Games Toaster

BitRabbit's Yukiko now in Ireland, the UK

At the beginning of the year, Games Toaster reported that ‘Yukiko’, the first game by Dublin based mobile developer BitRabbit, was finished and released, just not in Ireland.

For about a month now, Yukiko has been available for Series 60 mobile phones vie jamster.ie, or jamster.co.uk. For the slightly hidden option of 'single purchase', jamster.ie gave us a price of 4 euro, while the UK site quoted £4.50 (UKP), both not including operator charges.

In addition, the two Jamster sites, which also sell the 'Crazy Frog' ring tone, offered the option of saving "up to 80% with the Jamster! club", however when the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs joint the club recently their experience, like many consumers, wasn’t the best.

The Yukiko is also available in the Carphone Warehouse preinstalled on a 128Mb Multimedia Card (MMC) for £19.95, with two other games (by other developers), Marble Revolution, and Sky Force.

Link: Ireland’s game dev potential, courses

DemonWare founders, Sean Blanchfield, CTO, and Dylan Collins, CEO.
Ireland-based tech website, SiliconRepublic.com, has published an article under the title 'Ireland can dominate games platform business'.

The piece focuses on the words of Dylan Collins, CEO and co-founder of the Dublin games middleware company, DemonWare. “People don’t realise the job opportunities that exist in the games industry. Up until now the only games jobs were overseas. What’s happening now is there is an opportunity for people interested in the games industry to work at home in Ireland”, Collins told SiliconRepublic.com. DemonWare recently got approval from Sony, and Microsoft, to develop versions of their network-play middleware for the PS3, and Xbox 360, respectfully.

Early this month, SiliconRepublic.com also ran a story on the rising numbers of collage and university courses for computer games development, a list of such courses can be found on GameDeveopers.ie.

Small Claims Court rules against Smyth’s in case of broken down “PlayStation”

Judgement, and Director of Consumer Affairs opinion, goes against what consumers are often faced with when complaining to many shops about broken down consoles.

In the print edition of last week’s regional newspaper, the ‘Western People’, it  was reported that Margaret Noonan, of Cloondroon, Milltown, Tuam, original bought a new “PlayStation” console from ‘Smyth’s’ at the price of 199 euro in December 2002, but after it broke down in June 2003 she brought it back to the store where she was given a “re-conditioned PlayStation”. “Ms Noonan was told this was a PlayStation which was as good as new”, reads the Western, however this “re-conditioned” console subsequently broken down in February of this year.

At this point, when she returned the console to Smyth’s, she was told that the warranty only covered it for three months, and that it would cost her 87 euro for second ‘re-conditioned’ console, or 169 euro for a new console.

The claimant then contacted the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs (ODCA), and in the newspaper's own words, she was told, “that when she returned to the shop in June 2003, it was not a question of warranty but the Sale of Goods Act and she should have received a replacement or a refund”.

Judge Geoffrey Browne ordered that Ms Noonan get a full refund of 199 euro, Smyth’s were not represented in court.

“The aim of the Small Claims Court procedure” says the Irish Government’s information website www.oasis.gov.ie “is to provide an inexpensive, fast, and easy way for consumers to resolve disputes without the need to employ a solicitor. The Small Claims service is provided in your local District Court office”. [Further reading: Small Claims Court explained]. Contact details for the ODCA can be found here.

[NOTE: In December of 2002, the PlayStation 2, not the original PlayStation, was priced at 199 euro. However, as we can only re-report what the Western People have published about the case, we have confined naming the console to quoting the newspaper.]

GT4 Champion of Ireland winner

A winner was found, but one apparent runner up claims the event was the “most badly run event in the history of this country”, reports Cian Ginty.

On Monday the 6th, the bank holiday, David Cooney, from Glanmire, Co Cork, fought it out in the finals of the Sony Computer Entertainment Ireland’s GT4 Champion of Ireland competition to come out as the all-Ireland winner.

Sony tells us over 1000 people entered the competition by summiting their times on a specific track in the game to a website, the top 16 entries were gathered at the Nissan Ireland Head Office in Dublin for the knock out based finals. With a top prize of a Nissan 350z Gran Turismo Edition sports car worth over 60,000 euro, and not 55,000 euro as we were told before.

Cooney walked away as the only owner of a GT edition Nissan 350z in Ireland, and an invite to Le Mans as the Ireland representative in the European Final of Sony’s worldwide GT4 competition.

However, for at least one competitor, “Gaid1n”, a user on the Irish discussion site boards.ie, says the event wasn’t so good. Although he says he “Had fun”, the poster claims the event was marred with what he saw as technical inaccuracies such as starting with gaming pods with two TVs, but each TV, he says, screened a split screen displaying both drivers’ cars. 'Gaid1n' also claimed on his assigned pod “Player 2 had to listen to the other persons TV”, citing the problem that they were “both driving the same car which is hard enough to distinguish your engine from the other guy, never mind having to listen to the one beside you”, he states Sony “insisted” that sound was coming from both TVs, although he admits “After the first races, they moved over to the 2 main pods which had its sound hooked up to the PA system which wasn't too bad”.

Ireland Halo 2 tournament winner named, world-final to be played over Xbox Live

Microsoft has named James Barrett ‘TheBar0n’, from Dublin, as the winner of the Ireland leg of their Halo 2 tournament, he will go on to play in the world championship over the Xbox’s ‘Live’ multiplayer service.

The finals will take place next Friday, June 10. Winners from 24 regions will be split intro six groups, the ten minutes matches will be played on the new ‘Warlock’ Halo 2 map. The overall winner will get a 50' Samsung flat screen DLP HDTV, Samsung HD DVD player, the equivalent of $1,500, and a trophy with a 24 karat gold Halo 2 game disc. [to hell with Blu-ray, right?]

The winners worldwide so-far are as follows… Australia: Cabel, Austria: Billykater, Belgium: Project BE, Canada: I DaMan I, Denmark: GermanFreak, Finland: Iw1K1LL, France: I theos I, Germany: Pr0gamer, Hong Kong: Runningboy. Ireland: TheBar0n (James Barrett, Dublin), Italy: N3LucifeRLS, Japan: To be crowned, Korea: Oddwing, Mexico: MexLoco, Netherlands: King Tuur, New Zealand: Bob69er nz, Norway: ZpiKey, Singapore: tidusSG, Spain: IlopsI, Sweden: Shellman, Switzerland: Otcho Boy, Taiwan: I Kobegod I, United Kingdom: o0Lethal0o, United States: To be crowned.