Back when it was announced, it sounded like Nintendo’s WiiWare would let bedroom coders get their games into their Wiis, just like Microsoft XNA lets anybody write for the XBox 360.

Not so. Apparently all the usual NDAs and licence fees apply. The difference is the games can be developed by small teams (within licenced developers) and the games are distributed via Nintendo’s online service.

Nintendo snubbing small developers for WiiWare

WiiWare is a lie

I know I was never going to get around to coding any more games, not with my current workload, but all the same, I liked the idea, and it was helping leaning me towards buying a Wii.

Microsoft has dropped the price of XBox 360 in Australia, to $349 for the base-level Arcade (note, it doesn’t run old XBox games because it has no hard drive, and won’t provide HD video), $499 for the Pro (what should be called the standard model), and $649 for the XBox 360 Elite.

XBoxWorld reports the Arcade can be got from BigW for just $278 at the moment.

Hmmm. $278 to play Pacman Championship Edition. Am I enough of a sucker to buy it?

Comparative RRPs: Nintendo Wii $399.95; PS3 $699.95. (Why does Nintendo’s web site include no price information?!)

Game-On at ACMI in Melbourne closes this Sunday, and ACMI have told the Herald Sun that they’re close to reaching the high score attendance record for the exhibit.

So do go along if you’ve been considering it. We liked it so much I took the kids twice.

Show a valid Metcard on Thursday nights (open until 9pm) for concession rate entry.

Space Invaders is thirty years old this month. 1Up has done an article on ten things you didn’t know about it.

(via Vintage Computing and Gaming).

But have you heard the song/seen the video clip?

I was amused to see this Donkey Kong reference in a cartoon by Andrew Dyson in last Friday’s Age, commenting on the current Australian political stoush over petrol prices. It features opposition leader Brendan Nelson as Donkey Kong, and PM Kevin Rudd as Mario.

Sometimes Lifehacker is just overwhelming, posting zillions of things per day. Way too many to keep up, and for some reason Lifehacker Australia posts things that it calls “US-centric” which are, in fact, useless to anybody outside the US. Not sure why they bother.

That said, they also post some real gems.

A beauty the other day: a link to the Wikipedia List of commercial games released as freeware.

Some of them are oldies. Some are pretty new. Some of the classics that caught my eye included a 90s era Lode Runner sequel, the classic Sim City, an old instalment of The Elder Scrolls, and that ol’ favourite Elite.

As mentioned way back last year, ACMI in Melbourne is now hosting Game On, a history of video games. It opened yesterday. Details, including a trailer, are here.

Or check this video of the exhibition from when it was on display in London:

If you’ve got 18 tiny cardboard boxes, all labelled 4508197 - they contain a cape, from the Dwarve’s Mine. That should be in Google now.

From the ACM SIGGRAPH, Vol.32 No.2 May 1998: Game Graphics During the 8-bit Computer Era - a look at what was possible when all you had for graphics hardware was a large rock and a piece of chalk operating at 2MHz, some of the hacks that were used to squeeze the very last drop of functionality out of those systems and some of the more notable games insofar as their graphics.

Very cool. MIT are using sixteen Playstation 3s rackmounted and setup as a cluster to do supercomputing.

What with the Firefox Google page, and the customisable iGoogle, it’s less common these days to see the full-size Google logo, and its special event variations.

So you might have missed this: Google celebrated the 50th birthday of Lego (which was on Monday).

PS. I forgot to go to the Lego convention thing on Sunday, dammit.

PPS. Chewing Pixels highlights some great Lego finds

Doesn’t time fly? It seems like only last year Brickvention was on, but it was two years ago. This time ’round it’s being held opposite Flinders Street station, details at the Brickvention 2008 website. As to what to expect: check out the 2006 website, which has some pretty impressive models on it.