Nintendo are always a wild card when it comes to making appearances at E3. Most years, the company does not make a physical presence, instead releasing a special “Nintendo Direct” video detailing their plans for the year, which is broadcast during their segment of the show. This, they say, is a cost-cutting measure; as why come to the show to show off anything if you have nothing physical to talk about and a pre-recorded segment can do the exact same job? Therefore, usually when the company makes a physical appearance, chances are they have something big coming out for which only a physical demonstration can do proper justice.

A rumour earlier this month suggested that once again, Nintendo would forego a physical presence this year and rely on a Nintendo Direct instead. But earlier this week, a new rumour called that into question, when various sources each made similar claims that Nintendo was working on a new Hardware project and was considering a physical E3 appearance to show it off.

Though the company revealed in its most recent financial briefing that they were currently working on new Hardware, Chief excutive Satoru Iwata clarified this would be for a new ‘Quality of Life’ platform, seemingly implying they were not working on a new console or handheld successor to the existing Wii U or 3DS. He additionally stated Nintendo would reveal the system before the end of the current financial year – which opens a window between now and March 2015. However, little of this device is known.

While many gaming journalists originally ignored the new E3 Hardware Reveal rumour, some flipped on this position when the widely respected media outlet VideoGamer claimed it had heard from a third-party source that the speculation was true. VideoGamer linked the rumour to previous speculation about Nintendo planning a new hardware line, “Nintendo Fusion” – which we ourselves reported on several months ago – stating that similar technical specifications were once again quoted.

However, it now appears the original rumour was correct; as despite the above evidence suggesting Nintendo COULD have hardware to show off this year and the repeated rumours of E3 reveal plans, representatives from Nintendo contacted various members of the gaming press to state that there were no plans to make any such reveal in E3 – stating that they neither planned to reveal any new Hardware, nor any re-iteration of any existing platform. Nintendo have confirmed there is to be no physical presence at E3 at all, with the platform holder again hold a special Nintendo Direct on Tuesday, June 10 to share “further detail on the gaming experiences on the way for Nintendo platforms in 2014 and beyond”.

While we may now know Nintendo is not planning to be at E3 and will do a Nintendo Direct for it once again, the rumours remain interesting. Is Nintendo’s own admission of a planned hardware reveal next year actually a gaming device, or something health-related but nothing to do with gaming? Do the leaked Tech Specs mean anything at all, or are they a figment of someone’s imagination? Stay tuned to Sanitarium.FM and hear the latest as it’s discovered!

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

…And with that, HELLO WORLD! covered the screen in an endless loop. It’s easy to overlook the simplicity of BASIC – an acronym of Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, as well as an apt description of what the language aimed to be – but that’s what made it a revolution in computing.

On May 1, 1964 at 4am, the first ever BASIC program was tested and a revolution in computing breathed to life for the first time. Designed at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, BASIC was a completely new programming language designed to allow people who did not understand, or had no desire to learn the extremely scientific and mathematically-based programming languages that powered computers of the era, a simpler way to do things with their computer. Originally designed to be used for the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System to perform math-based tasks more easily (it’s said the first program was simply PRINT 2 + 2, asking the computer to work out what 2 + 2 was, although this is disputed), the language grew over the next year and became a simple solution to do all kinds of tasks.

While based on languages such as FORTRAN II and ALGOL 60, BASIC’s new approach made it much more straightforward for anyone to make a computer do things. You just wrote a number and an instruction for each thing you wanted the computer to do; and the computer would run down the list in numerical order. The instructions were based on simple English terms – PRINT for example put text on the screen; GOTO 10 would skip or go back to whatever instruction started with the number 10 – and it was possible to ask users questions, set variables and use IF…THEN to perform different things based on different criteria. Dartmouth released its version of BASIC for free for people to modify or build their own systems to use it with; and soon enough a version of BASIC was running on any computer device released even up to several decades following it; and with it a whole new generation of programmers sprung up, some of which even built their own versions of BASIC to add abilities beyond what became known as Dartmouth BASIC had planned.

The legacy of BASIC is simply hard to ignore. Its influence still remains today in programming languages such as Microsoft’s Visual Basic and in software like OpenOffice; while so many more modern languages owe many of their own foibles to standards from way back then – for example, if BASIC didn’t define variables simply by putting $ before a word, would PHP use variables in a similar way many decades later? So now, at the 50th Anniversary of its humble beginnings, lets all raise a glass for BASIC – the programming language that made computers simpler.

Call of Duty being the unstoppable juggernaut of a franchise it is, it was only a matter of time before its first new-gen iteration was revealed. Using the tagline “A New Era”, Call of Duty’s official Facebook page has for several weeks been touting a worldwide announcement for the next Call of Duty title, which we now know to be called Advanced Warfare, for modern generation consoles such as XBox One and PS4.

That Global Reveal was scheduled yesterday for the 4th of May; and the intention was for the company to reveal the game’s title and trailers for each region on the day. Unfortunately, one of those trailers got leaked on Facebook a little too early – the UK Trailer was discovered earlier today and was confirmed by Call of Duty as legitimate, with this message posted on their Facebook page:

This was scheduled for Sunday but it just leaked, so why wait? Here’s the first look at Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. #ANewEra begins now!

The Trailer consists of what is claimed to be footage of XBox One gameplay, and shows off the new gen graphics; details some possible actions; and offers an insight into the game’s story via select FMV sequences. I’m sure you’re waiting to see it yourself – so check the Trailer below, courtesy their official YouTube channel:

Touchscreen phones are all the rage these days; and while they may do the job of giving you greater interaction with the phone; and haptic feedback is helping to bring back the feeling you get of actually "pressing" buttons etc. – sometimes there's just no substitute for real, physical buttons. As well as always knowing where they are – because they can't be moved or replaced by something else like on a screen – physical buttons often provide short-cuts to the parts of a phone you want to use, letting you get to them in one press even when trying to do the same through the phone itself would take multiple touches, gestures or flicking through different screens.

Dimple on the bank of a Nexus phone;
and a simulation of the app.
Image Credit: Dimple.io

Most Android phones lack any kind of physical button – even a Home button like on the iPhone – choosing to utilise virtual ones instead. If you found yourself nodding in the last paragraph and wishing you could add some physical buttons to your Android phone, let me introduce you to Dimple. As described on their website dimple.io, Dimple is "a small NFC™ sticker with four buttons for Android™ devices. You are the one who chooses the button functionality. It makes doing everyday tasks quicker and saves your precious time."

The actual Dimple hardware is a small, rubberised strip with four depressible buttons, which you can stick on an Android smartphone wherever you like – it uses an adhesive that makes it both easy to stick and to remove, though the owners point out repeated removal and reapplication may reduce the device's lifespan. Pairing it with its dedicated Android app turns each of the buttons into physical keys for the phone; and the app also allows you to set exactly what each key does. Using the magic of NFC, it literally just sticks to almost anywhere on your Android smartphone or tablet without the need for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or even its own battery. Each of the four buttons have their own unique NFC ID so that the Dimple's accompanying app and the Android OS can tell them apart when they're pressed. Dimple claims each button can withstand about 2 million clicks, and you can reassign the functionality of around 100,000 times before the button memory wears out.

Unfortunately, not every Android phone will be able to use Dimple. Dimple's reliance on NFC means you will need an Android phone that supports NFC – or to add it through an NFC-enabled case – to use the device. The app also requires Android 4.0 to run, so older phones or cheaper Android models running outdated Android builds are sadly left out of the lurch. Luckily, most brand-name Android Phones released over the past two years should meet both needs. Dimple may also not work correctly if your phone has a metal exterior or uses a metal case, as this may cause interference from the antenna, which means phones such as the HTC One are sadly also out.

If you're already sold on the idea – and your phone meets all the requirements – you might be dismayed to hear that the Dimple is not available for purchase just yet. To fund the full production launch of the device, the creators will be turning to Indiegogo, launching a crowdfunding campaign on May 6th. Assuming it's successful however, Dimple intends to start shipping the final product within 60 days of the campaign finishing – putting its release around August 2014 for early backers, retail will probably be a little longer away. As for price? The earliest backers will be able to get their hands on the first production run batch of Dimples for just US$15, rising to US$26.99 the later your pledge. The final retail price is currently planned at US$28.99 – which equates in current rates to just a shade over £17 in UK money, or €21 for the rest of Europe.

Bungie and Activision earlier today released a series of 35-second trailers that offer brief glimpses into the character classes in their upcoming first-person futuristic action game, Destiny. The videos – posted on the Destiny official website – actually reveal very little: It was pretty much a given already that Titans are going to be the tank-like fighters, Hunters the quick, stealthy rogues and Warlocks are going to have some sort of special powers to screw around with enemies or the environment; and there’s little else to go on from what we see here. But they’re still pretty cool videos nonetheless.

While we’d love to show you the videos right here like we always do, unfortunately YouTube is currently suffering technical issues that are stopping the videos from embedding properly, so they aren’t currently showing up. Meanwhile, the official website age-restricts the videos. So until we find a solution, if you’d like to see the trailers, head on over to Destiny’s website and to the page, Guardian Classes – but stay tuned to Sanitarium.FM for more news while it’s hot!