We thought it was dead, crushed to pieces beneath the twisted wreckage of Bo Stefan Eriksson's Ferrari Enzo (the whole story here). But according to Eurogamer, Gizmondo - the handheld gaming platform with built-in GPS - is being exhumed. The company's European director Carl Freer, the one who wasn't sent to prison for embezzlement, has teamed up with UK electronics design firm Plextek to get things rolling again.

"The only reason Gizmondo was not a success last time round was it was not fully brought into the market," said Freer, ignoring the considerable competition from the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, which would have surely made life difficult for the platform if it had hung around long enough. Launched in March 2005, it enjoyed barely a year on the shelves before Gizmondo Europe went into liquidation.

No news yet on when the system will re-emerge, or whether the specs will be updated.

UPDATE: Swedish journalist and blogger Hans Sandberg has been in touch to inform us that he's carried out an exclusive interview with Gizmondo exec Carl Freer about the return of Gizmondo. He has translated part of the interview into english and the text can be found here. Freer promises to release a new version of the console with a widescreen by Christmas 2008. He claims to be in discussions with network operators who may offer the device for free with certain mobile phone tariffs.

Of course, Gizmondo is not the first gaming platform to rise, Lazarus-like from a seemingly eternal slumber - as this hastily assembled list 'proves'...

Three other gaming platforms that rose, Lazarus-like from a seemingly eternal slumber

Atari 2600 Originally launched in 1977, Atari's wood-paneled legend was re-released as the budget-conscious Atari 2600 jr in 1986, with a newer, modernised chassis. More recently, we saw the Atari Classics 10-in-1 TV Game, which reconstructed the machine into a single joystick. The Intellivision and Megadrive were among machines similarly re-animated by US firm Jakks Pacific.

ZX Spectrum This is a bit cheaty as it's strictly an emulation, but the rubber-keyed eighties computer discovered a new lease of 'life' as a key feature of the Amstrad Em@iler Plus. The ungainly device, a follow-up to the original Amstrad Em@iler, combined a chunky phone with an email client and qwerty keyboard plus the ability to play classic Speccy games. How could it possible have failed?

Game Boy Re-invented more times than David Bowie, the Game Boy has never really died, just continually transmogrified. Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Light, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, Game Boy Micro... It has recently been revived again, unofficially, as a handheld solar-powered emulator, which runs Game Boy, Game Boy Color and NES ROMs. More info here.

Can you think of any others? I started this list at about nine o'clock last night, certain I'd come up with loads. Then I stalled.

It's a novel idea, the online petition service. In theory, it offers a voice for the disgruntled, a direct channel between The (Wo)Man On The Street and Those Who Act Against Us. Pity it's become somewhat of a farce.

Take for example the many petitions started by irritated gamers on Petition Online. There are several requests for GoldenEye 007 to appear on the Xbox 360. Quite a few people have signed a petition addressed to Warner Bros., Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures to "Save HD-DVD! (Warner Brothers, the Consumer Has Not "Clearly" Chosen Blu-Ray)". Unfortunately, the more noble petitions have been drowned out.

There's even a band of merry PlayStation 3 pranksters who are petitioning SCEE/London Studios for several amendments to SingStar, the karaoke game. It was released in the UK on 7 December, but since then, this rabble feel they've been maligned on several points:

*Network Outages *Lack of SingStore Updates *False Advertising *Lack of Community News

Overall, users of SingStar PS3 love their game. They'd just like a bit more communication, reassurance and support from its makers - and less of the false advertising & promises.

If you feel the same way and want to join an increasingly loud chorus, head over to Petition Online and be heard.

Alternatively, if you feel you have an axe to grind about any other game, let us be your mouthpiece and share the joy here.

I'm a bit late with this, but it's funny so what the heck. Swiss multimedia artist Guillaume Reymond has finished the latest section of his Game Over project in which he uses groups of people to 'act out' classic videogames. He's already done Pole Position, Space Invaders and Pong and in November, he gathered some friends in an auditorium at the Palais de Rumine and got them to be Tetris, using stop motion animation. The video, which you can enjoy on YouTube, took over four hours to 'film' using 880 still photographs.

This, of course, is only the latest attempt at reproducing iconic videogames. There have been various urban versions of Pac-Man, including an 'augmented reality' project by the National University of Singapore's Mixed Reality Lab and the regularly staged Pac-Manhattan. Oh and here is a live version of Donkey Kong created for Jackass spin-off Viva La Bam - it's funny because someone gets hurt.

What philosophical or artistic message is behind these real-world recreations of videogames? Is it about our need to humanise technology - or perhaps a comment on how players project themselves into the game universe? In some ways I think they're a very literal exploration of Henri Bergson's theory on laughter in which the French philosopher argues that the basis of comedy is watching people acting like machines. This is perhaps why it's always classic videogames that get reproduced - there's something about the simple, iconic graphics that juxtaposes more humorously with human participants.

So, given the chance (and the inclination), what classic videogame would you re-enact and how?