Hack-a-Day says the console has "somewhere around 1200 ROMs" on an SD card inside the case. With the three switches on the front, the user can cycle through them and then flash the title over to the EEPROM inside. The display's size is 2x16.

Atari 2600 Mod Features LCD Selector [The Bits, Bytes, Pixels and Sprites]

According to Turner:

When you play, you watch only the Christmas lights, but the audio you hear is from the Wii, so your flubs are broadcast for all to hear (people in cars can tune 99.1 and crank it up as loud as they want.) When we are not playing, a separate version of the program that has the audio from the recorded game plays with the lights as a loop.

And all across America, thousands of suburban dads hold their manhood cheap, and thank God that Ric Turner does not live on their block.

Christmas Lights Display of the Day [The Daily What, thanks Carlos M.]

Roomba Pac-Man [site, via RipTen]

Osama calls it The NEStickle (not to be confused with the NES emulator) because, well, why not. It's not like FightDeck or TurboConsole's gonna make this look any less weird. The NES controller houses the stick's USB cable, and it's compatible with all consoles and PC.

Osama says Nicolas, his friend, had to carve a reinforced interior from wood "using nothing but his laser vision. This insures that I don't over-zealously cave the NES in while pressing hard on those buttons when I'm losing badly to a cheap-ass who won't stop throwing me."

You can see more pics of the NEStickle and its construction over at the link.

Introducing the NEStickle! [Towards Mecca]

The get-up was built by an Adafruit Wave Shield user, connecting the gadget to an Arduino system. I know none of what that means, really, but it allows for the motion-activated sounds. And the soundtrack of course is customizable. So you can bet your bippy someone's dreaming up a Mega Man version as we speak.

Arduino Inside a Mario Costume [Adafruit via Gizmodo]

As Joe and everyone who's seen this point out, that's rather like picking 1234 for your ATM PIN. Because the first thing anyone would do with an idle, disconnected NES controller is punch in the Konami Code out of boredom. Joe shows how it works, and so I assume the code can be changed up. But whatever its utility, it's damn cool and a triumph of mod ingenuity.

Retro Gamer Drive (Konami Code NES Controller Flash Drive) from ProtoDojo on Vimeo.

Retro GamerDrive [ProtoDojo via Gizmodo]

Explains Gamecity:

This year we commissioned design collective the Alaskan Military School to produce an animation package to communicate the ethos of the event. We recently launched a series of viral spots that are the first part of this collection of new work. They each take one of our favourite games at GameCity HQ and translate them into a 15 pixel grid. It's Hyper pixel minimalism! We realised that you can communicate the essence of great, iconic games with minimal visual information. I think this approach echoes the values of the festival, to take a sideways look at games, and foster a creative space.

Gamecity squared will be Oct. 27 to Oct. 31 in Nottingham, England. At the link, you can see also Parappa and Noby Noby Boy done in the same style.

Parappa and Street Fighter in Just 15 Pixels [Tim Maughan Books]

On his Flickr stream, KodyKoala describes his Guts-Dozer as kit-bashed from the parts of a "Mech Hulk Top" and a "GI Joe vehicle that I used to have as a kid." I think that's the "Wolverine," the missile launcher that Cover Girl used to drive. Once again, I can't remember the formula for circumference of a circle, but I can recall that. And that's probably why I write about video games now.

As for HRH Hippo, I thought that 200-pounds-of-suet physique looked familiar. "I used a BLOB build [from the X-Men continuity] figure as the base, and unfortunately I had to make the legs not movable to make it look right."

Custom Guts-Dozer figure by Donald "KodyKoala" Kennedy [TinyCartridge via Go Nintendo]

Team Ironheade of San Francisco took top honors and a VIP NASCAR experience for their winning entry. What's more, their speed record is an all-time track and event best. Team member Christine Phelan says that hunk of debris clinging to the front "is actually a piece of the speaker we busted through at the start of our skit." In profile, however, it looks kind of like a nasty gargoyle face, so all's still cool.

And here's a video. Ironheade's epic run (and speaker smash) is toward the end:

Really though, a 160GB USB hard drive, or Super Mario Bros. 3? Is it really that easy a decision? I know what I can go out and buy tomorrow.

SMB 3 External Hard Drive Sends My Gaming Heart Aflutter [GeekSugar via Gizmodo]

The team, Christine Phelan, 25, Andrew Cook, 25, Sean Feeley, 26, and Luke Nalker, 30, all met as students at the Savannah College of Art and Design, which explains their robust creativity and commitment to pulling this off. In July their design submission (above) was accepted by the 2009 Red Bull Soap Box Derby in L.A., which races on Sept. 26.

Best part of their blueprint was this answer: "Acoustic Warning Signal - How does the horn function? The power of ROCK! Yeeeaaahhh!!!"

The team's put together a bunch of pictures showing their work in progress - it's a big love song to sparks flying, glowing hot metal, welding masks and wide smiles. They just got a shout-out from Brütal Legend's Twitter, which is how we heard of it. Go check out the blog, there's simply too much awesome to show it all here.

Brütal Bus! [blog, thanks Greg the Allegedman]

The music was written by Daniel Larsson and the animation was done by Tomas Redigh, of the Swedish electronica duo Rymdreglage.

8-Bit Trip [YouTube]

Yeah, yeah, taste isn't a temperature. That's been discussed before. Still, this tea service design won some damned tea-off for 2009, and should class up your joint if you are so inclined to buy it. Or serve tea to guests, a lifestyle decision I'm betting is well outside our readership demographic.

Space Invaders Tea Vessel [Gamergrrlz via Gizmodo]

Joseph I. Hodas never really knew me, and never knew he was in a video game. He was a professional acquaintance of a friend of mine, and my friend and I loved how The New York Times would insist on quoting him by his full name, with initial, instead of just "Joe Hodas." So, as an inside joke, I put his full name on the back of a jersey of a team I created in NCAA 2004. He was the backup QB as a senior. He had lost his job to a sophomore (incidentally, the writer who profiled Brian for 5280 Magazine.)

I later heard Joe was kind of disappointed about getting benched in the middle of a championship season, and I honestly felt bad for that. Like he'd been the unwitting butt of a joke. So when EA Sports asked for names, I submitted his and hoped for the best. EA Sports reminded that you were submitting names only for "potential use."

Who knows, how, exactly, his last name got in there. I do know I'd never heard it said in previous versions. But I'd like to think that in a recording studio somewhere, maybe Florida, or New York or the West Coast, Brad Nessler of ESPN sat down, maybe cleared his throat, looked at a piece of paper and a pronunciation guide, and said "Hodas."

And in a game on Friday, Virginia Tech vs. the University of Denver (above), I got to hear "Hodas comes to the line under center." As silly as it is, it was a game-pausing, fist-throwing moment. Because it really underlines the game at its finest, when real life collides with sports fantasy on the television set, where you've always wanted to see a great sports moment starring you or your friends.

So, thank you, EA Sports. And I have one more promise: Joe, we're going to the title game this year. And we're doing it with you in the saddle.

You can head over to Cartagen, the mapping utility, and see for yourself. It runs in HTML5 and does not require Java or Flash. Punch in a landmark and off you go. (I did Big Ben, above).

London Mapped in Warcraft II Style [Boing Boing]

Artist Laura Swingle makes the charms; her page features Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, Zelda, Zelda II, Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, Metroid, and Final Fantasy. She asks that you specify which game you want, but it's not clear if that's from the catalog photo, or from all available NES games. I'm thinking "PICK ANY GAME" means what it says. If you don't pick, she gives you SMB/Duck Hunt.

The charms are about the size of a penny - tasteful and inconspicuous, but great conversation pieces once they're noticed. $12 gets you one, $18 gives you the silver upgrade.

Nintendo NES Game Cartridge Necklace PICK ANY GAME [Etsy via Aeropause]

Qpingu of the TF2 community - "taking days of tedious work" - packed them up into a sheet you can download at seven different resolutions. He threw the links up yesterday. The icon pack covers all achievements through the Sniper vs. Spy update, and he promises future versions to incorporate additional TF2 updates.

You can slap this down as a desktop pic, but I'm already thinking about spending a day with a jailbroken iPhone bringing these in as a custom theme. I'm sure you guys can think of other uses too. Or, like I said, it's not about the doing, it's about the having.

The Complete Achievement Icon Wallpaper Pack [Steam Users' Forums]

The maker, Nilesz, is running a win-a-wallet contest over on his site, which of course gives you the info on how to order one. From his blog, it sounds like he does take mail-in requests, but you need to make sure you're sending him something usable first. It'd be bitchin' if he could do the old Imagic cases, but the 14 he does offer - including Haunted House, Circus Atari and everyone's favorite, E.T. - are slick enough.

The Atari Wallet [Nilesz, via Boing Boing]

If you have a BlackBerry, you can pick this up over at Crackberry. It comes in green and blue, and the creator, sadosdemetrios, is soliciting donations.

Oooh, looks like Vault Boy's frowning because his right hand is disabled - too much thumbscrolling?

Update: The theme was removed from the original link (below). It can instead be found here.

PipBoy 3000 v1.5b+g : 83xx Curve [Crackberry, thanks Alvaro]

I looked on the site for the musical scale picture he created, but couldn't find one. Still, it doesn't look that hard to reproduce. Of course, this depends on an ability to read music or recognize notes, but if you've got that already, then impressing your friends is the easy part.

+1 for usage of the Millennium Falcon pic. And the Zelda theme, instead of Super Mario Bros.

How to Create Music with the DSi on the Photo Page [YouTube]