Do stress balls actually work for you? Then don’t get Underground Toys’ officially licensed Weeping Angel Stress Toy. Because I think it works the other way around: when you squeeze it, you get stressed.
I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, but you can pre-order this abomination from Big Bad Toy Store for $25 (USD).
[via Super Punch]
A couple of years ago Steven Lefcourt had a go at making realistic Pokémon. He ended up making creepy creatures, but they’re not nearly as scary and Kaiju-like as Yuuki Morita’s versions. The freelance CG artist used 3D animation and modeling programs to portray the final forms of the original starter Pokémon.
Check out the abs on Charizard. Blastoise looks equally mad…
…and Venusaur is daring you to choose someone else over him:
It’s hard to believe any of these three would accept orders from a kid, let alone willingly confine themselves in a Pokéball.
[Yuuki Morita via Geekologie]
Flyonix specializes in aerial video and photography. The studio recently put their knowledge of drones for a geeky pursuit. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, Flyonix set out to build and fly a life-size TARDIS. And they succeeded. Somewhat.
Flyonix built a custom rig with 12 propellers. Judging from their brief making-of videos – which you can watch here and here – they made the TARDIS model itself out of styrofoam. With everything in place, all that was left was to let her fly…
Oh, the humanity! Unfortunately it seems like her chameleon circuit wasn’t the only thing that needed fixing. According to Metro, a battery shortage was responsible for the crash. If you’re an aspiring Time Lord, you can see more in-progress photos of Flyonix’ ill-fated TARDIS on the studio’s Facebook page.
Imagine Slowpoke starting a ColorWare franchise and you get the concept behind Lëkki. The French gadget shop sells and repaints only old – but beloved – gadgets, such as the Motorola StarTAC 130. Their latest (?) offering is the Nintendo 64, a console even older than Motorola’s thousand-year old flip phone, but no less popular.
The console is available in four colorways and comes with a similarly colored controller and a copy of Super Mario 64, which is probably the best launch game of all time.
Lëkki sells the bundles for €120 (~$165 USD). Note that these refurbished consoles are PAL versions, so check if you have a compatible TV before you order.
[via Nintendo Life]
There are already plug-and-play third-party devices that let you play previous gen consoles or a PC using any of their controllers. For instance, you can use a Wiimote with your PS3 if you want. There’s no equivalent product for the PlayStation 4 just yet, but Marcos Mori de Siqueira of Softfactory is onto something here. He hacked a Dualshock 4 controller to send input from a mouse and keyboard to the PS 4.
I’m not even going to pretend that I fully understood what Marcos pulled off, but from what I grokked he used a microcontroller (plus two digital-to-analog converters for emulating the thumbsticks) to turn signals from his keyboard – in this case a Logitech Gameboard – and mouse into signals that the PS4 understands, sent via the Dualshock 4′s circuit board. All in all it took him about $50 (USD) of materials and a ton of solder to make the mod. Skip to about 1:55 in the video to see the mod in action.
Check out Marcos’ post on Softfactory for more details on his mod. Seeing as FPS and MMOs are still popular, I wonder why Sony and Microsoft don’t just add support for keyboards and mice on their consoles. They can probably earn extra from certifying third party hardware if they did that. It’ll make it way easier to search for content on their online stores too.
[via Hack A Day]
There’s a new Mega Man game! It’s a, uh, *cough* a board game. Wipe your tears, Blue Bomber faithful, board games can be a lot of fun! Plus Jasco Games’ officially licensed game will let you play not just as Rock, but as a Robot Master too! Yes! No? Oh come on. It’s all we have right now. Look at the bright side.
Because the game is still not done, its rules (pdf) are still being tweaked as well, but I think I get the basic premise of the game. You and up to 3 other players are all Mega Man. The goal is to be the first Mega Man to beat Dr. Wily. Standing in your way are challenges strewn about the board, as well as the Robot Masters. The kicker here is that the players also control one Robot Master each. When you reach the “Boss Battle” stage of the board, you (as Mega Man) will fight the Robot Master of the player to your left.
Hold B to charge your Mega Browser, then let go and pledge at least $60 (USD) on Kickstarter to get the Mega Man Board Game as a reward. Or we can all just play Rayman Legends. Damn Capcom, what the hell happened?
As shown by the Kinect, today’s cameras are powerful and cheap enough to provide accurate motion tracking. The same feat can be achieved by making the subject carry a motion sensor or a tracking device of some sort. But a group at MIT CSAIL led by Dina Katabi have come up with a way to track motion and body parts in 3D using only radio signals.
Katabi et al call their technology WiTrack. The current prototype uses four antennas, one to transmit the signals and three to receive the signals that bounce back from subjects. The radio signals that WiTrack uses are apparently a hundred times weaker than Wi-Fi signals. Because it doesn’t require a camera to work, WiTrack can work through walls, assuming the wall lets the signal pass through. For instance, it can be used to interact with devices even if you’re not in the same room as them. Also, because the subject doesn’t need to carry any tracking device, it might be more suited to full motion gaming compared to the likes of the Wii, the PS Move and even newer tech like the PrioVR.
While WiTrack seems really practical, after watching that video I think we all quickly realized that it can be used to discreetly violate our privacy as well. Forget about tinfoil hats, we might need to make lead-lined houses.
Most of the nixie tube hacks and mods we’ve seen involve clocks, which isn’t surprising considering the tubes were primarily used to show numbers. But there are also tubes that display symbols, and those are the ones put to good use by Lasermad in its Nixie Chessboards.
Lasermad uses ex-Soviet Nixies from the 80s. They also designed a neat chessboard that uses induction coils to power the tubes. All you have to do is plug the board to an outlet and the tubes will automatically light up when you place them on the board.
Here’s a demo video of the board:
You can order the Nixie Chessboard from Lasermad either as a ready-to-assemble kit for $340 (USD) or as a fully built set for $759. Note that the DIY kit is not for beginners, although Lasermad does have a help forum for people who opt to get their hands dirty.
[via The UberReview]
ThinkGeek has turned another one of its April Fools jokes into an actual product. The Technomancer Digital Wizard Hoodie uses 32 multicolored LEDs and a speaker box to emit light and sound effects. The cool thing – or the dealbreaker, depending on how geeky you are – about the hoodie is that you have to activate the effects using hand gestures, as if you were casting a spell.
The hoodie has nine spells or sets of effects. There’s a fireball spell, a health restoring spell and even a water bending spell. The LEDs are attached to a hood assembly as well as to its inner sleeves. While most wizards use mana, this hoodie runs on six AA batteries, which you’ll insert into its built-in battery compartment. Skip to 1:25 in the video below to determine whether you have the moxie to don this robe.
You can get the hoodie for $120 (USD). Cast the browsing spell and head to ThinkGeek to order.
A few months ago we saw a LEGO robot Charizard. Here’s an evolution of that idea, courtesy of Flickr member Stormbringer. His Poke’Mecha series depict the famous video game critters as large LEGO robots piloted by minifigs. You can’t pocket these monsters.
Stormbringer said that Blastoise is the first and the sturdiest of the three toys. Venusaur took him the longest to build because he had trouble finding azure-colored parts. Charizard is his favorite of the three because it was a challenging build, particularly its head and wings.
Summon your mechabrowser and head to Stormbringer’s Flickr page for more on his Poke’Mecha. He said he’s planning on building more of these, which is great news, but I hope he takes his project to its only logical conclusion: make the Poke’Mecha combine to form a larger robot monster. Or at least a huge Pokéball.
[via Laughing Squid]
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