The Super Mini cassette player has no controls. After inserting the tape, simply turn the volume knob to click the device on.
Lego designer Steen Sig Andersen took three weeks to craft his interpretation of a VW Beetle from angular LEGO blocks.
At first glance, this 1983 wristwatch TV from Seiko-Epson appears to be a gadget loves delight. However, it has several fatal flaws.
This is absolutely brilliant - a handful of classic arcade games animated in Lego. I'm particularly fond of the B & W Asteroids rendition at 2:05. Come to think of it, someone should create playable versions for the iPhone.
Lego Arcade [via BB offworld]
One of the drags of classic video games (or as we called them, "games") at my house in the early 80's was that we only had one giant screen (19 whole inches) that was in color. Even the most intense Swordquest session was easily felled by evening news anchor Dan Rather coming on. It wasn't common yet for children to have a TV in their bedroom (though I did have an old Zenith I'd garbagepicked hidden in our basement), so the family TV became a CRT entertainment bottleneck.
Some of my friends used cast-off 13" color portables for gaming and computing, and that was pretty much the state of things for a long time. In the 90's Samsung released the GX1395, a 13" TV designed expressly as a 2nd TV for gaming. No longer did the gaming youth have to be relegated to woodgrain clad second rate status. An exorbitant $300 got you a very special gaming display that didn't tie up the family TV.
The GX (capitalizing on "gen x" perhaps?) has a set of doors protecting the 13" screen from the usual bedroom antics. Hinge them open and you see the left and right speakers of the 21 watt sound system, along with a rooftop subwoofer that can offer quasi-surround. A pair of RCA inputs (no s-video?) and an RF in (for stealing cable of course) puts your favorite game's graphics on the special low emission screen. When kids won't back up from the TV after you've asked them to for the 100th time, at least it's nice to know that the GX produces somewhat fewer bozo rays. Today's more tyrannical parent will appreciate the password lockable aspects (once your kids explain it to you) as well as the countdown timer to limit even the most ambitious video game campaign.
On-screen menus let you adjust the picture as well as tweak the stereo sound system capable of both impressive quality and amplitude. The CRT is treated against the ravages of burn-in, with several color temperature modes like a contemporary TV. The titular GX mode offered a crisper contrast ratio for excellent contrast during gaming. Heck, I've even calibrated this TV set for broadcast specs and have used it for editing video.
I imagine that a mere 13" TV might sound funny to those accustomed to 42" LCD displays. It wasn't always as easy to dot the entire household with a TV in every room as it is today. The great sound system goes a long way to delivering a fun experience surpassing the comparatively small display real estate. The extra speakers, tilt stand, and tough guy styling make for a TV that's quite a bit larger than 13" televisions of the day. If your bedroom was as cramped as mine was, it would be hard to fit anything much larger in there.
The GX is a rather sophisticated device for its time with great display options, especially in a product aimed at kids. No wonder they were mostly use in stores as demo kiosks for new games. I also find that the Samsung is excellent for gaming from before the 90's. Compact-sized general movie viewing is great too thanks to the extended contrast. There is little information online about Samsung's GXE1395, except people wishing that they had one today. A flat panel also will never house the audio oomph of this guy. If the GX ever sold at the original $300 price, I can't imagine that there would be many of these around
related:
Commodore 1702, still one of our favorite monitors
Mysterious & slick Sharp from the 80's
While some Atari 2600 games are rare and precious artifacts, some carts are crazy common. There's practically a DIY genre focused on finding other uses for the stubby chunks of 70's plastic. This video shows off one crafter's idea for turning a typical Atari cartridge into a wallet. What makes this particular design interesting is that it re-uses every part of the original game except the screw that secures the two halves of the cart shell.
These carts are for sale on etsy.com, but I'm sure that some of our ingenious readers can ad lib something a bit similar. Just get in touch if you're going to hack up a Chase The Chuckwagon cart. I'll trade ya a couple dozen Combat games.
Etsy store featuring these wallets
related:
Atari 2600 joystick TV remote DIY project
Wicked DIY arcade cabinet kits
DIY: upgrade your iPod Nano screen the retro way
Zork is the quintessential text game. There's no need to click your mouse, maneuver a joystick or mash a d-pad. All you need is the ability to read, type and think somewhat logically. The amusingly clever text adventure was developed on a PDP-10 mainframe at MIT in the late 1970s.
Three of the four original programmers went on to found Infocom, which released the Zork Trilogy for many popular microcomputers in the early 1980s. Three decades later, you can play it on your web enabled fridge for free. That's true progress.
Link: Welcome to Zork
Frankie from HobbyMedia came across these arcanely beautiful miniature recreations of 1980s SEGA arcade cabinets at the Shizuoka Hobby Show.
The Sega Taikan Game Collection includes reproductions of five classic arcade titles: Space Harrier, Super Hang-On, Outrun, Thunderblade and Afterburner. Available in August wherever Organic (Kaiyodo) models are sold. Follow the link for more ridiculously cute shots...
Sega Game Taikan Collection - Old SEGA cabs played by Kaiyodo
The Retro Adapter by Komodo lets you use NES, SNES and Nintendo 64 controllers with Wii Virtual Console games. The little device includes a single port for each controller type and connects to the Wii using one of the GameCube ports. I already own a tangled heap of vintage controllers and can't wait to play my Virtual Console titles the authentic way. Available mid-June for around $20.
Wii adapter lets you BYO retro video game controller [cnet crave]
RT forum member mods recently started a thread about the Holy Grail for a Retro Video Game collector. He mentioned Nintendo's rare World Championships 1990 Gold Cartridge, which would fetch thousands on the open market.
My Holy Grail would be an Entex Adventure Vision with all four game carts. Around 50,000 of them were made in 1981/1982 and I'm ashamed to admit I've never actually seen one running. The electromechanical screen is a 150 x 40 grid of red LEDs created using a spinning mirror that casts a flickering, wobbly image at only 15 frames per second. The games included surprisingly enjoyable ports of Defender, Super Cobra, Space Force and Turtles.
Continue reading "My Holy Grail Console: The Entex Adventure Vision" »
Cyan's groundbreaking first-person graphic adventure Myst hit the Apple Store today. The $5.99 game weighs in at a whopping 727 MB and includes all the Ages, music, videos and animations from the original. Each scene was painstakingly re-rendered, as well (the 1993 version was compressed to 256 colors). Check out the preview video...
The iPhone is basically a shiny Nintendo DS for grown-ups, so porting classic entertainment titles makes a lot of sense - I suspect many of today's iPhone owners vividly remember blundering through this game back in the day. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a sudden urge to collect red and blue pages...
iMyst [Boing Boing Gadgets]
A classic Atari game played on a modern LCD doesn't look quite right. The colors are too precise, the graphics too angular. There's no ghosting as the textured phosphorescent tube lags behind the on-screen action. The experience is almost sterile.
Dr. Ian Bogost, an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech, is on a quest to change that. He asked a group of CS seniors to simulate a number of CRT behaviors using an Atari VCS emulator. The result is strikingly realistic.
Bogost identified four traits that give CRT displays their unique look: texture, afterimage, color bleed and noise. He explains, "Many of today's players may only experience Atari games in
emulation. Indeed, many of my students may have little to no memory of
CRT televisions at all. Given such factors, it seems even more
important to improve the graphical accuracy of tools like [Atari VCS emulator] Stella.
[The students] are currently working with the maintainer of the free, open-source
Stella emulator to patch their changes into the main build, where the
effects will be available as a configurable option. Expect to see it
there shortly, where hopefully it will benefit players, creators,
educators, and archivists alike. Given that we'll be placing the code
back into Stella's repository, I'm also hopeful that this software
might be extended for use in other emulators for computer systems that
used televisions as their primary output."
Students Make Atari Games Look Like Atari Again
related:
Racing The Beam: Inside The Atari 2600 [co-authored by Dr. Bogost]
The Poultry That Changed Atari Forever
Dave Clausen from the NYC Resistor hacker collective just gave us a shout about a stunning retro arcade museum in Beacon, NY, a 75 minute train ride north of Grand Central. Their display collection includes a number of obscure titles such as Atari's Steeplechase, electromechanical pinball machines and a half dozen Chicago Coin shooting games - the sort of stuff you don't see much these days. And - if you have the time - the arcade machines on display are in playable condition at a mere $10 an hour.
I'm particularly mesmerized by a display case filled with row upon row of handhelds from the likes of Bandai, Coleco, Entex, Epoch, Mattel, and Tandy. It's like the Sears Christmas Wish Book without the boring Barbie section.
Retro Museum of Awesome [NYC Resistor]
Hyperkin has been churning out inexpensive NES clones for years, but it seems like they're running out of new ways to repackage the same tired old concept. The FC Mobile II is a compact handheld console with 2.5" LCD screen and composite video out. It ships with two wireless controllers and a wireless light gun, allowing it to function as a TV-based retroconsole as well as a portable.
The machine itself is cute as a button. However, it loses it's appeal the moment you slap a gigantic vintage NES cartridge into its back end. The weight and balance of this thing is utterly atrocious; the ergonomic equivalent of gluing a paperback novel to the top of a Game Boy Micro.
A second issue is the light gun. We haven't had a chance to put it through its paces, but I'm almost certain it won't work with LCD or plasma screens. The original relied on scan line timing on a CRT, and I suspect this model is exactly the same. So expect to break out the fuzzy old 13" RCA TV from your youth if you're craving a drunken round of duck hunt.
This might well be FC Mobile's last dip into the NES goldmine. Nintendo emulation has been done to death for the past decade, and no amount of wireless tomfoolery is going to reinvigorate the market. The FC Mobile II can be yours for $59.99 sometime in May, 2009. Available in washing machine white or paper shredder black.
FC Mobile 2: The best portable NES gets a 1up [technabob]
Bohus just spotted "The History of SEGA" on IGN. It's a surprisingly comprehensive look at the iconic Japanese gaming company formed by Americans after WWII. The article spans everything from the company's arcade era heyday to its eventual crushing defeat in the console wars:
"At the beginning of 2001, SEGA admitted defeat. After 18 years in the console business and only a few short years of real financial success, they were finally calling it quits. The Dreamcast ceased production in March of 2001, and the final units were cut to $50 before disappearing from stores. The announcement echoed Stolar's decision to leave the Saturn, but lacked the silver lining. As with the Saturn, SEGA and a handful of third parties put on a brave face, and games continued to ship in the US into the first half of 2002. By that time the GameCube and Xbox had made their way onto shelves, and the Dreamcast's last hope was gone."
SEGA occupies an unusual spot in the gaming world. American founder David Rosen stayed with the company until 1996, and the frequent use of American talent created a company that straddled the Pacific ocean. While the brand still exists as a software division of Japanese gaming corporation Sammy, hit titles are fewer and further between.
ThinkGeek just took delivery of a shipment of ten year old Dreamcast consoles, brand new in the box for $99.99. They report, "These arrived mysteriously at our warehouse... delivered by a blue hedgehog. So dig up that old copy of Soul Caliber and get cracking.
Each Dreamcast console is new in the box and comes complete with a single controller, av cable and demo disc. You of course get a built in 56K modem and phone cable... which we assume you'll make great use of :) You'll need to provide your own games... but we know you can handle that."
Um, yeah. What they're trying to say is that the Dreamcast is well known for its crackability. The Dreamcast library numbers some 350 titles, although about 100 of those were Japan-only.
ThinkGeek: Original SEGA Dreamcast consoles materialize from another dimension
[thanks, Jason!]
The FPGA Arcade Replay board can be configured to emulate many classic video games and home computers, including the Atari ST and Amiga. It's in the final stages of development, with an expected price of under 200 euros.
MikeJ says, "The board will support all the games on the FPGA Arcade site, as well as my Atari ST core and a customized and supported MiniMig Amiga core. Other platforms such as BBC B, Commodore 64 and Spectrum will also follow shortly.
The board has an ARM processor which interfaces the FPGA to the SD card. Hard disk images, ROMs and floppy disk images can be used from the SD card. There are two expansion boards, one with TV out and some rear mounted connectors for the joysticks (fits in a mini-itx case), and a second board with a prototyping array. There are around 130 pins available on the expansion connector.
The board has DVI and Analogue out. The DVI connector can be used to drive a HDMI input of a flat screen TV, so you can play PacMan on the big screen. I am planning to do Asteroids in true 1080P :) The analogue audio output uses a very high quality Wolfson DAC."
The Replay board already emulates the original arcade hardware for Scramble/Frogger, Asteroids Deluxe, Space Invaders, Pac Man, Lady Bug and Galaxian. Supported gaming consoles will include the Odyssey 2, ColecoVision, Bally Astrocade, and the Adventure Vision. This promises to be very cool indeed.
In the 1970s, Heathkit produced a bewildering lineup of TV, hi-fi and computer kits. It was a time when kit-based home electronics still made sense. The components were well suited for hand assembly, and trading a few evenings in return for saving a few dollars was appealing to do it yourselfers.
The GD-1380 was Heathkit's answer to the video game craze that swept the nation in 1976. It incorporated the popular AY-3-8500 pong chip, used by dozens of manufacturers. The machine offered three variations of 2-player Pong, along with a single player practice mode and two shooting games. All in black and white, of course.
Since it was targeted at technically savvy customers, the system didn't include an RF modulator to connect to a TV antenna input. Instead, it used separate component and audio outputs. Back then, this was practically unheard of. The only equipment with component input was expensive lab and broadcast gear. However, the company provided instructions for popping open various Heathkit TVs and attaching the component and audio cables to the right spots on the input board. This limited compatibility to Heathkit sets, but reduced the cost and complexity of the kit.
Today, this sort of hands-on fun is largely out of the question, thanks to tiny surface mount components and increasingly small and sophisticated digital designs.
Classic Retro Thing |
