Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Okay, we heart this anonymous Japanese programmer. He created a version of Super Mario Bros. in which players move their hands in front of a webcam in order to push Mario around. It's not very intuitive, and it doesn't look that useful, but it's awesome. Things can just be uselessly cool sometimes, right?

Really, this is only barely Mario. The graphics are lifted from Super Mario Bros., and the level design is pretty much 1-1 without any coins or powerups in it, but the weirdo physics, lack of on-screen information, and the obvious, constant bugs lead us to the conclusion that this game was actually made from scratch to imitate Super Mario Bros. That just means that more of this guy's spare time was spent making a near-unplayable webcam game, which makes it even better -- as does the Hatsune Miku-created soundtrack. Of course, having been made from the ground up allows even wackier stuff to happen than the whole hand-control thing.

As for the Wii, we really wouldn't mind using the Wii's motion controls for some hobbyist-created, impractical "games." Could that be on the way now that the Wii has ostensibly been opened up? Ah, let's not think about the future of gaming -- let's just sit back with some popcorn and enjoy the weird video.

[Via NeoGAF]

Inexplicably, the voice synthesizer program Vocaloid 2 is a massive hit in Japan. Well, it's slightly less inexplicable when we specify that the "Hatsune Miku" version of Vocaloid 2 takes music and lyrics and exports voice output that sounds like it was sung by a female idol singer. And, of course, the fake idol's picture and name grace the product's box. We're happy for the linguists who, for once, can enjoy some commercial success (assuming that Yamaha is still employing the linguists who worked on this).

The YouTube video after the break contains Hatsune Miku versions of classic video game tunes. It's pretty surreal. It's all acappella, but the voice, in this case, is computer-generated!