It's nice to look and see how far we've come, but c'mon, sometimes we get a little nostalgic for the good old days too.

[Via Engadget Japanese]

We're a bit surprised we didn't get a liveblog-like stream of emailed press releases from Tiger Telematics this morning because today's their big day in North America. That's right, the Gizmondo is officially on sale for $229 with fourteen launch titles. They did roll deep by buying a full-page ad in USA Today with Verne Troyer (aka Mini Me) shilling the Gizmondo, but we're not so sure a launch with some weak hype, obvious insecurity with their press presence, abysmal sales abroad, and a third of a billion in mounting debt is reason enough for Tiger's EU managing director Carl Freer to be "extremely proud of what [they've] achieved."

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Oh DarkFader, you little scamp. First you whip up that now-famous (well, not that famous) DS bricking trojan of yours, then apparently you get ostracized from the homebrew community for wreaking havoc on your peers' devices, and then you apologize? Ok, fine, we'll assume it's not a disingenuous apology, but seriously, the part where you start talking about how those who only use official Nintendo games have nothing to worry themselves about? Way to be patronizing in your letter of apology dude.

Well with development, you spend usually one to two years on a game. But in actuality, you kind of have ideas that are floating around in your head for three, four, even five years before that. In my case, oftentimes I'll just have an object sitting my desk that'll be sitting there for a long time, and I'll kind of interact with it and it will spur ideas. In this case, about four years ago, my family and I bought a dog and started taking care of it and that became the impetus for this project.

This is still just a concept demo, but it is a working demo: DSpeak is basically Voice over IP calling using the wireless capabilities of the Nintendo DS. Using a connected headphone/microphone, DSpeak allows you to hold conversations with other DS users via WiFi, and the audio quality is reportedly "perfectly fine, as good as a mobile phone." Plus, you get little Mario and Wario icons moving their mouths when you speak — come on, Vonage, how you gonna beat that? The software itself will be available as a free download, and the booth boy told us that they'll be including headsets with DSpeak-compatible games (the headset will probably also be available for sale separately for some nominal fee). Otherwise that's about all we know—we couldn't squeeze a release date out of them, and no one at the Nintendo booth knew a damn thing about the actual technology they were demoing.