For those of us old enough to remember the classic coin-op that featured the entire Simpson family in an epic beat-em-up adventure (with the final boss being Burns in a robot suit), here's something that should get us reminiscing: a gameplay video of the family's next-gen adventure (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PSP, DS) that has both Marge and Lisa in a beatdown with Itchy and Scratchy clones.

As usual, the graphics are looking great, smooth, and accurate to the show's look and charm - pretty much what the ancient coin-op did, except in glorious next-gen 3D. It's a bit weird, though, seeing mother and daughter using kicks, punches and electricity-based attacks like no one's business.

While they certainly look good, they also somewhat detract from the characters' original concept. The old game, after all, made it so their attacks reflected their position in the nuclear family (Marge using a vacuum cleaner as a weapon, Lisa a pair of skipping rope, Bart a skateboard, etc).

Updates about The Simpsons Game (Electronic Arts) as we get them. Enjoy the video!

For those of us who can fondly remember the old coin-op game where four players played as each member of the Simpsons Family, in a Turtles In Time-esque beat-em-up adventure to rescue Maggie from the clutches of Smithers and Mr. Burns, prepare for the nostalgia blast of a lifetime in this gameplay montage of Electronic Arts' The Simpsons. We give you the latest involving the family of five's multiplatform adventure (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, DS, PSP).

In this video we see Marge, Maggie and Lisa holding back a riot - and it's beat-em-up fun in its finest. One thing to note is that while Marge doesn't have her signature vacuum cleaner from the first game, she can still serve up a nasty knuckle sandwich with her fists, with a Megaphone to mix things up. Lisa isn't a slouch, either, with her trusty saxophone creating an area-of-effect blast to take care of enemies.

Crazy action in signature Simpsons flavor headed for you. Enjoy the video!

What does it take for you to wake up in the morning? Copious amounts of coffee, a cold shower, or several snooze button presses, perhaps? Well, this might be something that might REALLY wake you up in the morning.

Yup, it's a gasmask turned into a showerhead. Let's forget that it somehow screams "terrorist" and think about the possibilities. Chris Dimino, the artist, has designed various stuff for MTV and Nickelodeon and a lot of cool (albeit semi-weird) pieces on his portfolio. The showerhead you see above is just one of his works. You should see the typovac - a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a typewriter.

We're not really sure why anybody would want to buy something that looks like it came straight out of Silent Hill but the gas mask showerhead is not available for sale. We think we'd opt for the coffee anyway.

Here's the answer for all husbands being nagged by their wives asking for a new house. LG Kompressor may look like an ordinary vacuum cleaner to you, but it's actually more than that, say, brick loads more.

The LG Kompressor is equipped with a built-in "dirt compressor" technology which, as the name implies, compresses dirt into blocks. Not only will this give you more room to store dirt, with a little imagination, you can actually use the collected filth bricks and pile them just like the way the Eskimos construct their igloos.

With a maximum power of 2.000 W, in a week you'll probably have enough bricks to build a pyramid, two if you live in a house with kids and a couple of pets. Seriously though, this product will be wheeled out of mass production in April and will be sold at € 299 (roughly US$ 400). Not bad for a vacuum cleaner and brick maker combo. Now all we need is loads of filth...

The folks at Gaygamer decided to drop into a Best Buy to see if they have a PS3 on display. They didn't find a PS3 display, but they did manage to get a good look at the Wii display. So here's the pics they took.

The size of the Wii is always a sight to behold. The thing is just so darned small, and cute to boot. What's we find particularly disturbing about the booth is the launch countdown clock. It has the feel of a doomsday clock to it, only it's surrounded by baby blue and white instead of spooky glossy black. It's like a new year countdown clock that spent way too much time in Luigi's vacuum cleaner.

Enjoy the pics!

More Wii pics after the jump!

 

The Japanese have a term for it. It's called "Chindogu." Sometimes loosely-translated as "un-useless", the term basically describes any invention or item that proves useful in solving small everyday problems. Sounds nice but there are two drawbacks, first is that invention or item is usually to impractical, or second, use of the item causes significant public embarrassment.

Take for example that Japanese "food cooler", which is basically a set of fans attached to the base of your chopsticks, so as you pick up food with your chopsticks, they're "cooled" by the fans. Or perhaps the Japanese "flu-helmet", which is basically a hardhat with a tissue roll attached to the top so that you never run out of tissue in case you have a cold. More amusing is the usb beef roaster, a modified USB hotplate which is powerfull enough for you to grill your own steak, only you need 64 available usb ports to attach the thing to.

See the amazingly "un-useless" USB gadgets that any geek at heart will love, like a USB lava-lamp, or a USB missile-launcher after the jump!

The results of simulations conducted by the University of Colorado-Boulder and Penn State suggest that one in three known planetary systems may have a habitable Earth-like planet. These results, published in the September 8 issue of Science, challenge the belief that Earth-like planets are rare.

The simulations looked at planetary systems with "Hot Jupiters." These are gas giants like our solar system's Jupiter and Saturn, but Hot Jupiters orbit closer to their sun than Mercury does to our Sun. The original assumption was that as these gas giants migrated to their "hot" orbit next to their suns, they suck up all the chunks of rock and ice that might have merged together into planets. In other words, a Hot Jupiter is like a gigantic vacuum cleaner that eats up all the stuff that might have become planets.

But the U. of Colorado/Penn State simulations showed that instead of acting like gigantic vacuum cleaners, these Hot Jupiters actually jump-start the formation of Other Earths. They gather rocky space debris and fling them together and outwards where they will likely coalesce into a planet-sized body. At the same time, they also gather ice-based debris (like the remnants of icy comets) near them, where they will eventually fall, melt, and turn into that planet's oceans.

"These gas giants cause quite a ruckus," said Sean Raymond of CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. "We now think there is a new class of ocean-covered, and possibly habitable, planets in solar systems unlike our own."

Besides Other Earths, these Hot Jupiters can also catalyze the formation of "Hot Earths," a rocky planetary body that orbits inside of a Hot Jupiter's orbit. But if it was that close to its parent star, well, anything that tries to live there is bound to be baked to a crisp. Good luck colonizing that.

This is the neanderthal of future robots. They will marvel at its primitive looks and near ergonomic design. It will be hung up on a museum wall someday and venerated like the dinosaurs and ancient man of yesterdays.

The MR-UBO1K, the Perfect Killing....I mean, Floor Cleaner Robot. It's designed to be more powerful than your average vacuum cleaner--watch it go through dirt like laser through a battlefield. It has more energy efficiency so it could  last longer than ever before: it'll have more time to suck in and destroy the little living beings in your carpet. The first-ever robot to operate both the vacuum and cartridge-type cleaner in the world; it can do multitasking. Can go "Silent Mode," so you can't hear it coming behind your back. Once the target is acquired, no obstacle will stand in its path, it will take the shortest route to its target and execute the operation.

So what do you think? It's the perfect household item, for now.

iRobot CEO Colin Angle's definition of a robot is a machine that is able to perceive its environment, thinks about what it perceives and acts on it. Quite a scary thought, but if applied to household appliances, it could be the answer to housewives' prayers. Imagine a robot that walks up to the table, cleans it, puts dishes away, washes them, and puts them on the cupboard. Now, that's what Angle is talking about, robots that get the job done.

Roomba and Scooba, iRobot's vacuuming and floor-scrubbing robots are quite interactive, that's why many programmers have hacked them for several purposes, one of which is to play music while vacuuming carpets.

iRobot welcomes all these modifications in its products, in fact it has released a documentation for the Roomba SCI serial protocol to make Roombas more interactive. If you have a serial port connected for the Mini DIN Port and a software to connect to the serial port, you can tell Roomba to do something completely different from its existing behaviors.

The possibilities are endless. But of course, it would be great if talented people can give some silly Roomba hacks a rest and instead come up with useful and productive Roomba projects.

Other robotics systems may have better programming environments, but with Roomba, you've got ready-built robot with built-in sensors and behaviors that can easily work with. The best part is even if you fail in your attempts at hacking, the Roomba will still clean the floor on your command.