NES emulation on the iPhone already? Watch the video and see how it's arrived already. Granted. it would be a lot better if you could swivel this thing into landscape mode to really make it work like an old-school Nintendo controller, but the fact that this is up and running is fairly impressive itself.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has the deets on this emulator, and we're looking forward to playing around with it. The only problem is, with a screen that small, can anyone really see what they're playing? Not if the controls stay like this, but we're hoping things get turned a little sideways and they crack the sound issue.

Well that was fast. It was just Saturday that hackers at Noobz found a buffer overflow exploit in the puzzle classic Lumines that allowed hackers to run a simple Hello World program on any PSP firmware, including the recently released version 3.5. By Sunday, our blogging brethren at PSPFanboy caught the above screengrab of Amazon's Movers and Shakers page showing the game's sales jumping a ludicrous 5900 percent in just one day. As of this posting Monday morning, the same page shows a more moderate 750 percent rise pushing the two-year-old title to the second-highest spot on Amazon's video game sales charts.

We understand that there are a lot of people out there that want to exploit this new, uh, exploit to run homebrew code on their PSPs. What we don't understand is how there can be so many PSP owners out there that don't already own Lumines. How do you buy a PSP and not immediately pick up this hauntingly beautiful musical puzzler? We suppose there could be some PSP owners out there who eschew UMDs altogether for legally questionable emulators, but really, if you need a firmware hack to justify shelling out a few bucks for such sublime puzzle goodness then we don't want to be your friend anymore.

For a brief moment in time, an updated version of the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility list was exposed for all the internet to see. Though it was yanked in a matter of minutes, one new entry stood out like an atomic mushroom cloud in a serene, children's playground. Not to imply that Psychonauts is capable of melting children or flooding large masses of land with deadly radiation, but its presence was rather devastating to the psyche.

In case you weren't aware (and clearly you aren't much of the time), Tim Schafer and his team at Double Fine did extraordinary things with Psychonauts, managing to take the seemingly incompatible platformer and adventure genres and mash them together like two pieces of clay. That's before they twisted the whole mess into a variety of amusing shapes.

Oh, there's a whole bunch of other new games too. However, when asked about the exact release date of this December update, Microsoft warned us that the list is not final. "We'll have more news soon -- as I'm sure you're aware with any software development, things can change at any time so we want to make an announcement when we're sure we've got the final, solid list."

View the non-final, slightly wobbly list of additions after the break.

[Thanks Nick! Thanks to Richard from Xbox 360 Fanboy for remembering to take a screenshot.]

Speaking with 1UP, Sony's Phil Harrison detailed plans to make most of the PlayStation (PS1) catalogue available for download on PlayStation 3 -- in addition to PSP. Harrison confirmed that a few titles will be available at launch, including Twisted Metal and Syphon Filter. The catch is you'll have to play them on your PSP, since PS3 currently lacks PS1 emulation software.

Once the patch is distributed though -- Harrison hopes by year's end -- each PS1 download will be playable on both PS3 and PSP, allowing us to enjoy treasured classics and rarities on-the-go and on the big screen. Just be warned, PS1 games will not be enhanced for your 1080p display.

Note: Actual PS1 discs will be playable at launch.

The homebrew community has beaten Sony to the punch, releasing the first PlayStation (1) emulator for PSP, called PSX-P. But, as this is simply the first public beta version, the emulator suffers from speed issues, among other defects. Riiiiidge Racer is reported to clock in at a paltry 10 fps.

PSX-P is compatible with PSP firmware v1.00–2.71 (an eLoader is necessary beyond firmware v1.50).

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.

TASvideos has posted a clip of Mega Man X and Mega Man X2 being played simultaneously (using one controller). But there's a catch...

The TAS community -- that's "Tool-Assisted Speedruns" -- is not about showing off, but rather, creating "movies that are beautiful to watch." Know that this clip was recorded using a controller wired into two SNES emulators and that the player used features like slow-motion and savestates to cast the illusion of a seamless playthrough in real time. So while it's not proof that an 'unassisted' gamer could play two different games with one controller, by exploiting emulation tools, the creator does show that two games can be played successfully using one set of button inputs, and without modifying the games.

Do you find these sorts of projects fascinating? Is this games avant-garde movement? Or just a "silly idea"?

[Via Digg]

PSP Updates received some snapshots alleged to be depicting the PSP's forthcoming PSone emulator interface. The pictures suggest a simple process in which users select a PlayStation game from an alphabetized list and then, are given details about the title and an option to purchase and download the game. Pictured above, the Gran Turismo 2 detail shows a $15 price and 2–6-player Wi-Fi (infrastructure) multiplayer support. Elsewhere, another image reveals this list of "new" available games (quite a launch lineup):

• Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
• Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
• Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror
• Doom
• Doom 2: Hell on Earth
• Duke Nukem: Time to Kill
• Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes
• Final Fantasy VII
• Gran Turismo 2
• Grand Theft Auto 2
• Metal Gear Solid
• Twisted Metal 2
• Quake 2