Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

You know, most of us here at Engadget couldn’t help but get a bit misty eyed when we saw that new Wii Classic Controller and recalled our fond memories of many a’ night spent with the SNES’ Ol’ Roundy. Of course, there’s always that original rectangular classic NES controller that we saved the Princess with in “Super Mario Bros.”, which will always have a fond place in our hearts. Whichever you prefer (or perhaps both), RetroUSB has just released SNES and NES controller adapters for the Nintendo Wii, letting your relive your mid-1980s and early 1990s memories of button-pushing in the 21st century; when you download the original Super Mario Bros. or the very first StarFox via Nintendo’s Virtual Console service, you can now play them as they were meant to be played. These controller adapters will make the perfect addition for our F-Zero party this weekend — Captain Falcon FTW!

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Emulation-packed PMPs are becoming a dime a dozen these days, but Ainol’s V1000 manages to add a few impressive touches to the media-playing side of this two-faced device. The landscape oriented unit sports a sleek, silver enclosure with a simple five button control layout, and boasts a 2.5-inch QVGA display, 400MHz ADI Blackfin processor, and the ability to give every retro gamer his / her fill of NES emulation. Aside from the obvious Mario love, it supports AVI / MP4 video playback at 30 frames per second, and plays nice with MP3, WMA, and FLAC audio formats on the musical side. Handling all those audiophile-approved lossless files is the 512MB / 1GB of internal storage, while the addition of an SD slot ensures room for that bulging ROM collection. Although details concerning battery life, availability, connectivity, and price aren’t yet available, we’re sure these handy all-in-ones will be popping up in China’s gadget shops real soon.

[Via The MP3 Players]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: Gaming

If you’ve been looking for a hugemongous NES to match with your 8-foot NES controller — and happen to have around 400 pounds of wood just lying around — you’re in luck, since the NES-obsessed operator of the National Game Depot is “97% finished” with a project to build just such a box. Sadly, it doesn’t look like this 8-foot x 3-foot x 3-foot monstrosity is going to be operational. Right now it’s destined as this guy’s entertainment center, since his original plan to use it as a bed was a bit too creep-o. There’s also no word if our ancient methods of blowing inside and bopping the top of the unit will lend any magic to its workability, but it’s always nice to have a place to store a few discarded koopa shells and 1UP ’shrooms all the same, and we suppose a TV or two couldn’t hurt anything.

[Via MAKE]

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Gaming, Portable Audio, Portable Video

It won’t give you as many retro-gaming options as the GP2X, but if you’re satisfied with a little classic NES action as a break from your daily grind, Odna’s upcoming VX737 PMP looks like it should suit you just fine. Of course in addition to emulating that massive library of 8-bit goodness, the PMP will also handle MP3, OGG, FLAC, and WAV audio, as well as AVI, MPEG-4 SP, XviD, and DivX video, which you can view on the player’s 2.5-inch QVGA screen. What’s more, it appears that Odna’s “inspiration” knows no bounds, with the VX737 sporting a curiously familiar menu system so you’ll feel right at home (check after the break). On the storage tip, you’ll get 512MB built-in, though there’s no mention of an SD slot or other means of expansion; there’s also no word on pricing or availability, but as with oh so many of these foreign products, it seems safe to assume that we won’t be seeing this reaching our shores anytime soon, lest they get their asses sued by a tag team of Sony and Nintendo.

[Via Anything But iPod]

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

The Pong Dress, created by a pair of Austrian artists, smacks of something that their German-speaking bretheren at the Chaos Computer Club might concoct — but the Vienna-based Ludic Society beat ‘em to it. Max Moswitzer and Margarete Jahrmann combined a dress with a 5 x 7 inch screen to play a a game of Pong on the wearer’s body. The joysticks are quite the coup de grâce, however: dueling old-skool NES controllers, plugged in at hip level. How do you keep track of the score, you ask? The scoreboard can be found chest-high. (Don’t blame us, we didn’t design it.) The dress is now on display at the Pong Mythos exhibition in Leipzig, Germany — we assume with Moswitzer wearing a stuffed bra to go with it.

[Via networked_performance]

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Filed under: Handsets, Peripherals

While mobile companies are doing their best to make cellphones as sleek and futuristic as possible, retro junkies keep taking them apart and turning them into ironic, yet functional, pieces of art like these. The first mod, from Grooveking.com, makes an old Motorolla DynaTAC 8000X or “Zack Morris phone” into a Bluetooth headset, that’ll get 8-times the juice of a normal battery. The second project, from DIYHappy.com, takes an old NES controller (which has already gotten the Bluetooth treatment in the past) and fills it with the guts of a Nokia 3200 - yes, the American Idol phone. You need a little technical know-how to make these for yourself, but after you get the hang of it, all of your gadgets might end up crammed into NES controllers. Sadly, the Nokia 3200 doesn’t have Bluetooth so you won’t be able to use these two devices together, but we look forward to the future when our Xbox 360 controllers and Treos are turned into seemlessly-integrated retro kitsch.

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Filed under: Gaming

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