Here I thought all the flashing corpses meant we were watching the Australian version of Left 4 Dead. I kid, Luke! I kid!!! No, this is a bona fide playable 8-bit “demake” of L4D, available soon for PC.

Now, that’s not to say this is exciting. I kept waiting for a crescendo event and then realised this emulator probably cannot handle that many characters on the screen. But the common infected are a little too sedate, especially considering 8-bit games are remembered for being muuuuuch harder.

There’s also only one special infected — the Boomer — although the creator Eric Ruth says all of the other special infected will be added in later some point. Ruth promises that all maps and campaigns will be represented too when the game is available for free download on PC on Jan. 4.

NES Left 4 Dead Gameplay Video 1 [YouTube, thanks Eric.]

Osama calls it The NEStickle (not to be confused with the NES emulator) because, well, why not. It’s not like FightDeck or TurboConsole’s gonna make this look any less weird. The NES controller houses the stick’s USB cable, and it’s compatible with all consoles and PC.

Osama says Nicolas, his friend, had to carve a reinforced interior from wood “using nothing but his laser vision. This insures that I don’t over-zealously cave the NES in while pressing hard on those buttons when I’m losing badly to a cheap-ass who won’t stop throwing me.”

You can see more pics of the NEStickle and its construction over at the link.

Introducing the NEStickle! [Towards Mecca]

“So why did I decide to build an NES?,” writes Dave Sterling. “I think mainly just to see if I could. I’ve never done something I would consider ‘art’ or ‘sculpture’ in LEGO and I really wanted to give it a try and see if I could recreate something directly to scale.”

His creation is 1/16th of an inch of the actual dimensions — bravo!

MOCOlympics Round #6: Dave Sterling vs. Crimso Giger in Atari: A LEGO® creation by Dave Sterling [MOCpages.com via Brothers Brick via Gizmodo]

From classic scooters and teddy bears to Furbies and Cabbage Patch Kids, this Good Housekeeping list documents the hottest of hot toys that were hot in their day. And unlike People Magazine’s 80s special, they’ve gone and given Nintendo and Sega their rightful props as hot toys.

While I can’t name anybody who’d be glad to get a jar of Play-Doh this year, I can think of a lot of people who would be thrilled to see a Sega Dreamcast or an original Nintendo Entertainment System under their X-mas tree this year. Sadly, none of them are kids.

What classic entertainment system would you want under your tree this year?

The Best Toys of All Time [Good Housekeeping by Yahoo! Shopping]

Or so said box, obviously in terrible shape, commanded when auctioned off on eBay last month. As spotted by Siliconera, a fierce bidding war for the unreleased game’s box — again, this is just a prototype of a box, not even a real box — ultimately came down to nearly six hundred bucks American.

Unfortunately for the seller, whoever won that auction apparently didn’t come through. The box has since been relisted on eBay, with two days worth of bidding to go. Right now, top bid is $US51, something we’ll be keeping an eye on.

Somewhat related, is anyone interested in a copy of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch: Make My Video for Sega CD? I’m looking to unload a few.

New Kids on the Block Prototype Sample NES Nintendo Box [eBay via Siliconera]

As Joe and everyone who’s seen this point out, that’s rather like picking 1234 for your ATM PIN. Because the first thing anyone would do with an idle, disconnected NES controller is punch in the Konami Code out of boredom. Joe shows how it works, and so I assume the code can be changed up. But whatever its utility, it’s damn cool and a triumph of mod ingenuity.

Retro Gamer Drive (Konami Code NES Controller Flash Drive) from ProtoDojo on Vimeo.

Retro GamerDrive [ProtoDojo via Gizmodo]

But spend $US20,100 on said ultra-rare NES game someone did, snapping up the “one of a kind” item on eBay. That purchase price may not be as outrageous as you’re thinking.

It does have three games on it, Super Mario Bros. 3, Pin-Bot, and Dr. Mario, helping to defray the cost. I’m fairly certain that any copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 costs about ten large anyway, so it’s a steal!

The real story is that this really may be the only cartridge of its kind, created for a nationwide college video game tournament from 1991. The Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991 was allegedly supposed to be destroyed at the end of that promotion, but one employee managed to hold on to a copy.

Hit up eBay to marvel at this gorgeous little contraption of chips, PCB and plastic.

Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991 NES World Championships [eBay - thanks, Billy!]

On his Flickr stream, KodyKoala describes his Guts-Dozer as kit-bashed from the parts of a “Mech Hulk Top” and a “GI Joe vehicle that I used to have as a kid”. I think that’s the “Wolverine”, the missile launcher that Cover Girl used to drive. Once again, I can’t remember the formula for circumference of a circle, but I can recall that. And that’s probably why I write about video games now.

As for HRH Hippo, I thought that 200-pounds-of-suet physique looked familiar. “I used a BLOB build [from the X-Men continuity] figure as the base, and unfortunately I had to make the legs not movable to make it look right.”

Custom Guts-Dozer figure by Donald “KodyKoala” Kennedy [TinyCartridge via Go Nintendo]