Hasta La Gadget!

Before the silly X-2 and the XIII trilogy, the Final Fantasy franchise was known for rebooting itself with each iteration. Each game had a different battle system than the one that came before it and featured different characters as well. This decision lent the series a rich universe and opened our eyes on the possibilities of turn-based combat, but it also meant that our favorite characters would be left out when the next game came along. Which is why I’m very excited about this fan made mod of Final Fantasy VI (Final Fantasy III to the West), which brings together heroes and villains from the different Final Fantasy games.

Spanish is the first language of the unsung hero who is making this mod, so pardon me if I don’t get some of the details right. The modder calls the game Final Fantasy El Origen (Final Fantasy: The Origin), and it will include 14 playable characters from various FF games. It will have its own story and new skills for the characters. The game is based on the SNES version of Final Fantasy VI, which the modder chose because of the wide availability of SNES emulators, meaning a lot of people will be able to play the mod when it’s finished.

AUROOOONNNN Sorry. Aside from the playable heroes, other characters will also make cameos in the game. Check out the gameplay below:

Head to the mod’s website for more pictures and information. The modder also uploaded a trailer on YouTube, which has more information for those who can understand Spanish. I hope the modder succeeds in finishing the game. And I hope he includes a scene where Sabin teaches everyone how to suplex a train.

[via it8bit]

After wowing us with his fake fireplace and fake secret passage decals, James Bit can now turn your walls into virtual arenas with these fighting game decals. Each set comes with life bar or hit point indicators and classic fighting game terms like KO, Player 1, Player 2 and more.

The decals are also removable and reusable, so you can actually adjust your life bar as necessary.

You can get the wall decals from James Bit’s Etsy store for $48 (USD). They’re nice, but I think it would have been more awesome if he used the font and life bar from Street Fighter II. Come to think of it, it would be neat to have huge wallpapers of the stages from the game.

[via Nerd Approved]

We’ve featured LEGO mad scientist akiyuki and his Great Ball Contraption before, but the updated version of his machine is too awesome not too share. The machine is about 101 feet long and shuffles 500 balls around. It took akiyuki a total of 600 hours to finish this machine.

Nope, that’s just a third of the whole thing. You’ll have to watch the video below to see all of its parts:

The basketball area is amazing and hilarious. The arms are so accurate, but I can’t help imagining them in a real factory, shooting packages through a hoop.

[via NOTCOT]

As far as competitive videogames go, you can’t get any simpler than Pong. But times have changed, and so have our tastes and need for mayhem. We can’t just have birds, they need to be angry birds. So if Pong is to be played by today’s gamers – bored adults and foul-mouthed adolescents alike – it can’t just have two paddles and a ball. There needs to be chaos.

Invented by Stacy Dudley and Brad Slattery, the RetroBall is a bat-and-ball game system – let’s just call a Pong a Pong and call it Pong. It has a 32×32 pixel LED screen, an acrylic enclosure and 1-bit sound effects. It’s clearly more powerful than the Wii U. The RetroBall has four paddle controllers so you can engage in four-player Pong deathmatches, and you can even increase the number of balls onscreen to five. It’s actually kind of reminiscent of Atari’s arcade classic Warlords.

But don’t let the cutting edge graphics and complicated gameplay fool you: you can’t just button mash your way to victory here like in your other modern games, primarily because there’s no button to mash, but also because skilled RetroBall players – probably named Stacy and Brad – are aware that you can change the spin and speed of a ball depending on how you hit it.

Pledge at least $149 (USD) on Kickstarter to reserve a RetroBall game system. Launch titles include 2-player Pong with 1 ball, 3-player Pong with 1 ball, 4-player Pong with 1 ball, 2-player Pong with 2 balls…

[via Ubergizmo]

…by different I mean it looks exactly the same as the famous robot from Portal 2. An achingly short video of the replica was posted at Valve’s Facebook account, with no further details provided other than an acknowledgement from the Valve Store Facebook account, which said “Hello friend.”

The turret – which seems like a life-sized replica, or if not has to be at least 3 feet tall – has the customary glowing red light, blurts out sound bites and best of all, has machine guns that protract from its shiny body. But since the turret doesn’t hate you, the guns have been replaced with blinking lights paired with gunfire sound effects.

I’m not sure if Valve – or anyone for that matter – will be selling the replica, but I am sure that there are thousands of people out there who would buy it in an instant.

[via Facebook via PC Gamer]