Grab Your Free Afrika Animated XMB Theme Now!

It's free, and way better than the LittleBigPlanet one.
Published 01/09/2009 at 8:15 by nofi
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It’s true, I might not like most of the changes to the XMB since the latest firmware, but animated XMB themes could be a huge plus point for me.  I don’t really like the LittleBigPlanet theme, and as an introduction it really should have been free, but thankfully Sony have seen sense and given us a stunning Afrika one for absolutely nothing.  Yes, you’ll need a Japanese PSN account, but who doesn’t have one of those these days?

So, anyway, just log on to the Japanese PSN Store and it should be right there under “what’s new”.  It’s completely free and only 5MB, so grab it and then head back to your normal PSN account, unless of course you’re Japanese in which case you can skip that step and feel particularly smug with yourself.  If you don’t have a Japanese PSN account then you can try to follow the instructions in this blog from IGN, but it’s really quite straight forward.

Go to the Theme options under “Settings” on the XMB, and scroll down to the new Afrika one, and apply. Yes, the icons are white and get lost a little bit amongst the zebras, but you can use the Background settings to dial down the brightness a notch to make things easier to read. It’s really, really impressive – the zebras are nicely animated, the grass moves in the wind, it’s like having a real life safari park right inside your PS3. Well, it’s not, but it’s certainly cooler than Sackboy running ad infinitum on a little globe.

Let us know if you find any other cool stuff like this, especially if it’s free.

Comments

Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.

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  1. What do the zebras do?


    • If you press up, up, left, down, right, right, they poop a little.


      • I thought you were joking… After three or five attempts one of zebras on the left lifted it’s tail up and really did it 0_o


      • if you push left down down left right r2, a lion comes on screen and the zebras run


  2. Thanks for the blog link. Just had a look and whoosh!… Quite the sea of non-english there. Will definitely grab the Afrika them as even your grab above looks gorgeous.


  3. Ha ha. The Devs must have spent hours making that Theme and then go and screw it up with white text. [walks away tutting and shaking head]


    • its the third or forth theme i’ve seen thats messed up by having white invisible text


      • But I guess those grey boxes on the friends list are good for something then, as previously the text that told you whose online would have been near-invisible like the rest is on the Afrika theme, but with these horrible grey boxes the text becomes visible so you can see what your friends are playing with ease.
        That shutup all you ‘grey box critics’ LOL. ;)


  4. just found another update with 3.0. there is a new signup form for playstation network. this might be a shock but after having a ps3 for nearly 3 years im only jus creating a japanese account. unfortuanetly this means because the sign up form has changed its impossible to tell what its asking you to write. please could someone help me cos i really want this theme.


    • nevermind im bein stupid. its not a new sign up form


  5. Unfortunately this is nowhere to be seen on my japanese psn store, i am very comfused.


    • Really? That’s odd.


      • I do not have the FW3.x yet, so I’m just gonna ask.. Do you have 5 new/unread messages in the above screen-shot?


      • No, that’s 5 friends online.


      • thanks.. 


    • Are you sure don’t just have the HK store


      • Yeah it’s not on the HK store, i made the same mistake.


  6. now im jus gonna wait for a tiger to come and devour them all.


    • Tigers don’t live in Africa bro. Sorry.


  7. lol the zebra look a lil chunky and the white icons do ruin it shame u cant alter icon colour.


    • Stick the Brightness on -3 and all is good :) ok now dont look so sunny in Africa but hey i can see my icons and text :)


  8. Its a nice theme, but Im not getting a Japanese account for it. I’ll wait lol

    …I like Zebras :)


  9. Just installed it, it looks really good, very impressed.


  10. I haven’t got a japanese account! Need to make one


  11. Thanks for the heads up, grabbed it.


  12. Wow, it looks really impressive. I thought they just stood there and moved their heads and tails, then a zebra walked onto the screen from the front as if it had walked past me – scared the shit out of me!!!


    • “scared the shit out of me!!!”
      You big baby! ;-)


  13. I’m not prepared to mess around with my settings for the sake of some zebras… I think I’ll wait for some better themes to crop up on the EU Store.


    • Well, there’s a huge chance this won’t show up on the EU store at all. There’s also no messing around with settings, just creating a new account as normal.


      • I tried to make a japanese account but on the address page, it no longer accepts just a zip code


      • i pasted a link on this article and in the forum so you can get one


  14. Sweet, gunna get this.
    It’ll probably annoy me though.


  15. I’m suprised that they can do full 3d themes I thought it would be more basic like the shown LBP one but I guess its just the style. I wonder if devs have a size limit?


    • It won’t be full 3d, I imagine they’re just high res pictures with a degree of interactivity. Very possibly flash based or something similar.


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