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Sexist, racist, homophobic, misogynist, puerile and occasionally slightly amusing. This is the world of Bad Hacks - a celebration of the best/worst in old-school ROM hacking.

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If you enjoy fighting games on your Xbox - in particular new versions of classics like MK Vs DCU or SF II With Bells On It HD And A Partridge In A Pear Tree II HD Turbo Turbo (to use the shorter form of the game - the full title is some four paragraphs of close-set type) you may be in the market for a better controller.

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Zany frontman Wayne Coyne of commercial alt-rock outfit The Flaming Lips has constructed what may be the world first double-neck, double-function Guitar Hero guitar. It's one half genuine guitar, one quarter Guitar Hero guitar controller and one quarter Korg Kaoscillator, making for a cute little noisemaker that you might just see at an upcoming show.

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Hard proof's still thin on the ground with this one, so exercise caution, but it all looks solid enough. The clip above introduces the (not quite ready for release) Wii Backup Loader. Run from the Homebrew Channel, it lets you load modified ISO files on a DVD, so they'll play on your Wii. Or, yeah, to use less innocent-sounding terminology, it'll load pirated Wii games, so they'll play on your Wii.

Nintendo Wii ISO Loader - It's Real! [Tehkseen, via Gizmodo]

Some of these sound almost gratuitous -- connect to two screens? Neah, never had a need for that. But TechRadar compiled a list of 10 tricks/hacks for you to extract more functionality out of your 360. Probably the most useful is No. 4 -- how to play Xbox 360 games online for free, without any Live account at all. It involves setting up a free app that tricks the console into thinking the Internet is a LAN. It's said to work, with some limitations. There's also a hack that lets you use any HDMI cable you want, with a little work.

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This gentleman, "Ron" Tajima has managed a Balance Board hack that manages to defeat the basic purpose of a Roomba's existence. But, it's awesome. He's used the Wii Balance Board's Bluetooth capability to link it with the poky-slow vacuum-cleaning robot. He steers the Roomba by the direction he leans.

The things that are balls-to-the-wall awesome about this video:
• Sped up assembly footage. See? It's simple.
• Crappy kung-fu movie audio -- with mismatched soundtrack.
• The beep-beep-beep "Surfin' USA" tone. Please tell me that's coming from the Roomba itself.

I won't be able to get that out of my head the rest of the day. A job well done, "Ron" Tajima!
Wii Balance Board Roomba Hack Cleans Up [Balance Board Blog]

Now this is more like it. GH:On Tour is all well and good, but it is hard to feel like yer actual axe-wielding rock warrior when you are hunched over a DS with a soppy-looking 'Guitar Grip' attached to your hand like a Nerf knuckleduster.

Eric Ruckman was so desperate to give the DS port of Guitar Hero the thrashing it so richly deserves that he scooped out the innards of his PS2 guitar and melded it with a DS. The DS touch screen is still used for strumming - the plectrum stylus works even better in this context - and the crafty sod even bolted on an FM transmitter to pump stereo sound through his hi-fi.

Hack Guitar Hero DS into a guitar controller [Hack-A- Day via Engadget]

Follow the jump for a video of the mod in action.

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Nintendo has been far too busy printing money and dreaming up strange new controllers to actually finish that DVD-on-Wii thing it has been promising for the last couple of years.

Happily, the homebrew community has stepped up and put together a Wii channel that will read a DVD disc and pipe it through the open source MPlayer media player.

It's not quite ready for prime time — the audio can sometimes get out of sync, although this is more a 'feature' of MPlayer than the fault of the hack, we suspect. Worth checking out, though, and it might just save Nintendo the bother of building something that nobody has really been crying out for but would be nice to have for free.

Homebrew Enables DVD Playback On Wii [Gemaga.com]

An early beta version of Microsoft's Fall Xbox Experience dashboard update for the 360 has made its way onto the internet via the usual file sharing sites, and modders and hackers have been working overtime to get the thing up and running on their consoles. xHaVoK87 has been constantly updating readers on his progress in getting the dash functional on his box, and as of his most recent update it looks like he's been successful. Congratulations! You now have a buggy beta version of the Fall dash update, complete with font errors, missing graphics, and none of the actual features that are supposed to be coming to revolutionise the Xbox Live Experience. In essence, your hacked Xbox now looks different. Way to go.

Work is currently being done towards an install solution for retail Xbox 360 systems, but you know what? I'll just wait. Hit the jump for a clip of the new dash in action, or hit the link for the full rundown of how they did it.

Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard 08 Leaked! [xHaVoK87's Blog - Thanks Madgame]

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