Nine Over Ten 9/10 Holiday Season Shopping Guide for Xbox 360 Owners

Welcome to Nine Over Ten 9/10's 2007 Shopping Guide for the Holiday Season. Looking for a gift for your gamer friend, or someone who is into Japanese anime figurines and collectibles? You just about came to the right place.

If you have a friend who owns an Xbox 360, chances are his machine would be spending the entire holiday season at Microsoft due to 3ROD, but if he's lucky to have his machine with him, here's some games that you should look into to spread some holiday cheer! Games come with no region protection unless specified:

• Half Life 2: The Orange Box - This value for money compilation features Half Life 2: Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2. And it comes with Half Life 2 and Half Life 2: Episode 1. Available at Play-Asia, USD 49.90, with free shipping. Click here for details.
  
  
• Gears of War (Platinum Collection) - No holiday will not be complete without a classic or two, and here's one which should stand the test of time. If your friend doesn't have this game, kindly enlighten him. Besides, at USD 29.90 with free shipping, it wouldn't burn a hole in your pocket to get him this. Click here for details.
  
  
• Assassin's Creed - This, is a rather pretty next-gen game from Ubisoft. It's new and shiny and comes with alot of hype (and some good reviews) to back it up. A bit expensive at USD 64.90. But don't worry about the shipping fees, it's free (with a price tag like that you would expect some concessions as well). Click here for details.
  
  
• Call of Duty 4 - What was formerly a franchise featuring World War 2 era combat, Call of Duty 4 takes a shot at modern warfare instead, and it takes no prisoners. Available at Play-Asia at USD 64.90. Click here for details.
  
  
• BioShock - The spiritual successor for System Shock 2, BioShock places you in Rapture (lol), a city underwater, instead of a space ship with a really creepy computer. Available at Play-Asia at USD 49.90. Click here for details.
  
  
• Halo 3 - Like Gears of War, this is gonna be a legend (if it's not already one) on the Xbox 360. Available at Play-Asia at USD 59.90. Click here for details.
  
  
• Viva Pinata (Limited Edition) (NTSC-J) - Sick and tired of buying a shooter for your friend year in year out? Check out Play-Asia's weekly special which is Viva Pinata Limited Edition at USD 14.90. Click here for details.
  

For more holiday gift ideas, such as Xbox Live subscription cards and games, visit Play-Asia. Stay tuned for more recommendations on what to get for a console gamer (Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, PSP and DS) and figurines/gashapon collector.

The Rom Report - Part 3: More SNES Games on the Nintendo DS

Welcome to the third installment of The Rom Report! Today we'll look at several SNES games that I've tried to run on the Nintendo DS using SNEmulDS, and without further a do, here's what really works, what works somewhat and what doesn't work at all.

• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past -This is a classic on the SNES, and even though it plays well on the SNEmulDS, the sound is totally skewed, with loud static being the order of the day. Recommended but play it with the volume turned off.
  
  
• Metal Warriors - A platformer from LucasArts and Konami featuring mechs, this game is prone to hang at the options screen and actual gameplay lags with a number of graphical glitches. Gamer beware.
  
  
• Prince of Persia - This Broderbund classic looks pretty, but you'll need to adjust the emulator's GFX settings constantly to let the game look the part. There are Minor but manageable graphical glitches both at the title screen and in-game. A difficult game to play notwithstanding, it's hard not to like an old classic like PoP.
  
  
• Prince of Persia 2 - Graphical glitches are somewhat worse compared to its predecessor and the lack of sound makes it a flop on the DS.
  
  
• Samurai Shodown - A personal favourite of mine, this 2D brawler is in the vein of Street Fighter, but with weapons. The graphics are sharp and a marvel to look at despite playing the game on the small DS screen. There's a minor glitch whereby the life bar doesn't seem to show a decrease when hit. No worries though, it starts flashing when you or your opponent is near K.O. Recommended.
  
  
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time - Another personal favourite of mine, this time it's from Konami. Control one of the four Ninja Turtles through 2D platform levels full of enemy ninjas and a boss at every end. Recommended.
  
  
• X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse - This is a rather tough game in terms of difficulty, or maybe it's because of the controls that lag abit. I faced no problems running this game.
  
  
• Zombies Ate My Neighbours - Graphical glitches abound on the main menu but once past that, you'll find the game not hard to love, as it is with the campy title. It's recommended that you set the emulator speed to normal, instead of the default "Fast" to cope with the frantic gameplay.

Side notes: SNEmulDS doesn't really like running .fig files and I wonder why. I've two games, Mechwarrior and Yoshi's Island in .fig format and both don't run properly (no graphics, sound only).