IF YOU'RE A retro gamer at heart, there are a few novel gadgets out in 2008 that will get your organ pumping.

First up, there's a Mega Drive portable available from Play-Asia.com which is fully licensed by Sega, and comes complete with 20 games for only $39 USD. More at Technabob.com.

Alternatively, if you've already got a backlog of NES and Mega Drive games check out this Gen-X console, which plays both.

If you're still in a festive mood don't miss this Mario Christmas Mural video.

Wii/DS
The DS has recorded mammoth sales that have now eclipsed the entire sales of the PS2 in Japan, an amazing feat that Nintendo could of only dreamt about prior to the release of the handheld console.

But as we all know, the Wii is doing pretty good too. Amazon said it sold about 17 Wiis per second when the product was in stock.

The NY Times seems to agree.

Worse news for Nintendo concerns a new hack for the Wii.

Though modchips have been around for a while, this hack is a little more dangerous for Nintendo. It allows the running of Wii homebrew, and may lead to copied games running straight from the DVD without the need for any further jiggery pokery.

On a less serious note, if you can't wait for the Wii gun, there's always a sharkier alternative.

Xbox 360
There's some odd rumours coming from the Seattle Times and we hope some of them bare fruit.

Brier Dudley speaks of the long rumoured internal HD-DVD drive and an internal hard-drive, but more interestingly speaks about Microsoft allowing other manufacturers to license the Xbox 360 hardware, and maybe add further functionality/devices to the 360.

"In particular, Microsoft could work with Toshiba to develop a digital video recorder with a hard-drive, high-definition HD-DVD drive and Xbox gaming capabilities. They're already allied against Sony and other backers of the Blu-ray DVD format, and Toshiba could help Xbox finally penetrate the Japanese market." said Dudley.

Further rumours come in the guise of a Wiimote-like controller for the 360.

"TeamXbox.com can confirm that Microsoft has been researching alternative input technologies for the last two years, including vision-based recognition such as the one used on Xbox Live Vision, as well as motion sensing technologies similar to those seen in the Microsoft Freestyle Pro and the PlayStation 3 SIXAXIS. Particularly, Microsoft has looked at ways to improve the right analog stick input and you'll hear more about those efforts soon." - more here, and a supporting news piece here.

Here's some fake pictures to get you drooling.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is coming to the Xbox 360. This is (apparently) not a rumor. This is straight from a Konami distribution representative’s mouth. The game is already in production and has been since early 2007. Complete details at XboxFamily. µ