NTT DoCoMo held an announcement event today in Japan for their new iAppli games for the 903i series.

These new games take advantage of the enhanced capabilities offered by "Mega iAppli." Mega iAppli vastly expand upon the capabilities of iAppli for DoCoMo's 900i series, by offering 10 times the amount of program space: 1MB. Furthermore, it is now possible to store these Mega iAppli on external memory, where they have no limitation for size -- it would be possible for a company to distribute a 10MB game, for example.

Such changes enable content publishers to create games of much higher quality. Coupled with the polygon rendering capabilities of the new 903i series handsets, these so-called "Mega Games" offer what I guess is the highest quality gaming experience found on any mobile phone in the world. Major content publishers were on hand at the announcement event to show off their new Mega Games. Bandai Networks showed "Mobile Suit Gundam SEED" with full 3D rendering, Bandai Namco Games showed Tekken 2, which featured the same polygon count as the original PlayStation version. Other games include Street Fighter ZERO (Alpha), Biohazard (Resident Evil), Dirge of Cerebus Lost Episode -Final Fantasy VII-, Monster Hunter, Mobile Pawapuro Baseball MEGA, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and so on, all of which take advantage of the enhanced iAppli features.

Both Impress Watch and ITmedia have coverage of the event, with plenty of pictures to go around. Click on the pictures below to be taken to their coverage.

Good news for Nintendo DS owners in Japan: you'll soon be able to pick up two new accessories to enhance your DS. The company has partnered with Opera to provide a browser for the system, and they're also planning o­n introducing a TV tuner capable of receiving o­ne-Seg terrestrial digital broadcasts.

Remember the Play-Yan? To go with the release of the "Gameboy Micro," Nintendo has announced a new version, aptly named the "Play-Yan Micro."

Sanwa Supply has a new USB gamepad coming out that looks strikingly similar to the NES gamepad. I guess people who use emulators a lot would be interested in something like this. I'm pretty sure some modder has already rigged up a NES > USB bridge of some sort, but at least this product is cheap (only $13 or so).

As an April Fool's Day joke, Sega announced the "Game Gear Goju." "Goju," or 50, refers to the number of screens the unit has. This is clearly a poke at the Nintendo DS, but it's certainly refreshing to see Japanese companies not taking themselves so seriously for o­nce. Translation of the "product page" inside.

Finally, I have been able to personally verify that American PSP game software works on a Japanese PSP. I purchased Wipeout Pure today at EB, and it works without any issues whatsoever on my Japanese PSP. We were sort of caught up in this mess a couple months back. From this, we gather American PSPs will also be able to play Japanese software.

My apologies if I scared anyone.

Sony Computer Entertainment has announced the group of 27 companies it has approved to produce UMD Video software for the Playstation Portable (PSP). I can't see how these companies expect to make any money off this myself. Why would anyone pay up to $40 for something they can get on DVD for the half the price?

People have always wanted different color game units and games. Now, people who want to spice up their gaming will have four new flavors.

Platinum Silver

I don't know where this o­ne came from, but a number of news agencies (Joystiq, Eurogamer) are reporting that a German site claims the PSX homepage states that production of the units has stopped.

Well, we here at TechJapan have some insight into this matter. Here's the official PSX homepage right here, and it says NOTHING about PSX production being halted.

Sony has confirmed that the controller buttons on some Playstation Portable (PSP) units may become stuck and not return to their default position. A free repair program has been announced.