The PX21 headset is a universal headset which will allow it to be used on Xbox 360, PS3 and also PC.  Retailing at a very good price point (Tesco had these in stock at £58!) the PX21′s are a great mid range alternative to it’s bigger brother, the DPX21 and although it fails to deliver on Dolby surround sound, the PX21 will provide you with a very clear, full bandwidth stereo sound and a built in mic which can be used with Xbox Live, Playstation Network and VoIP systems.

Features

• Amplified sound lets you hear every detail in the game
• Stereo expander widens the sound field for greater accuracy
• Mic monitor lets you hear what you’re saying
• Adjustable Bass Boost adds realism to the game sound.
• Chat Boost automatically increases chat voices as the game gets louder.
• Hear PSN chat and PS3 game sound with independent volume for each.
• Also works with XBOX games and XBOX LIVE chat
• Also works as a USB headset with PC and Mac.

Specifications

Headphones

• 40mm diameter speakers with neodymium magnets
• Speaker Frequency Response: 20Hz – 20kHz, >120dB SPL @ 1kHz
• Condenser Microphone Frequency Response: 50Hz – 15kHz
• Cable length: 16 ft. (4.87m)
• Weight: 6.4 oz (233g)

In-Line Amplifier

• Headphone Amplifier: Stereo DC-coupled, 35mW/ch, THD <1%, Frequency Response: DC – 30kHz
• Bass Boost continuously adjustable from 0dB to +12dB @ 50Hz
• Mic mute switch
• Stereo expander switch
• Maximum analog input level with volume control on maximum setting: 2Vpp (700mV rms)
• 3.5mm plug for line output
• USB connector for power, mic connection and stereo audio
• 2.5mm mic output jack
• USB connector for power (5VDC @ <60mA max)
• Dimensions: Height .5in (1.27cm), Width 2in (5.08cm), Depth .75in (1.905cm)

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The game will include new tracks from Jimi Hendrix, Avenged Sevenfold, Paramore, The White Stripes, Jane’s Addiction, Phish, Anthrax, The Cure, Bob Marley, Def Leppard, Ozzy Osbourne, Dire Straits, The Smiths, Foreigner, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Doors and many more. Rock Band 3 will be released Oct. 26 in North America and Oct. 29 in the rest of the world for the Xbox 360, PS3,  Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS.

“The Rock Band 3 soundtrack represents the strongest, most diverse collection of music ever assembled for a video game,” said Paul DeGooyer, senior vice president of electronic games, music and programming for MTV Games. “The addition of keyboards and vocal harmonies to the Rock Band platform massively broadens the music selection available to our players. You haven’t sung Queen’s epic “Bohemian Rhapsody” unless you’ve sung the harmony parts – and you can’t do that unless you have Rock Band 3.”

Without further ado, here is the entire, jaw-dropping Rock Band 3 setlist:

2000s:

• Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”
• At the Drive-In, “One Armed Scissor”
• Avenged Sevenfold, “The Beast & the Harlot”
• Dover, “King George”
• The Bronx, “False Alarm”
• The Flaming Lips, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1”
• HIM (His Infernal Majesty), “Killing Loneliness”
• Hypernova, “Viva La Resistance”
• Ida Maria, “Oh My God”*
• Juanes, “Me Enamora”
• Metric, “Combat Baby”*
• Paramore, “Misery Business”*
• Phoenix, “Lasso”*
• Poni Hoax, “Antibodies”
• Pretty Girls Make Graves, “Something Bigger, Something  Brighter”
• Queens of the Stone Age, “No One Knows”
• The Ravonettes, “Last Dance”
• Rilo Kiley, “Portions for Foxes”*
• Riverboat Gamblers, “Don’t Bury Me…I’m Still Not Dead”
• Slipknot, “Before I Forget”
• The Sounds, “Living in America”
• Tegan & Sara, “The Con”
• Them Crooked Vultures, “Dead End Friends”
• Tokio Hotel, “Humanoid”*
• The Vines, “Get Free”*
• The White Stripes, “The Hardest Button to Button”*

1990s:

• Faith No More, “Midlife Crisis”*
• Filter, “Hey Man, Nice Shot”
• Jane’s Addiction, “Been Caught Stealing”*
• Maná, “Oye Mi Amor”
• Marilyn Manson, “The Beautiful People”
• The Muffs, “Outer Space”
• Phish, “Llama” • Primus, “Jerry Was a Racecar Driver”
• Rammstein, “Du Hast”
• Smash Mouth, “Walkin’ On The Sun”*
• Spacehog, “In the Meantime”
• Stone Temple Pilots, “Plush”
• Swingin’ Utters, “This Bastard’s Life”

1980s:

• Anthrax, “Caught in a Mosh”
• Big Country, “In a Big Country”
• The Cure, “Just Like Heaven”*
• Def Leppard, “Foolin’”
• Devo, “Whip It”
• Dio, “Rainbow in the Dark”
• Dire Straits, “Walk of Life”
• Echo & the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”
• Huey Lewis and the News, “The Power of Love”
• INXS, “Need You Tonight”* • J. Geils Band, “Centerfold”
• Joan Jett, “I Love Rock N’ Roll”*
• Night Ranger, “Sister Christian”*
• Ozzy Osbourne, “Crazy Train”*
• The Police, “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”
• Roxette, “The Look”*
• The Smiths, “Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”
• Tears for Fears, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”
• Whitesnake, “Here I Go Again”*

1970s:

• The B-52’s, “Rock Lobster”*
• Blondie, “Heart of Glass”
• Bob Marley, “Get Up, Stand Up”
• Chicago, “25 or 6 to 4”
• Deep Purple, “Smoke on the Water”
• Doobie Brothers, “China Grove”*
• Elton John, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”
• Foreigner, “Cold As Ice”*
• Golden Earring, “Radar Love”
• John Lennon, “Imagine” • Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Free Bird”
• Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody”*
• Ramones, “I Wanna Be Sedated”
• Steve Miller Band, “Fly Like an Eagle”
• T. Rex, “20th Century Boy”
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “I Need to Know”
• War, “Low Rider”
• Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London”
• Yes, “Roundabout”*

1960s:

• Beach Boys, “Good Vibrations (Live)”
• David Bowie, “Space Oddity”
• The Doors, “Break on Through (To the Other Side)”* • James Brown, “I Got You” (I Feel Good) – Alternate Studio Version*
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience, “Crosstown Traffic”*
• The Who, “I Can See for Miles”

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Action, drama, adventure and humour propel the story as players choose their journey to become King or Queen of Albion.

“Fable III” will be available in Standard and Limited Collector’s Editions for Xbox 360. The Standard Edition will retail for £49.99, while the Limited Collector’s Edition will retail for £59.99.  The Windows version will retail for £39.99, and will also be available for download exclusively on Games on Demand on Games for Windows – LIVE.

The Limited Collector’s Edition also offers unique collectibles that true “Fable” fans won’t want to miss, including downloadable content, also available for Windows users, as well as in-box items that come with the Xbox 360 version. Wrapped up in a distinctive box created in the likeness of a book from “Fable III,” the contents include:

• A new quest: Uncover the mystery of the haunted forests of Silverpines and earn the legendary sword, Wolfsbane, deadly against wolves and balverines.
• Exclusive location: Unlock a new region, ideal for settling down with a family and discovering new treasures.
• “Fable III” playing cards: Created by Lionhead, these cards depict every type of character in “Fable III,” including Heroes, royals, rebels and villains from across Albion and beyond.
• Guild Seal Coin:  The coin features a Good side (blue) and Evil side (red) to assist players in making critical decisions that will impact the fate of the world forever.
• A new dog breed: Renowned for its loyalty, the Boxer is a brave canine companion worthy of greatest Queens and Kings.
• One unique outfit: Unearth one male and female outfit from the mysterious, faraway land of Aurora, a new destination in your “Fable III” adventures.

“Fable III” sets the stage for an unparalleled action and adventure experience, in which you will be called upon to rise from revolutionary to ruler of Albion. The choices and sacrifices you make while fanning the flames of revolution, and then as you rule as King or Queen, will lead to an ever evolving world of consequences that will be felt across your entire land.

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1984 was also rife with piracy as tapes were copied and distributed amongst friends but what could have been the destruction of the home computer game industry, piracy actually helped lend a hand in pushing it further.  Nowadays with multi million dollar developments, piracy is not what it used to be.  Once where a copied tape may have helped distribute your game to the masses and brought you fame with a tiny bit of fortune, piracy nowadays is illegal and very damaging to the business.

There were many great games that stood out in this year, Elite being one of them but I have opted for Software Projects’ Jet Set Willy for it’s famous bugs, exceptional gameplay and most noteably one of the first games to try and counteract piracy.

Jet Set Willy is a platform game in which the player moves the protagonist, Willy, from room to room in his mansion collecting objects. The room’s exits may be in any direction, and the objects may be collected in any order. Willy is controlled using only left, right and jump. He can climb stairs by walking into them (jumping through them to avoid them) and climb swinging ropes by pushing left or right depending on what direction the rope is swinging in. The play area itself consists of 60 flick-screen rooms containing patrolling monsters, various platforms and collectable objects. The monsters and hazards move along predetermined paths. The collectable items glow to distinguish them from other items in the room.

Willy loses a life if he touches an enemy or falls too far, and he is returned to the point at which he entered the room. This may lead to a game-ending situation in which Willy repeatedly falls from a height, losing all eight lives in succession.

As originally released, the game could not be completed due to several bugs. Although actually four completely unrelated issues, they became known collectively as “The Attic Bug”.

Initially Software Projects attempted to pass off the most severe – The Attic bug itself – as an intentional feature to make the game more difficult, claiming that the rooms in question were filled with poison gas. However, they later rescinded this claim and issued a set of POKEs to correct the flaws.

The most notorious bug was the The Attic Bug. After the player entered the room The Attic, various rooms would undergo corruption on all subsequent game plays, including all monsters disappearing from The Chapel, and other screens triggering instant death. This was caused by an error in the path of an arrow in The Attic, resulting in the sprite travelling past the end of the Spectrum’s video memory and overwriting crucial game data instead. This bears similarities to a buffer overflow, and as such is an early example of such an error – and the problems it can cause.

An item under The Conservatory Roof was placed too close to both the screen entrance and a killer object making it impossible to collect. The Software Projects fix removed the killer object.

There was an invisible and impossible to reach item in First Landing. The Software Projects fix relocated the item to The Hall – although some fixes relocated the object to The Bathroom where it became visible as another tap item. (By poking value 33, instead of 11.)

The Banyan Tree was impassable in an upward direction – the Software Projects fix changed the status of an essential block from solid to passable.

Like most ZX Spectrum games, Jet Set Willy was stored on a cassette tape. Simply making an audio copy of the cassette allowed people to easily copy Spectrum games. Jet Set Willy was one of the first to come with a form of copy protection: a card with 180 coloured codes on it was bundled with the cassette. Upon loading, one of the codes from the card had to be entered before the game would start. Although the cassette could be duplicated, a copy of the card was also needed and at the time, home colour reproduction was hard to do. Thus copying Jet Set Willy was trickier than most Spectrum games. However, means of circumventing the card were quickly found.

Reflecting a different attitude to software piracy at the time, one method was published in a UK computer magazine.

Since then, Jet Set Willy along with Manic Miner has found a massive fan base and fan versions of the game can be found and played on the internet.

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