The Club Nintendo yearly rewards have gone out, and if you got 600 Club Nintendo coins in the last year that means you got the Platinum Status reward. Last year, it was a Mario statue. The year before that, it was a Mario hat. Now, it's Mario pins.

No, it actually doesn't suck. Well, not entirely. I got the package in the mail today, and I'm fairly surprised by the quality of the whole presentation. For slavish Nintendo game registration, you get 25 pins in six boxes, with a shelf-worthy display.

The boxes are as much a part of the reward as the pins themselves. They're six long cardboard rectangles that can be rotated to make three different shapes: Mario, a mushroom, and a goomba. The other side of each box has cut-outs to show the pins. It's just thin cardboard, but you can stack them and they look... presentable? Okay, it's not the statue from last year. At least it's not completely half-assed, like a handful of pins in a plastic bag.

The pins are... pins. They're nice pins, and they're well-made, all-metal, with Super Mario Bros. characters on them. However... they're pins. You can't do much with pins, except put them on a bag or a jacket or something. Okay, not amazing, but pretty neat, hard-to-find Nintendo swag from Club Nintendo. And so it has a place on my Nintendo shrine shelf with all my Nintendo crap.

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Angry Birds needs to stop. It's become a Simpsons-in-early-90s-level fad. Or tamagotchi-in-late-90s-level fad. Or pogs-for-that-one-week-in-the-mid-90s-level fad. It's not just a casual game that became popular like Bejeweled, Peggle, or your-Zynga-game-of-choice. It's a multimedia phenomenon. And I'm getting freaking sick of it. At Best Buy, they have Angry Birds iPhone cases, headphones, and speakers. At Toys R Us, they have giant plush Angry Birds. And at Forbidden Planet (and stores normal people shop at), they have Angry Birds Fruit Gummis. I'm getting tired of Angry Birds, but I love a good gummi candy, so I got a box.

These Angry Birds Fruit Gummis are made by Healthy Food Brands, manufactured in Mexico, and put in four collectible Angry Birds boxes with birds or a pig cut-out. The gummis themselves are red (cherry), red (strawberry), yellow (lemon), blue (raspberry), green (apple), and black (grape), all shaped like a different Angry Birds character. You get a generous handful in the $2 candy box.

I was going to describe each candy and give it a review, but I can't, because they all taste pretty much the same. These are the blandest gummi candies I've ever eaten. I'm not making a joke about casual gaming; these are genuinely bland. Each candy is just vaguely sweet with a slight aftertaste of the flavor it's supposed to be, or the color related to the flavor it's supposed to be. The apple gummi tastes like a holistically diluted shot of Pucker, the lemon candy tastes like a slightly lemony bit of rubber cement, and I thought the blue gummi was a somewhat recognizable candy blueberry until I looked at the box and saw that it was raspberry. These gummis are made with real fruit juice like Chef Boyardee has a full serving of vegetables in each can. It might be technically true based on our loose standards, but it's fundamentally wrong.

I usually love gummi candies, but these I didn't feel like finishing. Give me some Haribo gold bears, give me some Sour Patch Kids, give me generic drug store gummi worms, but at least they all have some kind of flavor. There's just nothing to the Angry Birds gummis besides the brand recognition.

The headline says it all. Steam usually has some pretty good deals, but they might have outdone themselves with this one. The sale runs through Sunday, so pick up these games while you can. Highlights include, for today alone:

• Fallout: New Vegas - $5
• Monkey Island Special Edition Bundle - $5
• L.A. Noire - $25
• Total War Mega Pack - $12.50

Other sales going on for the weekend include:

• Portal 1 and 2 - $17.50
• Orcs Must Die! - $7.50
• Mass Effect 2 - $10
• Dungeon Defenders - $7.50
• Sam and Max Complete Pack - $33.50

If you want some PC games, now's a great time.

These are the headphones from the Saints Row: The Third Platinum Pack. I'm a sucker for collectors editions, and when I heard Saints Row: The Third would have Saints Row headphones that autotune your voice, I knew I had to get it.

They're pretty cool, but they feel cheap. For a $99 collector's edition of a $60 game, you can't expect high-quality headphones. They're decent, and they look great, though. The vocoder effect is pretty great, but the mic picks up a lot of background noise. I could describe it to you, but instead, here's the first Aggrogate micro-podcast, Saints Row Edition!

If the buzzing drives you nuts, here's a version I cleaned up in Audacity, for the pure autotuned goodness.

Final verdict: Pretty cool. Worth it, if you like messing with your voice and have low standards for headphones.

Nintendo usually goes big with its events, but I wasn't expecting the sort of thing it did today with its Super Mario 3D Land launch event. Mario took over Times Square, turning Military Island (the plaza next to the police station and recruitment center) into a huge Mario course. There will be more on that soon, but for now let's focus on what they were giving away: a mustache, tanuki ears, and a giant tanuki tail.

The Tanuki tail is like a huge beanbag with a belt. When you put it on, it bounces a bit and stays lifted slightly. You can spin attack people and really irritate them with it. The ears are soft and covered in felt, on a headband that's also covered in felt. The moustache is the only thing that seems like it won't last more than one use. The tanuki gear are joining my Mario hat in the Closet of Nerdy Swag.

We last looked at Orange Mod Works' Nerf mod kits in August, where I had some tiny-spring-losing problems but otherwise thought it was brilliant. Orange Mod Works makes modification kits for Nerf guns, offering stronger springs and reinforced parts to make Nerf guns even stronger. Now they're putting out an all-in-one kit for completely overhauling your Nerf gun. The Massacre mods don't just give you springs and backplates (like the kit I reviewed). They give you stronger springs, metal backplates and trigger catches, and most importantly polycarbonate bolt sleds and plungers.

To get the best distance from your Nerf gun, you need to remove the air restrictor from the breech. This requires you to either cut the mechanism in half and reseal it (which is really difficult), or to drill/melt through the barrel until the restrictor falls out. It's a pain. Since this kit gives you a completely new, reinforced breech, plunger, and bolt sled, you don't have to do any of that. The downside is that the Massacre kits are $37, which is more than the guns themselves.

If you want to go hardcore with your Nerf guns, you can do it in November, when the Massacre kits start to ship.  It will be available for the Recon, Alpha Trooper, Longstrike, and Raider, and the Alpha Trooper, Longstrike, and Raider versions will come with metal triggers if you preorder them (yes, a preorder bonus that's not useless!). Pretty cool if you're into Nerf insanity. Which we all know you are.

Hey, check it out. Free music. Specifically, a free soundtrack to Portal 2. More specifically, Valve is offering the complete 64-track soundtrack to Portal 2, "Music to Test By," for free on the Portal web site.

The Portal 2 soundtrack, like every other aspect of the game, was excellent, with some haunting and tense music that reflected both the dark humor and the surreal, clever action of the game's various Aperture Science settings. It had some great electronic and ambient tracks, and listening to any of them will take you back to the shifting walls and grimy pipes of the testing facility. For the record, the two catchy sounds in the Portal 2 commercials are "Science is Fun" and "Halls of Science," both of which are in the soundtrack.

Valve also released a handful of ringtones from the soundtrack and the game's sound effects. There aren't any quotes from GLADoS, Cave Johnson, or Wheatley, but there are portal and button sounds, plus short clips of the more notable tracks in the soundtrack cut for ringtone use. If that's not enough, Valve is also releasing the "Peer Review" DLC for Portal 2 Wednesday. It's free and mostly co-op but with some single-player support. Keep an eye out for it on Steam.

The season finale of Doctor Who is tonight, and in honor of "The Wedding of River Song," I've dug into my collection of nerdy crap and pulled out not one, not two, but five sonic screwdrivers. Well, four sonic screwdrivers and a laser screwdriver. Underground Toys has been making sonic screwdrivers since the series started again, and they're pretty cool toys for anyone who's a fan of props or cosplay. Read on for the five I have on-hand, and have at the ready to fight the Daleks.

The Tenth Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver

This is where it began again. While it's referred to as the tenth Doctor's sonic screwdriver, this model was used by both the ninth and tenth (Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant). Of course, Tennant was the Doctor for five years and Eccleston was gone after just one, so it's mostly seen as his. The light glows blue and a sliding switch moves the probe up and down, revealing a cool clear tube with a twisting thing in the middle. Two small buttons activate the screwdriver depending on its position, which is something the eleventh Doctor's screwdriver lacks. The other end is actually a pen/UV pen (though the UV tip has long since dried), and the blue light lights up UV ink.

The Eleventh Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver

The eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) has a larger and more elaborate screwdriver than the previous one. This one's a good inch longer, with a button that makes the probe and four claws pop up, adding another inch to the toy. Weirdly, the thumb button only lights up the probe when it's down. When it's popped out, you have to flip up the cap on the end and press the red button. You can also press the tiny black button on the probe's shaft, but it's awkward. This screwdriver glows green, and its gold and fake black leather details (the black band around the screwdriver is black plastic, but patterned to look and feel vaguely like leather, down to a row of stitches under the two buttons) make it look much nicer and more ornate than the tenth Doctor's screwdriver.

The Fourth Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver

The fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) is the most popular of the entire decades-long run of Doctor Who, and the only pre-gap sonic screwdriver I have (a third Doctor screwdriver is available, but it's almost identical to the fourth Doctor's sonic screwdriver, except for a yellow and black spiral around the base of the probe). It's also the only completely sonic screwdriver I have. There are no lights, just a sonic screwdriver sound effect when you pull down the collar of the probe with your thumb. It's also the only one you're supposed to hold upright; the probe is perpendicular to the screwdriver, so you hold it straight up when soniccing (sonicking? Sonic-ing?) something. The other screwdrivers are used by pointing the lighted probes at the object.

The Master's Laser Screwdriver

This is the only "evil" screwdriver in the collection. While the Doctor uses a sonic screwdriver, the Master (in the third season, where he was played by John Simm being hammier than most would consider humanly possible) uses a laser screwdriver. It does everything a sonic screwdriver does, and it kills people. This one has three yellow lights that only fire when the probe is extended, both functions activated through the same button on the side. This one is all gold and silver, with a more blatantly high-tech look than the other screwdrivers.

River Song's Sonic Screwdriver

This is the most advanced of the sonic screwdrivers, which is impressive because it's the only one with no moving parts. This one belonged to River Song in the fourth season episode Silence in the Library and Planet of the Dead. It's the tenth Doctor's sonic screwdriver, but heavily modified and from the Doctor's future. The probe has blue and red settings, and lights up in either color, switched by pressing a button behind a panel on the screwdriver that also activates the green light neural link next to it. It's by far the most detailed sonic screwdriver, with a handy ring, stabilizing pieces around the probe, and green patina over some of the parts to make it seem worn.

A few months ago, Hasbro announced a new line of Nerf guns, competing with the Nerf N-Strike series by offering a new, non-dart-based form of foam projectile. The company started showing off Nerf Vortex discs, and unveiled four new Nerf Vortex blasters to use them. Well, the Nerf Vortex guns are finally here, and while they might not be dart-killers, they're certainly impressive for cube warfare.

Instead of using compressed air to blast out foam darts, Nerf Vortex guns fling discs like little frisbees, sending them farther with less effort. Hasbro sent me the four new Nerf Vortex guns, and after spending some time with them I can safely say that they're the go-to weapons if you want the most range without modding your weapons. They're far from perfect, though.

The new guns are the Proton, Vigilon, Praxis, and Nitron, Vortex equivalents of the Nite Finder, Maverick, Raider, and Stampede. They're notably alien in design, with green color schemes and more curvy, organic lines than N-Strike guns. They also look Liefeldian in their barel design; instead of round barrels, the Vortex guns have rectangular barrels for firing the discs. If you ever wondered how Cable's guns worked, well, he must have been fighting Apocalypse with foam discs.

The Proton is a small, one-shot pistol that loads a dart into the back, cocking it in the process and firing it with a quick pull of the trigger. Despite its small size, it still shows respectable range. However, one shot isn't much for a Nerf war, which is why I recommend immediately trading up to the Vigilon. While the Maverick is a revolver, the Vigilon is a pistol with a built-in magazine. Pressing the thumb lever opens a door on the side of the gun where you can drop in five Vortex discs, stacked evenly against a spring-loaded cylinder. After you close the door, you can cock and fire just like a Maverick. Because you can stack the discs, it's much faster to reload than a Maverick, but you still have to handle the discs on their own because the magazine is built in.

The Praxis is the first of the Vortex guns to use the new Vortex magazine. While the N-Strike guns' magazines are rectangular and their barrels are round, the Vortex guns' barrels are rectangular and their magazines are round. The Vortex magazines are orange pipes that hold stacks of the discs and slide into round holes in the bottom of the Praxis and Nitron. Besides their shape, they effectively act just like dart magazines. Similarly, the Praxis and Nitron act just like the Recon/Deploy/Raider and Stampede. Slide the magazine in and cock and fire (with the Praxis) or hold the secondary trigger button down to spin up the motor and pull the trigger to fire (with the Nitron).

And how do the Vortex discs work? Pretty well. In fact, if you're concerned about range, the Vortex blasters absolutely destroy every stock N-Strike gun. Thanks to the wonders of aerodynamics, the discs fly much farther than darts while keeping decent accuracy. However, since the discs are round and flat, a stiff breeze can throw them off far more than darts. Imagine little frisbees getting blown to the side from a gust and you'll know just how vulnerable Vortex guns are to the wind. Also, the discs are green, so you're going to lose a lot of them in the grass. These are indoor Nerf guns.

If you want to have a Nerf war outside, you should probably stick to N-Strike darts. If you want the longest reach without modding your gun for a cube war, the Vortex guns could be your new greatest weapon.

Next to the Stampede used with the Raider 35-shot drum magazine, of course. There is no greater weapon.

Nerf gun mods are nothing new. People have been stretching springs, replacing barrels, and removing air restrictors for almost as long as Nerf guns have been around. However, they've always involved off-the-shelf parts and a lot of creative gluing, bending, and cutting to get things to work. Now Orange Mod Works has taken the guesswork out of replacing and improving parts of your Nerf gun.

Orange Mod Works is a small company that sells mod kits for Nerf guns. Instead of just offering the tools (though there is a very large tool kit you can buy from them to be prepared for complex and extreme mods), they offers measured springs and all-metal replacement parts you can just drop into your Nerf guns to both make them more powerful and reinforce them. They sent me their Alpha Trooper Stage 1 modification kit, and I was surprised by just how well-made the entire kit is.

The packaging alone is gorgeous, like a video game power-up. I usually don't gush about packaging, but such a small, niche product usually doesn't get such an elaborate box. Besides the replacement parts, the box also comes with an opaque Orange Works sticker and a transparent Orange Works applique. They're nice touches.

The kit itself consists of a 6-kilogram spring, a metal trigger catch, a trigger catch spring, and a metal backplate. The spring itself makes the Alpha Trooper more powerful, but the metal trigger catch and backplate keep the gun's plastic components from breaking with the extra force.

Taking apart the Alpha Trooper is easy. Remove the screws holding the handle and the end cap from the gun and put them to the side. Remove the other screws and carefully take the two halves of the gun apart, keeping the right side of the gun on a flat surface so all the internal mechanisms will stay in place.

Installing the mod kit is similarly easy. Pull the spring out. Lift out the trigger catch (the big orange plastic piece that slides over the plunger). Fit the new spring over the plunger and carefully slide the trigger catch over the spring and plunger until it first in its track. Put the trigger catch spring over the nub on the top of the trigger catch and press it down until it fits in the body. Push the main spring down and put the gun back together, except the end cap. Slide the backplate into the end cap and screw it into the back of the gun. Now your Alpha Trooper is modified.

This isn't all you can do with the Nerf Gun, and Orange Works recommends removing the air restrictor from the gun as well. Unfortunately, this is a more involved process that involves removing the bolt and either drilling or melting out the center post and the small parts inside the bolt without cutting through it or making the hole too big for darts to stay there. Orange Works offers a free guide to other mods you can do besides its own kit, including air restrictor removal and barrel replacement.

And how well does it work? Um... little hitch on that. As easy as the Alpha Trooper is to take apart, it's surprisingly tricky to put back together. Unfortunately, while putting it back together, a small piece of plastic has gotten lost. As soon as I find it and figure out how to replace it, I'll be able to provide a report on how much the spring improves performance. This problem has nothing to do with the Orange Works kit, which is extremely well-made and, in the hands of a more talented modder, should improve performance significantly. And if I ever figure out how to fix the gun, I'll come back to it!