Hasta La Gadget!

Just great, more hue-enhanced Wii hardware that we in North America will very likely never get. After teasing us with that kuro (i.e. jet black) Wii and matching classic controller, Nintendo’s announced a light blue sleeved Wii remote, nunchuk, and motion plus set that’ll be given out to five thousand members of its Japanese Club Nintendo program who have registered Wii Sports Resort. Historically, Club Nintendo gifts have only made their way stateside via unofficial channels, so if you’re desperate for a non-white peripheral and using paint is absolutely out of the question, we suggest you keep a close eye on eBay and hope the House that Mario Built takes a cue from its portable line sooner rather than later.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming

Nintendo unveils light blue Wii remote with MotionPlus, for select Japanese Wii Sports Resort owners only originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember the Power Glove, that controller for the NES that looked so cool when it debuted in The Wizard, but ultimately proved an unusable, if neat looking, piece of over-priced plastic? Well, the Peregrine isn’t that. I mean, both game controllers built into gloves, sure, but the similarities seem to stop there.

Manufactured by a company of the same name, The Peregrine doesn’t offer the gesture-based control the Power Glove promised. Rather the device is designed to offer a quick way for PC gamers to access their keyboard hotkeys without actually having to touch their keyboard.

The device has a number of built-in sensors. Touching combinations together will trigger a specific hotkey action. A total of 30 actions can be programmed into the controller. The Peregrine will arrive in Fall 2009. Pre-order is not yet available.

If you manage to make it to the back of the L.A. Convention Center, past all the bright flashing lights of the gigantic booths from Microsoft and Activision and Nintendo, you’ll find a small collective of independent game designers: folks like Diana Hughes. A recent USC grad, Hughes is showing off her MFA thesis, Pluff.

Pluff is a fuzzy little game controller–make him happy or annoy him and you’ll affect his on-screen digital counterpart. Pluff’s not available commercially, but Hughes is in talks with game developers about bringing him to market. His creator has also spoken to hospitals about how Pluff might be able to help kids with autism and other conditions.

You can check more Pluff over at Hughes’ home page.

Amidst some wishful musings, Dennis Crowley – blogger, NYC resident and co-founder of the nerd-gasmic Foursquare – has come up with possibly the most fantastic use of “augmented reality” yet. He wants to use an iPhone to play real-life Ghost Racers.

If you have played Super Mario Kart, you’ll know the score. In single-player time trials you get to race against yourself. Your previous best race is replicated by a ghost version of you, and the goal is to beat it. Crowley suggests that a mashup of the iPhone’s GPS capabilities and the Nike+ pedometer could bring this to the streets:

Ghost racers.  Think: Super Mario Kart time-trials, except you’re running against a ghost version of your best time on the map.  I know the Garmin already does this, but make it social… show me the best times of my friends or other local users.  (I really really want to do this for skiing one of these days).

There seems to be no reason, bar a little programming, that this couldn’t be done. Think about it: bike races against friends who aren’t even there, with the tension of Mario Kart somewhat replicated by, say, coded beeps in the headphones to tell you if you are winning or losing. Or, what about racing against Steve McQueen’s famous car-chase in Bullit? Like I said: fantastic. Now we just have to work out how to build a real-world Red Shell, and stars would be pretty helpful for whacking those delivery vans out of the bike lanes.

Idea [Teen Drama via Kottke]

There are so many things wrong with the GameDr Video Game Timer I don’t know where to start. Actually, I do. That name: GameDr. Is is Game Doctor? Or just Game “drrrr”?

The GameDr is a clamp-on lock for a power cord, designed to stop kids getting square eyes from too much game-time. The plastic box covers the prongs and keeps them locked inside with a four digit combination. The parent can then set the programmer to allow a certain number of hours of use per day, repeatable in every 24 hour period. When the time is up, the power is cut, although there are one-minute and ten-minute warning beeps to allow the kids to save their game before everything goes dark.

The problems are manifold. For the less responsible child, this plastic box should pop open with the swift attentions of a screwdriver blade. Other kids could just guess the combo. Chances are that if it’s set by your mother, you should just try combinations of you and your siblings’ birth-dates to crack the code.

Alternatively, buy a new cable. Both the PS3 and the XBox 360 use a standard three-prong “kettle-lead” which costs about a buck. The Wii uses a proprietary power supply, but even this can be found online for around $20, which is within the allowance of many kids.

One of the first (useful) things I learned to do around the house was to rewire a power plug (thanks, dad!). In England, this is quite a complex operation (I’m actually surprised you don’t need some sort of permit, provided by the nanny-state), but Stateside I imagine a screwdriver and a pair of scissors should take care of the job inside a couple of minutes.

Also, what about parents just telling their kids to turn the machine off?

At any rate, we proudly present the GameDr with our Gadget Lab “FAIL” award, reserved for those products that not only tick all the boxes on our “FAIL” chart, but cause us to add new ones (if you are interested, the GameDr has added a new “possible child electrocution” category to the list). Congratulations! $30.

Product page [Essential Tools via Raw Feed]