A pseudo-classic Genesis sidescroller debuts on Virtual Console today, as well as an NES sports favorite ... but really, you're playing Mega Man 9 right now. We know. You're not even reading this, are you?

• Super Dodge Ball (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): Without adding too much innuendo, the gameplay is pretty self-explanatory. You dodge balls.
• Vectorman (Sega Genesis, 1 player, 800 Wii Points): While he never became as popular as Mega Man, this robot fought without a torso, and best of all, could shoot upwards.
  

Your eyes, they do not deceive you. What you're witnessing in the above video is the antithesis of the subtle but very drool-worthy NES-in-a-blank mods we've been reporting on lately. It is, quite simply, a working NES on a belt.

Watch! as it's worn into a home electronics store and ... connected to a TV. Marvel! as its model plays Super Mario Bros. using the connected controller (but where's the power supply, and do we even want to know?). Visit! the site where you can actually buy one of your very own – for the low, low price of $300 – and be the envy of ... no one.

[Via Engadget]

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]

Video game collectors have just been given a golden opportunity (and another thorn in their significant others' side). Nintendo of Canada is cleaning out their warehouse and is auctioning their collection of brand new, sealed retro games, with all proceeds going to United Way charity. The auctions, totaling 421 games in 24 different auctions, break down as follows:

• 70 NES games over 4 lots
• 169 SNES games over 13 lots
• 182 GameBoy games over 7 lots

As of this writing, the highest bid in any auctions is US $1,013 for a collection of NES games that includes Mario's Time Machine, Dragon Warrior IV, The Great Waldo Search and – this is the big draw, folks – George Foreman's KO Boxing. There's some great games in the other lots, too, with Addams Family and Lost Vikings activating the most synapses in our nostalgic minds.

Joystiq got in touch with Nintendo of Canada to confirm the auction is legit, so what are you waiting for? Bidding for all lots ends June 5.

The Virtual Console provides some intriguing social commentary on tourism this week, with two games allowing us to travel the world and make a mess of it while we're at it.

• Metal Slug (NeoGeo, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points): Honestly, we shouldn't even have to expend a bullet point on this game. You know what Metal Slug is all about. Dash through some jungles, some mountains, some ruins (they're all to East, just so you know) and shoot everything that isn't part of the background. Everything.
• City Connection (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): Travel through cities like New York and London, while marveling at the engineering incompetence that spawned multiple levels of dead-end roads floating in the sky. Driving up and down them is apparently illegal too, so be sure to bump off those pesky police vehicles.
  

Returning from a brief, WiiWare-induced hiatus, the Wii's Virtual Console service offers but a single new old title for your enjoyment this week.

• Skykid (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): Join Red Baron of Bird Land as he makes the skies friendlier in this side-scrolling shooter. Enemies must be shot down, bombs must be dropped and the loop must be looped if you hope to survive your airborne jaunt. And try not to screw up the landing!

And that's it. Move along to the next post, folks.

First and foremost, apologies for the headline. If you can find it in your heart to forgive us, we're sure that the video above will tickle your fancy for gaming peripheral-themed furniture. We're not sure how much we'd pay for a custom-built, gigantic, functioning Nintendo Entertainment System controller (or a boxed copy of Super Mario Bros. 3, for that matter) that doubles for a coffee table with a removable glass overlay, but we could be convinced to skip a few months' rent should this epic furnitroller show up at our local Targét. Our landlord would certainly forgive us when we invite him over for an exhilarating round of comically oversized Bible Adventures.

Do you know what we really, truly and utterly despise about Pokémon games? It's the fact that every time something Pokémon related pops out of Nintendo's red-and-white capsule, we have to go hunting for that "é." You know, the one with the thingy on top. That's a period of 45 minutes we could spend being super effective and writing about this week's Virtual Console releases.

• Pokémon Puzzle League (N64, 1-2 players, 1000 Wii Points): Pit those encapsulated creatures against one another in a battle of manic block rearrangement! Way to go!
  
• Renegade (NES, 1-2 players, 500 Wii Points): Clean up your city by punching and jump-kicking every thug, gangster, villain, lowlife, miscreant and suspicious loiterer you can find. So, pretty much everyone in the game then.

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]

Wii owners might finally get a new Virtual Console title that they actually give a damn about, when the classic brawler River City Ransom hits the service next week. Publisher Aksys has confirmed that they'll be releasing the title next Monday, as part of Nintendo's regular weekly releases.

Hooray for nostalgia and all, but we're getting a bit concerned with the glut of content now available on Virtual Console. Perhaps Nintendo should implement a rating system, to help users distill the garbage from the few titles that are actually as awesome as we remember them.

What's VGA, you ask? No, it's not Spike's Video Game Awards. It's the Video Game Authority, a group that issues grades based on the condition of old video games, in a manner similar to action figures and trading cards. After paying a fee, gamers send in their beloved collectibles, which are graded and sealed in tamper-evident acrylic cases, marked with the official hologram of the organization. The first of these VGA-graded items are currently up for auction on eBay.

Currently available are near-mint copies of Super Mario Bros. 3, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear and others, all in the 75-85 grade range. Final Fantasy is notably already up over $200, and Super Mario Bros. 3 isn't far behind. If nothing else, those NES games look damn sexy in those plastic cases.

Read - First VGA Graded Games Hit eBay [GameSniped]
Read - BigHedToyz [eBay]

We admit that we don't share their same tendencies, but we love how many video game modders seem to come from the George Mallory school of thought. Why do you want to put downloadable content on the Nintendo Entertainment System? Because it is there. RetroZone are the ones to thank for the feat, which involves a specially-made cart featuring the Mac game Glider.

The cart is flashable, so once you finish the levels that ship with the game, new ones can be downloaded from RetroZone's official site. No, it's nothing we'd ever sink our time into. But we're aboslutely thrilled that someone out there is doing it.

Make no mistake, today's pair of Virtual Console titles has nothing to do with either chess or the lottery. We can, however, celebrate the second Square Enix title to come to the North American Virtual Console, and it's a lot closer to an RPG than the last one.

• King's Knight (NES, 1 player, 500 Wii points): A crazed hybrid between vertical-scrolling shooter and RPG, this game was one of the first examples of destructible environments -- you can pretty much destroy everything in your path. You know the drill: choose your character, level up, kill a dragon, save the princess.
  
• Powerball (Sega Genesis, 1-2 players, 800 Wii points): This bastard child of rugby and football born eons into the future, Powerball has you smack the snot out of the opposing team as you vie for the chance to run the powerball into your neon-lit goal for points.

All right, here's the situation: You're staging an NES-themed musical (off-Broadway) and the big finale requires a shiny, new Power Glove for all 40 members of the chorus line. You already have access to one unopened Glove that your grandmother gave you as a present in 1995 (way after it was a hot-ticket item), but you need the other 39 before the end of the month or the opening night of your show will be ruined!

This is the only situation that we could think of to justify anyone bidding on the lot of 39 sealed, Japanese Power Gloves that recently showed up as a bulk lot on eBay. Apparently we're not imaginative enough, though, because the Australia-based auction already has four bids with a high offer of AU$90.88 (not including the hundreds of dollars in shipping costs). Maybe we're just not "bad" enough to realize the economic and cultural potential of owning what is most likely the world's largest collection of sealed Power Gloves in one place. So we leave it as an open question to our commenters: What would you do with 39 Power Gloves?

[Via GameSniped]

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.