By all accounts it's a bit of a mess but then, that's what you get when you muck around with this kind of business. There's sloppy framerates and poor controls all over the shop.

On the bright side, it supports the...Wii Remote?

N64 Emulator Hits Jailbroken iPhones, With Bluetooth Wiimote Support

You might know of Shiraz Malik - he's the longtime commenter Spoony Bard here, and he was also our comment ombudsman last year. He's currently pursuing his MBA at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and he and his wife are expecting a baby soon.

Although a committed gamer for life, Shiraz is facing some mature decisions on the road to fatherhood, a path that has less time for games, in a household with not much space for them, either. He's written about his decision to sell his video game collection, the nostalgia he feels saying goodbye to those old friends, but knowing there will be new ones as soon, when his son arrives and embarks on his boyhood.

When I was four years old, my dad brought home an Atari 7800. In retrospect, that was his first mistake. I became hopelessly addicted to the wonderful world of video games. I made time for Mario, hung out with Alex Kidd in Miracle World, dreamed about Mega Man while doodling in class, and I soared through the sky with Starfox.

Twenty-six years later, I'm juggling graduate school, married life and a job search, and I still have managed to find the time to get my game on. Somehow I was even able to do some comment moderating for Kotaku in that time, too. Through it all, I've made sure to keep my love of video games alive in some way. But now, we have a new situation.

You see, the day my wife told me that she was pregnant, everything changed. All of a sudden, we're spending our free time taking classes and picking out baby names. Try as I might, the wisdom of hanging on to all of my video games seems to make less sense as time goes by. And in this tough job market, with the mountain of debt school has forced us to carry, we have looked for ways to scrounge up a baby fund.

So after lengthy debate, we decided on my extensive video game collection. I was hoping to hold on to some of my vintage game systems for my future kids, but we simply don't have the space anymore. My wife reminds me that I can play a lot of these games on a virtual console ... but she doesn't understand what game collecting is about. We hardcore gamers take pride in our amassed collections of gaming systems and games; there's just something special about that bygone era when you stayed up all night playing Mega Man II with a friend while your parents were asleep.

Now I look around at the game systems I must sell ... here's my green Xbox Halo Edition along with all my Bioware RPGs ... it has to go. Hey, there's my old N64 ... in college, we played it until the sun came up, and then we played some more. To date, I've never been as good at a single game since Goldeneye. And there goes my silver Gamecube that entertained me and my friends at parties.

I must console (no pun intended) myself with the fact that whatever I make will go towards making sure we can buy my son (yep, it's a boy!) of what he will need, and I certainly hope that one day I can share my love of video games with him along with my other passions. In fact, I've already planned how we're going to watch the Star Wars movies - starting with New Hope and ending with Revenge of the Sith, the only way they should be watched!

But most importantly, I hope he has fond memories of growing up like I did, and if that requires me to expunge some of the things that gave me joy, so be it. In a way, I'm cleaning out my past to make way for his future.

- Shiraz Malik (Spoony Bard)

Due to come in at around $20 when it ships in July, the Retro Adapter works like a controller hub, allowing you to use NES, SNES and N64 pads. What's more, the hub is styled to look like an N64 (though we think it looks as much like a 3DO).

Innex Retro Adapter updates your old controllers for active Wii duty [Offworld]

Ambition is what drew me to Factor 5.

As a gamer I came to the studio's work a little late. I missed their Turrican days, their era of making games for the Super Nintendo and Genesis. I came upon them as an N64 gamer, spotting their logo at the intro to Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. That 1999 shooter was one of the first games to utilize the N64's RAM expansion pack for improved graphics resolution. That was the first hint to me that Factor 5 was a studio interested in pushing technology.

The next game Factor 5 game I played — still before I had become a reporter — was the one that forever charmed me to the studio. It was Star Wars: Battle for Naboo, a new-Trilogy sequel to Rogue Squadron. A hidden feature is what won me over: stuffed into its N64 cart was audio developer commentary for each of the game's levels. I'd never heard such a thing before.

This was a studio of developers with whom I wanted to speak. And I would.

At the start of the GameCube era, in 2001, I was just beginning to cover games. I played Factor 5 GameCube launch title Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader as a novice reporter at my first E3. It is, to this day, among the best-looking games developed for a Nintendo platform. I don't remember talking to Factor 5's U.S. president Julian Eggebrecht then, nor for its 2003 sequel, Rebel Strike. But it was by that second GameCube game that I was writing a freebie column for IGN about the GameCube.

What I wrote about Rebel Strike highlighted the second defining characteristic of Factor 5 for me: they bit off mouthfuls at a time. Rebel Strike was not just a full new game. It housed the entirety of its predecessor, re-crafted for split-screen co-op. It contained not just audio commentary but making-of documentaries. But there were signs of rough edges: peculiar dips to black between gameplay and in-engine cutscenes; a group of on-foot side-scrolling levels that played poorly and curiously lacked audio commentary.

In 2006, I finally got paid for something I wrote about Factor 5. I was at MTV and covered the topic of developers using audio commentary. I referenced Factor 5 as a pioneer.

Factor 5 disappeared from my radar after that until I finally met Eggebrecht in person at a Sony event in 2006. He was showing, for the first of several times, the dragon-combat game Lair. He was a champion of PS3 motion control, a booster for the system's technical prowess and ambitious as ever. He wanted a game with air combat, ground combat, allusions to the ethics of modern war, hooks to the PS3's web browser, elaborate cutscenes and so much more. There were those two signatures of Factor 5 again, summed up in one word: ambition.

But Lair was rougher than Rebel Strike. Factor 5 barely attempted to hide this. In one of the more open displays of developer frustration with their own game, the studio included commentary in Lair that alluded to the game suffering from what was described as a curse of the dragon games, a problem that they said extended to personal problems among some of the staff. Following up in an e-mail, Eggebrecht said to me in 2007: "I am not a believer in ghosts, but this one was haunted."

Factor 5 faded away again, rumored over the next two years to have canceled its deal with Sony, possibly returned to working with Nintendo. Then came the news reported in Variety that Factor 5 was one of the studios suffering from having made a deal with the collapsed publisher Brash. I reached out to Eggebrecht again, who all but confirmed that the studio had been making a Superman adventure and expressing hope that the game would still come together.

"With that said," he wrote to me in November, "Things are obviously in flux and we hope that the game proves to be as indestructible as our hero…"

And then? Today's news. Factor 5 in the U.S. is no more. I've not heard back from Eggebrecht about this turn of events. The statement on the company's official website indicates that its German parent company still has projects coming.

There may be a future yet for Factor 5. There definitely was a past worth appreciating.

The super-sized sequel to the original Banjo-Kazooie on the Nintendo 64 finally joins its predecessor on Xbox Live Arcade on April 29th, bringing with it a much faster frame rate and the Stop ‘N' Swop feature left out of the original release due to it being too damn big to begin with. Rare will also be celebrating the release of 4J Studios' port with a set of Tooie-themed gamerpics, yours for a measly 80 Microsoft points.

To help ease the two week wait, Rare has opened up a Banjo-Tooie section on their website for fans who'd like to bone up a bit before the bird and bear return.

Banjo-Tooie Release Date Bonanza [Banjo Blog - Thanks Jake!]]

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]

Wii-kly Update: New Classic Game Added To Wii Shop Channel

Jan. 28, 2008

Traverse the half-pipe from the comfort of your living room. With this classic game, it's Winter Break all the time. Freestyle through white powder, and school your best pal with your new trick! Did you get air?

This new classic game goes live at 9 a.m. Pacific time. Nintendo adds new games to the Wii Shop Channel every Monday. Wii™ owners with a high-speed Internet connection can redeem Wii Points™ to download the games. Wii Points can be purchased in the Wii Shop Channel or at retail outlets. This week's new game is:

1080°® SNOWBOARDING (N64®, 1-2 players, Rated E for Everyone, 1,000 Wii Points): Hit the slopes for some serious shredding in one of the first truly realistic snowboarding games ever created! Start in the lodge and select from five characters, each with his/her own particular attributes and special tricks. Then take a look at the wide assortment of available boards and choose one that best suits your rider and style. Once you've got the gear, six different modes of play, including Match Race, Trick Attack, and 2-Player Versus, await. Pick a course and get ready to experience a sensation of speed that'll make you forget all about the cold—but it might just send a shiver down your spine. Throw in hidden characters and boards, varying weather and snow conditions, multiple paths through each course, and a variety of tricks to master—topped off with rock-solid play control—and you've got a recipe for winter fun that you can enjoy any time of the year. It's all the fun and excitement of the sport, without the bruises and frostbite!

For more information about Wii, please visit wii.com.

Pokemon.com - They Show You Their Pokemans [Nintendo - Thanks Daniel!]

Wii Pilotwings? [Wii60]

Super Mario 64 Classic NES Edition [YouTube - Thanks Xehirut!]

Geist Force. Mario 128. Frame City Killer. Nico. Project Berkley. Too Human. Thrill Kill. Donkey Kong's Fun With Music.

If you've been following gaming for a while, you'll recognize many of those names, knowing that many of them never saw the light of day or were in development for so long, console generations came and went without a release. If you're looking to wax nostalgiac on dozens of games that never made it past the alpha stage, you may want to spend some time over at Unseen 64.

In addition to a slew of unfinished, unrealized sequels and fresh franchises are games that underwent massive design changes. Sneak a peek at Okami's photorealistic style, House of the Dead III's cel shaded look, Rez's half-dozen art direction attempts, or the abandoned Resident Evil 1.5. Wonder to yourself "Whatever happened to that game?" Michael McWhertor

Unseen 64 - Videogames Unseen, Unreleased & Beta Archive!

So how about that fix? Pro-G got the following statement from Nintendo about the issue.

Due to unavoidable technical reasons unfortunately it is not possible to save ghost data from Mario Kart 64's Time Trials in the Virtual Console version of the game.

Unavoidable? Really? Sure, it's outlined in the Virtual Console Shop Channel but that doesn't make the hurt any less worse. Let's hope Nintendo can find some way to squeeze 256KB of data out of the Wiis internal storage to address this issue in a future update. Michael McWhertor

No fix coming for Mario Kart on Wii Virtual Console [Pro-G]

The long in the works fan remake of the classic Nintendo 64 game The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time looks like it may be progressing, with a release candidate coming "soon". While the authenticity of the project has always been in doubt, the newest screens of the game, regardless of whether it actually exists, are still very pretty.

A Something Awful forum poster updated the long running topic with new information about the remake's creator and the status of the project.

Daniel Barras, an old friend of mine, has announced that Release Candidate 1 of OoT2D will be released soon. He's waiting on his laptop to be airmailed to him (and he probably needs to put a couple finishing touches on it).

Sounds promising, but I'm a skeptic and still have my doubts. Still, I simply cannot wait to be proven wrong and try this out for myself. True believers can check out more screens at the links below.

Thanks for the tip, Gourry. Michael McWhertor

Ocarina of time: 2D - RC1 (Release Candidate 1) Beta - Release will be soon [Something Awful Forums]
OoT2D - The Original by TRM (New Graphics upgrades too) [Zelda Fan Game Central Forums]

Keep in mind this is a beta release, one that was pushed to make a near-holiday live date, so expect some buggy behavior. I'm away from my gaming PC at the moment, but I'm going to give it a shot tomorrow when I return to LA. Michael McWhertor

Goldeneye Source Official Site

Those gadget-crazed heathens at big brother site Gizmodo point to this much-needed Nintendo Sixty-Fouuuuur parody with the site's intern, Ben. Not only does it have the slow mo screaming, but the pawing at the console. Brilliant! Brian Ashcraft

Thanks, Torokun

What. Happened. To. Rare. With the likes of GoldenEye and Banjo-Kazooie, the UK-based developer made some really entertaining games. Now, it just makes games. But, Viva Pinata could be that elusive return to form. Here, just listen to the title's lead designer Gregg Mayles intelligently downplay Pokemon comparisons:

People always want to compare something with the closest thing they're familiar with, and I guess our comparison point is fated to be Pokemon. But to me the two are far more removed than people think: Pokemon focuses on the collection and confrontation of characters, while Viva Pinata offers a much wider range of stimuli and encourages the player to tackle the game in a manner that suits them. They can be direct, they can dabble, play a long game or a short game, be entrepreneurs, play it safe, help others, strive for a garden that's the envy of all their friends, or simply enjoy creating something from nothing.

Filled with confidence, we are. Brian Ashcraft

Viva Rare [Guardian Unlimited via Games Blog]

Check out this wonderful t-shirt illustrating the march of evolution from Nintendo's first D-Pad to the current Wiimote. It's available for pre-order now from Splitreason.com for $17.95, who promise to ship it off sometime early this month. Florian Eckhardt

Nintendo Evolution T-Shirt [Splitreason.com]

Look, I know that they put this thing in every hotel room, but we just left the ultra-posh Cerulean Towers Tokyu hotel and I'm trying to find anything positive about downgrading to this ancient dump. And, no, those aren't gorgeous graphics. We're just watching sumo tournaments on TV. Michael McWhertor