Most of us have probably dabbled around with a Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator before, but have you ever crammed one into a TARDIS? Those things are supposed to be bigger on the inside than the outside. Anyhow, one man decided that having a dedicated stand-up gaming cabinet wasn't enough, so he built this pillar of geek awesomeness.

Check out the two different sections, one on the building of the iconic blue Police Box, and the other on the console. He even had the 7th doctor, Sylvester McCoy, autograph the thing. Is it still a sin to covet thy neighbor's sci-fi gaming cabinet? If so, mark us down in the "sinner" category.

[Thanks, Douglas!]

2P Start's Tim Harding dropped us word of his recent retro addition. "Awhile back I built a reproduction
Mario Bros. arcade cabinet perfectly to scale (with some minor MAME modifications)," he told us. You can also view some of the progress at this blog. Check out the highlights for this weekend:

Joystiquery
Japanese hardware sales, Jan. 28 - Feb. 3: The unremarkable return
Joystiq Podcast 037 - Lions on meth edition
PS Fanboy Week in Review: 2/4 - 2/10
Weekly Webcomic Wrapup wins an award*

News
Director of next Mortal Kombat movie talks 're-envisioning'
EA's Facebreaker trailer makes its debut, lacks gameplay
Splash Damage growing, confirms new multi-platform project
Heed Totilo's warning -- keep a late Mass Effect save to play new DLC
Gently weep over your DS with Bandai Namco's 99 Tears
New Monster Hunter on PSP includes installlation option
The Club nods at Gears of War's "Seriously" achievement
Turok devs blame delay on PS3 version
Student hospitalized after suffering leg burns from pocketed PSP
Professor Layton sequel already 'confirmed' for U.S.
Ex-Marine goes missing supposedly after Call of Duty triggered flashbacks
Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 gameplay video looks familiar
TMBG, Natasha Bedingfield headline Sims 2 FreeTime soundtrack

Culture & Community
The surreal Nintendo artwork of Jimi Benedict

We're not sure where "Build Your Own MAME Cabinet" falls on your todo list but it's pretty damn high on ours. Sure, we've pushed it down and put it off over the years (why did we learn underwater yak-shearing?) but after watching this 5-part video series on that very topic put together by the crew at Systm our desire has been rekindled. It's like a geek rite-of-passage, where previously basement-bound nerds branch out, teach themselves something new, and apply that knowledge to build the one thing that will ensure they'll never leave the basement again ever. Now, if you'll excuse us ...

[Thanks, Luke]

If you told us twenty years ago that, by 2007, there would be a pocket-sized device that could make wireless phone calls, take pictures, play music and show movies, we'd probably get a little dewy eyed at the techno-futuristic possibilities. If you told us that device would also be able to replicate the games of hundreds of upright arcade cabinets, we might very well have exploded with anticipation.

So far, the efforts to port the ubiquitous Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator to the iPhone have had pretty limited results -- anything more complex than Pac-Man or Q*Bert reportedly runs into some hefty performance problems. Still, we can't help but imagine the possibilities that will come with some more development time. After all, just look at how far we've come in the past twenty years.

[Via Engadget]

X-Arcade has launched its long-in-development controller, which combines its Trackball Mouse and Dual Joystick. This peanut-butter-in-chocolate match makes it suited to all kinds of emulated games, from Golden Tee and Marble Madness to Pac-Man and Street Fighter. The name of this controller? The Tankstick.

We were with you, but "Tankstick?" Shouldn't that be reserved for a controller modeled after, say, a tank? "Tankstick" makes us think of that scene where Indiana Jones hangs perilously from the tank's side-turret, while the maniacal driver steers with exaggerated, stair-climber arm movements. That's a tank-stick, fit for toning arms while crushing the leading archeologist. At least we coud use the Tankstick to play that Indy game where you whip open the kids' cages and ride the mine carts to sweet freedom.

But we digress.

At $200 -- or $10/pound -- you'll have to play a lot of MAME or GameTap to justify buying the Tankstick. But, like the other X-Arcade controllers, you can get adapters ($20 each) to plug into nearly any console. Alternatively, tell your parents/spouse/children that you need to buy 15 pounds of cheese at once, and later claim it melted on the drive home.

The next step in the iPod's journey from being just a digital audio player to a device that does literally everything is the iPod MAME project. The emulator--a very much unsupported emulator for iPod linux--allows you to play such legendary games as Pac-Man on a range of iPods.

We assume that the emulator will play other MAME games (no telling how well), but since the only iPod available for us to test is a chunky 3G iPod, we can't test this theory. In the meantime, check out Scott's nano MAME cabinet pictured on the right. Scott's been working hard to fine tune the graphics for the iPod's display, as well as creating a custom MAME cabinet to play the games on.

[Via Boing Boing]

See also:
Play Doom on your iPod
iPod linux project spawns Game Boy emulator
iDoom: now (very) playable on the iPod nano

Thanks to the iPodMame project (a subdivision of iPodLinux), iPod video and iPod nano owners can now enjoy Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man on their portable audio players. w00t!

[Via Engadget]

As they continue to jam bigger screens, faster processors, and better controls into digital cameras, it only makes sense they would throw some games into the things. The 5.1-megapixel Fujifilm FinePix V10 comes with four "surprisingly addictive retro arcade-style games" including a shmup, a Breakout clone, and a maze game. For an added twist, the camera can incorporate your own pictures into the games.

It might be the first time a manufacturer is shipping a camera with games built-in, but it's not the first camera to run games. Check out the totally awesome Mamed project, running Mame on any Digita OS enabled digital camera.

[Via BoingBoing]