Target to sell retro arcade cabinets w/games
In November Target Stores will offer BigGames Home Video Arcades – real arcade machines for the home that will retail for less than $500. Each unit plays 12 of the original arcade versions of the most popular Midway games including: Defender, Defender II, Robotron, Joust, Bubbles, Splat, Sinistar, Rampage, Rootbeer Tapper, Wizard of Wor, Timber, and Satan’s Hollow. Also – Dicks Sporting Goods will be carrying the tabletop version of the cabinet. I am totally going to get one of these, take it apart and see if I can add more games. Thanks Brian! [via] Link.
A Maker writes “OK, this has to be the CRAZIEST Lego project ever built. For real. From what the father of the idea said today in the Lugnet Robotics List, it involves +20.000 bricks and 13 RCX units that communicate in 2 communication chambers each with a seperate program. Build time was +300 hours. It runs on NQC software and it’s ALL Lego, except for the ball. Built by Gerrit Bronsveld and Martijn Boogaarts.” [
A virtual space resort being built in the online role-playing game, Project Entropia, has been snapped up for $100,000 (£56,200). Jon Jacobs, aka Neverdie, won the auction for the as yet unnamed resort in the game, which lets thousands of players interact with each other. Entropia also allows gamers to buy and sell virtual items using real cash. The space station is billed as a “pleasure paradise”. Last year, a gamer bought an island for $26,500 (£13,700). [
Raphael writes “One day, I bought a genesis game console with a few games. I got tired of playing Sonic and MicroMachines so I decided to build a reprogrammable cartridge. It can be used for many things, such as running demos, homebrew games and music on the real console.” 
Firmware wars continued…Fanjita has updated his firmware 2.0 Eboot loader for the PSP to version 0.7. This program allows for the launch of some homebrew programs (not all since it is being run in user-mode and not kernel mode.) This program builds on the work done by Saotome to load homebrew EBOOT.PBPs into PSPs with v2.0 firmware, using the TIFF exploit. It will not work on any other firmware version – including v2.01 and 2.50. [
The best thing going for the Nintendo DS is “Nintendogs” a game of sorts where you raise a virtual puppy. I’m slowly raising one, more about that later, but – here’s a little “News from the Future” action, you can bring your virtual doggie to a GameSpot, place it in bark mode and get a free virtual gift. Of course, I want to set up my own version and give out treats, er tricks, outside… [
Rob writes “Years ago I really liked the game called Bing Bang Boing, I wanted to get one for my young son but since it’s no longer on the market I decided to make one for him. The game involves setting up small trampolines so that a ball bearing can successfully bounce along a number of them in succession.”