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.

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.

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.

Lots of free stuff came out of PAX, and con goers were inundated with t-shirts, keychains, and other thotchkes. I got a total of 5 t-shirts (and I would have gotten 2 more were it not for humiliating defeats in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 and Team Fortress 2 at Antec and Alienware's booths, respectively), plus a ton of other great stuff. The highlight: an Aperture Science t-shirt from Valve's booth, a set of BlazBlue soundtrack and media discs from Aksys, and ridiculous light-up Kanye glasses from Ubisoft. Check it all out below.

• Aperture Science t-shirt
• Red Faction: Armageddon t-shirt
• L.A. Noire t-shirt
• Section 8: Judgement t-shirt
• Toy Soldiers t-shirt
• Bastion bandana
• Homefront flag
• Homefront armband
• Pokemon Black and White pins
• Earth Defense Force fly swatter
• Child of Eden Kanye glasses
• Ghost Recon: Future Soldier keychain
• Frag Girls hand grenade stress ball
• Aksys BlazBlue/Arcana Heart comics and soundtrack/Blu-ray discs
• Magic: The Gathering USB key wristband
• Plants Vs. Zombies bumper stickers
• Munchkin silver piece coin
• Antec system decal
• Turtle Beach LED flashlight keychain
• New England Institute of Art light-up keychain and stress ball

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Epic and EA are really taking the off-the-walls, over-the-top, crazy-lunatic-bullshit humor of Bulletstorm and running with it. Just a few weeks after being accused by FOX News and a quack TV shrink that its game can cause rapism, EA handed out these trinkets in press bags at a recent preview event. Yes, this is a Bulletstorm nutcracker.

The nutcracker itself looks pretty freaky, with a belt made of skulls, a skullface tattoo, and... well, a tall that that makes it pretty clear this baby was mostly just a painted-over regular nutcracker. But it's still damn neat. How many nutcrackers have you seen look like they want to wear your skin as a toga?

The packaging is great, too. It doesn't just hint at what the Nutcracker is as a skill shot, it outright praises it. It waxes poetic on the ballistic nut shot. It was certainly an unexpected piece of swag (especially since EA wasn't actually showing off the game at this particular event), but it's a great reminder of the game's sense of humor. Bulletstorm hits stores next Tuesday.

Yep, it's still the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. The limited edition Wii version of Super Mario All-Stars came out last week, and it offers a ton of nostalgic value for $30. The box set includes the SNES classic Super Mario All-Stars ported on disc to the Wii, a soundtrack of Mario music, and a booklet about gaming's favorite plumber. As a Nintendo fanboy's walk down memory lane, this is a great deal. As a gaming experience, not so much. It's more than the issue of copying a 17-year-old game to the Wii, but to get the full story you'll have to read after the jump.

Let's start with the extras, the pack-in items that sealed the deal for most fanboys. Both the booklet and the soundtrack CD come in this very nice Super Mario History DVD case, decked out in the easily recognizable (and hard to read) Famicom red and gold.

The booklet is a perfect-bound, 48-page pamphlet containing 25 years of Mario history. The full-color booklet is light on text, but things like Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, and Koji Kondo's statements on every game in the Mario series (not counting Yoshi's Island or the other spin-off games), concept art, and even some small glimpses at early design documents make it feel just a little bit more than the game's liner notes.

The soundtrack is great. If you're hoping for orchestral arrangements of classic Mario music, you're going to be disappointed. If you just want full-length, just-as-coded themes from every game in the main Mario series, this is the disc for you. The NES Mario games' theme music is in all its 8-bit, chiptune glory, and it'll take you right back to early Saturday mornings in the late 80's, glued to the television as you play through Super Mario Bros. (and 2, and 3) again. As a bonus, the second 10 tracks on the disc are all short recordings of the classic Mario sound effects. A few clicks, and you can have coin, 1-up, and pipe sounds as your ringtone.

Then there's the game. Despite whatever stray hopes gamers might have, it was obvious that this would be a direct port, simple and unchanged from its state when it was first released in 1993. It's actually pretty funny, since Super Mario All-Stars itself was a remastered, new-graphics-for-the-time compilation of the classic NES Mario games, but let's not dwell. This is a ROM on a Wii disc, nothing more. Still, at least we can play the great 16-bit remake versions of the NES Mario games!

At least, we can play the great 16-bit remake versions if we can put up with a distinct off-ness of the gameplay. The game lags. It feels like there's a half-second pause between pressing a button on the controller and seeing Mario move. In a game series that became famous for, among other things, its superlative play control, this is unacceptable. Jumping feels floaty and uncomfortable, especially in Mario 3, where a few pixels and a moment's pause can mean the difference between picking up a koopa shell and kicking it into a wall and having it bounce back at you. Nintendo botched the simplest task: competently emulate a Super Nintendo game.

Is the game worth the $30? Well, the booklet and soundtrack are great. If it were just $20, even without the horrible port, I'd wholly recommend it. However, considering the game barely even feels like Mario because of the lag, this gets my disappointed condemnation.

On the bright side, I have a Mario coin ringtone now. So I have that going for me, which is nice.

A few weeks ago, I covered the Fallout: New Vegas Collector's Edition, a pretty awesome collection of New Vegas feelies piled on top of the already great (yet extremely, painfully buggy) game. It came with a set of poker chips, which would be both fun and useful, except the "set" included a single poker chip from each casino. You can't exactly have a game of cards with just one chip of every color. The chips are darn cool, though, and I lamented that you can't put together an entire, poker-worthy set of them.

It turns out that you can, and that the results are both striking and eye-poppingly expensive.

Reader Greg W. showed me his new project: putting together a complete poker set out of many, many Fallout: New Vegas Collector's Editions. Greg put together 20 CE's worth of New Vegas poker chips, and has built some impressive-looking stacks of chips.

Greg says he's spent about $500 pulling together all of these chips from all these collector's editions. He scours eBay for auctions selling just the chips, so he doesn't have to shell out the full $70-80 for each set. He's not done yet, though. Greg says he'd like to have 40-60 sets' worth of poker chips by the time he finishes collecting them. Our suggestion is to use FedEx or UPS to deliver them; those Wasteland courier companies have been getting accosted by raiders as of late.

Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet is easily one of the most adorable game series mascots we've seen in the last decade. He's just a smiling dude made from burlap, buttons, and a zipper. While you can't pick up Sackboy in all his stuffed, zippered glory yet, you can at least get him in articulated plastic. Meet the Sackboy action figure, from Mezco.

For a hunk of plastic, this Sacktion figure is surprisingly fun. He stands about 4 inches tall, and has joints in his shoulders, wrists, hips, waist, ankles, and head. If you can pose him in LittleBigPlanet, you can probably pose his action figure. This version is the "Happy" variant, with a little rubber tongue sticking out of his big, smiling mouth. This guy has loads of personality.

This action figure comes with two "accessories," and neither are particularly useful. One doesn't even make a bit of sense. That squiggly pink thing is supposed to be the "Poppit Lasso," the tool you use in the game to customize different things. The action figure version is a soft plastic tube with a wire inside so you can bend it in different shapes. I have no idea how to use it. It doesn't peg into the figure anywhere, it can't actually hold up or attach anything, and it's basically nothing more than a bendy stick. I get what it's supposed to be, but I just don't see how it fits in an action figure sense.

Sackboy also comes with stickers. Again, you can't really use them with the action figure (a clear acrylic pane connected to the lasso would have offered a place to put the stickers and tied the whole package together), but who cares? You get stickers! Hell yeah!

If you want to pick up your own Sackboy action figure, you can grab him for $15 on Amazon, or possibly less at your local comic book store.