It was only a matter of time. After the initial success of any Nintendo product there follows a plethora of neat and nauseating colors upchucked onto the market. That time is at hand once again. There’s still no official word from Nintendo on anything but white Wii-motes, but now there is a third-party option for those of you bored with the standard white.

One of the first companies to offer a third-party substitute for the Wii-mote is Snakebyte. They are calling them Riimotes. They appear to look very close to the authentic Wii-motes, with the button design styles a bit different. The first models will be available either in a glossy black or a bright purple. Bright purple? Yuck! Maybe if you are playing a My Little Pony game…They should assault your senses in early February.

With the housing market being what it is, homes need all the help they can get. Anything to add some value, should you want to sell down the road. So, why not get some of these Game Boy bricks and redo a garden path in the backyard.

These are the brainchild of a Denmark man who wanted to add some gaming to his architecture. You have to admit, they look pretty nice after they’ve been in place and aged a bit. Here I thought the actual Game Boy was about as useful as a brick these days. The guy put alot of time into perfecting these. At first they would explode in the oven, but he finally got it right. If you have a gaming themed home, why not go the extra mile and sink some of these into your dirt.

As if Nintendo hasn’t sold enough DS’s in quite enough colors it looks like another one is on the way, this time sporting Cobalt Blue/Black. We thought the bundled colors were pretty nice and that Pikachu model was pretty neat but we are definitely impressed with this new Blue color. Circuit City has this new color up on their site priced at the usual $130 but not available for order quite yet. You can ask them to let you know when it’s ready however, and help Nintendo pull just a little bit further ahead.

If you are stuck in Mario land and are saving up for an extra life, this mushroom bank is the perfect place to store your gold coins. It’s hard to save, but you have to put some of it away for a rainy day in the Mushroom kingdom. Let’s face it, you’re jumping around, hitting blocks with your head, jumping on turtles and taking on Bowser…uninsured. What if you got hurt? Luigi can only do so much, he’s not the smart one. Better start a nest egg.

Then there’s the other expenses. Dresses for the Princess. Rebuilding castle walls, buying spare fireballs and feeding Yoshi. Lucky for you, this bank comes in 2 versions, the classic 1UP Mushroom and the Super Mushroom. It retails for $14.99.

Here’s a third-party handheld Nintendo emulator that doesn’t look like total garbage. Though it has the typical generic name of Solar MP4, this little device actually has some impressive features. It can play MP4 videos up to 320×240 in size on its 3.5 inch TFT screen, it also has built-in emulators for NES, GameBoy and GameBoy Color games. Of course you have to use ROMS loaded via an SD card, but those are easy enough to find. It can even function as an e-Book reader with the ability to read out loud any text file as long as it’s written in English or Chinese.

And of course, it has a DS-like design with solar panels, so you can play games using the power of the sun. Not bad for a knock off. You can get one for $123.32.

A new game for the Nintendo DS called Metro-Wardive, uses the built-in Wi-Fi to detect hotspot activity around you as usual, but in this case it uses it to generate a unique gaming environment. Wardive captures the wlans in the immediate area like a wardive-tool and creates a game, by reading the names of the hotspots in your immediate area and turning them into enemies which try to take over your wardive-cristal. You fend them off with your touch pen, put your shields up and don’t just stay in one spot for very long.

The idea is to take metro-wardive for a walk through town and see how many enemies are hiding in the area you are in or pass through. Each time you play it captures different data and creates a new level for you.

Those of you who have been waiting with baited breath to be able to play SNES games on your iPod Touch or iPhone can now let out a huge girlly squeal. Your prayers have been answered. That’s because someone has coded a native SNES emulator for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Right now it’s still in the testing phase, but in the near future I predict there will be many a broken iPhone as you press down way too hard on the virtual controller while playing Super Metroid and the like. Unless you care to make a donation to the developer, thereby scoring some beta testing, you’ll have to try to contain yourself for the time being until the app goes public. Check out the video here.

It used to be you’d show up at the door with a dozen roses and a box of chocolates and you were set. Well, it doesn’t take many years for that to get old.

Why not give that special someone a Valentine’s day treat that goes hand in hand with their Nintendo Wii obsession? Paul Pape Designs now offers chocolate Mii’s for a very special and very geeky Valentine’s Day. They’re made with real Hershey’s chocolate, in white or brown and the most adorable touch(Or sickening, depending on your viewpoint) is the fact that they come in a box that resembles the Wii.

You can get your old classics on Wii’s virtual console, but it just doesn’t compare to being able to pop in that cartridge and play. Like a good book, sometimes you want to feel that cartridge in your hand, or see it in your collection. The Gen-x is a new hybrid console that lets you play the best of the 8-bit and 16-bit video game generations, and has full compatibility with both the Nintendo Entertainment System and the SEGA Genesis games. What’s more, it’s even rumored that it will play every single NES cartridge with no compatibility issues whatsoever.

The system comes with everything you need to get playing, including controllers and A/V cables. Unfortunately, you can’t connect an original NES controller. Not sure what the hell they were thinking there, but the ports are compatible with SEGA’s original controllers at least. The console’s list price is $59.99, but can be found in stock at VideoGameAction for only $36.89.

If you’re a huge fan of Mario,(who’s not?) you’ll want to put away your Mario Kart slot car set and order yourself this giant Mario Kart racer pronto. It’s yet another way to bring the game into real-space and bring back memories of the N64. Mario and his Kart are over 12″ long and feature various sound effects from the game. Which is probably a good thing, since your cat will have some warning as Mario speeds down your hallway. You wouldn’t want Mario to run over Fluffy and spin out like he hit a banana peel.

Comes with a Nintendo GameCube style controller with five functions: Right, Left, Forward, Reverse and Turbo. Runs on 1 9V Battery and 8 AA Batteries. Check out a somewhat dorky video of it in action here. You can buy one online for $49.99.

As if it hasn’t been hard enough to find a Nintendo Wii game console this year, rumor has it that a retail chain called Slackers is taking their shipments of the popular console and selling them on Ebay at a jacked up price.

According to Ars Technica an insider with Slackers stated that any Wiis that they receive, at least in the Illinois/Missouri area stores, are not available for the suggested $249 retail price at the store and are instead marked up to $499 on Ebay. Recently reports say that the Buy It Now price has been dropped to $399.99, which is still $150 over suggested retail by Nintendo.

Anyone that’s been interested in buying a Nintendo Wii this holiday season is aware of just how difficult it has been to get one and people are capitalizing on that fact, and so are many retailers. I purchased a Wii months ago that I had to stand in line one early morning to get, and even then I had to buy the $250 console bundled with two games for a total of $350. The Wii has seen a shortage for a year now and Nintendo says the lack of consoles available to meet demand is tough on planning for the company including creating any planning or promotions for new games. However, I can think of worse problems than having a consistently higher demand than supply.

According to Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, Nintendo is also discouraging the practice of bundling the console itself with other items since the Wii loses its price advantage over competitor consoles like the Xbox 360 or the Sony PS3, but it is ultimately up to the retailers how they decide to sell the console. He also added that the power Nintendo held over what retailer they would ship consoles helped retailers adhere to the companies suggestions.

Maybe it isn’t a marketing scheme and Nintendo really is having trouble keeping up with production for the Nintendo Wii game console. Nintendo is offering hope for some of those still looking for Wii this holiday season, although opening a present with a piece of paper promising a Wii in a month just might not be the same as the real thing.

In a telephone press conference today Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said they the company is working with GameStop to give out “rain checks” to those looking for an Wii this year with a deliver time frame in January of next year.

Now you can play Mario Kart in the real world away from your screen and in slot car form. The set includes 2 cars, a transformer, straights, curves, narrowing set, 2 hand controllers, guardrails and spare contact brushes, guide keels plus a track link.

Race Mario’s B-Dasher against Wario’s Brute on twenty feet of track. This should be a fun way to enjoy the classic game in a whole different way. I can only assume that more cars are forthcoming, since racing Mario against Wario could get boring after awhile. Some of us prefer Toad’s well balanced ride. This is a great fun concept. I’m surprised it’s taken them this long to bring it to market.

Let me start off by saying: Did I fall asleep and miss everyone striking oil in their backyard? Well, apparently so. And it seems that we need still more jewel-encrusted devices(This is worse then the Bedazzler making Jean jacket wearers into Rhinestone Cowboys in the 80’s.), since Crystal Icing wants to embellish your DS Lite with images of Mario and a flying Koopa for $350.

If that doesn’t satisfy your attraction to shiny objects, how about a custom Wii console covered with thousands of Swarovski crystals? One Wii pimped out in a Zelda theme was detailed with over 7500 24-Karat gold-dipped crystals. If you are interested in the price, you’ll have to follow the link. I’m too scared to look.