Hasta La Gadget!

Pokémon X & Y have lots of hard to find monsters, from highly conditional evolutions to the legendaries that you can only catch after finishing the game’s story. But the most coveted type of Pokémon, the rarest of the rare, are the shiny Pokémon – alternate colors of the game’s creatures. Allegedly you only have a 1-in-8,192 chance of encountering one in battle. That’s why Redditor dekuNukem hacked his 3DS to do the dirty work for him.

dekuNukem’s hack was made for battles started via fishing; I don’t know if it can be modified for the more conventional grass-hunting method. In simple terms, the hacked 3DS automatically casts the fishing rod and enters into battle on its own. If the encountered Pokémon is ordinary, the hack automatically runs away from the battle and repeats the process. But if it hits pay dirt, it emits a buzz to alert dekuNukem. You can read a full explanation in his video, or you can skip to 1:08 to see it in action:

If you think you can build your own Shiny-farming 3DS, download dekuNukem’s code here. Here’s another code you should get: my friend code is 1048-8685-2995. Remember me when you catch those shinies!

[via Joystiq]

One of last year’s most successful Kickstarter-funded projects was the MaKey MaKey, a device that allowed you to input keyboard commands to a computer using everyday objects. A new USB device called the Verve is similar to the MaKey MaKey, but it’s more versatile. Using a variety of sensors, the Verve lets you trigger mouse and keyboard input using real-world actions or events.

The Verve consists of a central console and seven types of sensors that plug into the console. It also has a companion program that has both Windows and OS X versions. The program is used to map the input from a sensor to a mouse or keyboard key, as well as to set the threshold – i.e. the intensity of the input – to which the mapped key will be triggered. For instance, you can use attach the motion sensor to a sword and make your videogame character attack when you swing the sword. Or you can leave the motion sensor by your cubicle and make your computer show your desktop when someone passes by. Because you’re not hiding anything there.

Pledge at least $99 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Verve kit as a reward. The kit will come with one of each sensor along with all the cables you need. I’m a bit conflicted with the potential of the Verve. On one hand, the variety of sensors means it encourages a creative and diverse array of input options. On the other hand, the one-to-one correspondence of a sensor to a key makes it quite cumbersome to setup anything beyond a simple command.

The MaKey MaKey is so easy to use because it gave you several inputs just by plugging in one board. The Verve gives you seven sensors, but each sensor can only be mapped to one key. What modern software uses just one key? From what I understand it also does not support key combinations (e.g. ctrl+X). And what if you want to use more than one unit of a particular sensor? It’s amazing how cheap and user-friendly sensors have become, but I’m not sure if the Verve will be a legitimately useful product or a mere curio.

[via DVICE]

Declare your allegiance to the Starfleet without wearing Spandex with ThinkGeek’s officially-licensed Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform hoodies. They have all three colors: red for command, gold for operations and blue for sciences. I guess the Enterprise had no need for plumbers and cooks. Or technologies.

The hood on each sweater has piping that matches the sweater’s color coding. When the hood is down, the piping makes it look like the sweater has a shallow v-neck, similar to the actual uniforms worn by Captain Picard and his crew.

You can order the hoodies from ThinkGeek for $60 (USD). Comm badge and pips sold separately.

You don’t get to 10 Mega Man games without making a few enemies. 80 of them to be specific. Patrick Merrifield reminds us just how difficult the Blue Bomber’s life is with his massive masterpiece. Patrick made bead portraits of each of the Robot Masters that Rock faced in the classic Mega Man series.

Patrick said it took him over 90 hours and more than 67,000 beads to put the collection together. I don’t think I’ve ever arranged a thousand of anything. And yes, it is a collection of portraits, not one big wall, so you can split them however you want. You can’t buy them separately though. Here’s a closer look at one of the portraits.

Turn into Pay Man and buy the collection from Patrick’s Etsy shop for $1,000 (USD).

Link isn’t known for being flashy or even stylish, but fans still associate him and his series with bling, thanks to Nintendo’s tradition of releasing gold cartridges and systems for The Legend of Zelda games. The talented console modder Zoki64 and his customer steal that trick from Nintendo and then some by making a sparkly Ocarina of Time-themed Nintendo 64.

Zoki64 gave the console a metal flake finish, causing it to twinkle in direct light like an angsty vampire.

Put your shades on and skip to about 0:30 in the video below:

Zoki64 also made a more subdued gold Zelda casemod but with a Famicom console. Check that out and the rest of his eye-popping work on his deviantART page.

[via it8bit]