While you might have thought it would be riddled with bullets, or maybe involve a horse head, it’s really just a massive, powerful PC in an ornate case. Inside, a 1940 Cadillac Fleetwood spins on a turntable as Don Corleone keeps his watchful eye on the mobo, power supply and cooling system, powered by MSI and Cooler Master components.

Under the hood (of the PC, not the car), there’s an MSI Z68A-ZD80 mobo, with a Intel Core i7-2600K Quad-Core CPU, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, a pair of MSI GeForce GTX 550 Ti Cyclone II OC graphic cards, two SATA3 120GB SSDs, 1TB and 2TB hard drives, powered by a Cooler Master Silent Pro M850 power supply, and cooled with V8 and Excalibur fans.

The guys over at Case Mod Blog spotted the Godfather PC casemod at the recent Campus Party event in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The case was made by Omar Majzoub – the same guy who brought us last year’s evil-filled Chucky casemod.

Maybe it’s just me, but I expected more blood.

[via Case Mod Blog and Bahia.com]

The dress is supposed to light up like when the snow sparkles at night. The LEDs underneath the skirt will only light up if the skirt and a ring come in contact which each other thanks to a magnetic switch. I suppose the lights would help her be seen at night, but they strike me as more of an artistic statement than anything else.

[via Ubergizmo]

The Mega Drive 4 Guitar Idol edition will include not only a Mega Drive/Genesis gaming system, and a pair of old-school controllers, but bundles a guitar that would make current-gen console players happy too.

The system comes pre-loaded with a whopping 87 classic SEGA 16-bit games, including titles such as Altered Beast, Rainbow Island, Golden Axe III, along with the brand-spanking-new Guitar Idol and 50 music tracks from a number of popular artists. Everyone from The Ramones to Panic at the Disco to Billy Squier is represented on the diverse the track list.

No word on if or when you’ll be able to grab this system outside of Brazil, but for now, you can find out more over on TecToy’s website.

[Interama and Sega Nerds via GameSetWatch]

Zeebo Inc. is taking advantage of the fact that current video game consoles are too expensive for majority of the people in developing countries. Brandon Sheffield of Gamasutra says, “In Brazil… a PS3 costs the equivalent of US$1,100 new, and the Wii costs US$1,000, because neither console has officially launched there — the only alternative for those consoles is piracy.” The Zeebo on the other hand will have a launch price equivalent to a mere $199 USD, and its games will sell for about $5 USD to $15 USD.

Obviously a lower-priced console will have lower specs as well: the Zeebo’s ARM 11 CPU clocks in at 528 Mhz, supported by 128 MB of RAM and a Qualcomm Adreno GPU. For comparison’s sake, Nintendo’s Wii – the “weakest” current gen console – has a 729 Mhz CPU, 88 Mb of RAM and a 243 Mhz ATI GPU.

But we also know that a powerful console doesn’t guarantee success: the Wii is number one in terms of worldwide sales, and the supposedly future-proof PlayStation 3 is barely surviving the present. Zeebo Inc. wants to pull off a Nintendo-like performance with their console, so along with the very attractive price tag, they’ve partnered with major video game publishers and developers like EA, Activision, Capcom, THQ and Popcap to ensure that the Zeebo will have quality games.

Double Dragon ftw! The Zeebo will come with three free games stored in its 1 GB NAND flash memory, and additional games can be purchased wirelessly. But because the Zeebo is aimed at poor folks like me, instead of requiring users to have an expensive broadband connection the Zeebo will make use of existing 3G networks to connect to the online market, known as ZeeboNet.

As you can see ZeeboNet will work like Xbox Live, where customers can top up their accounts and purchase games priced in “Z-credits”. The prepaid digital distribution system will serve as protection against piracy, which is so rampant in Third World countries that it has discouraged video game companies from marketing or localizing their products in such areas. For example, I have a PS3 (got it for free) but when I created my PlayStation account I found out that the Philippines wasn’t on the list of countries supported, so I picked Hong Kong. My address is “1, Aberdeen, Hong Kong.” Where’s the love Sony?

If all goes as planned the Zeebo will give its users lots and lots of localization love. John Rizzo, CEO of Zeebo Inc. says, “We work with developers in the local countries; I could imagine a Bollywood dance game with a dance pad. That would be fantastic in India, much more sale-able than Prey. Or in China, a game that teaches English as a second language would be really cool and powerful for that market.”

For more details you can check out Gamasutra’s articles on Zeebo as well as the console’s official site. I hope the Zeebo becomes successful, if only to convince good game developers and publishers to make low-priced quality games. I think Zeebo Inc. is really looking after it’s target audience: aside from offering cheap consoles and games, the company claims that Zeebo only consumes 1 watt of power. 1 watt! I mean, Light bulbs consume at least 5 watts, and they don’t even play games! Light bulbs suck.

In the end I think the Zeebo’s success will depend on a healthy library of video games and Zeebo Inc.’s respect of the ownership of users’ digital purchases. I’m also a bit concerned about the console’s reliance on 3G networks because it relies on signal strength and the number of users on a given location; here in the Philippines cellular phone networks are brought to their knees on holidays because of the sheer volume of text messages and calls. Let’s hope that today’s 3G networks can withstand the force of millions of Zeebos.

So Brazil, prepare to be blown away by Tekken 2. And just you wait for Tekken 3! I don’t know if you’ll like Eddy Gordo though.

The artists of Brazil’s Meninos design studio first started out making these custom pop art hard drive cases for their friends. Now they’ve had the brilliant idea to release their wares to the rest of the world for us to enjoy.

Each one of their external USB hard drive cases is hand-assembled at their studio, using a custom acrylic case (complete with dual cooling fans) covered with a precisely applied vinyl wrapper of one of their designs. They’ll also make custom designs if you upload Adobe Illustrator art using their custom template.

While I love all of their designs, the Samuel L. Jackson Pulp Fiction model has to be my favorite (vinyl blood splatter not included).

While the cases aren’t cheap ($250 US without a drive, $400 to $620 US with one), I’ll forgive these guys since the designs are just so cool. Head on over to the Meninos Shop to see the complete collection.