More details have emerged about LEGO Universe, the upcoming massively multiplayer game. I'm not sure how I feel about the organic backgrounds—I was hoping the entire world would be LEGO—but I could see how it would become tedious if everything were made of elements.

Two good bits of news, however: you will be able to create models of your own in game, which is wonderful news. (There had been some questions about how a kid-friendly game would protect itself from the inevitable legion of outsized LEGO phalluses—well, still are questions, I guess, but presumably developer NetDevil has figured out a happy medium. And even cooler, LEGO will allow you to "print" real-life versions of the LEGO models created in game. You make it online, they'll send you the bricks you need to make it at home. (For a price, of course.)

LEGO already offers a similar system with a virtual design tool, but I hope adding this feature to Universe will expand its capabilities and brick library—as well as drop the price of custom set ordering.

LEGO Universe: 'LEGO Star Wars Multiplied By A Million' [Game|Life]

Emotiv will be selling this "EPOC" neuroheadset, allowing gamers to control characters simply by the power of thought. (Unlike previous systems, which required the hands to act as a proxy interface.) The headset will be available around the holidays for $300 with a custom game that will take advantage of the 30 different expressions which can be recognized, including:

immersion, excitement, meditation, tension and frustration; facial expressions such as smile, laugh, wink, crossed eyes, shock (eyebrows raised), anger (eyebrows furrowed), horizontal eye movement, smirk and grimace (clenched teeth); and cognitive actions such as push, pull, lift, drop and rotate (on six different axis) as well as a completely new category of action based on visualization, the first of which is the ability to make objects disappear.

The EPOC will be first released for the PC. I am less interested in how the EPOC will be used to control games and more interested in its use as a secondary interface method for general computing. I would love to be able to switch applications or control my media playback with only a raised eyebrow.

Kotaku's contemptible corsair Brian Crecente had a head-on with the EPOC at this year's Game Developer's Conference.

I was a little concerned with the underlying technology, though. From the demonstrations I saw and participated in, the device seemed mostly to detect whether you were or weren't doing one thing. In other words, it could tell when I was trying to float a rock or not trying. But it was hard to tell just how sophisticated that detection was. Could it, for instance, differentiate between my trying to levitate a rock and make one disappear? The Emotiv people said it absolutely could, but they didn't demonstrate that.

Press Release [BusinessWire.com via Crunchgear]

"Fez" is one of the finalists in the 2008 Independent Games Festival awards. The conceit is deceptively simple: the protagonist avatar (the protavatar?) is a 2D character trapped in the 3D world. While that's been done before in games like Klonoa 2, the difference is that in Fez rotating the entire world reconfigures platforms that are out of depth on the Z-axis in 3D to still work in the plane in 2D. That doesn't make sense with me explaining it, I know, but watch the short clip and all should be clear.

Project Page [Kokoromi.com via Waxy]

Kotaku takes a look at ten different videogame industry analysts and analyzes the accuracy of their claims, proving the hardest part about being an industry pundit is fooling someone into giving you a proper soapbox.

My personal rate of success is a perfect ten, since I strive to be wrong always. HD DVD will rise again!

Analyzing the Analysts, Episode One [Kotaku]

Composer Nobuo "Final Fantasy" Uematsu suggested in an interview that Japan change its national anthem from the imperially biased "Kimigayo" to the theme to Super Mario Bros.

I think there are a lot of talented composers these days compared to when we started back in the day. But if I were to name just one person then it would be [Koji] Kondo-san and his beats and music in Super Mario, just his upbeat tempos. I'm sure everyone in the world -- no borderlines or age limit -- everyone in the world who's come across Super Mario's music will never forget that melody... I think that the Super Mario song should be the national anthem for Japan. [Hums the death refrain] So when someone wins a gold medal at the Olympics, a Japanese athlete, the flag should go up with the theme song. Shoop! ...The world would have a different image of Japan if we use that.

While the theme to Super Mario Bros. is probably more widely recognized worldwide (oddly the same notion I had last night playing Mario Galaxy) I think the theme to The Legend of Zelda is more appropriately austere.

A Day in the Life of Nobuo Uematsu [1up.com via Kotaku via Go Nintendo]

A fishing cellphone game in Japan rewards some winners with real, raw fish delivered fresh to their door.

When a fish takes the bait, the player is sent to a slot machine screen where, if luck prevails and 3 numbers line up appropriately, the virtual fish is hooked and reeled in. A message is then relayed to the wholesaler, who picks up the real-world equivalent from the local seafood market and delivers it, whole and raw, to the player’s doorstep.

If videogames start rewarding you with actual food I am doomed. Going to get grub is about the only thing that gets me out of the house already!

Ippon Zuri: Catch-and-eat fishing by phone [Pink Tentacle via Gizmodo]

Just got this email. I figure it was sent to me because Brad knows that the Boing Boing Gadgets audience would be the ultimate locus of DVR-owning MMO players.

Hello,

I'm hoping this is the WoW Nowplaying guild list here at TiVo.  If not, please accept my apologies for tagging the wrong list.

If it is the list, I'd like to get in touch with someone to get my 2 characters, Beacker (mage) and Korok (warrior) into the guild.

I'd also like to see if it's possible to coordinate with people who are trying to level alts to group up.  I'm finding that the mage needs some backup to get his ruby shards from Silver Stream mine (Beacker's level 21), and get that damned compass out of the Alexston's farm house.  Nothing like getting jumped by a bunch of Defias when you poke your nose around the corner inside the house.

Brad (beacker)

Also, if you see either of Brad's characters in game you can message him and get a free TiVo. Or at least that's what I think should happen.

According to Computer & Videogames reading of EDGE magazine (go internet!) the LEGO Indiana Jones games with be sans swastika, just like the LEGO sets. Developer Traveller's Tales says that LEGO has replaced the Nazis with "an anonymous genocidal, occultist, trenchcoat-wearing master-race."

On the one hand I get it: LEGO is a Danish company and Europeans are understandably more touchy about representing the Reich in pop culture (and it's a safe business decision, besides). On the other hand, if they were fine in the movie and the movie is fine for kids, what's the big deal?

Lego Indy: First concrete details [ComputerAndVideogames.com]

Keith Lam has built a prototype of his "Moving Mario" installation, which trades on the conceit that sidescrolling platform games aren't actually moving the avatar, but scrolling the background. In Lam's installation, the character (and the "screen") actually move left to right. Very cute—but I'm more curious to see how he'll animate all the blocks and enemies in the real world. It's like a Super Mario Bros. carnival game!

Project Page [The-Demos.com via Gadget Lab via MAKE]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Alec Meer points out the inherent rub of official no-CD patches to games that are released after the games are long in the tooth, as Blizzard recently offered for Warcraft 3:

I’ve always found it fascinating when games do this after release. It’s an admission that copy protection is just an irritation to legitimate players, and that disc checks are a particularly buffoonish and archaic anti-piracy measure at that. ... And is there really anyone still playing W3 after all these years who didn’t apply an unofficial no-CD crack long ago?

Warcracked III [RockPaperShotgun.com]

"Blip Festival: Reformat the Planet" is a documentary debuting at SXSW next month that delves into the world of chiptunes, using the Blip Festival '06 as a jumping-off point. Looks great.

Trailer [Vimeo via Waxeley]

Previously • BBtv: Blip Festival, Sweet Spot Candy Expo, More Chip Tunes Artists [BBG]

Educational gadget maker LeapFrog has announced two new handheld gaming systems: the "Leapster2," a more simple system designed for younger kids; and the "Didj," a DS-class model that can be integrated with homework assignments (or at least spelling lists) but can also play proper games like Sonic the Hedgehog. Both systems are listed as "web-connected" to allow parents to track their kids' progress, but they don't say how, exactly. Wi-Fi perhaps?

Both systems are coming this summer. The Leapster2 will be $70; the Didj $90. While I like the idea behinds these systems quite a bit, I do question how much kids will actually want to play the games that are offered instead of entertainment titles for the DS and PSP. (We weren't playing Mathblasters and Odell Lake in school because we wanted to—or because of our love of osprey.)

A final, vital note: LeapFrog's vice-president of gaming is named "Christian Cocks."

Press Release [PRNewswire.com via Coolest Gadgets]

Game|Life has a first look at "Major Minor's Majestic March," an upcoming Wii game from the developers and artist behind the classic Playstation game, PaRappa the Rapper. The un-ironic art is wonderful and Game|Life has more examples.

Players will use the baton to keep tempo, recruit new band members, and snag special items in an effort to create the most impressive parade ever seen. You'll be able to add up to 15 different instruments to the procession, and will be judged on how well your marching musicians keeps the rhythm and avoids obstacles.

First Look: PaRappa Creators' Wii Game [Game|Life]

The Entex Adventure Vision System was a table-top game system from 1982 that was ahead of its time, with a 150 by 40 pixel LED display, 733 kHz Intel 8048 processor, and swappable game cartridges. According to Wikipedia, the AVS used "a single vertical line of 40 red LEDs combined with a spinning mirror inside the casing" to produce its display. As you might suspect, the moving parts took a toll on the battery life, although it could also be hooked up to an A/C adapter.

A new-in-box Adventure System has found its way to eBay with all four games for the somewhat ridiculous price of $5,500. If you can't swing a few thousand for an ancient game system, the MESS emulator supports the Adventure Vision on for OSX and Windows.

Entex Adventure Vision System. Complete. Near Perfect. [eBay via Joystiq via Oh Gizmo]

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw is the bent brain behind "Zero Punctuation," the hilariously cutting weekly videogame review program that has been the first legitimate breakout hit from the gaming community in recent memory. If you haven't seen "Zero Punctuation," well, it's best watched and not explained. (The latest episode is below.) You might want to turn down your speakers if the boss isn't a fan of wonderfully vivid vulgarity.

BBG: What's the typical creative process you follow when making these videos? Are you taking notes as you play the game or do you wait until the very end?

Yahtzee: I usually take a few days to play through the game and I'll usually finish it, or get as far as I can before I feel I can formulate an opinion. After that I'll devote a day to writing the script. I don't take notes, but I'll usually latch onto maybe 4 or 5 points and get a paragraph or two out of each. I generally compare the text to older reviews then to make sure I've written enough. Then comes making the images, which usually takes me 2 or 3 days. I used to record the speech first, but I found that I'd sometimes want to make changes to the script while making the images, especially if I wanted to reword a phrase that I found too hard to visualise. Once the images are done, recording the narration and stringing it all together in Windows Movie Maker is the easy part.

BBG: What was the inspiration behind using the animation instead of, say, your yapping head?

Yahtzee: The inspiration for the animation was me not possessing a video camera or any similar means of recording and wondering if I could make a video out of still images and narration.

BBG: How'd you end up with The Escapist? Have you been surprised by your success?

Yahtzee: I put my first two videos on Youtube and of the many offers of work that would come my way over the next few months, The Escapist were the first. They're good people and I am treated well with a big sack of money at the start of every month. The success has been pretty surprising, and I'm also doing my best to exploit it as best I can; I've gotten two free trips abroad so far and been making decent headway on my main ambition to be a professional game designer.

BBG: What's your favorite gag so far? Have you felt like you've slipped any in that people have missed?

Yahtzee: I think my favourite one is still the illustration of the developers of Heavenly Sword, 'Ninja Theory', as a ninja teaching another ninja with a blackboard and pointer. I don't know why, it just stays with me. And yes, I'm pretty sure a lot of them get missed, most people tell me they usually watch the videos over and over again to catch all the stuff they didn't see properly. One of my favourite techniques is to flash up more text than can reasonably by read in the time given. It's like a subliminal challenge or something.
 
BBG: Do you think it's easier to pull off all the vulgarity by not being on camera?
 
Yahtzee: I certainly don't feel as self-conscious as I would do if I were on camera. I have terrible presenting discipline. I never look in the right way while I'm recording, I usually stare at the ceiling and rock back and forth in my chair. If you listen very hard you can sometimes hear my chair squeaking while I talk. It probably needs some screws tightening.

BBG: What's your most beloved game?
 
Yahtzee: I have a well-documented love of Silent Hill 2 for its excellent atmosphere and storytelling, but as for games that balance good gameplay and story I'd say Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and probably Portal, too. I like games that mesh gameplay and story well, not too much one way or the other.

BBG: So what's next for you?

Yahtzee: I am working on a couple of things. I'm part of an indie game dev team here in Brisbane and we've got a couple of projects going, including a rather nice corporate contract I'm not supposed to talk about but which could be the big break we need. I'm also lending assistance to a professional studio here which I probably also shouldn't be  talking about. As for personal projects, not much at present. There's a couple of ideas I have on the go, it's just a matter of seeing which one holds my attention for longest.

This knock-of "MP4 Player" not only plays music and video, it can emulate the NES and Game Boy Color. But even better, it can be recharged with built-in solar panels. That's right: you can play Faxanadu until the sun explodes.

It comes with 2GB of memory built in, which is plenty for NES and GB ROMs, although perhaps not music and movies, and can be expanded up to another 2GB with an SD card. Oh, and it's got a USB out to which other gadgets can be connected—not for data, but to be recharged from the solar panel.

It's $123.32 from China Vision, plus shipping. And despite very need for yet another device that can play emulated NES or GBA GBC games, I'm having a hard time talking myself out of buying one. If it played SNES games I'd probably take the plunge.

Catalog Page [ChinaVision.com via Albotas]

A member of the WDW Magic forums discovered a pilot program being tested at Walt Disney World which will allow visitors to use their Nintendo DS as an interactive guide the park. The software offers an interactive map of the Magic Kingdom, with guides to various "park offerings" including rides and dining locations, meet-and-greet locations for characters, and a wishlist checklist that allows you to mark off attractions after they've been visited. It also appears that the map will give "you are here" information, presumably by figuring out the Wi-Fi access point to which your DS is connected.

Even more nifty: special themed games are unlocked when you're standing in line for an attraction. This is so cool I can hardly stand it. I'm not even that enamored with Disney World, but this makes me want to take another trip once this is implemented. Someone I was talking to mentioned how great it'd be if they integrated FastPass notifications into this, so your DS could alert you when it's time to walk to the front of the line.

Disney looking at using Nintendo DS systems as an interactive guide map? [Forums.WDWMagic.com via Shacknews] (Thanks, Daveman!)

A Portal fan has hacked together this "Still Alive" rig controlled by an Intel 8080 running at 2MHz, with a sound chip from a Commodore 64. Then he released the source code in Assembler. You win the fan prize, sir.

8080 Computer playing Portal Still Alive [YouTube via via RPS]

Previously:

• Jonathan Coulton on Writing Portal's End Theme [BBG]
• Rule 34: Portal Edition [BBG]
• Portal Weighted Companion Cube Papercraft [BBG]
• Portal Papercraft [BBG]
• Portal in LEGO [BBG]
• Portal Writer Erik Wolpaw Interviewed [BBG]

Considering how relatively limited the selection for minifigs are, Brendan Mauro did a great job emulating the characters from Valve's Team Fortress 2.

I'm still playing Team Fortress 2 myself. Wish they'd come out with a few more maps, but I still adore it.

Brendan Mauro's photostream [Flickr via The Brothers Brick]

Previously: Portal in LEGO [BBG]

A Destructoid reader spotted this listing for an "Interactive Light and Smoke Stage Show" accessory kit for the videogame Rock Band. Presuming it's legit and not a hoax, the kit will be available in June for a hundred bucks.

This would only be cool—and I use "cool" liberally—if it were officially supported, with synchronization with the music in the game. That said, I've yet to pull out my Rock Band kit since our Fünde Razor charity event. I really liked the game, but just haven't been in the mood to rock solo since I've tasted the joy of full band play.

Live the dream with PDP's Rock Band 'Interactive Light and Smoke Stage Show' [Destructoid]

Paul Pape is offering these Mii-shaped chocolate treats for Valentine's Day, shipped in a Nintendo Wii-shaped box. The figures aren't based on your own Mii avatars, but that's fine. I'm sure they'd cost more than $15 if they did.

Catalog Page [PaulPapeDesigns.com via Boinkology via YumSugar]

I was looking through some old paperwork and found my original Wing Commander blueprint for the Hornet fighter (as well as a copy of "Space Piston Magazine" from Space Quest IV). I started to scan them in before realizing, Hey, I bet the internet is more on the ball than I am.

Lo, and behold: a full set of fairly high-resolution scans of all four blueprints, including my all-time favorite, the Scimitar Medium-Class Fighter.

I used to love the Wing Commander series. I built an entire cockpit for myself out of a refrigerator box, wired up a few non-functional switches and placed the whole thing over my computer so I could play in darkness. I even taped a faux heads-up display to the clear face mask of my Photon helmet (a Laser Tag knock-off) and tore out the padding on the side to wire in headphones.

Get Them While They're Blue [WCNews.com]

Todd Levin, chronicling every videogame console he has known, on the Atari 2600:

The joystick’s distinct shape provided me with hours of sophisticated entertainment, especially as I blindly turned the corner of sexual awareness. When Beth Rubenstein came over to “play Atari” in our renovated basement, our gaming would always quickly deteriorate into marathon sessions of hard, closed-mouth kissing—because tongue kissing was disgusting—followed by hilarious hijinks such as me chasing Beth around the weight bench with the joystick tucked between my legs, like Jane Gumb trapped in the world of Tron.

I’m not sure who would have been more disappointed to discover that last fact: my parents, who tried their best not to raise a pervert; or my brother and sister, who had no idea they were playing Activision’s Pitfall with my surrogate boner.

A Very Weird and Blocky Future [TheMorningNews.org via Kottke]

Why hasn't someone combined the 3d positional Wiimote controller from the Nintendo Wii and a—excuse me for being crass but I believe this is now the parlance—fucking machine? You've got three axis control plus rotational sensitivity. Seems possible. Once you had a one-to-one mapping of the Wiimote and the machine, you should be able to broadcast the positional data over the net without much problem. You might even be able to wire vibration feedback from the machine to be sent to the Wiimote.

Rob Beschizza has spotted a curious thing at CES: several knock-off game consoles that accept actual game cartridges. That may seem logical at first glance, but considering that knock-off consoles have typically been bundled with hundreds of pirated games built-in, it's a bit peculiar to see these sorts of decks appear that seem aimed at legitimate game collectors. (Not that I have a problem with it! Someone needs to keep making old consoles even in this age of emulation.)

Even better? The systems take both 8-bit and 16-bit cartridges. One even mixes Genesis and NES!

CES 2008: Retro Console Clones Take Actual Cartridges [Gadget Lab]

Aaron Skillman made this custom Guitar Hero controller in the shape of a turntable. You scratch the 45 to strum while using your other hand to play the frets. It's like the Beatmania "Metal Edition" that never existed.

GUITAR HERO PORTABLE TURNTABLE CONTROLLER [HustlerOfCulture.com via Crave.CNET.com]

The Guinness World Records folks are putting out a "Gamer's Edition" in Febuary. Who will now become the canonical high score keeper of record, Guinness or Twin Galaxies?

Preview Page [Gamers.GuinessWorldRecords.com via Oh Gizmo via Joystiq]

Although the initial press email was slim on details, the "Guitar Wizard" game to be shown off next week at CES aims to be a Guitar Hero that actually teaches you how to play guitar. (Sort of like a Rock Band for drums!) The software will ship with a Washburn electric guitar with a MIDI pickup and will sell for around $180 on the back half of next year. It could be a hell of a tool if they execute properly.

Apparently the company's software is already on the market in the Mattel "I Can Play Guitar" product, which appears to be more toy than musical instrument to me. They also have a "Piano Wizard" line that does something similar.

I'm about as over Portal riffs (rifts?) as anyone—all good things must come to an end—but how could I not link this one?

Best of the Orange box [Brickshelf.com via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]