That man, the myth, the legend, Ben Heck, is at it again. Now he managed to cram the Atari 2600 into a somewhat small, handheld, portable device. Heck went a little old-school with this mod. It may be a little bulky, buy how else can you enjoy some Pitfall anywhere in the world. He also made ran a little Thurderdome action between the portable Atari 2600 (named the VCSp Rev7) and the other clamshell, handheld console, the Nintendo DS. This guy can churn out new console mods quicker than Jason Chen can put them down his pants. – Travis Hudson
VCSp Revisions 7 [Via Kotaku]

Remember, our cute pet/gadget contest is still going on. There is a Amazon gift certificate up for grabs and all you have to do is snap a quick photo of your pets with some gadgets. Above is my cat, Ditto, rocking out some Nintendogs on the Nintendo DS—irony, anyone? Hit the link below for all of the details of our contest. – Travis Hudson
Fuzzy Wuzzy Modo Photo Contest: How Cute are Your Pets and Gadget [Gizmodo]

Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:
Last year marked the first annual Saluting Wares Improving Technology's Contribution to Humanity awards, also known by its laboriously contrived simpler name, the Switchies. The Switchies honor some of the year's best products by coming up with a category to fit them into, since great products often break out of the accepted boundaries. This year saw so many product introductions that I'll be covering the awards in two columns, focusing on home and portable products. With that said, let's roll out the red carpet for the former:
The "Setting Things in Motion" award (and Device of the Year) goes to the Nintendo Wii. Navigating between the Scylla of Sony and the Charybdis of Microsoft and accused of relying too heavily on its stable of retro-friendly character franchises, Nintendo built upon its maverick strategy succ...

Filed under: Gaming

Tilt sensing isn't quite the novelty it once was, with all these new-fangeled controllers and laptops flooding the market, but as much as the execution might lack, or our child-like joy wane, we've always got room for one more tilt-enabled doohickey at the Engadget HQ. This time around it's the Nintendo DS sporting the fancy functionality (again), via a homemade tilt sensor which plugs into that handy mini-USB port. Unfortunately for the bleeding edge types, the actual use of this thing is an exercise in frustration, since the control is merely digital -- full left or full right, none of those fancy degrees. Still, if your mom and her gal pals have commandeered your Wii for the afternoon, you've just gotta get some Nintendo-flavored tilt-sensing action on, and you can't find your Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble cartridge anywhere, then it sounds like this DS hack is the hack for you. Alternatively, you can apparently plug this thing into your PSP, but we don't hav...

Filed under: Laptops
While some of the parts of the OLPC's XO laptop are still coming together (like the UI), other parts are ready to rock, commercial-style. As we previously saw in a slide showing NickNeg's pull-string power generator (pictured), the theory is that kids will be able to juice up their lappies with the tug of a string, ideally 10 minutes of use for every one minute of pulling. While no laptop with this generator is available yet, that hasn't stopped new startup Potenco from commercializing the power supply, even before the XO is ready to hit the global streets. The company recently claimed at the NEXT2006 conference in Copenhagen that a minute of pulling will yield an hour of light, 25 minutes of talk time on a cellphone, 230 minutes of iPod shuffle use, or 45 minutes on a Nintendo DS. But, as OLPC News points out, no one's really sure how many minutes of XO use that will translate into. We'll let you know how much they cost and when you can get one to cha...

Nintendo seems to be pulling a big 'ole Sony today. Not only have they recalled the WiiMote straps it also seems that Nintendo Japan is recalling 200,000 power adapters for the Nintendo DS and DS Lite. Unlike the WiiMote, this problem hasn't caused any damage, but the power adapter is capable of heating up the DS to temperatures that can cause damage.
The adapters shipped with units from January to July 2006 and Nintendo will be offering free replacements. – Travis Hudson
Press Release (Japanese) [Via newlaunches]

Another massive blow to Sony: Japan's biggest game franchise moves from PlayStation 2 to Nintendo DS. In Game|Life.

We're not sure how useful this $25 third party motion sensing card would be, seeing as there aren't any official DS games that support it. But if you're a fan of homebrew games and swinging your DS around like a monkey with a Dickens' novel, have at it.
Perhaps if enough people buy this once it's released next year, Nintendo will provide some games and/or an official motion sensing card as well. – Jason Chen
Product Page [NDS Motion via DS Fanboy]

Filed under: Gaming
Haven't you ever wanted an Etch A Sketch right there, on your DS? (We hadn't considered the possibility until today.) For $25, and some familiarity with homebrew apps, you can get a DS motion card, which includes a 3-axis accelerometer and a single-axis gyroscope. Apparently some folks have already cooked up some apps that will work with this card, including an Etch A Sketch-style application and two games. You can plunk down the cash for the pre-order, but if you want something a little more immediate, you could just buy a regular Etch A Sketch for far less, and not have to worry about all that homebrew stuff. Your call, though.

[Via DS Fanboy] 
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Remember the PSP? You know, the portable gaming system that is being outclassed by the Nintendo DS? Looks like you can now play downloadable PS1 games on it provided you meet the requirements. Those requirements are that your PSP is running firmware 3.01 or higher and that you've set up the PSP to communicate with a PS3. Right now, the available games include Crash Bandicoot, Tekken 2 and Syphon Filter for $5.99. Wow, Sony actually picked good games this time. Too bad about the initial list of downloadable games for the PS3.
Games are transferred over from the PS3 to the PSP via a USB cable. I guess Wi-Fi would be too much to ask. Sony also plans to make the games directly downloadable to the PSP in due course, but timing has yet to be announced. So does the prospect of playing classic PS1 games rev your engines, or have you played Tekken so much it's no longer fun? – Nicholas Deleon
PSOne games now available for the PSP, via the PS3 [GamePro]