Here are the top 10 of the most expensive retro games currently sold in Tokyo’s Akihabara district (based on my research in about 10 stores). I took the picture above in the place I love the most on this earth, the Super Potato used game store in the heart of Akihabara. Believe it or not, I didn’t see anything cool gear-wise so this list must do as a “live” report from the world’s Nerdvana for now.

Compared to 1999, when I was still a game collector and went there for the first time, prices went down dramatically but there are still some very, very pricey carts and CDs for sale. Some of these were available outside Japan in localized versions.

Top 10: San San $420/boxed
(1994, Genesis, based on the Japanese board game Go)

Top 9: Gradius Archinmendes $470/cart only
(1987, NES, promo version of Gradius made for a Japanese noodle maker)

Top 8: Kinnikuman $560/cart only
(1985, NES, released in the USA as M.U.S.C.L.E.)

Top 8: Foreman for real $560/boxed
(1995, Genesis)

Top 6: Virtual Bart $590/boxed
(1995, Genesis, based on “The Simpsons”)

Top 5: Safety Rally $750/cart only
(1986, NES, racing game)

Top 4: Delisoba deluxe $920/boxed
(1997, Sega Saturn, based on the terrible Courier Crisis)

Top 4: Tag Team Pro Wrestling Special $920/cart only
(1986, NES)

Top 2: Darius Alpha $960/boxed
(1991, PC-Engine/Turbo Grafx, shooting game, limited to 800 copies)

Top 1: Kidou Senshi-Z Gundam Hot Scramble Final Version $1,400/boxed
(1986, NES, shooting game, limited to 1,000 copies)

Today Sharp unveiled a prototype of a 26-inch LCD Aquos TV [JP], which is solely powered by solar energy. The company said one day, their solution might bring television to all the 1.6 billion people on earth who don’t have access to electricity.

Sharp’s new green TV uses half of the power existing LCDs need. In comparison to the power consumption of the 28C-PB500 [JP], a CRT TV Sharp introduced in 2002, the prototype looks even more interesting since it boasts just 25% of that old model’s annual power consumption.

A  highly advanced triple-junction thin-film solar cell battery is used to power the green TV. The solar panel/TV kit will be showcased during the G8 summit in Hokkaido starting July 7th.

The Hyogo Prefectural Institute of Technology recently presented [JP] a humanoid robot that is programmed to walk like a fashion model. The researchers claim they used materials easily available anywhere for the development of the robot, which comes with a frame made of aluminum.

The Manekin Robotto (fashion model robot) stands just 160cm tall, which might not be enough to let it run on cat walks instead of real models. Weighing a more realistic 30kg, it moves through 16 joints and motorized cylinders built into its body. The robot is able to cross and bend its legs, just as human models are supposed to do. Too bad it’s so ugly.

Generally a PC is needed to control the movements but if you insert an SD card holding pre-saved instructions into the robot’s memory card slot (located in its head), it can also move independently. The Manekin Robotto can also be remote-controlled via a cell phone.

The robot is available from the Japanese institute at an amazingly low price: It’s yours for just $940.

Drones use AI, not GPS, to frag you
Seed bombs: Make the world greener while forcing your philosophy on others
Incredibly tiny RC helicopter: prototype for Dune Hunter-Killer?
Tokyoflash SPACE WATCH!
Play your Nintendo DS like a Jedi with a Lightsaber Stylus

Well today I received a call from an HP Tech Support guy. I was informed
that liquid had been inside my keyboard and when they opened the computer to
diagnose it, the liquid spilled onto the motherboard causing damage. He also
informed me that in order to fix this I would have to pay $1,099.

Wow, that’s just — wow. Zack mentions there was no liquid inside his keyboard when he packed it off, as if he even needs to say that. Also, HP technician, even if this mysterious liquid managed to stay inside the keyboard for the entire shipping process, how exactly did you manage to spill it on the motherboard? Did you hear it sloshing around in that spacious, hermetically sealed keyboard and decide to investigate — directly over the mobo?

The guy then told Zack that he would receive his computer back, but it may “blow up.” I’m sure that for every experience like this, there are a thousand perfectly good interactions with HP’s customer service, but that doesn’t reduce the impact when you hear something as ridiculous (almost Comcastic) as this. Sounds like HP HR could use a little QA, IMHO.

Today’s Top Posts:

• PINs hacked from ATM transaction processing software
• Blockbuster backs out of Circuit City buy
• Play your Nintendo DS like a Jedi with a Lightsaber Stylus
• Shell Japan to build big solar power panel factory
• Interview: James Dyson loves and hates on the iPhone, BlackBerry
• Beer-bottle telephone
• Voice Search comes to Google Maps for BlackBerry
• Japanese companies start anime and manga download service for the Nintendo DS
• Nvidia’s faulty laptop GPUs cause all sorts of headaches
• Google Talk on the iPhone: It’s not what you think

At Germany’s new grocery story of the future (already in use by residents of the present) shoppers can use mobile phones to check out while they shop. The store has created free software for your phone that allows you to use your camera to capture barcodes as you shop. Once finished, just press a button and all your purchases come up as a single bar code. Slide your phone under the barcode reader at an automated pay station, and your final amount comes up. Shoppers can then pay using cash, credit or debit cards, or with the touch of a finger, (once you register for fingerprint shopping). The store also features Roger the helpful German shop robot, an automated wine tasting bar and micro chipped meat. Take a tour with the BBC.

Sure this thing has GPS built-in but it uses a number of clever algorithms so it won’t be completely dependent on geographic position and can even do crazy arial acrobatics. The best part is where they throw balls at the thing and when it stays essentially in the same place without moving. This stuff is cool but extremely scary.

via Giz

Bloops! It seems the gas inside flat-panel displays, Nitrogen Trifluoride (NF₃), is 17,000 times better than CO₂ when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere. The gas isn’t very prevalent yet but just wait until we start throwing away our old HDTVs to get OLEDs. Best of all, “has a characteristic mouldy smell and is thought to be highly harmful to the liver and kidneys.” Tasty!

While flat-screen manufacturers are talking up their greenness, what we really need to know is their NF₃ use and energy efficiency. It will be interesting to see how long this issue lasts until someone does something about it.

Will Davies, Valerie and I sat down in one of the modeling rooms for about three hours and went through the design process from brainstorming to building on one of the CAD machines. I conveyed my thoughts to Will and sketched a few ideas out in the RDD journal (all Dyson engineers are issued a journal that becomes property of Dyson) that was issued to me at the beginning of the day. Upon my departure from Malmesbury the journal was confiscated and filed into the library of journals.

Anyway, as I said before, we had about three hours to design and submit our prototype so that it could be built in the 3D modeling machine overnight. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to film the printing machine in action because of what was being built in it at the time. It was really, really cool. Essentially, the designs are uploaded to the machine and it begins to ‘print out’ whatever it was that you uploaded. There are two materials that it lays down and unfortunately I made the mistake of taking all my notes in the RDD journal, so I can’t tell you exactly what they were at the moment. The main compound is a soft plastic and around that is a gel-like material that gives the actual device support while it’s being printed and hardens. The printer basically works like any other printer you’ve seen. It slides across from side-to-side and deposits the material as it goes. My design had to be submitted by 4:30 and by 10AM the next day it was ready to go. After it’s done printing, one of the engineers scraped away the gel-like material and put it through an acid wash and then a quick blow dry to remove any remaining particles.

How did I design it? I thought about the one place that collects the most dust and dirt in my apartment and just looked down at my keyboard. Then I thought about other applications for it. I thought that PC owners would want the ability to vacuum the back of their PC case, so I added a bit of flexibility to it.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I present to you the CrunchGear Dyson Root 6 attachment. We have the only prototype and it will likely remain that way. Heh.

Of course, we had some issues with it, but they weren’t realized until after the fact. There were little nubbins inside the swivel to lock the attachment between it’s 180 degree angle and 45 degree tilt that were placed incorrectly in CAD, so they didn’t exactly come out right, hence the loosey gooseyness of it. But we had less than three hours for the entire process. There also wasn’t enough time to add bristles at the end. Overall, I can say that I’m the proud owner of a one-of-a-kind Dyson prototype. I just hope they don’t make my design better and start selling it. Heh.

NVIDIA is taking evasive action, but to be honest it may be too late for this gamer. I switched over to a GeForce in my last system build, but if ATI is able to pull this kind of performance out of this chipset for such an incredible price, I may swing the other way next time I’m window-shopping at Newegg.

They’re connected through a fiber optic cable system and monitored from a secret undersea headquarters. Actually — I’m being informed now that they are actually monitored from a normal, above-ground observation center. Sorry, I get carried away sometimes.

Helpful image from this very informative blog

Hey, readers. We’ll be chilling in the sunshine tomorrow and back to posting on the weekend in the lead-up to - ummmm - the iPhone 3G! Have a good long weekend and thanks, as always, for tuning in.

Apple has dropped the price of its solid state drive MacBook Air by $500. Now, the useless laptop equipped with a solid state drive can be had for the low, low price of $2,598. That’s with a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

Note that the upgrade price from the 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz has also dropped, from $300 to $200.

Not that solid state drives save you any battery power, mind you.

via AppleInsider

Here’s the recipe:

5 parts dry red clay*
3 parts dry organic compost
1 part seed**
1 - 2 parts water

We used a 16oz. plastic cup as a measure, which made enough for approximately 300 seedballs. After mixing together all the dry ingredients, we added enough water to form a mix that held together without crumbling but wasn’t so wet that it wouldn’t roll into balls. Pinching off small bits of the lovely mud, we rolled penny-sized balls and set them in trays. They will sit on my windowsill for three or four days until completely dry.

Get rollin’, people. Mother Earth needs us.

I have an iPhone and a BlackBerry. And I have to confess that I use the BlackBerry more. But I really wanted to like the iPhone because it’s thin—one of the clever things about it—thinner than any other phone, and fits easily in your pocket. I find that a nuisance if you’re going to a function or whatever it is. I really like that about it.

I hate the touchscreen. That’s my biggest complaint. I love the weather, really good. Maps are brilliant. The way you are supposed to use it, I really like. I’m not sure about having to slide that thing across every time you answer a phone call. As a way of locking the screen, I accept that because it’s important.

I find the phone contacts list very frustrating because I stroke down and my finger hits one and selects it, so I then have to deselect it and start stroking again. So they need to sort out the difference between stroking it (scrolling) and selecting one. And then I find for some reason it doesn’t select the one I want to select. And I get that on occasion with numbers when I’m dialing. I want to press the 4 and it selects the one below or above.

How about the typing?

It’s awful, but I think the predictive texting is very good, so that makes up for a lot of the bad. Also, you can’t turn it sideways, except when you’re on the Internet. But when you’re doing an SMS or email you have to do it upright.

I think the Internet is good even at these speeds. I like being able to expand what I’m looking at. The Internet is surprisingly good, whereas on the BlackBerry it’s very bad.

Which BB do you have? (An 8700 series)

It’s horrid looking, but I like it. It’s quite interesting because it illustrates my two points about design. This [the iPhone] looks beautiful and some of the things are good, but some are very frustrating, so you fall out of love with it. This [the BlackBerry] looks horrid, awful. It’s not been designed by anyone with any design sense, but emailing on it is fantastic and the software is very good and the cut and paste. Everything about it is incredibly good. I like using it. I hate the symbols on it, they’re meaningless. I use that all the time and use it for phone calls because it’s easier than using the iPhone for looking up contacts. So if they just correct the things one doesn’t like about this.

Then I see my son and son-in-law with a rubber case around it and I thought what’s that all about. Defeats the purpose of it. I’ve dropped it five times onto a concrete floor accidentally and it hasn’t broken. It’s not marked or scratched.

Downloading photos is very good. I use the camera a lot. i think it’s very good. It’s the easiest phone camera I’ve come across. It’s the easiest to use camera. I’ve taken 83 photos and they’re brilliant.
They came out quite well.

I asked James if he had the latest MBP with the multitouch trackpad and he responded with:

“Oh, that business. I haven’t got that.”

Are you getting the new iPhone?

Yes. I’ll get the new BlackBerry as well.

I ramble on about how cool the Bold will be and James asked:

“Is the Internet better?”

Umm. No.

And that was that. To recap, James loves and hates both the BlackBerry and iPhone.

Fear is the mind-killer. And this thing will kill more than that once the technology is co-opted by the treacherous Harkonnens — or your roommate.

This tiny RC copter is available from Thinkgeek for $50 and would work perfectly to administer a dose of lethal poison to a sleeping kwisatz haderach. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s time to read you some Dune! Or you can imagine I’m talking about the hunter-killers in Terminator, that works too.
[via BoingBoing and Technabob]

The addressees were collected by the UK’s BPI and sent out to discourage folks from using torrent and p2p to download music.

Asam Ahmad from Virgin said: “We are protecting our customers’ interests by making them aware of the issue, so they can make an informed decision about how their connections are used.

“We want our customers to enjoy music safely and without the risks associated with sharing music without permission.”

Thanks, Virgin. By accusing and alienating your users you will compel hackers to create secure darknets that you and your parasitic industry organizations won’t be able to track. Good luck.

The alternative are no cap plans for similar amounts, with less allowance included but cheaper per minute fees. So, the $18.25 per month plan still includes 100MB of data, but only $14 worth of calls and texts. Additional calls cost 44 cents per 30 seconds and the Flagfall fee is only 24 cents per call. Text messages stay 24 cents each. The per month handset payback fee is also less, with the $18.25 plan and a 12-month contract, monthly pricing for the 8GB model starts at $47, and $56.60 a month for the 16GB iPhone.

No contract customers can get the 8GB 3G iPhone for $699.14 and the 16GB model for $814.20, pre-paid plans start at $28.77 per month with no data.

Meanwhile Gizmodo reported an angry call from Optus, saying that its post about iPhone pricing plans was incorrect. Gizmodo had reported that the iPhone would be available with two plans: a $75.83 cap plan that includes 1 GB of data and up to $287.96 in calls and SMS. And a $95.03 cap plan with 3GB worth of data and up to $383.96 in calls and SMS. Gizmodo’s tip also said the handset would only be available with a two-year contract and the 8GB model will cost $211.18, and the 16 GB model for $316.77.

On its Web site, Optus, says

“Optus Post-Paid customers can get the 8GB iPhone 3G for $0 upfront on a $79 ‘yes’ iPhone 3G Cap, with attractive handset payment options across all new plans… Pre-Paid customers can purchase the 8GB iPhone 3G for $729 then choose any current Pre-Paid calling offer.”

The carrier also says it is offering Free unlimited data on all iPhone 3G plans for the first month, for post-paid customers who connect before the end of August and free unlimited data for pre-paid customers until the end of August. In the hopes that customers will “completely immerse themselves in the features and functionality of the device.”

Do you want to see a video of Will Wright explaining Spore for the 80 billionth time? Yes you do.

While I’m not about to ask Wright to pee on me, it’s hard not to look forward to the game’s release, especially when I’ve never played any of his games before.

via Rock, Paper, Shotgun (my new favorite game site, btw)