Details: While I (Dan) continue to be largely absent due to personal issues (I'm now moving to a new state again), I have still kept building and kept attending events. At one such recent event (this year's BrickFair Alabama), I was interviewed by our friends at Beyond the Brick about my Super Mario Bros.Piranha Plant. While the mechanism still doesn't run smoothly enough for me to be completely happy with it, it's worked well enough to take to shows - but I've been avoiding documenting it online until I've had a chance to make it work better (in this clip, it's already lurching along at a slower speed and sticking a little). I'd like to revise it further to fix the motion problems and to try to capture more of a world from Super Mario Bros. - perhaps with a few more moving characters.
This model debuted at last year's Maker Faire Orlando, which coincided with the 30th anniversary of the original release of Super Mario Bros. It also works out nicely that Piranha Plants were actually green back then (as compared to the red that's currently more common). Not that colors showed up on my classic Game Boy, anyway...
Details: I'm well aware that there are newer "gaming consoles" out there, but to me, the original NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) will always be the best. Tetris remains a favorite of mine (on those rare occasions when I do partake in gaming, I usually grab Tetris for Gameboy - in black and white, of course). While the mosaic of a game of Tetris in progress isn't quite perfect, the rest of this LEGO-based rendition of the classic game set-up is very accurate, including the controllers and game cartridge. Did I mention that the buttons on the console are actually spring-loaded or that you can really load the cartridge into the console? Forget game console cases, this is how video-game themed LEGO sculptures should be done.
Details: Um. Wow. So what would you do with 51, 324 LEGO bricks and a nice commission from Nintendo? At 7 feet wide and 250 pounds, this is probably not the Nintendo DS you're going to slip into your pocket.
Sean Kenney is a well-known LEGO certified professional who appears regularly in the news whether in print, on TV, or online. Sean is also the creator and owner of MOCpages, a popular site for LEGO fans to post pictures of their own MOCs (My Own Creations).
I love how the size of the model allows a greater amount of detail in the creation. The cat mosaic cracks me up. Take a look at some of the other images Sean has on his site that show you the details. He actually has the Nintendo disclaimer and bar code on the back! Okay, so the disclaimer amounts to gobbledygook, but it's very well designed gobbledygook!
My only question is: Does the thing fold up? :) [Editor's Note: Sadly, no - the steel frame used to make this sturdy keeps it from folding. This model is currently on display in the store window (ready for people on the street to take pictures with it) at the Nintendo World Store at Rockefeller Center in New York City, New York, USA.]
This robot can play a perfect game of "Wii Bowling" on Nintendo's Wii Entertainment System. For the uninitiated, the Wii is controlled through a "WiiMote" which is sensitive to movement. This allows for realistic and active video games. However, these new units have been controversial because we don't really need yet another video game system, much less one that has a remote that begs to be flung across the room.
Anyway, so there's this "Bowling" style game for that platform that is apparently rather easily beaten. This robot pushes a button, swings the wiimote, and releases the button - and that's all it takes. Put that in a loop and a timer, and voila - a perfect score, one strike at a time. The link above has more detailed documentation, but that's the gist of it. This robot is both beautifully simple and surprisingly effective. Then again, this isn't a real bowling game, so issues such as the ball's weight didn't have to be taken into account.
Since you need a "wiimote" to operate a Nintendo Wii, I won't count this as "cheating". Some books were used to help the 'bot from jumping (the momentum of the swing would make the 'bot jump if the books shown in the pictures and video weren't there), but that's probably just a time-saving measure (sure, they could have put together a bunch of LEGO just to weigh it down, but why?)
Here's some embedded video action for you. I recommend watching it here only. This 'bot has been getting a good deal of "viral" attention lately, and some of the comments on the YouTube page are offensive and/or obscene.
