Sega has created the ultimate peripheral for guys too busy gaming to meet women. Meet Ema - Eternal Maiden Actualization, Sega's robotic girlfriend. She stands around 18 inches tall and can sing, dance, and totally make out with you. When switched to "Love Mode", a feature sadly lacking in real life companions, Ema uses infra-red sensors to detect nearby human heads, doling out kisses with her cold, mouthless face.

Ema goes on sale in September for around 18,000 yen ($166 USD), and while she is currently exclusive to Japan, Sega isn't ruling out bringing her worldwide should demand prove high enough.

Not going to say anything further, as opening my fat mouth at this point could get me in serious trouble.

Sega creates robot girlfriend [Telegraph.co.uk - Thanks Seiger!]

Wii controls to defuse bombs [Metro.co.uk]

The Optimus Prime PC Case Mod [ExtremeTech]

Consider this an introduction. A How-To, if you will. Bandai's goodwill ambassador Masked Bakuc. The vids provide a good walk through for constructing a Gundam plastic model while wearing a Lucha Libre mask and a cape. Basic and advanced techniques are covered. Hit the jump for the exciting sequel as well as footage of Bakuc surfing. In costume, too! Brian Ashcraft

Bandai Instructional Vids [Patrick]

Wow, I can't believe it's only been a year (or so) since I first stumbled upon Destructoid and wrote a brief love note to their big, boxy mascot.

Oh Destructoid, you're so funny you make our sides hurt. What with your big metal grin, recently upgraded Lampoon 5000 chip and twin death rays, you're destined to spend a robotic lifetime cracking us up.

It was March 30, a mere two weeks after the site had gone live and my attentions were much appreciated.

In the twelve months since then we've asked Niero to justify his robot head, been briefly assimilated by the Destructoid collective, had some of my anatomy appear in their masthead and, by far the best bit, watch a new site blossom into a powerhouse of gaming news and opinion under the guiding hands of Niero and Robert Summa.

Congratulations guys and have fun at your party tonight. Sorry I can't make it, but hopefully some of our readers will show up to see if projectile vomit can clear the mouth grid. Enjoy the stretch hummer, you earned it. Brian Crecente

Destructoid Turns One [Destructoid]

Ollie Barder has a fascinating look at Japanese developer Sandlot and the mecha/robo games it's made. Sandlot is responsible for titles such as Gigantic Drive and The Chikyuu Boueigun. The company's name and philosophy is much like those "sandbox games" that let players wonder freely. What's more, the company has a definite vision of what a Sandlot game is. Writes Barder:

For almost all but one of Sandlot's games they have a very similar gameplay implementation in regards to the player viewpoint, that of a boy on the ground looking up at an immense mechanical behemoth (or at the very least a discernable sense of scale to the gaming proceedings).

Interesting company, interesting article. Check it out for yourself. Brian Ashcraft

Ollie Talks Sandlot [GameSetWatch]

Do you remember when you first saw Rocky and was moved almost to tears by the triumphant story of an untalented boxer who, by dint of his determination and ability to sustain massive blows to the head, rose above his own fears to prove that he wasn't just a bum? Three movies later, Rocky looked like a supermodel, drove a Porsche, shattered the Iron Curtain after wiping the pinko sweat of Ivan Drago off his brow with the corner of the American flag and — even more unbelievably — lived in a mansion with a talking robot. Philly leg breaker makes good!

I always wanted one of those talking robots, but they stopped selling them at the Sharper Image after around 1984. Luckily, Vice City Stories takes place in 1984, and you can buy one in the Domestobot, who also bares an uncanny resemblance to Nintendo's R.O.B. Now that Silent Hills Origins is sure to suck, this is the only title I'm looking forward to on PSP. Florian Eckhardt

Domestobot In Vice City Stories Is The Nintendo R.O.B. Robot [Gamebrink]

Name the two robots that sit in toy-form on my desk at home. I'll be nice and give you a clue. You can see them, or at least part of them, in the background of an image I posted sometime this month.

Good luck and yes, I'm evil.

Check out the rules for our PS3 giveaway, if you're confused about this. Brian Crecente

While Sega did bring us the Dreamcast (and for that, we are forever thankful), they also squirted out this horrible robotic cat (and for that, we are freaked). Sega calls this beast "Near Me," a word play on "nyan," the Japanese word for "meow." GameSetWatch stumbled across the kitty on eBay. The seller states:

SEGA CREEPY CAT ROBOT " NEAR ME " KITTLY RETAIL USD 400 Available only in Japan, New in box

When you touch Near Me that will respond to sound by moving it's head in in the direction of the sound or twitching its ears It becomes a different character by your way to raise it, It doesn't walk but Near Me can mew in several different way

A robotic pet so unsettling that "creepy" is used as a selling point. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [GameSetWatch]

In the interests of furthering the social lives of gamers in the San Diego area, I have decided to post about The King of All Bots: an event being touted as a badass, robocentric partay.

Prepare to receive "the deets":

The Morena Club (1319 Morena Blvd / San Diego, CA 92110) is holding an event, The King of All Bots, on Saturday, August 19. Beginning at 9 PM, it will be the first in a series attempting to infuse gamer pop culture into the club scene. What's on tap for this very first unfashionably fashionable sock hop? DJ Jive Alive will be spinning some records — hip-hop, down tempo, rock, and random SNES MIDIs, local artists Ty Hunter and Lena Low will build and destroy a robot made from assorted audio equipment, and "Johnny Robo" will be playing on the club's plasma screens.

A very important feature I discovered when peeping the poster was that there is no cover charge. Now you have no excuse. Eliza Gauger

It's a testament to how far ahead of his time R.O.B. the NES Robot was that even after watching a 7 minute documentary explaining how you use him to play Gyromite, I still don't have any idea how to play it. The Wikipedia clears some of it up, but all I know for sure is that the sound of R.O.B.'s joints moving sounds like dull chainsaw cutting through human bone. Thanks to Zac for the tip! Florian Eckhardt

Gaming Archaeology: R.O.B. [Powet.tv]

Richard over at Aeropause has succeeded in wresting the Chromehounds demo from Xbox Live's xenophobic Australian servers by dint of some pretty sneaky ninja maneuvers: he made a new account and pretended he was Australian.

Alas, the game sounds more ponderous than the yearly episode of spyware removal, defragging and general "tech support" required during Christmas visits to your parents' house:

Alright, after getting my brand new demo, I sat down and played it several times trying to get a feel for the game, and after about the third time through I said to myself stop playing this game, it's boring! The pace and feel of Chromehounds is one of an overgrown chess set with no end in site. The mechs move incredibly slow and they turn even slower. I timed how long it took to do a 360, it took 15 seconds, which means if you are getting plastered from behind just kiss your ass goodbye.

Horrible. Give me blasty mech madness, dammit! Eliza Gauger

EDITED TO ADD: I just had a friend try this and he wasn't able to get the demo. Has anyone reproduced Aeropause's mechy results?

Chromehounds Demo Review [Aeropause]

Stompy mechs! Exquisitely rendered rocket tails! Sunny blue skies! Shooty little hoverbots! Splosions!

Yanked right out of Computer and Video Games' grippy little fingers and smeared, still steaming, all over Kotaku's head and neck. Come readers, let us stare into the future of fun... together. Eliza Gauger

Charmed Labs has come out with a homebrew GameBoy Advance insertable called the Xport 2.0. The naked widget plugs into the cartridge slot of the Game Boy Advance and:

[...] allows the Xport hardware to be tailored to your target application, and the 64 digital I/O signals provide programmable I/O for interfacing to practically any hardware device.

The website has some awesome .WMVs of the GBA-bots in action, demonstrating basic wandering and barrier-avoidance (complete with event-triggered They Might Be Giants audio samples from the bot itself), holonomic motion (frisbee-like spinning while scooting across the floor), and a video entitled "Teach" in which the GameBot is shoved around like a toy car being played with, and then released. It then autonomously repeats the movements it was "taught" just a few seconds ago. Outstanding! Eliza Gauger

Gameboy + LEGO = Robot [Charmed Labs]

I finally dug up my shaky-cam of the robot battle going on in the middle of Sony's party at the Game Developers Conference. This thing was shot on my cell phone and it was really dark, so sorry for the crap quality.

Nintendo's own ROB made Wired's top 50 robots of all time. True, it barely made it, but on the list is on the list. And now, for your reading pleasure, number 45:

45. NINTENDO R.O.B.

In the mid-'80s, the PC was killing the market for videogame consoles. The game industry's only hope? A robot. Nintendo packaged the Robotic Operating Buddy with the 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System. The R.O.B. didn't do much, but the gimmick helped Nintendo sneak systems onto shelves. Lo, the console market was saved.

True, the Robot was a completely under-utilized peripheral and what game, was it just one I can't remember, it was used in, sucked. But what other robot in history can save it single handedly save the video game industry?

The 50 Best Robots Ever [Wired]