Rising from the dead - Xbox Red Ring of Death repair

As you may be able to tell, I haven't updated this site in quite some time so I figured thats its about time I tried to breathe some life into it. And to celebrate this I thought I would try and revive my long dead Xbox 360.
If you owned a Xbox prior to the slim version you will have undoubtedly encountered the red ring of death (RRoD) by now.

My original white 360 was struck down by this affliction years ago and was duly repaired by Microsoft  and returned good as new. This gave me about another years worth of good service until the inevitable happened again, but this time outside of the 3 year warranty extension. It's a story I am sure we are all familiar with, in fact I have yet to meet an Xbox 360 owner who has never encountered the RRoD. 

At this stage I decided that rather than paying for a repair job I would shell out for the Elite version instead and since then I've never encountered any issues (still waiting for an excuse to grab a 360 slim).

I never threw out my old white 360 though. It's spent the last couple of years sat in a cupboard. I've spent quite some time trying to decide what I could do with it (I couldn't bring myself to simply chuck it away) and started looking for things to do with a dead 360.

These ideas ranged from some kind of fancy book end to a goldfish bowl (of sorts) but none ever got off the ground.

Given the newest offerings on Xbox live such as Netflix, Love Film, 4oD, and soon to be available BBC iplayer I decided that an older Xbox would be perfect for the lounge now (I deliberately keep my Xbox setup in another room, when the other half starts watching rubbish on TV I retreat to my haven). 

So over then next few posts I aim to document the fix attempt. So far all I've done is power it up and confirm it hasn't magically fixed itself during it's hiatus in the cupboard. I should stress that I've not tried this before so it will be a little experimental and may not actually result in a working 360. I've viewed a few guides online but yet to find one that is as detailed as I would like. Thats not to say this will be perfect either, but the aim is to post a number of images throughout the stages in the hope that it will help someone else at some point.

Join the Ms Splosion Man Beta

In an unusual step for an XBLA release, Twisted Pixel are offering 10,000 people the chance to play Ms Splosion Man during a beta period. 
Signups for the beta are open now and will remain open until 12th June. If you want to take part then you must fulfill the following criteria: (taken from the Twisted Pixel developer blog)

• Be one of the 10,000 registrants chosen to participate.
• Own a retail Xbox 360 console with a hard drive.
• Have an Xbox LIVE Gold Membership.
• Have broadband Internet access at home.
• Be willing to play the early access with others in the program if they know them or not.
• Have time to play with numerous online gamers, and time to provide copious feedback.

If your interested, you can sign up here and while your waiting you can follow the progress of the game at http://mssplosionman.com/

New Carmageddon Game?

Hang on to yer helmet.... It looks like a new Carmageddon game is due to get an official announcement. A timer has appeared on http://www.carmageddon.com/ with nothing more than 3 skull and crossbones and a countdown timer.

At the time of writing there are 9 days remaining which would give us an announcement on the 1st of June. Given that E3 arrives a week later this may be a ploy to grab a few headlines before being swallowed up in the barrage of info that is usually delivered during E3.
Oddly though the timer doesn't seem quite right. In the Carmageddon universe (at least according to this countdown clock) there are 95 seconds in a minute and a number of 5 second chunks are skipped during the countdown. Ultimately the minute countdown does actually last a minute, just seems like a bit of a weird botch job. Hopefully not an indication of the quality of any future release.

The original Carmageddon was released in 2007 on PC amid a furore of mass media frenzy regarding the games content and various censorship battles ensued.

Magic The Gathering 2012 Gets Official Release Date

Wizards of the Coast have announced that Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 will be released on PC (via Steam), XBLA and PSN on the 15th June 2011. So far no price has been confirmed.

Wizards originally announced the new game back in March and stated that the new game will include new game modes, opponents, decks along with new puzzle challenges seen in the first game.
The latest video from Wizards introduces the first new opponent in the upcoming release, 'Gideon Jura':

The original release of Magic the Gathering has attracted a large number of players since the original release on XBLA in June 2009 (with PC and PSN releases the following year). Since then it has undergone 3 expansions, which gave players new decks and challenges to experiment with. Even today it isn't difficult to find opponents to play against on-line. A feat that very few XBLA titles could boast 2 years after their original release.

Is this the Wii 2?

Rumours regarding the Wii 2 (codename 'Project Cafe') are rife at the moment. Nintendo have supposedly confirmed that a new console is in development and it would seem that they are likely to announce this officially during next months E3 show.

In the last few days a number of images have made there way online and appear to show the new controller and console. If rumours are to be believed then the controller will feature a 6inch touch screen which could potentially stream videos and games from the console.

To back this up further a video posted on YouTube today (see below) supposedly shows Project Cafe being privately demonstrated to a number of developers. The video appears to show the controller and new console on the slidedeck while the console apparently is sat on display at the front of the room.

I always thought the Dreamcast was ahead of its time

Its impossible to say for sure whether this is legitimate or not but time will tell. If the controller is to house an inbuilt screen with the ability to play games separately from the console then I can't helped being reminded of the good old Sega Dreamcast controllers.


It will be interesting to see if Nintendo react to this latest leak but so far they are keeping quiet. Personally I doubt that this will be enough to upset their big announcement plans.

PlayStation Network - It's back......

Are we nearly there yet?

Remember that shiny sleek black box sat under your T.V you used to use all the time? Well dust it off, Sony have published a statement today giving PSN users the welcome news they have all been waiting for. The PlayStation Network is being restored today.

The restoration will be a phased rollout beginning with America and Europe first, followed by Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. 

Once available in your area, you will be required to update the system software to version 3.6.1 and then asked to reset your password. After that you should be good to go. 

At the time of writing it would seem that much of North America has been restored now and the European site has just this minute been taken down for maintenance which suggests the network should be restored imminently across Europe.

The PlayStation Network has been shutdown since 20th April following a serious security breach.

You can read todays full statement from Sony here.