The game has a bunch of characters with condoms on their heads and is designed to educate teenagers about STDs. Aside from the award, it was also commissioned by UK’s Channel 4 Television to bring awareness of sexually transmitted diseases.

The game never made it to the Xbox 360, but if you want to try it for yourself and see what all the fuss is about, you can download it for PC. It’s completely free. You might even learn something.

[via digitaltrends]

An unidentified woman wanted to get her hands on a discounted Xbox 360 so much, that she decided to dowse other shoppers in her way with pepper spray. Alejandra Seminario, another shopper who happened to witness the entire thing, said: “People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray. After we paid, we saw five that were in really bad shape. They had been sprayed in the face, it looked like, and they had swelling of the face, really extreme swelling of face, redness, coughing.”

The pepper spray dispersed through the air, causing minor discomfort and itching to the other shoppers who weren’t directly caught in the face by the deranged woman. The crazy thing is, she was able to pay for her purchases and leave the store before the police arrived.

The pepper-spraying shopper was described to be Hispanic in between 32 to 38 years of age. She was described as standing at 5-foot-3 and weighing 140 pounds. She was said to have been wearing black pants and a black sweater during the incident.

For the sake of many, I hope she eventually gets caught! Shame on you, you pepper-spraying shopper!

[via CNN via Dvice]

The high-end version, rumored to be called the “Xbox 720″ or codename “Loop” would be closer to what we have now, with a disk drive and a hard drive. It would also be backwards compatible with 360 games. There is speculation that it could have two separate graphics chips as well, but that may be wishful thinking.

These rumors make a lot of sense. Not everyone needs an Xbox for hardcore games. Chances are they would sell a ton of cheaper units, adding up to more sales overall.

[via SlashGear and Geeks Are Sexy]

Thanks to a new device called the Wasabi 360 Ultra, you’ll be able to load ISOs of your Xbox 360 or Xbox 1 games directly onto any ESATA hard drive, and boot and run the games as if you had the original DVD in the tray. The Wasabi 360 attaches to your console – connecting between the motherboard and the DVD drive. Installation is solderless, but does require that you crack open your Xbox 360, and make some minor modifications to its metal shielding to allow cables to pass through.

Since the Wasabi 360 uses an ESATA interface instead of USB, it’s smokin’ fast. Games are loaded from inside the Xbox 360 Dashboard GUI, letting you quickly and easily jump between games without getting up from the couch. It even supports multi-disc games.

Here’s a demo of the Wasabi loading up CoD: Black Ops, and then Driver: San Francisco without so much as a disc in sight.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Clearly games load way faster from the Wasabi-enabled hard drive than from DVD, and not having to deal with scratched discs and “dirty disc error” messages ever again has appeal. The Wasabi guys also plan on adding the ability to rip ISOs directly to the hard drive in a future upgrade, but for now you’ll need to burn ISOs using your PC.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that Microsoft will assume that the primary use for the Wasabi will be for game piracy – while I personally think it would be a great add-on for legitimate game owners too. I’m hopeful that Microsoft won’t stand in the way of this nifty console enhancement and potentially ban its users from Xbox Live. Perhaps someday Microsoft themselves will offer the ability for you to load your entire games directly to the hard drive, and just limit piracy by not allowing multiple copies of the same serial number to be installed on multiple consoles instead of forcing you to still insert the DVD every time like they do today.

The Wasabi 360 Ultra sells for $99.95 (USD) and is available for pre-order in both Xbox 360 Slim and Fat versions over at ConsoleSource.

This pack has skins for weapons, more multiplayer characters, maps, and Horde fortification upgrades to make your multiple action more fun. This large DLC pack will cost 2,400 Microsoft Points ($30 USD).

The other pack is the RAAM’s Shadow Pack. This DLC kit will come on December 13 and let players play in the shoes of one of the most memorable bosses from the first game.

This DLC pack will put players into the game before the events in the first title and they will fight the aliens on new missions with some familiar and new friends. The coolest part of the game is that you can also fight as the aliens and even play as RAAM. That sounds really cool to me! This DLC pack will cost 1,200 Microsoft Points ($15 USD.)

The thing that has kept me away from the Forza franchise more than anything is that I wanted a good force-feedback racing wheel, and finally there is one. The Fanatec Forza Motorsport CSR Elite Wheel is licensed by both Microsoft and Turn 10. The wheel even has the Forza logo on it.

It will connect wirelessly to the Xbox 360 and will connect to the PS3 and PC with a USB cable. The wheel has the force feedback effects I want with a pair of 110w motors and vibration motors in the wheel rim. The wheel has a carbon fiber center and real Alcantra on the rim. It doesn’t come with a shifter or pedals, but you can them as accessories from Fanatec, or the pedals you might have for a Logitech G25 or G27 racing wheel with an adapter. Pricing and launch date is unknown.

[via Reddit via Geeksaresexy]

The Halo soaps are not just available in different colors, but in different scents as well. The green Spartan has a Mountain Dew scent, the red has a Dr. Pepper scent and the blue has a Pepsi scent. Sorry Coke fans.

You can order the Halo Spartan soaps from Digitalsoaps for $15(USD) each. I hope the helmet’s edges aren’t too sharp.

These geeky gamer necklaces are made by Deadly Pretty Designs, and you can choose from a bunch of them available in their Etsy store.

You can choose from a miniature Nintendo DS, Xbox 360 or PS3 controllers and more. The retro Super Mario Bros. necklaces are also pretty cool. Prices for the necklaces vary from $10 to $25 (USD).

[via holycool via Thaeger]

DreamGEAR has unveiled a new product down at E3 2011 this week that is cool if you have all three consoles and the motion accessories that go with them. The device is called the TriMount and it’s a little shelf style bracket that will hold all those sensors. The top of the TriMount has a spot just big enough for the Kinect.

Under the Kinect is a spot for the PlayStation Eye Camera and in front of that PS Eye is a place for your Wii sensor. That means no more messing with sticky tape when you move that Wii sensor. The TriMount can clamp to the top of your old-school or flat-panel TV and includes a wall bracket for mounting the thing to your wall as well. The TriMount can be pre-ordered right now for $29.99 and will ship on August 15.

After looking at it for a few moments, you start to realize that this might be a good idea, especially if you play for hours on your Xbox 360. The new version comes with a jet-black rubberized finish, which will ensure that it will remain in your hands, no matter how sweaty they get. There are also extra parts that will allow you to customize it further. In case you’re wondering how it works, here’s a video of the first-generation Avenger in action:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

You can buy one Avenger for $50 (USD)but if you buy two, the company will send you a third one for free.

[via CrunchGear]

It looks like a very accurate reproduction to me, complete with carved Xbox logo, power and eject buttons, and four controller ports. Ben even made a controller connector, but it’s not attached. I think he should use twine to connect it, to keep with the primitive, natural theme.

It even looks like the controller has a pair of moving analog sticks, which can rotate around thanks to their ball-socket construction.

I only wonder why Ben decided to make an original Xbox instead of the Xbox 360 or Xbox 360 Slim. Maybe he was afraid they’d catch on fire from overheating. You can find a complete gallery of images of the wooden Xbox here.

[via Bit Rebels]

The machine is called The Big O and it is huge. Computer geeks out there will get wood when I mention the specs of the beast. It has a pair of Intel Xeon x5860 CPUs with 6-cores each, overclocked to 4.3GHz. The machine uses ECC RAM and you can cram up to 24GB of the stuff inside.

To be sure you can play Crysis maxed out you can get up to four EVGA GTX 480 FTW video cards inside the machine set up for some SLI lovin’. The entire rig is liquid cooled and the most interesting news is that the PC has an Xbox 360 Slim inside the case that is also liquid cooled. You had better have a trust fund though, the thing STARTS at $7699 (USD), but hits $16999 in its nearly maxed out config.

I love how Shaun White’s intervening smiling mug completely obliterates whatever seriousness is left out of the Tiger news.

Why? Because it would be better for the portable gaming arena for another competitor to come and shake up the scene. If Redmond can come up with a device that does equally well in gaming and media playback – something that in my opinion can’t really be said of the DS, PSP, and iPhone/iPod Touch – then I’d certainly buy that gadget. And, as I said, more competition means a race for more and better features (and hopefully lower prices), which would benefit us consumers in the end.

[via Electronista, image via Digital Battle]

This is part of acgourley’s Project Excite Bike, which kind of reminds me of that old Nintendo 8-bit game I used to like, Excite Bike. Basically, he used a sensor ring to capture the movement of the bike while you are pedaling. This action replaces a button or a trigger on the Xbox 360 controller, and passes its information through a modified 360 joystick circuit and an Arduino controller.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

This is primarily used for racing games. The speed at which you pedal would be the speed of your virtual car. It’s kind of awesome if you ask me. This initial hack was done with an Xbox 360, but it could be adapted to any game console.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

While the concept sounds pretty simple, it’s pretty complicated to set up. If you want to give it a shot for yourself, check out acgourley’s blog to for schematics and more info on how he put it together.

[via Make:]

So here’s the story: Will Urbina needed to learn Final Cut but didn’t own a Mac. He could buy one, sure, but when you’re a modder, that’s just not how you roll. When the situation is complicated by your dislike of actual Mac products, you’ve got a real problem on your hands. But Urbina, for all his Mac hatred (hiss! boo!), seems a pretty clever fellow, and when he came across an old Xbox devkit, he figured his problems were a few months of work away from being solved.

Using that devkit case and an EFi-X dongle to allow him to boot to multiple operating systems, Urbina built what he calls the OX Xbox Pro: a custom system that combines the Mac OS and software he needs, and the Microsoft sensibilities he prefers. Urbina is not without a sense of humor, though–that’s clear from the little touches, like this:

Not-quite Mac, just like the mod.

Check out the worklog for all the dirty details.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via Walyou]

Final Fantasy XIII hit the shelves today in Japan where hundreds of people queued up in order to buy the  game. Sony hopes that the game will boost sales of the PS3 console for Christmas.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Square-Enix hopes to sell at least 2 million copies of  FF XIII locally. The game will be launched in the North American and European markets on March 9th, 2010. It will also be available on Xbox 360, but not on Wii.

The Final Fantasy franchise has sold more than 92 million games worldwide since its launch in 1987.

The initial impressions posted on Kotaku say that the cut-scenes are well-directed, but I’d expect nothing less from Final Fantasy. The music is layered and complex. The game starts with resistance operatives fighting against a city of machines. Sounds pretty cool! I’m looking forward to playing this when it arrives in English.

[via Kotaku, images via Square-Enix]

For a mere 80 Microsoft points ($1 USD), you can move through a number of dialogue screens, most of them refreshingly less stalkeriffic than the above, which I’m guessing indicates the end of your game. If not, then I’m guessing this dating sim/edutainment title/bit of hilarity takes a whole new Grand Theft Auto turn.

They’re not all dour and pre-prison, though:

Though if you’re the kind of guy who chooses option B, I’ve gotta say, you may be eventually leading up to that other screenshot.

From my limited exposure, I’m not sure if Don’t Be Nervous Talking 2 Girls is a serious effort or a bit of parody, and really, it could go either way. At the price of a dollar, I may have to find out, if only for science.

[via Gay Gamer]

I think what I like best about these cufflinks over some of those we’ve seen before is the fact that they’re thin and flat, and even a little dark. From a distance, they’ll just look like plain ol’ cufflinks. Sneaky.

Of course, if you want to be a little more obvious, you can try these other Xbox-inspired cufflinks, also from the CufflinkConnections store.

Yeah, slightly more obvious there… but not as obivous, as, say, Star Wars minifig cufflinks–which are also available from the same store. Maybe it should be named RandomCufflinkConnections. Or maybe I should stick to blogging, ’cause my store-naming skills are not so strong.