A Cool Gadget

I think I have a new favorite video game artist. I’ve already got a set of Scott Campbell’s hilarious Pac-Man illustrations in my house, and now I’m totally in love with his new “Great Showdowns (of the 8-Bit era)” series that he did for the 2008 iam8-bit video game art show at the World of Wonder gallery in Hollywood, Ca.

Scott’s mini paintings (3″ x 5″ each) offer a whimsical take on the confrontations between classic video game characters and their various nemeses. Dig Dug tries to make friends with Pooka and Fygar instead of exploding their insides, while Frogger contemplates how exactly he’ll jump onto that damned log so he can make it home from work once again. Back in the day, I pumped so many quarters into Moon Patrol, that the moon buggy vs. happy rock scene is my personal favorite.

While the original paintings have already found good homes, for $100 you can get your hands on a set of 5 mini prints (limited to just 30 per edition), signed and numbered by Campbell over on A Paper Tiger If you want a set for your wall, you’d better hurry.

As much as I love the minimal design of the Nintendo Wii, sometimes I find the whole white plastic thing a little boring. That’s why I love this concept for a Wii woodgrain paneling update.

Currently just a concept design by Joe D!, his mod envisions a layer of woodgrain veneer (probably just vinyl decals) for all of his Wii controllers. From the Wii-Mote to the Nunchuk to the Classic Controller and even they Nyko Perfect Shot - they all get wood. Not only that, the controllers get some bright white backlit buttons and a nice black paint job to bring out the woody goodness.

It only leaves me wondering what sort of look he has planned for the Wii itself. No word on if or when Joe will bring his concept to fruition, but I’ll be sure to post photos of the real deal if and when he does.

Have you been alienating friends by over-twittering and now need a substitute robot friend to pal around with? Good news, because as of right now, making this talking robot head is well within your reach.

This nifty bot was made by L. Scott Hudson, who put a terrific how-to video up so that like-minded folks could make one too. What’s cool is that the video is narrated by the talking robot head, who explains how to make herself.

Basically, you install the speech API, such that the .net app sends commands that can be tied to voice events. Then you assemble the LED mouth, attach it to the head, and hook up the circuits. At some point you have to glue eyes onto a tupperware container, but I guess he figured you didn’t need a tutorial for that part.

The talking robot head was part of Make Magazine’s recent Dorkbot Austin event. You can learn about the other geeklicious projects from the event here.

GUIMagnets are small, flexible magnets with GUI objects on them that you can use for fun or to aid you in your website design.

Ostensibly they can be used to create a “website on a whiteboard” but that bit of copy should probably be changed to “website on a magnet board” because if you’re like me, you just tried sticking a magnet to a whiteboard as a test, and it fell on the floor.

Buy a set (41 magnets) for €20 (about $30) which is a crazy amount of money for magnets, OR buy 5 sets for €90 (about $180) because you have a tree that grows money in your living room, and a lot of refrigerators that need to be embellished. Then again, if you really are using them for work purposes, I guess you could try expensing them. Good luck explaining that one to the boss.

[via GeekAlerts]

I don’t care how much I have to buff my oily prints off of this chrome joypad. I want one. I can’t believe in all of the years that game controllers have been made that nobody has thought to make one before. And yes, this one isn’t some cheap plastic masquerading as chrome. It’s actually made from metal.

This polished chrome joypad comes to us courtesy of China’s Dream Cheeky, makers of all sorts of fun USB gadgets and gizmos. The shiny metal controller features an 8-way directional pad, four game buttons, start/select buttons and shoulder triggers. The back of the controller is covered with rubber, giving you a better grip than if the entire thing were slippery metal.

It plugs into the USB port on any PC (there’s conflicting info on Mac compatibility), and offers shiny gaming goodness for your computer games. They’ve also got a nifty chrome USB hub, if you don’t have a spare port to plug this thing into. Now all I need is a version that’ll work with my PS3 or Xbox 360 and I’ll be really happy.

No word yet on pricing or where you can pick one of these shiny things up, but while you’re waiting, check out the other cool stuff over on the Dream Cheeky website.

Not only can this portable media player crank out movies and music, but it can play games from classic consoles from Nintendo and SEGA too. It can even charge itself or other devices with its built-in solar panels.

In addition to playing your MP3s and MP4s, the Media Street eMotion EM-SOL2GIG media player offers compatibility with NES/Famicom, GameBoy, GameBoy Color and SEGA Mega Drive (aka the Genesis stateside). Of course, that assumes you’ve got an idea of where to find some ROM files (hmm, ever heard of Google?) And when you’re done playing games, you can get some culture thanks to a text-to-speech E-book reader capability that can read any TXT file in either Chinese or English. It offers 2GB of on-board storage, plus an SD slot for memory expansion.

The portable console offers a 320×240 color display, and measures in at 5.5″ wide x 3″ high x 1″ thick - with most of the heft coming from the fold-out solar panels. The large solar panel not only charges the player’s internal battery, it can provide emergency juice to other portable gadgets such as mobile phones and digital cameras.

You can find the EM-SOL2GIG over on Amazon for $169.99 USD.

(BTW, this player looks awfully similar to this other solar game system, but that one makes no claims of SEGA emulation).

If your kids aren’t getting beat up in school enough for your liking, then you could try your hand at these felt lightsaber pencil holders and see if that kicks it up a notch.

Seriously, this is a pretty cool idea, but there is one problem: they don’t actually resemble lightsabers. Staging them with Star Wars pencils is definitely helping, but I’m pretty sure people would just think you had a random wad of felt wrapped around your pencils. Unless, of course, you started battling with them while making the appropriate sound effects. But then your pencils would fall out and you’d be back to square one.

You can make your own with this handy how-to guide. So if your kids are the type who begged you to take them to The Clone Wars on opening day, give yourself a break and leave them alone with some felt, glue, scissors, thread, and the instructions and let them get to it.

[via Craft:]

Catch an extra 40 winks tonight by laying your head on some of these comfy Space Invaders pillows. Created as part of Taito’s Space Invaders 30th anniversary celebration, they’re perfect for the retro gaming geek who has everything.

They come in the two designs shown above: one with a couple of large pixelated invaders, and the other design covered with tons of smaller alien dudes. Oh yeah, did I happen to mention that they glow in the dark? Sweet!

According to the product page over at importer NCSX, “The pillows are big enough to accommodate human heads, pets, and assorted wide loads,” making them perfect for use in my household.

They’re available for a limited time only and retail for $29.90 a pillow.

Japanese modder Hideo Takano must really, really love his Mac Minis. He’s gone over the top by producing not 1 or 2, but 7 different Mac Mini casemods, each with a unique look. Let’s start out with this classic Macintosh Quadra inspired Mini.

This is my personal favorite, the LEGO Mac Mini. I wonder if you could stack a bunch of these together to form a supercomputer?

If only the real Mac Pro were this compact.

While this one might look like a fuel canister, I wouldn’t recommend pouring any gasoline into it.

And while this variant on the aluminum Mac Pro isn’t a dead ringer like the other one, it is a bit more compact, and features a nifty pop-up USB port and power switch.

You can check out the other machines in the collection and additional photos of the mods shown here over on Mac Mod Lab (in Japanese).

Remember the beginning of Donkey Kong? You know - the part where Kong climbs to the top of the building, stomps his feet, and the girders all fall diagonally into place? That’s sorta what this new version of Jenga reminds me of.

Shipping this September, Donkey Kong Jenga doesn’t monkey with the orignial Jenga block stacking and removing gameplay. But I couldn’t think of a better way to spice up those boring plain wood blocks that the regular version of the game comes with. Sure, it’s a few bucks more than standard Jenga, but put Mario and Donkey Kong on anything, and I’ll gladly pay a couple of extra bucks for it.

You can pre-order Donkey Kong Jenga over at Amazon for $24.99.

[via Kotaku]