Norm's Blog Of Stuff!

SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Mad Catz Interactive, Inc. (AMEX/TSX: MCZ), a leading third-party interactive entertainment accessory provider, announced today that it has secured an accessory license from Nintendo of America Inc., a leading developer and publisher of videogames and videogame consoles and handheld devices, to produce licensed videogame accessories utilizing select Nintendo intellectual property.

Pursuant to the terms of the agreement, Mad Catz has obtained non-exclusive rights to develop and market a range of accessories for the Wii, Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi systems. Territories covered in the agreement include select countries within North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. The agreement includes the select use of Nintendo’s intellectual property such as the popular Nintendo characters Donkey Kong™, Zelda™, Link™, Mario™, Luigi™, Wario™, Yoshi™, Bowser™, Toad™, Princess Peach™ and Samus™.

“Nintendo has created some of the videogame industry’s most popular and enduring characters and we are honored to have an opportunity to create licensed videogame accessories featuring their world-renowned intellectual property,” said Darren Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mad Catz. “We look forward to offering unique and exciting accessories for the Wii and Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi systems to videogame fans across the globe.”

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Remember when I reported about the Exclusive Comic Con Limited Edition Fight Pads and Fight Sticks? Well here are the screens for the two, courtesy of MadCatz!

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Remember when Street Fighter 4 came out and the buzz about a limited edition Fight Pad, Tournament Stick and Arcade Stick were announced? Well, From a press release at Mad Catz, they will be releasing a “Limited Edition” Comic-Con Tournament Edition Fight Stick and Fight Pad to be sold at the convention.

On a positive note, if you’re going to comic con and were looking to get one of the two items, or BOTH, this is your opportunity. The Tournament Edition: Fight Stick and Fight Pads will be sold exclusively at the capcom booth 22-26th and will be limited to 250 units per console for the Tournament Fight Sticks and 500 units per console for the Fight Pads. When I say per console I mean PS3 and Xbox 360, just to clarify. Now while we don’t have a screen shot of what the Comic Con Exclusive artwork for the pads and fight sticks look like, be well informed its going to look different from what you see in the photo above. Mad Catz and Capcom have worked closely together to make sure we all who are attending comic con, buy a very awesome product. Here’s a Quote from the Art Director at Mad Catz about the pad and sticks to end the article.

“When we set out creating the Limited Edition artwork we knew that we had to create an impactful design that was radically different from the previous imagery and color schemes. With that in mind we chose not to concentrate on a group of characters but instead produce something targeted to the fan community. After working through a number of designs, we focused on one of the strongest ‘fan-favorite’ characters in the game, Sagat. The character is renowned for his large scar which game legend tells us was caused by archrival Ryu. In my mind, playing Street Fighter® IV evokes the player’s competitive nature, with rivalry a key element of the experience.”

- Norman Rhodes

NBOS Founder

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Popular torrent site, The Pirate Bay has been sold to a company named Global Gaming Factory X (Sounds like a new reality show for MTV or Spike). As we all know back a month ago the two founders of The Pirate Bay were prosecuted and the decision didn’t go in their favor. You can also recall a blog post from TPB that states that TPB may be sold. The thing that gets me is that it took for the events that led up to this for a sell to happen. It kinda reminds me of the Napster situation, one of the biggest P2P Music Sharing Programs out forced into a paid service, and The Pirate Bay is heading in that same direction. Don’t worry though the guys have promised that the money from the sale will go to a worthy cause. To a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, openness of the nets and etc. I wish these guys the best of luck with their fight against the legal system and hope they prevail.

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I’m sure with all these web browsers out for PC you really don’t look towards the mobile phone market for variety. Today I give you a new browser for your Windows Mobile phone that kicks all kinds of ass and makes the IE browser a thing of the past. The name of it is Skyfire, currently its in beta for Windows Mobile Phones and two Nokia Phones. This is a FREE download and takes the experience of using a browser on your PC and brings it to your phone. Not just looking at silly mobile versions of websites, but looking at a full website, on your phone. It comes with Flash installed with it, but heres one of the downsides to it. When I tried to test it out on a site like stickam, where it uses flash even for the chat. I couldn’t type anything. Everything else ran fine though. It lets you link your Twitter and Facebook accounts to the homepage and lets you see those updates from twitter. I would like to see a bit more out of that feature, like letting me update from the homepage. One last thing about this browser, its load times are pretty good on heavy sites. It didn’t take too long for a page to load or for a transition from one page to the next to happen. Overall, I like the potential this Browser has compared to this boring ass Internet Explorer on my phone, and look to use it a lot more.

If you’re tired of IE, Switch to Skyfire and enjoy seeing the internet on your phone!

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