Plus, I mean, god damn, look how long it takes for everyone to get in the safe room.

Here's another video. I love the beginning, everyone running one after the other to the weapons table. As awesome as this looks, I bet it's pure hell to play. We're seeing the reason Valve capped this at four to a side, I think.

This is Why Left 4 Dead 2 is Limited to Four Players [Hot Blooded Gaming]

Industrious Left 4 Dead modders have devised a not-exactly-simple workaround to bring the original game's four campaigns into the sequel. The very unofficial, multi-step hack requires ownership of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, ample patience and better than basic knowledge of editing PAK files. But, hey, it works.

Well, it mostly works. The list of issues includes numerous crashes, limitations and a dependency on console commands, but if you're desperate to play No Mercy with Spitters and baseball bats, you now have the option. Will Valve offer a sanctioned version of this? At the risk of pissing off the Left 4 Dead owner further, we sure hope it does.

How to Resurrect the Original Left 4 Dead [L4D Mods]

Not sure what you're looking at? Well, modder FreePlay's found a way in through the hacked save data files of an unnamed game (he doesn't want Sony to figure it out which one from his video.) In so doing, he was able to run a hi-there message ("lol go=hacked. sorry sony") and dump the PSPgo memory to his memory stick.

"No, it's not going to lead to custom firmware, piracy, or a Pandora['s Battery, a means to mod PSP firmware] for the Go," FreePlay says. "It can't write to the flash, and it even seems to be unable to overwrite the system settings, which was always unblocked before on the older systems. It's user-mode only."

The site pspslimhacks calls this a "semi-hack" and notes that the exploit has been around for sometime.

Despite turning down the volume and keeping the game screen away from the camera, a small fragment of the game's load screen can be seen around 1:18. Any guesses what it is?

PSPgo Slightly Hacked in Two Days [YouTube, thanks Dan M. and FunnyButRandom]

OK, yeah, they also load and play faster. But whatever your objective, sister site Lifehacker found a new hack that allows you to rig a hard drive to your Wii - even if it has the 4.0 System Menu installed (previous hacks called for an icky downgrade to get around that.) Just a warning, this requires hardware in addition to the hard drive, a suite of mod software, and the know how to use it. And also the willingness to muck around in a Wii and risk melting its graphics card, if a boldfaced "public service warning" is to be believed. The process is lengthy, so be prepared to kill an afternoon. But it is doable.

How to Store/Load Wii Games via USB Hard Drive on System Menu 4.0 [Mike & Heather, via Lifehacker]

Enter the Punch-Out!! compatible Slam Man, the boxing dummy designed for a workout that's been modified in the DIY way to work with an NES emulator. In theory, a cool concept, one that would have potentially interested me in looking for free Slam Mans on Craigslist. In reality however, it's a little less elegant than one might think, as the Slam Man has been modified with actual arcade buttons and switches for each control input that Little Mac is capable of.

The theory version may not be possible. But I'm guessing that there's some enterprising third party peripheral maker willing to throw its hat in the ring. Anyone? Mad Catz? Hello?

The Punchout Interactive Interface Improved [Instructables via MAKE]

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]

gamezine have found a way to install/reinstate a feature (by means of some code work, so it's PC ONLY) missing from the game, which lets you "play" it in third-person view. I say "play" because, while mostly workable, it locks the camera on the x-axis, making vertical movement a little tricky. You'll also quickly find that DICE only bothered with 60-70% of the necessary animations for the viewpoint, so it can look a little rough.

Still! It's a nifty trick, and can be turned on and off at any time, meaning you can activate it for long jumps (where you really need to see your feet), make the jump, then get back to first-person mode.

To access this third-person mode, open "TDInput" in the following directory:

C:\Documents\EA Games\Mirror’s Edge\TdGame\Config\

Then paste the following line in above the bit where it says "Bindings=(Name="F5""

Bindings=(Name="F4",Command="FreeFlightCamera",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)

Once that's in, start the game up, enter a mission then hit F4 a few times. That'll scroll through a few camera options, including a free camera and two variations on the third-person camera.

Oh, and I took these two screengrabs just to show you, yes, it works.

Mirror's Edge Third-Person View Activated [gamezine, via Evil Avatar]

A follow-up statement from Valve says that the fix has already been deployed to address cheats on dedicated Xbox Live servers, which accounts for the majority of co-op and versus mode play.

It expects to deploy a title update "in the coming days" for Xbox 360 owners playing on user-hosted servers or via system link. Thanks, Valve!

Reader Mario wrote to us with a distressing tale, saying "Versus mode is a blast, but recently, I joined a game and found myself in a safehouse at the beginning of a chapter. Suddenly, about 30 witches spawned in the safehouse with me followed by two tanks." How? Console command-style hackery that can be used on the Xbox 360 version. Cute when it happens to the next guy, but probably not to you.

You can see it in action in the clip above, which will also unfortunately tell you how to do it. We're contacting Valve to see if it's taking action to address Left 4 Dead cheating.

The very definition of 'Neat Hack', Ken Moore shows us his DIY Wiimote Theremin with a virtuoso rendition of a piece traditionally associated with the instrument - the theme from Star Trek.

It's not, in actual fact, a real Theremin. Rather than radio frequency oscillations, Ken uses tiny LEDs on the tips of his fingers (hence the gloves) that trigger the Wiimote's infrared sensors. Still damn cool, though and if nothing else takes my dream project of Theremin Hero one step closer to reality.

More Wii Theremin Videos [Ken Moore Design]

Gasp at the thrilling adventures of Dragon Pervert ("take down an evil Dominatrix & her army of gimps using breasts or something"), thrill to the weapons-grade racism of Blac-Man ("Profoundly racist") and ponder the nuanced take on sexual politics in Mega Fag ("It's up to you to terminate the evil Dyke's rape quest!"). These are childish and wrong on almost every level - especially anatomically, you really have to wonder if the programmers have ever seen naked humans - and in many cases could end up as alarming appendices to psyche evaluations.

As well as ROM downloads and a nice line in deadpan description, the site also has a number of features including a history of this oft-maligned (ok, justifiably maligned) subgenre of fan art. We apologise in advance.

Bad Hacks [via Waxy]

As the Google Translated (from German) page below would have it "Unfortunately, the D-Pad of the 360 Controller anything other than accurate."

Quite, which is where this nifty DIY Arcade controller project comes in. Just grab some resistors, LEDs, a Pizza Hut box (preferably clean) and and 'old' 360 controller and get to work. Don't worry, the person who wrote this is "definitely not a soldering masterly" either.

my own Xbox 360 arcade controller [fr3Ak blog, via HackNMod]

While filming jingle promos for NBC, Coyne told Entertainment Weekly what it is and why he made it.

"I've constructed this great looking Guitar Hero double-neck guitar thing here," Coyne says, smarmily, "because there's a lot of kids out there that actually think this is how you play guitar now, that you just press a series of four or five buttons and... it makes every sound the guitar can make."

EW thinks the monstrosity is "Huh-larious!" We think it's mildly interesting and possibly an indicator that we won't see too many Flaming Lips tracks on future Guitar Hero releases.

To see Mr. Coyne whack away at his guitar to the tune of NBC's three-note brand, hit up EW.com for extensive jingle coverage.

Flaming Lips 'Chime In' for NBC [Entertainment Weekly - thanks, Jason!]

Nintendo Wii ISO Loader - It's Real! [Tehkseen, via Gizmodo]

There are also workarounds to allow you to play your porn any media file or video on the console. But the glitch (not really a hack) that allows you to play your own music in Xbox original games is kind of pointless. And you can connect your console to a wireless network without buying the overpriced WiFi bridge — you just have to dedicate a laptop to it, and last I checked, they usually cost a little more ... Either way, if you're bored and want to make your 360 roll over, beg, eat a doggie biscuit off your nose, it's something to bookmark.

Ten Xbox 360 Tricks Microsoft Won't Tell You [Techradar]

The things that are balls-to-the-wall awesome about this video:
• Sped up assembly footage. See? It's simple.
• Crappy kung-fu movie audio — with mismatched soundtrack.
• The beep-beep-beep "Surfin' USA" tone. Please tell me that's coming from the Roomba itself.

I won't be able to get that out of my head the rest of the day. A jorb well done, "Ron" Tajima!

Wii Balance Board Roomba Hack Cleans Up [Balance Board Blog]

Eric Ruckman was so desperate to give the DS port of Guitar Hero the thrashing it so richly deserves that he scooped out the innards of his PS2 guitar and melded it with a DS. The DS touch screen is still used for strumming - the plectrum stylus works even better in this context - and the crafty sod even bolted on an FM transmitter to pump stereo sound through his hi-fi.

Hack Guitar Hero DS into a guitar controller [Hack-A- Day via Engadget]

Follow the jump for a video of the mod in action

Nintendo has been far too busy printing money and dreaming up strange new controllers to actually finish that DVD-on-Wii thing it has been promising for the last couple of years.

Happily, the homebrew community has stepped up and put together a Wii channel that will read a DVD disc and pipe it through the open source MPlayer media player.

It's not quite ready for prime time — the audio can sometimes get out of sync, although this is more a 'feature' of MPlayer than the fault of the hack, we suspect. Worth checking out, though, and it might just save Nintendo the bother of building something that nobody has really been crying out for but would be nice to have for free.

Homebrew Enables DVD Playback On Wii [Gemaga.com]

And if you don't know what Defender is, it's a classic sidescrolling arcade shooter released in 1980. Head on over to the Defender of the Favicon site to check it out. Won't take but a minute and fellow web developer types might just get a kick out of it.

Defender of the Favicon

June 16 Wii update [HackMii]