If you think those Macbook Air ads are stupid, you think the MBA itself is stupid, or indeed you think that Apple are stupid, you’ll probably really like this spoof ThinkPad ad from Lenovo. It points out just how stripped-down the MBA really is, and how much extra stuff you’ll need to lug around to use it as a serious computer.

The ad is for Lenovo’s new “no compromise” X300, you see, which comes with a DVD writer, 2GB RAM, and a reported 4 hour battery life. Of course, you’ll probably also like the ad if you’re a ThinkPad fanboy – and yes, there are indeed some of us out there…

Activision have just revealed 15 of the tracks which will be entertaining (and indeed annoying) us when Guitar Hero: On Tour is released on the DS, hopefully later this year. There are some good ‘uns and some pretty bad ‘uns, in true GH style…

And here they are!

“Do What You Want” by OK Go
“All The Small Things” by Blink 182
“Spiderwebs” by No Doubt
“Are You Gonna Be My Girl” by Jet
“We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister
“All Star” by Smash Mouth
“Breed” by Nirvana
“Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield
“Hit Me With Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar
“This Love” by Maroon 5
“Heaven” by Los Lonely Boys
“Helicopter” by Bloc Party
“China Grove” by The Doobie Brothers
“Rock and Roll All Nite” by KISS (cover by Line 6)
“What I Want” by Daughtry

It’s not quite Guitar Hero II, with its Free Bird and its Carry On Wayward Son, but we’ll take it.

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We here at TTB aren’t what you’d call massive GTA:IV fans. To be honest, half of the team hate it with a passion, and the other half like it, but don’t exactly want to make love to it, so you could say we’re pretty much split. A bit like this video, then, which shows something GTA fanboys and haters alike can all enjoy – the graphical differences between the game’s 360 and PS3 versions.

So, what are they? Even the (usually heavily biased, of course) comment thread at Xbox360Fanboy couldn’t decide, settling on “they’re pretty much exactly the same”. I entirely agree – but surely with Rockstar’s long-standing partnership with the Sony consoles, and of course the PS3′s claimed processing power advantage, I’d expect there to be at least something special about the PS3 version.

So, if the 360 edition has better multiplayer support and more DLC (downloadable content), could it really be true that the boys in Redmond have gotten themselves the upper hand this time around?

Check out a much bigger version of the video (for nitpicking purposes) here.

So, the guys over at Shacknews decided to pop on down to 3D Realms’ office in Dallas (for some undisclosed reason), and big guy George Broussard decides to give them an impromptu showing of the current state of the now-infamous DNF. As you do, of course. They supposedly got to feast their eyes on some new weapons, two new maps, a forklift (?), limbs being blown off, and some environmental puzzles in action. Their fascinating, in-depth verdict?

“Duke Nukem Forever is looking great, and will easily stand apart from the crowd in both visual and gameplay styles.”

Yeah… err… awesome, I guess. That’s almost as good as video footage, still images, a bit of a review, or anything else they could do to prove that a) this game actually exists and b) it doesn’t look like something from 1998. Of course, lots of people share my sarcastic sentiments, deciding to cause a huge stir in the comments thread for the story. It was even enough to justify this this reply from 3DR‘s George B himself:

“…they came over and we checked out some stuff and out of the blue I just decided to show them DNF for about an hour. We ran through a couple of maps and chatted about stuff and we asked for some feedback. It was pretty unofficial and off the cuff and just done because I’ve known the guys for a long time and they were local, and what the fuck. They are being secretive/light on info because of obvious reasons, but just wanted to post and say “hey, we saw it and it’s real”.”

So there we have it: conclusive proof that Duke Nukem Forever is actually real – just like all those other times.

Of course, this could just be a clever viral ad for the excellent Rayman Raving Rabbids series, but I like to think that it could mean a little bit more than that. I like to think that we’ll be getting another Raving Rabbids game, this time using the balance board in some cunning way, and that it’ll be with us soon. Maybe shortly after the upcoming Ubidays event in Paris at the end of May?

I personally think that the Rabbids games are among the best on the Wii, and they certainly use that motion sensitive controller in lots of clever ways. So I’ll be interested to see what wackyness they’ve come up with for the otherwise apparently dull and pointless Wii-step.

After the awesome show of maturity that was the scrotal mouse, I thought some people might like another thing to have a childish giggle at. So may I formally present this brilliantly thought-out box art for a game called Touch Dic, a Korean touchscreen dictionary app released in 2005 for the Nintendo DS.

Silence at the back!

Force Dynamics are a company based in New York who specialise in some very hi-tech driving simulators. So it’s only natural that they’d want to hook a SNES up to one for some Super Mario Kart action. Isn’t it?

This is probably one of the most stupid and painful game controllers I’ve ever seen (except maybe those original Xbox pads…) – it also looks like loads of fun.

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Today news has leaked out that the thing that destroyed GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas for me has been included in GTA4… The cheats! Once again I will have to sit and watch people not play the game, simply just give themselves loads of health, guns and cops chasing them, then kill them all, rinse and repeat. I really must question why Rockstar has done this? The game is huge, like 100+ hours huge… Do people really need to cheat to get enjoyment from the game? Plus, now there is online multiplayer and all the little mini games to keep you occupied.

15 cheats have been leaked so far, all accessed by dialing certain numbers on Niko’s mobile phone. Luckily for us, some of the achievements (but not all) will be disabled when the cheats are entered, so at least all us 360 owners will have to play the game legit (well almost…).

I’m not going to list the cheats, but they can be found here if you really are that sad… Thanks Rockstar for crushing my dreams of a cheat free GTA game.

We here at TTB all love us a bit of Portal, but to be entirely honest, we’d have bought The Orange Box without it anyway. So it seems a litte odd that this quirky little puzzle game (that has since taken the world by storm) was once intended to be left to fend for itself on Xbox Live Arcade, and actually got rejected by Microsoft.

So says Valve‘s marketing director Doug Lombardi in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, quoting the infamous 150MB file size limit as the cause. The Source engine is no lightweight, after all:

“…the platform holders aren’t doing that right now. There’s a size limit and all kinds of other things.

“We’ve asked them, we said we were open to it. So it’s a decision for the platform holder and how they want to make the games available and how much bandwidth they want to [allow].”

Would The Orange Box have been as popular without Portal? Probably. But would Portal have been as big as it is without the huge market exposure it got by being part of The Orange Box?

Interesting thing to ponder.

If you’re the kind of person who uses a computer a lot and enjoys brains and all things gold (like some kind of geeky neurologist gangsta rapper), then you’ll love this £19.99 mouse from Fabstuff.net. And if you’re wondering why it says “Pat Says Now” on it, that’s because that’s the name of the Swiss company that designed it, and not some kind of subliminal advertising for Fun House or anything.

If you haven’t worked it out yet, the one and only, entirely mature and grown-up reason I’m even sitting writing this is because this mouse totally looks like a big wrinkly scrotum. Yep, now you too can move your cursor around the screen using only the power of sweaty, shiny balls.

Buy your golden scrotum mouse here.