There's something truly refreshing about 8-bit artistry. It really does harken back to a time when video game artists were able to create some pretty damn amazing stuff when faced with some very real barriers.

More than a decade ago, long before your fancy 32-bit color palette, computers could only display 256 colors at a time and techniques like color cycling were employed to provide an optical illusion that made rivers appear to be moving and flames appear to flicker.

Even wonder what a lightning strike looks like in slo-mo? This is some great footage of a strike captured at a high frame rate.. Looks amazing.

Wondering just how well your browser stacks up when it comes to HTML5 compatibility? We were, so we took a number of devices (both desktop and mobile) and sent them off to html5test.com to see how they performed.

Full disclosure; I realize that we really didn't give IE a fair shake here.. IE9 is about to be launched and should firm up the numbers and we didn't have a copy of the beta - though we've not heard great things.

Also the Blackberry score is from Blackberry 6 (not released yet) so take it with a massive grain of salt.

Here's the full size image

Here's a great mashup of all your favorite 8-bit video game baddies (plus a little bonus Portal thrown in for good measure) and some extreme sports.

Ever wonder what the MP3 player, laptop, handheld gaming device or mobile phone would have looked like if they were introduced in an Atari-esque 1977 alternate universe? Neither did I until I came across this amazing-looking project. Behold! ALT/1977

If you're wondering what 25,000 Barrels looks like, you're in luck. Prepare to be in a Physics (or PhysX as the case may be) - induced trance as the barrels come crashing down. neat.