Friday Freebie

Today, the Friday Freebie is all about Pocket Gamer being proved wrong, something we generally prefer to avoid but are assured is character building, so we're just going to roll with it.

First to put us in our place this week, then, is the DS – a console that, if we're honest, has mostly festered on the periphery of the Friday Freebie since its inception, getting little more that the occasional table scrap in the form of a dirty little bit of homebrew or a postage stamp-sized offering of gameplay via a flash web demo.

Well, now it's payback time.

We have not one, not two, but 19 free legal downloadable DS demos! And where did we find this Aladdin's cave of riches? Wikipedia, naturally. The site provides links to demos for Metroid Prime Hunters, Mario Kart DS, True Swing Golf and some other oddities such as the fabled E3 2005 'Submarine' tech demo.

Of course, when we say 'legal' what we mean is that they're all officially signed by Nintendo; that does not mean, however, that the files were ever intended for use in this way, as you'll need to fiddle with either Wireless Multiboot, loaders, flashcards or development tools in order to play them.

Does that sound like gibberish? Never fear, as we have rooted out a little resource (Wiki again – what else?) to explain how to make them work.

And so, on to the second freebie, one that has us eating our words from a while ago. Indeed, some of you may recall our web game edition of the Friday Freebie a couple of weeks back. In it, we boldly proclaimed the PSP as not being particularly well endowed in the web game department.

Oh, how wrong we were.

A quick trip to PSP Garden reveals that the PSP flash web game scene is in very good health indeed, with full-on titles featuring decent animation, great presentation, solid controls and other nice little extras such as music.

You need to register with the site in order to get access to the titles (a quick and free process) but once you do, just click the 'New Flash Games!' link near the top of the page and you'll be rewarded with swathes of quality titles. There are some cheeky uses of well-known licences, but the focus is squarely on original, innovative flash games. You can add the titles you enjoy the most to a favourites list, as well as vote and leave comments on any of them.

Pleasingly, the site also keeps track of all the players and displays the top scorer for each game alongside it. It's something well worth a visit for idle thumbs, which is further sweetened by the community features.

Lastly this week, we're on more familiar ground. Action film buffs will probably have already heard about or seen Crank. For those that haven't, it features the impressively agile Jason Statham as a hitman infected with a deadly poison that will kill him if he doesn't keep his adrenaline levels at the sort of intensity that can only be brought on by gun fights, car chases and explosions. Accompanying the film is a mobile game, of which a flash online demo has been made available for free alongside the film's DVD and Blu-ray release.

So there you have it; a sizeable, sweet slice of humble pie for this week's Friday Freebie, but one that we are happy to serve you.

For those new to all of this, our freebie archive will probably give you one massive sugar rush. As for the hardened followers of our serial update on portable gaming sans expense, simply click 'Track It!' to be sure not to miss next week's offering.