You've seen the Legend of Zelda Wii mod, and this is the same thing, but with a DS Lite and different colors. Not much to say, but it's worth looking at, and knowing that it's on eBay for fucking $660 bucks. Jeez.

To fill up some space I'll let you in on an embarrassing secret of mine. Some of my friends are lame dorks, and for some reason they're convinced that saying "that's how I rule" is a way of solving things with pure testosterone. Being the man that I am, it's the gayest shit ever and drives me nuts to hear people say it, no matter how small or joking they might be. So one day my friend and I got into a dispute over whether or not Link ever fucked Epona in between a cut-scene and gameplay. My friend argued to no end that it was impossible, totally overlooking the fact that maybe the last note of Epona's song has been missing all along, and that's why a damn horse comes running across the land whenever you start sticking your fingers in holes and blowing to get a song playing - Ocarina of it's Time to get dirty!

Yet you disappoint and mount Epona all wrong every single time without finishing the song. My friend refused to believe it was even possible, and boomed out nonsensically "Cuz that's how I rule," which pushed me to such an extreme of hate and bad emotional judgement to declare back at him, "Oh, yah, well this is how HY-rule!" I've regretted it ever since. Although in my defense, it's still not as gay as saying "This is how I rule." That is all. There will be a test on Monday, so make sure you study.

A few days ago I noticed a lot of Wii games had popped up on torrent sites, and since the console is cheap by comparison to its rivals, I thought about giving it a try. I guess Nintendo has been noticing the rising trend as well, here's an announcement they made in Europe:

“Modification microchips (mod chips) circumvent the security embedded into Nintendo's products. To install a mod chip into a Nintendo hardware system, it is necessary to dismantle the product and, in some instances, remove components. The use of mod chips voids the manufacturer's warranty. In addition, the installation of a mod chip can damage the functionality of a Nintendo console, sometimes rendering it incapable of repair. Mod chips have been adjudicated to be illegal in various countries around the world, including the Unites States, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. Most European countries have also already adopted laws prohibiting the circumvention of technological measures for copyright protection. People caught installing or selling mod chips may be subject to criminal charges. We are invading Poland.”

Okay, the last sentence wasn't part of the quote, but I wouldn't rule it out just yet. They have to expect it will be a problem when region locking continually makes their continent look like a third world country compared to us when it comes to gaming. Don't worry though, since this announcement was only made on the Nintendo UK site, you should take it as an encouragement to mod your Wii if you live anywhere else.

Facepunch Studios appears to be a gathering for gamers with ambitious 3D projects, and the group yielding the most interesting results lately is the Twilight Princess crowd. It started when "??UnKnOwN??" ripped some of the 3D models from the game, but kept excited members in the dark as he or she cleaned up the 3D meshes and enhanced the quality of the character textures. Just recently though, member "DONOTWANT" came out of nowhere with 40 different character meshes ripped for download, and the fanboy floodgates have been unleashed.

What this all means, is that if you have 2D and 3D manipulation software, like Photoshop and 3D Studio Max, you can do whatever the hell you want to the Twilight Princess characters. Anything. I just opened up a few of them in 3D Max and checked out a few of their textures too, it's the real thing. And if you're into making mods, you could easily rig the models and animate them in Garry's mod. Ok, it's not that easy, rigging each polygonal vertex can be a huge bitch to do well, and coding always gives people headaches, but getting your hands on these kind of files is the hardest step in the process to making Link fight G-man or finally beating the shit out of Midna with the gravity gun. Expect some convincing April Fool's jokes to pop up next year! If I have some free time tonight I'll mesh around with the files more, but grab the winrar downloads before they disappear. If any of you are interested in pursuing this further, lemme know and I'll try to decently rig the models for you this weekend. Any Twilight Princess fight animation requests?

Update: We're all greedy little Zelda lovin' bastards, and I'm already getting a bunch of emails that the downloads in the other sites' forums aren't working anymore. Their servers must be getting slammed, keep checking back if the downloads aren't working for you. Or, feel free to upload the winrar files on another site and help point others to alternate download locations. Thanks for being patient.

Update 2: Just added over twenty pictures from the Facepunch Studios forums - you can see Link, Midna, and others in various poses below. People have the characters in rigging editors, are working on collision detection, and even throwing some of them into Garry's mod. And there's already a slightly NSFWish picture too, so be warned. Also, I'm being told you can also download the 3D files here.

I bought an NES skin for my Wii from here for fifteen bucks and I love it, but this Wii altering is a complete mod that must have taken a week or more to make. Jeremy painted the Wii base the same hue of gold as the limited edition Ocarina of Time Nintendo 64 cartridge, and the Hyrule shield and Master Sword come from the special edition Zelda soundtrack. Although the true geek factor kicks in when you plug it in and see the white LEDs illuminate from behind the Triforce and shield. And while you're sitting through loading times you can even slide out the sword and use it to scratch your back.

Right now the eBay auction has it priced at 385 dollars, but there's still 9 days left of bidding. Here's the eBay auction (caution - music plays on the page), and below are more pictures of the paint job and LEDs.

Paul Capello's "Rebirth 8.0" PC case mod uses Myspace phototrickery to appear amazing at first, but the more we zoom out, and the less our angle of vision is tilted, the more clear the truth becomes. The Matrix case mod looks like Morpheus took an overdose of red and blue pills and puked it all up onto someone's PC. It's as disturbing as it is tacky too - there's an onyx orgy of H.R. Giger goo surrounding a fetus, yes, an actual moving mechanical fetus. A quivering test tube baby kinda kills the mood of looking at porn, although if you think Carrie-Anne Moss is hot then you're screwed anyways. This might give Wachowski (whichever is still a man) a wet dream, but I've seen more impressive looking postal stamps than this decadent disaster.

Wiipod just doesn't sound right, let's throw one more "i" into the Wii's name. YouTube user matthewsalvo hooked his Wii up to his 60GB iPod using a Linux application to enable live video stream. The audio ironically doesn't come from the iPod though, it's instead sent to a separate receiver. If you thought your Miis were miniature, then check out his tiny 21 player parade. Let's see you try to play WarioWare: Smooth Moves on this small screen. Worst Wii mod ever.

Looks like this mod's creators from Peru are a bit behind the times, but I love 'em for it - I'm getting sick of seeing so many Half-Life 2 mods. In the game "Super Doom Mario" you collect coins, shells, and mushrooms for murder. The player wisely stocks up on Bullet Bills for ammo, and in only a few seconds a swarm of Yoshis on Mario Kart surround him and start attacking. I think this is the first time I've ever seen anything punch a Yoshi right in the face, making this one of the best mods of all time. There's also Shy Guy mobs, storms of Lakitus, and a few other surprises, but my favorite part of the whole game is seeing the true-to-Doom Mario facial expressions at the bottom of the screen. This honestly looks more fun than a lot of Doom 3, I'd pay for it.

Yah, what ever happened to that Wiimote gun Nintendo promised us? It was the "Wii Zapper," and you can see the picture of it below, but a random forum member on GameBeaver got tired of waiting and made his own:

Back at E3 the when Nintendo began its display of the Nintendo Wii there were several extra items that caught the attention of the public. One such item would be the Nintendo Wii Zapper. In case you don’t know what the Zapper is let me casually explain. The Zapper is a holster for the Wii Remote; in short it is a plastic gun shaped case that the Wii Remote and Nunchuck can fit in to give a more realistic first person shooter experience. Well since the Wii’s release Nintendo has said nothing about when the release of the zapper will take place. Fortunately for the world this delay, has given several individuals a chance to come with their own imitation Zappers.

Now if only it worked. Nintendo hasn't followed up on their Wii Zapper status since they first announced it, so for now we must just rely on the Wiimote and Wii nunchuk. I wouldn't be surprised though if the Wii Zapper was given to the public around the time of the E for All Expo, I've got a very strong feeling that Nintendo still has a few tricks up its sleeve.

Ben Heckendorn's three part Wii Laptop tutorial continues this week with phase two. Last week's part one showed us how to 'modify' the heat sink by benignly bashing it down to fit into the laptop's interior. This week he shows us how to reattach some pieces, mount the disc drive back to the motherboard, and create the design for the laptop's exterior. But before you give this mod project a try you should make sure that none of the pictures below scare you. If you think you're ready for duct tape and design doodles then you can read the full article over on Engadget.

I want to see Ben Heck make a DS laptop next, where the keyboard is actually a touch screen. Except instead of playing DS games on 2 widescreens, it has 8 game slots and can display 4 double screens per  laptop screen, letting you play all of your favorite games at once. I'd make a Minority Report glove and play each game with one finger.

You probably won't be able to play it on your computer, but why not at least stare at it? The DE_Wanda Counter Strike Source map was created by Soenke c. "Warby" Seidel, and the detailed textures he uses combined with HDR lighting make the level look better than most games you'll play all year. Add to that a part in the level where a colossus actually fights a Half-Life 2 Combine walker and you've got potentially one of the best gaming moments of 2007. You can download the 160MB map and look for others with PCs powerful enough to play it here. Check out the gallery of screenshots below. If you do play it, be sure to send me some more screenshots to post on the site. Here's to hoping that someone takes on a Twilight Princess map mod project

Update: TheLastBoss reader Samuel has a far too awesome computer, and he's already downloaded and played it for a few minutes. I updated the gallery below with 4 more of the pictures he took, including one NSFW upskirt of the two creatures. Thanks Samuel!