The Zone

The Asus World GameMaster Tournament 2008 Malaysia Final comes to a close and the winners are announced. Who were triumphant? Who went home with the prize booty? More pictures after the jump!

Like a secret 1UP mushroom treat hidden among the forest of electrical goods and electronics, Malaysia finally has an official Nintendo store counter! Nintendo fans and gamers rejoice!

Ever thought of publishing or developing your own ideas for the world to see and enjoy? Are you a budding game developer or comic artist with a great idea pitch but nobody's willing to help finance your budget?

Here's your chance to finally see your dreams come to fruition, as the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) yesterday announced two competitions for Mobile Content and Digital Comic design. Winners of the Mobile Content competition will get a RM50,000 grant while the Digital Comic winners will be awarded a RM15,000 grant each!

More details after the jump. (More)

(image originally taken from Screenshots) 

You gotta love Malaysia. Where else can you find a whole street closed off for a officiating ceremony for the new 23 public "automatic-cleaning" toilets? 

With the toilets costing RM400,000 each, you wonder if they'll throw in a back massage once you're done with your "business" in there. I remember trying out one such toilet back in Sydney, Australia, but I didn't think they were that great compared to a normal toilet. Anyone tried out the ones in Jalan Bukit Bintang yet?

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Windows Vista and Office 2007 was finally launched last weekend at LowYat Plaza in Malaysia and we were there to capture all of the excitement! We'll have a full report in the next issue of HWM so in the mean time, enjoy this batch of photos! :3

Nope, it's not a Photoshop edit. It's a real Burnout Dominator screenshot for the PS2, featuring the streets of KL! I'm soooooooooo gonna get this game if it features virtual Mat Rempits to mow down! I just found out the game doesn't have the 'Traffic Checking' feature anymore. Aww...but still, racing down KL streets with no traffic jam should be a plus. ;)

Hitachi Data Systems just announced the appointment of Johnson Khoo as its new managing director for Malaysia, and to commemorate the event they held a drifting session!

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Like WTF does data systems have to do with drifting??? But it was undeniably cool and getting a light taste of drifting felt great! The only drifting I've ever done was in racing video games, and the experience was both nerve-racking and cool at the same time.

They got an experienced drifter, Sean Khoo, from drift.com.my to be our driver. He was pretty cool, since he took us on a wild spin a number of times. Halfway through the session they had to switch tyres as bits and pieces of the tyres were already being spat out by the harsh tarmac.

Check out the video of the drifting session after the pics below! :D 

It's back! The MSC Malaysia IP Creators Challenge Series 2007 is now on for local budding animators, artists, and game developers! Last year IP Creators Challenge saw up to nearly RM900,000 in grants given away to 25 winners. If you missed out last year, now's your chance to win grants to expand your creative idea into a marketable product!

The closing dates for the proposals (just the proposals, not the finished product) is 28 June 2007, so get cracking! During this time, MDEC will be holding a number of workshops for people new to pitching ideas and proposals to interested publishers, as well as talks on IP.

For more info, check out the following link.

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This piece of important news might be a little late but hey, better late than never. If you didn't already hear about it, TM (formerly known as TM Net) recently announced that its ploughing US$50 million (~RM175 million) in a massive project to build a undersea fiber optic cable from SEA all the way to the US. The entire project will actually take about US$500 million (~RM1.75 billion) and quite a few SEA telecommunications companies such as from Indonesia, Thailand and India are sharing the cost.

It is said that the main reason for the cable is SEA telecommunication companies are hoping to avoid the recurrence of last year's Taiwan earthquake debacle. If you don't remember, the quake pretty much severed most SEA countries from the Internet for several weeks. The new cable expected to be ready in late 2008, will bypass the quake and volcano prone North Asia, and we should have nothing to worry about if any quake hits or volcano erupts in the future.

More importantly though, TM said that it's data capacity will go up from 60Gbps to 75Gbps when the cable is ready. Will this mean faster broadband speeds for everyone? 2Mbps speeds (or more) for the home? TM says its possible but we'll wait and see on this one. The new cable will surely create excess bandwidth and we hope that TM will deliver on that promise. At the very least, we just hope that we will be able to finally get the true speeds that we subscribed to. 

Original link here (via The Star)

Are you a Xbox 360 gamer? If you are, we want you. Consoul 2007 is Malaysia's first and largest "Bring Your Own Xbox 360" LAN Party ever and its gonna be one hell of a party! 

Organized by Gamer's Hideout and GameAxis, it's going to take place on the 26th and 27th May 2007 at the Lower Ground Floor of Cineleisure Damansara. The event is all about getting to play with your like minded fellow 360 gamers in the flesh and having a good time. But wait, that's not all. There will be a Gears of War and Command & Conquer 3 tournament as well, with cool prizes obviously for grabs. If that's not enough, there will be a crazy Lucky Draw with tons of great prizes on offer too. So, what are you waiting for?

Details of the event can be obtained from www.gamershideout.com.my

 (pix from raise.flavert.com)

For all you fellow muslims that can't go anywhere without your treasured PSP, here's an interesting app that you'll probably find very useful - Al-Quran for the PSP! According to Kotaku, the developer of the app is a one student named Ikhwan Nazri Mohamad Asran from the Information and Promotion Bureau of Usrah Institution, Multimedia University Cyberjaya.  

Al-Quran for the PSP is still in the Beta stage, but apparently you can pm momochi zabuza from the pspfans.net forums to get your hands on a copy. (Link here). According the official website, the app should be available for free download after the 19th of May 2007.

Now, who said that all game consoles/portables are evil? If it takes a portable game console for the kids today to not neglect their religious duties, then we're definitely up for it. For once, it's nice to see the PSP being put to good use with noble deeds. (The PSP homebrew scene in Malaysia is really all about software piracy. Period.) 

PS: The same folks behind the nifty Al-Quran for the PSP app also have a Islamic PSP-zine that you can download for free. The Raise (now in its 3rd edition) can be downloaded from raise.flavert.com 

There's not much tech in this post really but here's something interesting that we want to point out. Spotted at engadget.com, one of the more popular tech blogs on the web today, is a post about Hitachi and Oracle teaming up to introduce anti-piracy tags in China.

The story is fairly interesting but thats not what we want to show you guys. Check out the photo accompanying that post. Looks familiar? Of course, its good old Petaling Street @ Malaysia's Chinatown. 

There can only be two explanation for this really. Either the dudes at Engadget went to sleep during geography classes or... the fake/pirated goods on offer in Petaling Street is world famous! 

In any case, Malaysia Boleh!

Original link here.   

Just a friendly reminder that tomorrow will see the start of Transformers RobotCon 2007. What's Transformers RobotCon 2007? Well if you love  the Transformers toys, cartoon, games and (soon-to-be-released) movie, you can't afford to miss out on this mega Transformer event at Cineleisure Damansara tomorrow. Autobots, roll out!

iZZi just launched their new wireless broadband service today, and to demonstrate how effective their connections were, the media were treated to a trip to The Eye On Malaysia wheel at Tasik Titiwangsa. Needless to say, the view at the wheel was incredibly scenic, which I managed to capture a few snapshots. Click the jump to view more!

Just a friendly reminder that registration for the World Cyber Games 2007 Malaysia is now open and it's FREE! That's right! It will cost you zilch, nada, niet to sign up so join the world's largest cyber game tournament and you stand a chance to win big prizes! Places are limited so point your browser to Multiplay.Lowyat.net and register today!