I’ve seen a few Wii-mote hacks over the last year, but this one takes the cake I think. This dude is pretty genius and his creative use of the Wii-mote makes me wonder what fun new tech we’ll see in the next 10 years. Freakin Amazing!
Archive for the 'Consoles' Category
So it’s an open secret that Microsoft sort of ganked the first-gen Xbox 360. Rudeboy and I were in the local Toys R Us on a lunch break, and wandered over the sad, sad video game section. Even sadder than them having no new PSP slims was the sight of a damaged Xbox 360, proudly showing us the trademark red ring through the shop’s display. Not gonna sell a lot of Xboxes that way, are you, guys?
So neither Rudeboy nor myself had any big plans to get a 360, so we had to rely on a mutual friend to pick up this slick Halo 3 edition. Our buddy is kind of funny, and I had to go ahead and break the seal for him so he wouldn’t be able to freak out and return the thing. So, it’s opened, and there’s no going back now. Right away I have to say the color scheme is very nice in person, much cooler than either a black or a white one. 
The green controller looks very nice as well. All the internal packaging was either green or orange; a nice touch. The power brick could be hollowed out and used for lodging in your average favela, so that’s a recycling option in a couple of years. My take on the Halo 3 version: probably right up there in cool with the black “sports” Dreamcast, but not quite as cool as a top-loading NES (with dog bone d-pad). Apologies for not quite matching the sexiness of the famous PSP licking shot. Look, I can’t help that I’m an ugly man.
Not sure about the details surrounding this thing, but all I can say is WOW! One might argue that this baby is a few years late to the scene, but that didn’t stop one intrepid modder from creating a thing of dreams (from about 15 years ago). I mean… how often did you used to wish that your Gameboy could do just a little more as you played yet another round of monochrome Tetris?
Tired of using your lame attempt at a car badge in Mario Kart DS? Well… me too.
Good thing there’s a site like DSIcons.com to assist those of us who are less apt at creating anything other than a pixel blob in the icon editor. As the picture to the right shows, the instructions are pretty decent at helping you create that perfect car badge to help you express who you really are deep down inside.
There’s probably close to 50 free badges over at the site as well as several more packs that you can pay for (not sure why you would though with all those free ones to choose). I’ve tried a few of them out and they all look pretty decent in-game. So head on over and make everyone think that you have icon skillz.
Well… as I predicted, I’ve been somewhat of a failure at posting the DS game of the week on a weekly basis. But in my defense, my real job has been quite demanding the last month or so. To tell the truth, I actually have a whole list of stuff to post, I just need to find the time to actually do it. But anyway… on to this weeks DS game.
In a fit of boredom last week, I decided to try out a few DS games that I’ve had laying around for a while and have never taken the time to play. I can’t say for sure why I hadn’t tried this game until now, but I think it was mostly due to the fact that I didn’t have very high hopes. I realize that it got reviewed pretty well and I realize that most Nintendo games that revolve around first-party characters and themes are usually decent games. But every now and then, the touchscreen seems to “get in the way” a bit for me. For instance… Metroid Prime: Hunters reviewed pretty well and I know a few people who enjoy it, but I just couldn’t get into it. I’m just too much of a keyboard-mouse person when it comes to fps games I suppose. Anyway, I was a little worried that the touchscreen would just be gimmicky… boy was I wrong.
According to several of those stock market smart guys you always hear tale of, Sony’s fiscal year revenue results may not be looking so hot. Apparently, they may post the biggest loss in 4 years equaling close to $630 million (that’s US dollars kids).
For the most part, the huge loss is due primarily to slow Playstation 3 sales (well, duh). The article specifically sites the fact that the poor PS3 is currently in the 3rd place position behind the Wii and Xbox360 and speculates that this is mostly due to insufficient production. It seems that the losses tallied by their games division will outweigh the profits from both the electronics and movie divisions combined. So all that money they just raked in from the record breaking box-office sales of Spidey 3 this month still weren’t enough to counter the PS3′s sluggish performance.
Now, you may argue that they new they weren’t going to make a profit on the PS3′s for several years. That’s just a calculated business decision. However, I don’t think the loss was supposed to be quite this vast. At least not judging by the reaction to this news. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if the new management over there at the Sony games lair will be enough to pull this sucker out of one terribly frightening nose dive.
This weeks DS game of the week is a rather old title (as DS games go), but it’s still one that can suck up vast amounts of free time. For anyone who’s not really into puzzle games, just keep moving on to the next post. However, for anyone who can easily get sucked into a tetris marathon or who wastes away the hours at work playing bejeweled, Bust-A-Move is right up your alley.
To tell the truth, I’ve been a fan of Bust-A-Move ever since I first played it on a friends Sega Saturn “back in the day”. Even before that, I used to love a good session of Bubble Bobble on my old NES. My sister and I even spent an entire afternoon once and beat all 40 million levels (or however many there were) of that mind numbingly repetative game. Needless to say, those friendly little dragons hold a special place in my heart.
Holy freaking crud! Microsoft’s upcoming Project Gotham Racing 4 looks absolutely amazing! Apparently water effects are what really sets “next-gen” gaming apart from the last generation (as made explicitly clear in the image below).
When I first played the original PGR on a buddies XBox, I was blown away at how good it looked. The race replay was almost photo-realistic at times and I wondered then how it could get any better. Well, the picture above answers that question… add realistic weather (view the rest of the gallery here). Between PGR4, Bioshock, Lost Planet and a few others, it’s clear to see that weather is the wave of the future. And that’s ok by me. Now I just need to hijack my brother-in-laws 360 so I can play this game as soon as it comes out.
One could easily make the argument that Ben Heckendorn is something like a modern day Michelangelo. His creations could easily be considered works of art, many of them on par with the Sistine Chapel (to us geeks anyway). However, there are others out there that have some mad hardware hax0ring skillz as well. Take, for instance, the following example:
Although not nearly as svelte as something Ben might have come up with, you have to give credit to the industrious young creator of this Gameboy PC. You can click the picture for the full gallery of this amazing creation as well as a description (if you can read Japanese). As you can see in the pictures, the screen was removed to make room for the guts, but even without a screen, it’s pretty impressive.
Apparently this tiny machine runs Windows XP off a 4gb flash card that slides into the game slot. It also sports 2 usb ports, a built in nic and a vga port (so you can connect a monitor to compensate for the lack of a built-in screen). I’m sure the video specs aren’t anything to get excited about, but just imagine taking a pc that size to a lan party….
“Dude… where’s your machine?”
“In my pocket.”
“Heh… not THAT machine. I was talking about your computer.”
“I’m not kidding… it’s right here.”
<pulls Gameboy PC from pocket>
The group then collectively gasps and someone can be heard to say in a near whisper…
“woot!”
