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No More Heroes' girl-crazy otaku protagonist, Travis Touchdown, must have found the Cosmic Key, because he's crossed over into the world of Valve games -- specifically Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2.

The L4D mod uses Travis to meet the game's quota for one leather-clad survivor, putting him, in his usual red jacket and Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly T-shirt (but no beam katana), in the place of ultra-pessimist Francis. While an L4D2 mod could address the lack of stabbing and cutting, it would seem mod creator ash_link isn't a fan of Valve's sequel, so, yeah ... that's probably not happening.

The Team Fortress 2 mod does about the same thing, replacing that game's Scout with a pint-sized, katana-wielding Touchdown. Head past the break to see for yourself. Seriously, go watch the video now.

[Via Destructoid]

Doom's main character always seemed to be lacking that little extra something. Sure, he had a BFG 9000 and could battle demons with the best of 'em, but did he have a gun arm? How about a body covered by totally sweet blue metal armor? Didn't think so. And that makes all the difference in the Mega Man mod for Doom 2, created by Mike Hill of the UK. "I've been modding for Doom ever since I first got a hold of the PC version ... some may find it hard to believe that the Doom modding scene is still live and kicking after all these years," Hill told Joystiq.

The 22-year-old built the mod (still in alpha) as an homage to "the time when I feel Mega Man was in full fruition: on the NES," harnessing not just 8-bit sprites for characters but for entire levels. Mike Hill's hope is that someday the mod will contain "all the levels and weapons from Mega Man 1–6 (and maybe even 9)," though, as of right now, he's still got a long way to go. "Right now the gameplay is a bit slow paced and unbalanced, and the maps are extremely difficult to navigate ... expect a more stable release some time next year." He promises more levels and more weapons in 2010, but we're hoping the power of Joystiq BioMass™ can spur Mike on to get us more Mega Man deathmatch asap. Go forth and comment, BioMass!

Update: We've added a video of the mod in action just after the break.

Well, that didn't take long. On the very day that New Super Mario Bros. Wii was released in North America, hackers Virus and Vash released Tanooki, a program that allows users to design their own levels in place of the game's existing locales. Coder Treeki also announced Reggie!, yet another level editor for New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Whichever wins, everybody wins.

Of course, these programs, while awesome, are pretty impractical for most of us, given that they run on a computer and thus work only with emulation. But, we must reiterate, these are awesome, and we appreciate the efforts of hobbyists everywhere who immediately make games better with their work. Check out example videos of both (with some NSFW language in annotations) after the break.

[Via Gemaga]

Man, is this National Awesome Half-Life 2 Mod Weekend, or what?

Machinima.com user (and assumed Source engine guru) m0rtanius recently made a 3D adaptation of the first level of Castlevania, which you can view in the video after the jump. Before you pass judgment on this mod, we suggest you view this clip from Castlevania 64.

We've come a long way, baby.

[Via GoNintendo]

Okay -- Time Gentlemen, Please featured a number of Hitler-Heiling prehistoric lizards, so we guess there's now two games out there which feature Nazi Dinosaurs. Still, the more recent title to boast the hybrid, a Half-Life 2 mod titled Dino D-Day, actually allows you to go toe to talon with with these fanged, scaly members of the Third Reich. You can check out an overwhelmingly patriotic trailer for the mod over on ModDB -- or, if you're in the mood to massacre some Nazi Dinos right now, the mod is also available to download.

(To be fair, the dinosaurs featured in Dino D-Day are unable to speak, so it's difficult to know whether they harbor the disturbing political and social beliefs of the Nazi party. However, they're affiliated with them in combat, so we've got no reservations about punching them repeatedly in their stupid dinosaur faces.)

Some folks measure the length of time it takes for a new console to be hacked wide open by how long it takes to display a "Hello, World!" message. For us, that metric is determined by how long it takes to get a Sega CD emulator running on the system. For the PSP Go, that period of time has been finalized: 43 long, lonely, Night Trap-less days.

A YouTube video by "Neon" from "Team Typhoon" (is that some sort of gang?) appears to prove that on some PSP Go, somewhere in the world, one can play Sonic CD. Don't get your hopes up -- the video's annotations repeatedly promise that the hack will not be released to the general public, so for the time being, you're going to have to keep playing that old copy of Wirehead on your clunky, Voltron-esque home console. Still, our heart swells knowing that our wildest dreams are possible -- if not slightly out of reach.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Now may be the perfect time to come up from the deepest bowels of Torchlight's dungeons to take a breather from all of your greedy hoarding, as Shacknews reports the game's mod tools are now available. Runic Games originally announced the tool set would be a separate download following the late-October release of the game and the dev has made good on that promise, gifting us all with TorchED.

TorchED allows one to manage all aspects of the game, from creating custom levels to modifying skills right down to quest construction. For you budding quest composers out there, Runic offers a list of tips to get your mod on that you may wish to check out.

[Via Shacknews]

The disc drive out back may be a bit precariously placed, but 'Hailrazer"'s portable "NCube" reeks of everything we'd want in a handheld version of the last-gen Nintendo console (except for wireless multiplayer, of course). Engadget spotted the 90-hour-in-the-making portable GameCube over on – surprise, surprise! – the Ben Heck forums. A breakdown of the construction process can be found just after the break in video form, though you may want to set up the drool tray now before proceeding.

All set? Alright, now go ahead.

[Via Engadget]

The Left 4 Dead modding community is really kicking decomposing zombie butt lately. We've seen Raccoon City, some of our favorite Super Mario 64 spots, and even Shaun of the Dead's Winchester pub all realized in the game's zombie apocalypse framework. Now we bring you another mod that pays homage to a zombie film: 'Dead Before Dawn,' a mod based on the 2004 remake of George A. Romero's classic, Dawn of the Dead.

The new mod opened to public beta this Halloween and features a variety of locales stripped from the movie, along with its own snazzy campaign poster. The folks behind the mod even went so far as to create their own title sequence (though their version features far less Johnny Cash than the movie's). You can shamble on past the break to check it out.

[Thanks, Gutfree!]

We hope your recent forays into piracy merely involve you donning a hook and eyepatch for a debaucherous costume party, or else you likely received a message from Microsoft like the headline of this post. The company recently dispatched a wave of bans to owners of modded Xbox 360s who've been playing pirated copies of games. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to IGN that "we have taken action against a small percentage of consoles that have been modified to play pirated game discs."

The spokesperson went on to explain that this batch of console bans wasn't conducted on any particular time frame, and that the company was merely following up on its standing policy against piracy. In other words, Microsoft isn't trying to ruin your Halloween weekend -- it just, you know, worked out that way.

[Image]

Has your homebrew SNES masterpiece, Secret of Manilow, been trapped within your computer for a decade or so due to technological restraints? Time to dust off your old ROM file -- the Quickdev16 SNES developer cartridge has all you need to get your brainchild up and running on Nintendo's Super console. The cart includes an Atmel AVR ATmega644 with boot loader, a USB connection with which to upload a ROM, 16 megabits of SRAM, and an RS232 converter.

We're assuming that if you possess the technical know-how to craft custom SNES games, then you probably know what all that stuff means. We're also assuming that you'd be more inclined to pony up for the cart's $120 price tag than we are. That's just a tad too steep for an SNES cart -- or rather, an SNES cart that isn't a sealed, mint condition copy of Chrono Trigger.

[Via Engadget]

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start. It's a powerful string of commands capable of garnering its invoker thirty lives, a gaggle of power-ups or other potent in-game bonuses. However, a technomancer from ProtoDojo.com has figured out a way to give the Konami Code practical applications in real life -- it can now be used to unlock one gigabyte of LOLCat JPEGs, German techno covers of Billy Ocean songs or, well, smut.

This little slice of realized magic is possible due to a 1GB flash drive embedded into a hollowed-out NES controller. Entering the Konami Code into the controller unlocks it, allowing you to browse its contents on your compy. To see how this technological feat was made possible, watch the video after the jump. After that, start pondering what this guy could put into a Power Glove. Perhaps -- dare we say it -- a two gigabyte flash drive?

[Via The Tanooki]

Remember that Mushroom Kingdom mod DoritoClock was working on for Left 4 Dead? Well, he's making progress and now has some new areas of the campaign to show off: the exterior of Peach's Castle and Super Mario 64's first world, Bob-omb Battlefield. He even added the latter's Chain Chomp!

It seems DoritoClock has also been reading our diary, because he's compiled a 10+ minute video walkthrough of all the areas. You can find that video past the break, but if you're anxious to see that Chain Chomp munching on a few undead carcasses (like we are), prepare to be disappointed. It's a work in progress, folks.

If you own more than one console, there's a sizable chance that you found The Conduit underwhelming. A commendable effort, sure, but not the world-rending behemoth we were all hoping for. That said, if you own multiple consoles, you probably also have enough money to afford a sweet custom rig. Thus we present a custom Wii dedicated to High Voltage's good ol' college try.

While it might appear to be little more than a Wii with a face painted one side and a logo plastered on the other, the real magic happens when you turn it on, causing it to light up so very prettily. See it all in the detailed (and vaguely sensual) video after the break.

[Thanks, John]

Tim Magoolaghan is quite the modder and has made a Frankensteinian PSP. Aside from the second analog nub he slapped on this custom PSP-2000, he's also added a built-in camera, 32GB of Flash memory (eliminating the UMD slot) and a dedicated charging port that allows USB charging no matter what the handheld is currently doing. In the video interview where he shows off his creation (video past the break), there's also some emulation stuff going on due to the custom firmware, but we don't condone that kind of thing.

Tim's whole motivation behind this custom PSP is that he wants to show consumers the older model can do wonderful things that the new PSP Go cannot. He says Sony's new device isn't very consumer friendly and while we think he has something there, it's overshadowed by the fact that he's sitting next to the most annoying woman on the planet.

[Thanks, Robin!]