Our first thought upon seeing this very cool hack was "that's awesome." Our second thought was "do you have to blow on it to make it work?"

BenHeck.com forum member "darkeru" created this inventive new take on a home made NES portable, which manages to squeeze all of the 8-bit dynamo's guts into a 4.1" by 5.5" space ... with a backlit LCD display. We just had a third thought: what happens when you connect it to this portable NES?

[Via Hack a Day]

All right, we'll admit that headline is a little inaccurate. The heavily modified Super Mario Bros. cart shown above actually plays Japanese Famicom carts (like the not-at-all-bootleg Super Bros. 5), not the slightly larger American NES carts. Semantics aside, we're sure you'll share our sense of awe at the accomplishment of fitting an entire video game system into what, at one point, was used to hold the data for a single game.

All the pieces are there, believe it or not, including A/V outputs, a svelte power switch, and two controller ports sticking out at the bottom of the cartridge. The machine seems like a one-of-a-kind hack, and doesn't look like it's going to be sold any time soon. It's a shame, too ... we' d love to get our hands on one of these, if only so we could plug in our Flash Memory PowerPak via an adapter to create the ultimate NES-cartridge-shaped hacking monstrosity.

[Via Engadget]

It should be a no-brainer. You blow into a harmonica. You blow into an NES cartridge. Putting the two things together should result in more efficient blowing. And indeed it does. All you have ti do is watch the video performance on the new instrument to see how much it blows.

The creator of this monstrosity of musical design has put together some detailed instructions for those who would dare to replicate this feat in the comfort of their own homes. Choose your cartridge carefully, though -- as the instructions note, this is a game you should be comfortable essentially making out with. So Yo Noid! is probably out.

We used to jam the game all the way back, force it all the way down, shove (of all things) one of those plastic SNES cart covers in there to keep it in place -- and then (as seen above) feverishly press 'Reset' until that sucka started up. Other techniques?

See also: How did you blow your NES cartridge?

Who said that grandma's skill set wasn't that useful? It's a custom crocheted Atari 2600, complete with two controllers, a game cartridge, and Pitfall on the screen. Amazing! These is exactly the sort of old school stuff we'd be filling our homes and offices up with if it was for sale in stores.

Now the real proof comes when someone knits us a next-gen system complete with a multiplayer game playing out on the crocheted screen in -- wait for it -- high definition. That'd be like a million lines of yarn or something. Better get to knitting before Super HDTV gets invented.

[Thanks, Mike]

When most gamers talk about rounding out their collections this holiday season, they're probably thinking of about picking up some bargain priced PS2 or Xbox games. For an elite group of obsessive NES collectors, though, it's all about finding decades-old 8-bit games that are not always so bargain-priced.

MTV's Stephen Totillo profiles some of the people who have made it their goal to collect all 700+ NES games in their original boxes. Between them they've sold everything from PS3's to T-shirts to fund a quest that can easily run into the thousands of dollars. Rare games like Stadium Events or a gold Nintendo World Championship cartridge can demand hundreds or even thousands of dollars by themselves.

The most interesting part of the story is what these collectors do with the games once they have them. Collector Jason Smith has played all of his 700+ games for at least 15 minutes, while Omegathon winner Luke Armstrong only tried a few dozen of his carts before giving up. That might seem like a colossal waste, but as Totillo correctly points out, "if one amasses the world's greatest stamp collection, one doesn't then mail a bunch of letters."

Known only as "drx," some mysterious mage has resurrected a Sonic the Hedgehog 2 prototype cart and promptly dumped it (for emulation). It's an early build of Sega's sequel that's more akin to the first game than to the final version of Sonic 2. Can you spot the differences?

It's been suggested that this prototype is the same alpha build that was featured in several episodes of Nick Arcade. Another early build, often referred to as Sonic 2 Beta, was stolen from a toy show in New York back in '92. The cart was pirated and sold as a final version in parts of Asia and Brazil, despite only featuring four semi-playable levels.

Nintendo's apologizing to European customers because they've had to temporarily switch to cardboard game boxes as a result of shortages afflicting that territory, according to Gamasutra's David Jenkins. Nintendo, ever sensitive to gamer needs (and we can't fault them there), is tossing a coupon into paper boxes offering customers a plastic case once supply issues have been resolved.

We admit, those are some high quality plastic cases, but c'mon. The DS cartridge is tiny and holds just 128 megabytes of content. Does it really need to ship with plastic that weighs many times more than the product (3.5 grams)? It's environmentally irresponsible. We understand that large game cases help titles fight for attention on a retail shelf, but there's no reason that they can't do that fighting using more responsible materials.

Comprised of bits, games should be the most environmentally-friendly products to distribute. Nintendo (and other industry players) should use this opportunity to examine packaging.