Remember when Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried modded a Roomba and played Frogger across a four-lane highway? No? Well, if you did, it would be the perfect segue into this week's Roomba mod breakthrough.

A company called myRoomBud -- apparently started, built, and run by kids (peep this child labor pic) -- has designed a version of Frogger (pictured) that features myRoomBud's Roobit the Frog (a costume character mod for Roomba). Using a RooTooth device and some clever code work, myRoomBud modded its Roomba to sync up with the in-game Roobit. Yes folks, so incredibly pointless that it could've only been conceived by the minds of children. So where do we download?

[Via TechEBlog]

Much like the spritely amphibian star of Frogger, it seems that Konami's Hawaiian studio is destined to be mangled by a large (and largely oblivious) truck traveling on the "streamlining operations" freeway. Roughly 40 employees will be affected by the year-end closure, with Konami hoping to relocate most of them to positions throughout the rest of the company. No specific reasons for the change are cited, though John Strom of Enterprise Honolulu suggests that it stems from Konami's desire to scale back all game development in the US and focus on casino gaming facilities instead.

Konami has not confirmed such a plan, but with most of their titles emerging from the buff Japanese arm, it's hardly inconceivable. The Hawaiian studio was responsible for games such as Frogger Beyond and Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix -- a roster not nearly as impressive as their valiant resisting of the obvious impulse to combine the two franchises into some sort of rhythmic, frog-stomping adventure.

See also:

• Real-life Frogger (or: Roomba hacking is fun)
• XBLA Wednesdays unveiled

MAKE: Blogger (and one time Joystiq contributor) Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried (creator of the awesome Pac-Man LED bike wheels) teamed up recently at the SXSW conference in Austin to use a Roomba robotic vacuum to play a real-life game of Frogger!

Armed with only a Bluetooth-enabled Roomba, a green t-shirt, and the alcoholic consumption necessary to devise such a brilliant idea, they managed the little "frog" across four lanes of traffic ten times before falling under the wheels of a Toyota 4-Runner.

Afterwards Torrone said, "We had a lot to drink before we got here but there's nothing to sober you up like steering a robot through traffic." Ah, truer words were never spoken... not ever.

[Thanks, redLlama]