Ben Heck made his own pinball table. And it's not some half-baked pinball table running off a connected PC, with off the shelf components; it's largely built from scratch, from the cabinet to the LED matrix (!). All running off a single microcontroller. He's a smart guy.

Chemically, this makes sense, but I'd never thought this might be possible.

"Obama Says: Yes We Can is a Simon Says game based on Barack Obama's New Hampshire Primary speech, as later turned into song by will.i.am. Watch the game create a pattern of button and direction presses, and repeat that pattern correctly to score! The more you get correct, the harder the patterns become - can you keep up?" Oh blimey.

Lots of good stuff in here I didn't know about, all for your DS, and all not illegal. Hurrah for homebrew.

"With DS Reader you can read any e-book (or text file) on your DS. It even has a great little bookmarking function to keep track of your progress." Ooh.

"Game Trivia Catechism is a multiple-choice trivia game, testing your knowledge of video gaming. It can be played as straight trivia, or as part of a story that follows Al and Sally as they compete in the King of Game Trivia Tournament." Looks awesome.

Leanoard rounds up his favourite DS homebrew games. Some good stuff in here that I didn't know of.

Commander Keen on the DS. Heck yes. One of the first games I spent a *lot* of time playing.

Portal-inspired homebrew game for the DS. Looks rather sweet, although not keen on collect-em-up mechanics.

"It occurred to me that if I could somehow tether a DSLR to an instant-on device like an Arduino microcontroller I would have less weight to carry around and could get more work done. After mentally spec’ing out what I would need, I realized the solution was right in front of me - because I bring it with me for Mario Kart wireless races on long night jobs - (In the manner of John Lasseter’s slow epiphany voice): “Use-the-Nintendo-D-S.” Duh." Oh wow.

"It's just an Nintendo in a toaster, but I like it."

Long thread of patched and hacked 8-bit and 16-bit ROMs, some bringing a vast amount of customisation.

"VideoGamesHero brings you homebrew action at it's best - offering lasting fun and challenging action with over 65 Songs, 5 Game modes, Motion Card and Guitar Grip support, there is something for everyone!" Homebrew Harmonix-style rhythm action game for the ds. Awesome.

"the nintendo ds is an excellent platform for homebrew audio software - here’s an (incomplete) list of some of the excellent sound toys that are available for the platform." Awesome. More listed in the comments, too.

There's a link at the end of this thread to a patched OSX version of Cave Story. Excellent!

" Protein[DS] is a little audio manipulation software running on Nintendo DS, which ables you to manipulate audio, anywhere you go - it is in some ways similar to ElectroPlankton concept."

"glitchDS is a FREE homebrew Cellular Automaton music sequencer for the Nintendo DS. It’s perfect for creating IDM and Glitch style loops." Should only work with R4, but seems to work with several carts.

"NDS adaptation of the famous Warcraft mod". Oh my. DS Homebrew, I love you.

Users' artwork from Colors! for the DS. Really quite impressive, some of this.

"Colors! is a simplistic digital painting application for Nintendo DS based on modern
painting-techniques developed for drawing tablets in programs like Photoshop."

"Not necessarily the completest 'best' collection, but some of the more notable games, applications and emulators that have grabbed my attention long enough to stay on my DS."

The first of Joe Deaver's adventure gamebooks translated to a rather beautiful NDS port.

"This is a port of Tyrian for the Nintendo DS." Wonderful top-down shareware Shmup, now abandoned, and put on your portable.

"Shredz64 is a modern day game for the Commodore 64... [its] design is modeled against the popular "Guitar Hero" series, geared toward the ability to play along to your favorite C64 music on the guitar." Plays any .SID file you throw at it. Impressive!

Wavelet-based video codec and player for the Nintendo DS, developed by Nick and his brother.

Homebrew Galactica Viper/Raptor fighter-combat sim, based on the excellent (and now free) Freespace 2 engine. As a huge BG _and_ FS2 fan, I'll be checking this out.