Sony’s patent application for a haptic touchscreen composed of “tactile pixels” shows former Sony Computer Entertainment chief Phil Harrison as the inventor. It also has a bunch of references to potential use in “a game device” and to “game events,” so it seems fairly obvious that it was developed as an idea for PSP.

The patent app describes a haptic feedback system that seems pretty complicated. The pixels themselves are capable of moving up and down, providing feedback to user actions. It’s certainly interesting, but we’re not gonna hold our breath waiting for this to hit the consumer market anytime soon. We wouldn’t mind being wrong though.

Remember those new DS colors that we told you about the other day? Looks like the rumors were true. For Europe anyway, which would explain why they showed up on a Spanish site.

Nintendo has begun distributing these advertisements which show some new colors for the European market. Europe needs some more colors too. They haven’t had as many as the U.S. No word on when they might hit here. These will hit stores on June 13th. Look at all those pretty colors. It’s like Easter without the eggs.

So the Predator is loose in your city, half your men are dead and it keeps making that eerie noise as it stalks you. Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura were no help at all. Unfortunately, Predators have state of the art camoflage, so chances are, you won’t live very long to tell the tale…Unless you have something that can show you his heat source. Like this Handheld Thermal Imager for instance.

It combines a visible light digital image with an infrared one, producing a single view that lets you get an immediate visual temperature map of whatever you aim it at. It’s priced at about $7500. These thermal imagers are designed for heavy-duty industrial troubleshooting and safety applications, but there’s no reason you can’t use it to snag yourself a Predator before it detonates an atomic bomb from it’s wrist.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wanted to play hockey with Donkey Kong. It’s just a dream of mine. I’m a geek. I know he wouldn’t perform well on the ice since he’s so big, so I know I can save the Princess. I’ll finally get my chance.

The Micro VS System was released in 1984 and is one of the earliest consoles that let’s you play against another player and with DK. With the console’s two handhelds, two players can join a game by sharing the screen between them. They are pretty hard to find, but the good news is that Play-Asia.com got hold of a limited quantity of brand new factory sealed consoles. Better hurry.

Here’s another entry from Microsoft’s Next-Gen PC Design Competition. The AlphaGrip Handheld Computer (or AlphaGrip HC, for short), features full-size rocker keys on the front with a flip-up display and a keypad for thumb-typing. It also has a trackball for mousing and some buttons for “sophisticated PC games”.

Thing is, you may have noticed two things, both unappealing: It’s bulky and the top is shaped somewhat like a heart. I can’t imagine ever using this in public, but despite that fact, I like it. It took some imagination and looks a lot like the Atari Jaguar.

These gameboy boots certainly make a fashion statement. Something about how everything you love dies. Like Disco and Nintendo’s handheld, for instance. So why not combine the two in a space age Disco look and hit the dance floor?

These boots were designed by Helen Red Richards back in 2001 for a Nintendo campaign. Apparently the Japanese love them and wear them all the time. And why not? Nothing wrong with looking like a space cowboy. Plus, you’ll always have a pair of Gameboys handy for you and a friend.

Here’s the latest in Chinese underground knock-offs. The “Cool Boy” wants to be a real living Gameboy so bad you can practically taste it. It manages to be completely un-cool despite the name and despite the fact that it’s a portable game system capable of playing a variety of old school 8-bit and 16-bit console titles.

Looks like the Cool Boy plays emulated NES and SEGA games. The kind you get from questionable sources in the dead of night, in a back alley, that usually have 120-in-1 cartridges that often violate copyrighted works from major game studios like EA, Nintendo and Disney. The system has a 2.4″ LCD screen with 480×240 resolution, and can even output to a TV via it’s built-in AV port.

The Atari 2600 brings back a lot of memories for some of us. And making a portable Atari can be fun, but this modder has really outdone himself with this model, giving the project some amazing style.

The Multari is a portable Atari 2600 with 32 games built right in. The chassis itself was made from vacuum-formed styrene plastic, with the usual colorful buttons and D-pad, there’s also a 5-inch display and a set of speakers. In fact, this is one of the nicest portable Ataris I’ve seen yet. Check out the video below.

This blue Gameboy type device comes from Innovations for Learning and is designed for schools. It’s got the typical directional buttons, a few other buttons, a 2.5-inch LCD, USB sync, SD card storage, AC/USB charging, and a 3.5-hour battery life.

Supposedly it has “complete reading and math curriculum that is aligned with all of the major reading and math programs,” inside of the device. The idea is to help substitute the learning that Kindergarten through second grade students already get. The company is non-profit, so they only charge for the cost of manufacturing the device, which is $50. However, the reading and math programs will cost $20 per student. They will start rolling them out at 500 Chicago elementary schools.

Socket Communications has introduced something interesting in the new SoMo 650 handheld computer that uses anti-bacterial plastic in its construction. The handheld has a fast 624 MHz processor, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a large bright QVGA display, and plenty of SDRAM and Flash memory. The antibacterial SoMo 650 handheld computer and docking cradle will be available in fall 2008.

The Portable Slide Panel Digital Media Player has a design that makes it look like a game handheld. It’s a video player with a 2.8inch LCD display capable of playing back MP4 and 3GP files. It also works as a MP3/WMA player, FM tuner, has ebook function, built-in speaker, and JPEG viewing abilities.

The coolest function is it’s ability to play games, and it claims to support NES, GameBoy and GameBoy Color. Apparently via an emulator. The device also has a built in mic and a digital video camera. That’s alot of cool features. Plus it comes with audio and video out cables so you can connect it to a TV. The only downside with this device is that they only give you 1GB of internal memory, but there is the typical SD slot for expansion. It will cost you $59.99, and they even give you a pouch.

Here’s a pocket gaming system that’s not from Nintendo or Sony, but from Korean company called MyRacer. The MF101 portable looks like a media player, but it’s actually a pocket-sized game machine. It’ll play music and video files in several formats, but it will also play a number of Adobe Flash-based games, like the ones from Korea’s Play4U or Com2uS catalog.

It sports a pair of directional controls, even shoulder buttons. The user interface is even Flash-based. The system has a 320×240 resolution 2.4-inch color LCD screen, and comes with 1GB of on-board memory, which is expandable with an SD slot. It’s not available in the US yet, of course. But if you want to try to score one from a Korean retailer, it will cost you around $104.

The Wind, Dyson DC16 handheld cleaner looks like it’s a Sci-Fi ray gun from the future, but you are more likely to see Han Solo cleaning up the Millenium Falcon then shooting lasers with this thing. The device is the love child of Miyake designer Dai Fujiwara and James Dyson. They apparently had too much to drink and started brainstorming about how sexy they could make a vacuum.

The result is a sexy new handheld carpet sucker at an affordable price of $194. It’s got a great steampunk look and a trigger. Need I say more?

I guess if you want Guitar Hero on the go or if you are a Leprechaun wanting to play the game in your size, you are in luck my friends. This miniature version was created by Basic Fun, and it looks like they got Activision’s approval. It’s called the “Guitar Hero Carabiner,” and it will make it’s debut next week at the International Toy Fair in New York.

It measures in at only 7.75 long and 3 inches wide, though the neck can fold down to cut its length in half. The carabiner also has the ability to dangle from your bag or backpack, in case your pocket real estate is already full with a DS and the like.

LeapFrog has a new handheld learning/gaming system, the Didj. It should retail for $89.99 when it arrives this summer. LeapFrog isn’t saying that the device is Nintendo DS competitor, but it happens to be aimed toward 6 to 10 year-olds, a demographic that the DS currently rules with an iron fist.

With the Didj they want to up the gaming and graphics while integrating the fancy learning stuff. It’s sure to be a hit with parents who would rather see their kids being educated rather then simply guiding Mario on his latest quest. The Didj has no Wi-Fi connection but it should work with the LeapFrog Connect Application, which lets children customize game content via USB.