Just in case you’ve ever wondered “what would Portal look like if it had been released in the early 80s”, now, courtesy of Joe Larson, you can find out.

ASCIIpOrtal Update 2 ASCIIpOrtal update video 2 [ASCII Portal, via Offworld]

See, the DS and DS Lite were easy pickings for anyone looking to play homebrew titles or pirate illegal copies of DS games. All you needed was a flashcart – like the R4 – and you were good to go.

But the DSi is different. The R4 won’t work in it. Also, because it can update its firmware, every update can – like the Wii – block the latest attempts at circumventing its security. And it’s successfully managed to hold out for, oh, a whole six months.

Meet Supercard’s DSONEi, a flashcart that is able to get around this by beating Nintendo at their own game. Say you use the DSONEi to play some old Lucasarts adventure games on your DSi. Then Nintendo releases a firmware update, you install it, and your Lucas games stop working.

All you’d need to do is wait for the Supercard team to come up with a fresh workaround for Nintendo’s latest update, download new firmware for DSONEi device, and you’re back in the game.

Sure, it’s not a perfect solution, as you’re reliant on Supercard to continue supporting the device. But a flawed workaround is better than no workaround at all if you’re a homebrew fan and want to make the most of your new Nintendo handheld.

New flashcart seeks to circumvent future lockouts from DSi firmware updates → [Tiny Cartridge]

It’s only at a beta-stage so far, so you can choose among a Simon-style memory game (pictured) a Missile Command-type game (which I couldn’t get to work) and a shoutbox, should you feel like bellowing your love for the DSi into the ether.

It has a way to go before it’s the level of the WiiCade, but at least it is a start.

DSiCade [site via http://www.kotaku.com.au/games/2009/03/kama_sutra_comes_to_the_ds-2.html

NSFW: Kama Sutra for your DS → [Tiny Cartridge]

No HDD on the Wii eh, Nintendo? Big mistake. Makes Wii owners sad. Never mind, while Nintendo may be lacking the will to make a storage device for the Wii, others are more adventurous.

Matrix have parted the curtains on the WiiZii, a plug-n-play mod (mod! avert your eyes!) that allows you the user to connect a SATA HDD to the console, which when plugged in will let you load homebrew files on the fly. The mod itself also includes 2mbit of internal memory, as well as the promise of future firmware updates.

It’s no official solution, but then, do you honestly think there’s ever going to be an official solution?

Plug & Play WiiZii mod brings external HDD support to Wii and super fast ISO loading!!! [Maxconsole]

The geekiest of romantic gestures used to be limited to those with a knack for assembly and emulation, but thanks to Multiple-Option’s Easy Proposal Maker, you too can ask for another’s hand in marriage in-game.

As the demo clip shows, simply plug in your marriage request — or any other proposal that might involve a giant ring sprite — fire up The Search Master mini-game and watch in panic as the object of your affection tile-matches. Too precious!

Easy Proposal Maker featuring The Search Master [Multiple-Option via TinyCartridge]

And now it’s, kinda, out of beta. Version 1.00 has been released, and while it’s not technically a finished version, it does bring with it a ton of neat features, like Classic Controller support, the ability to detect all four Wii Remotes and support for Guitar Hero peripherals.

The full list of changes/improvements

• meta.xml now handles all ISO-8859-1 characters properly (you can use either UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1 encoding, but UTF-8 is restricted to the ISO subset)
• Wiimote power button support (shutdown)
• Wiimote rumble honors system setting
• Fixed some crash bugs
• Fix meta.xml UNIX style newline regression
• All wiimotes work now, not just the first one (only one can point at a time though)
• Classic Controller support
• Nunchuk support (scroll only, using the stick)
• Guitar Hero 3 guitar support
• Left and right change pages too
• Hit 1 on Wiimote to retry the network connection (like clicking on the network icon or Z on the GC pad)
• Added information to the installer
• Fixed some networking issues with networking disabled (and possibly other bugs)
• Pushed in some text to avoid overscan crop
• Widened video width to match system menu (”black bars” fix)
• B returns from app screen (unless scrolling with B-hold)
• Try to initialize network earlier (slight speedup)
• Retry network initialization a few times
• Fix a networking issue (libogc problem)
• Reload stub now identifies itself (magic number, for future use)
• Support broken HTTP proxies in update check
• Show IOS revision in main menu
• () -> * (Hint: old-school Wiimote support needed what? Try it both ways.)

Provided you know your way around the homebrew setup, go try it out, let us know how it goes.

The Homebrew Channel: Now With Less Beta! [HackMii]

The Acekard 2i is claimed to be the world’s first fully-working DSi flash cartridge with cart mavens Acekard claiming the device supports all of the DSi’s new features – including the ability to read and store data on MicroSD cards in the new slot.

This video shows what appears to be the menu system (curiously, the site says “The Acekard R.P.G. utilises the idea of the iPhone which gives the customer a totally new control experience.” which I think is just a fancy way of saying that the menu can use the touchscreen) with a quick segue into a probably not-that-legal version of Castlevania. Never mind, Nintendo. You had a good run at being piracy free for, what, two months?

Acekard2i For DSi Released! [Acekard - thanks to Wraggster for the tip]

The very definition of ‘Neat Hack’, Ken Moore shows us his DIY Wiimote Theremin with a virtuoso rendition of a piece traditionally associated with the instrument – the theme from Star Trek.

It’s not, in actual fact, a real Theremin. Rather than radio frequency oscillations, Ken uses tiny LEDs on the tips of his fingers (hence the gloves) that trigger the Wiimote’s infrared sensors. Still damn cool, though and if nothing else takes my dream project of Theremin Hero one step closer to reality.

More Wii Theremin Videos [Ken Moore Design]

The hardware nerds behind the Acekard flashcart reckon they have made some progress towards getting their card working with the DSi.

The above video shows what appears to be a DSi booting from a flashcart and running some decidedly non-homebrew software. Although it may look as though Nintendo’s dream of a piracy-free handheld are over, the team say that releasing a cart using their method would be ‘almost impossible’ to do commercially.

Of course, a couple of weeks ago people were saying that the above video was impossible too, so we shall see.