PSVita & 3DS News: Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force Holomatch port for the Vita; TWiLight Menu++ 9.0 released with widescreen mode and Rocket Slime 3 gets an English Translation!
8th generation portable consoles had a good ride but now, their commercial & homebrew life is coming to a close. However, homebrew releases are still trickling out for the PlayStation Vita/Nintendo 3DS and in this article, we’ll be looking at 3 that got published in the last 2 days!
PSVita Release: vitaVoyager, a port of Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force’s Holomatch mode, by Rinnegatamante
It’s no secret that the PlayStation Vita’s game library is pretty lacking in the FPS genre, but thanks to efforts from the homebrew scene, it managed to get quite a few great titles in the genre including DOOM I/II, Quake I-III, Counter Strike, Return To Castle Wolfenstein and many others.
Now, Rinnegatamante has dropped yet another port for the console and that is vitaVoyager, a port of lilium-voyager which is an ioquake3 fork (the Vita has an ioquake3 port in the form of VitaQuake III) that’s compatible with Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force’s Holomatch mode which is its multiplayer mode. From its Wololo /talk thread, the following should be kept in mind when using it:
- By default, the game runs at 480×272 (the PSP’s resolution) as opposed to the PSVita’s native 960×544 resolution
- Obviously, this is done for performance reasons but you can increase the resolution if you wish at the cost of the game’s framerate
- Both local and online multiplayer are supported.
- Bots are supported as well so you can have a botmatch if you’re out and about without an internet connection but still want to play the game
- There is a dynarec (dynamic recompiler) for QVMs which grants a 10/15FPS boost but this causes the game to crash when a match ends so it’s disabled by default
- To enable it and enjoy some crashes to LiveArea, see Rinnegatamante’s tweet on it
To grab vitaVoyager, check out its page on VitaDB and put your data files and efq3.key (CD Key) in ux0:data/voyager/baseEF. It must be noted that demo files are not supported so you must own the full game to play it!
You may donate to Rinnegatamante and give thanks for his efforts related to the PSVita by following this link to his Patreon page.
3DS Releases: TwiLight Menu++ Ultimate and Rocket Slime 3 English Translation
TwiLight Menu++ is a staple for hacked Nintendo 3DS consoles as it’s a piece of software that allows you to play dumped Nintendo DS/DSi/GBA games while also coming with a plethora of emulators including ones for the NES, SNES, Genesis, Master System and GameBoy (Colour).
Other than allowing you to play hundreds of games, it also comes with the DSi Menu for an authentic experience and supports every DS console from the first Nintendo DS to New Nintendo 2/3DS XL!
Now, it has been updated to version 9.0.0 which comes with one major feature and some other minor ones namely:
- Widescreen (16:10) mode for Nintendo 2/3DS consoles which lets you play supported DS games in 16:10 mode on the upper screen!
- This requires you to have Luma3DS installed and Sono’s 2nd (or later) release of TWLPatcher installed which isn’t available as of this article so you’ll have to wait a bit to use the feature
- Currently, there are 89 supported games which include Mario Kart DS, Super Mario 64 DS and Okamiden among others
- A new retro theme inspired by the Sega Saturn has been added
- If games are loaded from a flash cart, cheat files can now be saved on the flash cart as well
- Updating the Recently Played list is now optional
- Numerous bug fixes including the DSi boot sound being high quality again among others
To grab TwiLight Menu++ Ultimate and unleash your 3DS’ potential, follow this link to grab the CIA file or use TwiLight Menu ++ Updater to have the work done for you 😉
For the final item in this article, we’ll be looking at a just-released fan-made English translation for Slime Mori Mori Dragon Quest 3. This 3DS exclusive game was released in Japan on November 2, 2011 and it remained playable only to Japanese audiences until yesterday when Team Rocket released Beta 1 of their English patch.
This patch, which makes the game fully playable in English, includes a translation for all images, NPC text and menus although there may be some bugs lurking around so make sure you report them on the GitHub Issues Tracker for the project!
If your 2/3DS is running Luma3DS, you can check out this link to grab the translation and start understanding what’s going on in the game 🙂
Conclusion
Other than these 3 releases, the last 2 days also brought about other noteworthy stuff in the console hacking community namely the creation of a bounty for “Native Resolution for PSP games on PSVita“ through a PPSSPP port accelerated by the PSP hardware found in the Vita and SphereSolid’s Anniversary Edition PSVSD units which come with a slightly different colour.
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