Gametap has switched over to it’s new “free” ad-driven format.  So maybe it’s time to give it another look.  Maybe this time it will go smoother then the last.

Like many people out there is saw a post on Xbox 360 Fanboy that the Japanese Trusty Bell/Eternal Sonata demo works in the states regardless of Microsoft’s new content blocking nonsense in the last dashboard update.  So, I hopped onto my Japanese profile and downloaded a copy myself.  I finally got a chance to sit down and play through it a little while ago.  Not only does it work – it’s in full English.  It appears that it is actaully a multi-region demo just released in Japan first.

The demo is not incredibly long and does not introduce you to the characters but it is enough to give you a feel for the game.  I have to say I really enjoyed it.  It looks great and plays great too.  I was thrown by the battle system for a moment since I expected old school RPG style fighting instead your thrown into a small area with the ability to move about and attack your foes – provided you are near them or have a ranged attack.  There is a battle timer along the left had side of the screen which rapidly decreases.  This setup allows you to say run over to an enemy – beat on him with a normal attack (which helps fill a special meter) and finish with a special attack.

I’m not the biggest RPG player in the world but I may actually pick this one up when it comes out.

After an extended break from thinking about torrentzip, it came to my attention that there was an issue with the Windows version. Due to file permissions it was impossible to access files on a drive mounted in Windows with the IFS Driver for Windows. As luck would have it my current development box has several ext3 drives mounted so I grabbed the source (and activated SVN while I was at it) and patched it up. It appears to be compiling and running just fine in Windows – I haven’t test compiled the source in linux… Hopefully there will be no issues.

Download it here: TorrentZip Win32 0.3 RC 2

*update* Missed a small but, huge bug – RC 2 should take care of that.

Well, it seems TheSpecialist has come to the communities aid!  He has released a new version of his Xbox hard drive hacking program with support for the 120gig security sector.  In order to use it, at the moment, you need to use a Western Digital Scorpio BEVS-LAT laptop hard drive – which I believe is model number WD1200BEVS (can anyone verify this?).  That is the only drive supported by the software at the moment.  Hopefully, the software see new revisions that will supports other drives in the future.

Via Joystiq::Xbox-Scene