Ever since Nintendo announced the next version of the DS-- the DSi XL (or the DSi LL in Japan), people have been scratching their heads. Why? Why does the world need a much larger, unwieldy DS that doesn't fit in your pocket? Why does it come with a gigantic touch pen? Why does it only come in 3 colors-- white, dark brown and dark red? Who wants a dark brown DS? Turns out that the answer is that the DSi XL is marketed at old people and families who want to sit around and watch other people play games on the DS.

Since it first rolled out the NES up to the Wii, Nintendo's had some weird times with its controllers. The NES controller was good enough, but then... things got really weird as they tried to set themselves apart from the newest cool kid on the block-- the Sony Playstation-- and ended up with some sort of bizarre mutant controller. Final step: Fuck it, just give 'em a couple sticks to wave around in the air. Via: Level One Boss

Holy crap this took a lot longer than I thought. A couple weeks ago, there was this Periodic Table of Cartoon Characters floating around on Digg and it got me thinking about a Periodic Table of Video Game Characters, but unfortunately, the periodic table of elements doesn't always cooperate when it comes to video game character names. If you're stumped on any, let me know and maaaybe I'll give you the answer.

So last week, we had this NES customer service training video from 1991. And then over the weekend, IHC personality and link finder extraordinaire, Delsydsoftware proposed a great little addictive detective game. From this scene of the guy standing in front of this rack of NES games, how many games can you identify?
It's okay to do some research-- as a matter of fact, doing some research and some CSI work is the best way to go about it.

You ever wanted the awesomeness of Guitar Hero with the chirpiness of 8-bit sound and a 2 button controller? The recently release NES ROM, D-Pad Hero brings you the best of both worlds-- with tracks from Guns n Roses, Michael Jackson, Daft Punk and A-Ha, all in glorious chirpy sound. And it's available for NES emulators for Windows, OS X and Linux! Yay!

There's so many great quotes and bad translations in older NES games that many of the phrases that appeared in these games became standalone catchphrases in themselves. Well, SydLexia.com had done a great job of making a list of the 50 in-game NES quotes you really should be aware of if you all yourself a geek. Sure not all of them... but most of them. There might be a test. Click here to see the big-ass list.

Australia never really went all crazy about the NES and this is probably one good reason why-- scaring the crap out of kids with giant 8 bit monsters probably isn't the best marketing strategy. Just saying.

If you like completely random mashups and fights to the death starring slews of NES characters, you'll love this video. If you love to see Mega Man (that's NES Mega Man not super-gayed-up Mega Man) as destroyer of the universe and eater of worlds, you'll love this video.

It's not well-known (and it well may be bullshit) that when Activision was developing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance wanted to add several Nintendo licensed characters like Samus and Link. In the end, sadly, Nintendo said "no" to the deal. Oh well, UA was still a kick-ass game.