If you’re too lazy to construct the NES harmonica that surfaced a couple years ago, now’s your chance to cheat and buy one on eBay. As of now, there are seven bids on the Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge harmonica with six days left, the high bid at $15.50. Not a bad price for an awesome addition to your coffee table of gaming. Here’s what the seller has to say:

This harmonica was constructed by using a Hohner Pocket Pal harmonica and building it into a Super Mario Bros 3 cartridge.  As you can see in the picture, this appears to be a standard NES cartridge at first glance.  Fool your friends by blowing into it and see the look on their faces when they realize it is a harmonica!!

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There’s no question that Final Fantasy XIII is a beautiful, dramatic affair, but according to reviews of the game, released outside of Japan today for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, it’s also a departure for the series. The verdicts aren’t much different than we heard in December, when Final Fantasy XIII was released in Japan: Open worlds, mini-games and exploration are hacked away in favor of eye-popping cutscenes and fast-moving narrative. Whether that appeals to you depends on personal preference.

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This 8-bit rendering of New York City is pretty self-explanatory, but here’s what artist Brett Camper says about it:

I hope to evoke the same urge for exploration, abstract sense of scale, and perhaps most importantly unbounded excitement that many of us remember experiencing on the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Commodore 64, or any other number of 8-bit microcomputers. … Take some time to think about New York a little differently. Set out on a quest. Be an adventurer.

At the Web site, you’re free to explore all five boroughs. Camper created the maps using open source software and data packages, with the underlying software coming from OpenStreetMap. Each tile is a 16-by-16 pixel rendering, laid onto the map using a series of spatial tests.

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Admittedly, I know very little about the world of mixed martial arts, but this TapouT T-shirt, which makes MMA star Kimbo Slice look like a Punch-Out villain, speaks my language. I especially like the TapouT quality seal, so you know you’re playing with power. Apparently Kimbo isn’t the first fighter to get the Punch-Out treatment; Jens Pulver was the original 8-bit star, though I prefer the mug of Kimbo, looking like Bald Bull after he’s knocked you down with that ridiculous rushing attack. And hey, MMA shares about as little resemblance with boxing as Punch-Out, so this all makes sense. The Kimbo Slice Punch-Out T-shirt sells at MMAWarehouse for $28. [via FightTrends]

Here’s an interesting patent from Sony describing a video game demo whose features degrade over time. The illustration above spells it out: You download the entire game, and at first all its features are available to you. But after several hours, your character becomes less powerful. In another scenario, Sony describes a racing game that depletes the number of available tracks with each race. Eventually, you’re left with very little, unless you choose to unlock all features you once had. The patent even allows for subtler changes in a game’s sound effects, lighting and color. Sony says it could distribute these demos on physical media — it’d have to, given that Blu-ray-based games would be inconvenient to download.

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Good news for people who like interspatial travel:  Portal 2 is coming, probably for Xbox 360 and PC. Game Informer’s April cover reveals that the sequel to Valve’s cultish 2007 hit is real, and while the big reveal was short on details, Kotaku found some more information through GameStop’s listing for the game. So here’s what we know:

Portal 2 will have a multiplayer mode with its own story-driven campaign. This has to result in some mind-bending puzzles, as the original game’s objective — escape a science lab by shooting Point A and Point B portals in the walls and travelling between them — was twisted enough.

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Even if you don’t own a Mac, you’ve got appreciate the way Valve is hinting at Steam for Apple computers. The digital game download and multiplayer platform has long been bound to PCs, but Valve teased big changes by sending some hilarious images to several gaming and Apple-related Web sites. They’re all parodies of famous Apple ad campaigns, including “Get a Mac,” the iPod silhouettes and the iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial, with characters from Valve games such as Half-Life, Portal and Left 4 Dead. It seems likely that Valve will make things official at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week. For now, enjoy the images. [via Boing Boing]

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So you’re looking for the order in which to fight bosses in Mega Man 10, which launched this week for the Wii. We’ll get to that. But first, it’s soapbox time: Back in the day, Mega Man boss orders were like a secret. Sure, they were always published in Nintendo Power, and that was inevitably how someone found out about them. But mostly, this stuff traveled by word of mouth. Somehow you got wind of the fact that metal beats bubbles, bubbles beat flash and flash beats quickness, and it became wired into the brain, only to be forgotten after years of modern video games, which — get this — help you figure out what to do.

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We all felt pretty good after figuring out the harder puzzles in Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, but that’s nothing compared to the feat of Jordan Verner of Ontario, Canada, who beat the Nintendo 64 classic despite being blind. A couple years ago, Verner uploaded some videos of himself playing parts of Zelda 64. On a lark, he asked if anyone would help him finish the entire game. Roy Williams, of Camden, N.C., took on the job with three other gamers, blindfolding themselves and writing down everything they did.

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