GG2 is in a complete 1.0 stage and clocks in at 4.8 MB. There's a deep forum discussion on its creation over at TIG Forums, and its periodically updated.

Of course, I feel obligated to tell you to take all sorts of reasonable precautions with what .exe's you download and install. But if you do play it, let everyone know your impressions in the comments. Mine: the sprites, at least in the close-up stills, look nice and familiar. Gameplay seems to follow the same kind of running/jumping physics, if a little skimpy on the animations.

burgerk1ng says it's a fun game. The file can be found here and here. Boilerplate caution about downloading and installing .exes from strangers.

Gang Garrison II [FINISHED] [TIGForums, big thanks reader burgerk1ng]

Mega Man Paul [Trinknitty's Blog, via Go Nintendo]

BTW: Before any of you English majors attempt to correct me on the usage of toboggan: "3 — chiefly Southern & Midland: STOCKING CAP"

The five mods are Age of Chivalry, D.I.P.R.I.P., Insurgency, Synergy, and Zombie Panic. Full announcement on the jump.

As a part of our continuing efforts to support the MOD community, we will begin hosting selected MODs directly on Steam starting next week. The first five MODs to ship on steam will be Age of Chivalry, D.I.P.R.I.P., Insurgency, Synergy, and Zombie Panic. As always, owners of any Source game will be able to download and play all of these MODs for free.

Once installed, these MODs will appear in your "My Games" list and will receive automatic updates just like other games on Steam. Also, these MODs now take advantage of Steamworks, which provides stat tracking and tighter integration with the Steam community.

We're excited to see MOD developers get wider recognition for the hard work they have done, and we hope to support more MOD teams in the future. Watch for the official release next week!

Announcement [Steam]

30 LEDs went into producing this disco monster - all linked to the sound output and set to pulse in time with whatever bangin' choons the owner (Travis) wishes to inflict upon the world.

This PSP is available for weddings, birthday parties and Bah Mitzvah's.

A very cool and very bright PSP modification [Maxconsole]

The id Tech 5 engine uses 'MegaTextures' - huge texture maps (up to 128000x128000 pixels) that require huge amounts of preprocessing to create.

id - and John Carmack in particular - are still very much pro-modding and have confirmed their plans to eventually open-source id Tech 5, but are unsure if there is a way around this technical limitation. Simply put, it is unlikely that any modder would have the computing resources that are required.

Just a thought - this sounds like an area where a project like Folding @ Home could be useful. Sure, cancer might not get cured as quick but, c'mon - MegaTextures!

Id Software's Willits: Rage Mods May Not Be Possible [Gamasutra]

And what a mod - Portal: Prelude is huge, actually bigger than the original game. It has 8 new chapters, 19 test chambers, a new plot and over 400 lines of dialogue (with English and French subtitles!).

You will need Steam, a copy of Portal and possibly some other bits and bobs like Counter Strike Source - the developers have, rather endearingly, forgotten.

This trailer should give a taster of what to expect when the game is released later this month...

Portal: Prelude[www.portalprelude.com thanks to Greg H for the tip]

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 purported boomerang mod:

The boomerang from CES in January:

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PS3 Batarang on Hackaday [forums.benheck.com, thanks Wakka]

While it no longer makes bread browner or blacker through heated coils, the Nintoaster does make for a snazzy, fully playable NES. It even retains its orange glow, sans cartridge melting heat! A completely useless making of video is available should you want to see this bad boy in action.

Nintoaster [Stupidfingers via Gizmodo, Ubergizmo]

..NO! Heresy! Microsoft and Sony were never meant to be combined in this way! That is right up there with co-habiting dogs & cats, that is.

A depraved hardware modder over at AcidMods has taken an Xbox 360 Chatpad and performed unholy rituals upon it to make it work with the PSP. There was probably solder involved. Solder and goat's blood.

PSP Phat and Slim Open Keyboard in action!!!!! [AcidMods via PocketGamer]

Wicked Sweet Projects by SCAD Inc [SCAD, via Gizmodo]

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

True, this mod could have been done with pretty much any small plastic box, but choosing a Nintendo Entertainment System to house a retro gaming PC is the kind of crowd pleasing coup-de-modding that is difficult to surpass, save by hollowing out a Vectrex or performing electronic taxidermy on an actual anthropomorphic hedgehog.

The beast contains a Windows XP PC loaded with the GameEx emulator front-end and a metric shedload of NES, SNES and N64 games - all of which, I am certain, are fully licensed and were purchased alongside their original packaging.

NES Console Modded as Retro Gaming PC, With Video [Slashgamer]

Graphic Designers! Don't waste money on expensive Apple Macintosh desktops - just gut your Xbox like a fish and stuff its innards into a Lan-Li PC-XB01!

The Lan-Li case really does look like one of Apples more industrial numbers with the cheese grater effect on the front. It has plenty of room inside to let air flow around your now warranty-free Xbox, plus housings for a water cooling system if you are really paranoid about getting the RROD or live on the Sun.

The PC-XB01 will be available later this month for around $150. Time to start looking for a minimalist Phillip Starke controller to go with it.

Lan-Li PC-XB01 [via The Register]

Here's a mod that guts a perfectly good (or bad) NES and repurposes it for food storage and transport. No putting Chiquita banana stickers all over this one, gang. In 20 years it'll totally pwn Josie and the Pussycats for collectible lunchbox supremacy. Creator fluctifragus shows how he made it, with helpful handmodeling from Sasquatch of Alpha Flight.

Nintendo Lunchbox [Instructables]

So is this another step in making a PSPhone, or is it turning into a DS? I say the next logical step in modding is to make the entire PSP into a Wiimote.

Pspzproject — The Touchscreen Project for the PSP [pspzproject.dcemu.co.uk, thanks Wraggy]

Wii Systemmenu hacks [DCEmu]

UPDATE - Crediar dropped us a line this morning to let us know the tool's gone live. Happy hunting.

All you need to get the mod working is Oblivion patched to 1.2 and Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon, which you can snag on Amazon for $10. I'll be spending most of the afternoon digging ferociously through my PC disc collection looking for them. Hit the link for screens, instructions, and even video of the mod in action. Brilliant work - now do Arena!

Morroblivion: The Resurrection of Morrowind [Official Mod Site - Thanks Sonya]

For roster editors, this is a setback in a niche that has prided itself on near-instantaneous turnaround of complete roster files by the date the game drops. EA, we’re told, is working feverishly on a patch to resolve this problem. But for now, anyone who downloads any roster file should avoid editing it; and those who do choose to edit it should do so offline, as doing so online risks corruption and can crash the game, according to our source.

Conversations with that source tell of an entire, crucial weekend of work essentially lost. One early-bird editor, working off of a devkit and not a final copy of the game, already got a file out through EA Locker. Other roster editors used it as source for their own files, and discovered the glitch. Even though the original author removed that file, there is still some residual viral spread that could affect unwitting others. It and anything going around right now should be considered suspect until the game is patched.

“I was assured that when I release my rosters on Friday there shouldn’t be any problems wth them,” one editor, who demanded anonymity because of a close, unofficial relationship with EA, told Kotaku. A day-three release of a custom roster file was, to now, considered very late. Now it’s the earliest that a reliable file can be produced.

The corruption — and this could be a total shot in the dark — appears to involve nonstandard ASCII characters in certain players’ names in the roster file, such as the infamous A’Mod Ned of Florida International, who memorably waded into a melee between FIU and Miami in 2006 on a pair of crutches. Indeed FIU is one of several teams that go missing, for inexplicable reasons, after changes are made to a roster file that was already created and shared by one editor. While that editor has already removed the file from EA locker, others who downloaded it continue to send it to friends unwittingly.

If you intend to game with custom roster files on NCAA Football, you probably should not use them until you see that the game has downloaded a patch from Electronic Arts.

NCAA 09 Bugs [YouTube]

Probably a good thing he violated his warranty by disassembling the machine (which already RRoD'd, and somehow received a second heat sink in the process) as I doubt he'd want to send this work of art off to be scrubbed clean or replaced. Of course that means no chance for the rest of us to randomly get this as a refurb unit. And how cool would that be.

Making the Kill Bill Xbox 360 [chuboi.com]

But Brian Kaldenberg, in a way, defies that altruistic mode. He sees NCAA rosters also as a very profitable business, and that makes him one of the most despised figures in a community where reputation and motive have as much currency as the accuracy of one’s work. In message boards and private conversation, Kaldenberg is routinely accused of plagiarism, arrogance, and deceitful practices. But with a combination of thick skin, patience and guile, he has become probably the most successful of anyone who sells NCAA rosters for more than a suggested donation. And Wednesday, sending more shockwaves through a jittery community, he acquired another leading NCAA roster domain, thus unifying the top three URLs returned for a search of “NCAA rosters” on Google.

“It’s hard for me to understand why they care so much that I sell it,” says Kaldenberg, 25, who since the last release of NCAA Football has managed to make acquisitions of his top two, hostile competitors — fkrosters.com and DT Linder’s PSXSports. “I think it’s because I was not the pioneer. The pioneers definitely are DT and FK. Then I came along and did it differently and made a lot more money.”

Kaldenberg’s replacement of PSXSports’ front with an image of a Monopoly board, for the time being, may also illustrate the acid relationships he has with others. He insists that was a wink-and-nod to Linder, who had likened PSXSports and Kaldenberg’s original Gamerosters.com to keystone properties in the popular boardgame. But others see it as a message that Kaldenberg is coming to drive out any roster editor, for profit or otherwise. And they care about Kaldenberg’s profit motive because for them, NCAA Football is a goose whose golden egg is not money, but the ability to freely change any or all of the names in sports gaming’s deepest universe.

“We’re concerned that if sites keep charging for rosters, the NCAA may ask EA to pull the editing feature,” says Chris Jacobs, a site admin for freeNCAA09rosters.com, a free counter-site to Kaldenberg’s for-profit empire. “The game would be ruined if we were stuck with HB #15 all year.”

On that sentiment, all agree. No college sports title releases with any current player’s name or likeness, thanks to NCAA bylaws. In professional sports simulations, where superstars opted out of collective deals and refused to allow their likenesses to be used, a few absences are nettlesome. To have not just an entire league, but the largest league of any (and March Madness’ 341 teams is even larger) makes gaming with and without complete roster files a night-and-day experience.

Thus sprouted the community of roster editing, with Linder among its progenitors. (Kotaku attempted to reach Linder before the sale of PSXSports but he did not reply. Efforts through others didn’t return a comment before this article was originally posted.) And despite well sourced ventures such as Kaldenberg’s and his closest competitor, Nick Cain’s Sportrosters.com, the free roster community could only be beaten if editing were killed altogether. They make their product first for themselves, then share it to others, and are apathetic about its profitability or market potential.

“I’ve had people volunteer to help me and say that we could work nonstop on the roster file,” said Victor Vasquez, who owned fkrosters.com before selling it to Kaldenberg in December, then reconstituted his efforts on fairdale-kings.com.“But I know only how accurate my work is. I know the homework that I put into this file every year.”

Kaldenberg began with Gamerosters.com in 2004 while a junior at Iowa State University, and approaches it as much as a businessman as he does a fan. He appreciates the value added by a strong roster file (gaming with rival Iowa — he lives in Iowa City — when he plays online) but also foresees the potential in the business and an end-game. “My ultimate idea is to grow the Gamerosters portfolio to the point a gaming site or gaming e-tailer makes me an offer I can’t turn down,” Kaldenberg says, claiming he received a six-figure bid last spring but “I just didn’t feel like it was the right time yet.”

Some might think the right time has come and gone. The addition of the EA Locker feature to this year’s NCAA football game, depending on your point of view, is either pro- or con-roster editing. Through the EA Locker, Xbox 360 and PS3 gamers may share roster files freely across the network. That sets up a competing viral spread of three roster types, none of which can be monetized:

• Fully researched and edited rosters bought by the community (Kaldenberg’s)

• Rosters which are the same in content, but distributed for free or a donation (Fairdale-Kings and freeNCAA09rosters)

• or incomplete, fan-oriented rosters built by individual players which are tailored to specific schools or conferences and contain inaccuracies or wholesale omissions elsewhere.

Working in Kaldenberg’s favor is the number of offline-only players who want rosters. Custom rosters were only available for use online beginning with last year’s title, meaning a large group of players who only game in offline modes, like dynasty or campus legend, care only for accurate rosters and neither need them online nor seek them out there. Also, EA Locker is available for free on PS3, but only through XBox Live Gold on that platform, representing a separate barrier. Vasquez, his adversary, himself agrees that there are more offline gamers than online.

Also, Kaldenberg trusts in a consumer instinct built on the notion that someone offering a product in a free market has a business motivation to provide an accurate and superior, product. It’s the same reason you wouldn’t buy discount meat off the back of a truck. “People are willing to pay for what we offer and pay for the peace of mind knowing they are getting a quality product,” Kaldenberg says. “Similar to how people are willing to shell out $60 for a steak at Ruth’s Chris.”

Kaldenberg won’t divulge specifics, but says he has served close to 10,000 customers since 2004, seeing his year-over-year demand double in each of the last three years. (Vasquez boasted he had more than 20,000 registered users when he ran the site, some of whom have migrated to fairdale-kings.com)

Kaldenberg’s operation requires seasonal employees — working on a PS3, PS2 and Xbox set up in an office — and a full-time business operations manager (the business also manages rosters for March Madness and other titles). But such growth has yet to attract the notice of the NCAA. “No one from the NCAA or EA sports has ever contacted me regarding roster editing,” says Kaldenberg, who has sought legal opinions regarding his exposure in his current venture.

Truth is, EA may not need to sue anyone out of existence, especially if that risks destroying a feature the majority of its installation base adores. If it can tip the balance so that works that are both complete and free win out on its network, that returns roster editing to the community of nonprofit enthusiasts and eliminates those making money off the NCAA or its amateurs’ likenesses. Jacobs and others see such an advantage being tacitly swayed to nonprofit editors.

“Our site is part of the EA Community Leaders program, and privately, we were told that they don’t like people charging for rosters,” Jacobs said. “Hence the EA Locker feature in NCAA 09.”

For its part, EA did not respond to an emailed request seeking comment. Roster editors say this is not a surprise: the ability to edit a roster is a content feature any publisher would, reasonably, not want to give up. In this case, discussing it inevitably acknowledges the cottage industry, for profit or otherwise, that provides gamers with full rosters against NCAA wishes. The less EA reacts, the less the situation is under its control, and the less it is accountable to its licensing partner.

Kaldenberg, if nothing else, is resilient and adaptable. His own record with his rivals proves that. In December, he won fkrosters.com through a third-party offering process. Vasquez, the site’s owner, says he didn’t know who was buying the site until the offer (made through GoDaddy) was accepted. Kaldenberg says Vasquez had every opportunity to reject the sale after learning of his bid.

Kaldenberg said Linder reached out to him late last year, offering him control of both the “Park Place and Boardwalk,” of roster mod domains, and hence the reason for the Monopoly board on PSXSports on Wednesday. An original package price of $16,000 in December eventually winnowed to $7,000 in June, said Kaldenberg. Linder, reached Thursday, said he offered the site because he was competing in a saturated broader market serving sports gamers, and wanted to rebrand his efforts in the roster-only space. To that end he launched EArosters.com on Thursday, his fourth URL since beginning his roster efforts in 2001. Linder said both sides reached an agreeable settlement.
"Brian and I are both competitors and I certainly appreciated his sense of humor," about the Monopoly board on his old URL, Linder said. "Brian purchased Park Place and Boardwalk, but he has to worry about people landing on Marvin Gardens or Pennsylvania Ave first. I just placed hotels on my green and yellow monopolies."
But if anything, Kaldenberg's survival in a cutthroat business environment has taught him valuable business lessons that many 25-year-olds don’t experience firsthand.

“I’ve learned to turn a deaf ear,” Kaldenberg said. “People say bad things about you, and I used to fight it and get upset, and then I'd just see it make matters worse. I’ve matured since my younger days, and I stay away from internet message board controversies. Customer service is more important. If a customer has a question or needs assistance, it’s much more important for me to spend my time responding to customers than to respond to someone criticizing me on another website.”

Kaldenberg’s largest for-profit competitor, Nick Cain’s sportrosters.com, remains somewhat above the fray and agnostic about the fate of for-profit roster editing. Cain, who only became interested in NCAA football because he found the gameplay more engaging than EA’s Madden series, said roster editing represents only 2 percent of a business portfolio that has included poker applications and adult business ventures.

Cain says Kaldenberg also approached him about buying sportrosters.com, but refused after being put off by the negotiating style.

“He bragged about his revenue,” said Cain, himself a coder who outsources his roster work to Indian writers working on console development kits. “We’ll I don’t bank on this money. This is funny money to me. I spend an hour a day maintaining my web sales. He can put up monopoly boards all day. But if EA Sports closes the door, well, it was fun while it lasted.”

[via Boing-Boing]

Wiispray turns Wii Remote into virtual graffiti spray can [Engadget]

Solution? A doorbell attached to a drum stick that acts as the kick pedal, making legs-free Rock Band kicking possible. Kinetic has published the details of its mod online, including the list of required materials and the how-to. Cost? About twenty bucks. Who else is now super duper excited about accessibility?!

Rock Band Drum Kit Accessibility Mod [Kinetic Communications - thanks, Jay!]

You move about the map, aiming a portal gun with your stylus to finish the level and grab pieces of cake along the way (naturally.) DS Fanboy raved about the game, conceding it lacks the graphics of the original but "it definitely has the feel and charm." Hell, I love the look on its own. Has a kind of Cartoon Networky mien about it. I just want to poke that guy in his tummy with the stylus, Pillsbury Doughboy style ...

Eh, er, OK, back to news. You can download it from the programmer T4ils, and if you need a guide on how to homebrew for the DS, DS Fanboy has that as well. There's also a screenshot gallery on DS Fanboy.

StillAliveDS: Portable 2D Portal for DS [DS Fanboy]

Hit the jump for gator eye pics.

Got Gator [The Llamma's via technabob via Albotas]

We're eventually going to get to the point where someone recreates the Old Testament as Klingon musical theater in Unreal Tournament 3, but until then, we'll have to settle for custom characters and UT2D gameplay mods and user-generated content like this Super Mario Bros. style map. If only we could add mods to cancer research or something. The cure would be on the internet with a Creative Commons license by the weekend.

UT2D-SuperMario_Beta [PC/PS3] [Epic Forums - thanks, Samuraidino!]

SOLD!

The Wii60 wheel [GoNintendo]

Now the user-based developers behind Tactical Ops (a classic UT mod similar to CounterStrike) are talking about bringing Tactical Ops 3 to consoles. While the team doesn't think that the first release of TO3 will support the PS3 or Xbox 360 (due to issues like button mapping), they're confident in the possibility for future releases. And when console mods become the size of full games, we can't stand behind a waist-height object fast enough.

Huge Unreal Tournament III mod whets PS3 appetites [CVG]

In the future, robotic slaves will play all of our video games for us. And it will be awesome.

Project Page [Air Guitar Hero via DCEmu]

Now here's a familiar story, modder cooks up something and gets in legal trouble, although it's usually from the software publisher. In this case, "unauthorised use of a police uniform" is an offense under New Zealand's Police Act. And even though it's unclear whether this really fits the definition of that offense, the cops are looking at their options. A cop spokesman said the police are looking into the matter.

Honestly, what the fuck is it with Australasia and Grand Theft Auto? I'll just leave it at that. I've never been to either Australia or New Zealand, but crikey, their collective pants-wetting over American video games, this series in particular, makes them look like the schoolmarms of western democracy.

Gamer's Real Brush with the Law [stuff.co.nz.] [pic by Robert Kitchin, The Dominion Post]

Good work, Thomas. We've got two more of his pictures after the jump.

Earlier this week I found Pongout — which actually has some replay value as you can't accept losing to such a ridiculous concept. And then TechEBlog discovered "Tresling," (left) a version of Tetris played by slamming an arm-wrestling opponent's arm into a controller. I like the video, complete with "Eye of the Tiger," but that was the theme to Stallone's "Rocky III" not his arm-wrestling vehicle "Over the Top" of 1987.

Here's the combo game I want to see: NCAA Hitman 08. As Agent 47, you begin as a top defensive back prospect in high school. Before the big rivalry game, you garrote the other team's star receiver, steal his uniform, line up at his position and nab 6 interceptions for TDs, winning the Heisman in the process.

Pongout [All Games All Free]
Tresling - Tetris and Arm Wrestling [Hacked Gadgets via TechEBlog]

If you can think up a more practical reason for a 7-inch flip-up LCD screen on your Wii, let me know in the comments. Pretty much everything I imagine involves an airstream trailer, a card table and a generator. Or a post-apocalyptic world where normal televisions do not work.

Wii Gets Even More Compact With Personal Seven-Inch Screen [Game With a Brain]

Big fan of this site. One of my employees brought us out to his car to show us what he created under the hood. I laughed so hard. He loves the original NES and wanted to make a tribute under his hood. Whatever excites him. I wanted to share this with everyone.

Make your PS3 even Bigger [Geek Pulp] Thanks Jason!

Hi.

I'm the guy that did that PS3 hard disk thing and seen as how I can't get the comments to work, I thought I'd tell you.

Firstly, thanks for putting it up there, I had no idea it would be up on websites that people actually look at :)

Secondly, I'd like to justify why I made it.
As I'm sure you know 3.5" hard disks are a lot cheaper than 2.5" hard disks, in fact the 500GB one in there only cost me £60; External hard disks don't allow you to save demos/games/updates etc. and I needed something to do for my school technology project.

Also, it isn't really a mod as the unit is a standalone thing that just sits on top. I have pics of it by itself if you want to see. Also, while it does stick out a little, you've got to agree that I got the style right.

I know this probably isn't that big a deal to you, but people seem to have misunderstood my baby and it's a little frustrating hearing people say that there was no point and that it was just a big chunk of fail or whatever the quote was.

PS3 Clearvision 7" LCD Screen [Madcow via PlayGadgets]