO GAME

GAMEPLAY
——
Please refer to documents in the manual for details.
Cheating::: you can save level passwords to passwords.dat file in the game directory (one password per line)
The newly saved passwords will be available via password selection blue screen.

Changes:
version 0.5 - Initial release

version 1.0 - Added password selection screen (press [triangle] on password entry screen);
New passwords are saved as the player progresses through the game.
- Added music tracks
- converted FX to use SDL_mixer (faster startup)
- misc PSP-specific optimizations

CREDITS
——
Original game idea & code:
http://www.slashstone.com
Kostas “Bad Sector” Michalopoulos

+++ PSP ADOPTATION PROGRAMMING +++
DENISKA (http://deniska.dcemu.co.uk)

Download Via: DCEmu