Retro - SlashGear

‘retro’ Stories

Motoart retro fighter-jet desk chair

Chris Davies, Jul 2nd 2009 Discuss [0]

As someone in the market for a new desk chair, I'm now hopelessly in love with these Motoart seats. Reclaimed from authentic, Vietnam-era fighter jets and bombers, the ejector seats are freshly padded, newly upholstered and given aluminum bases with double-wheel casters. Read The Full Story

Chess Set for Tesla: custom vacuum tube chess set

Chris Davies, Jun 29th 2009 Discuss [0]

Created by Paul Fryer last year, this "Chess Set for Tesla" takes 32 working vacuum tubes and turns them into chess pieces. Each tube slots into a port on the custom board, lighting up to show their identity via a glowing icon on the top. Read The Full Story

Palm Pre runs Doom [Video]

Chris Davies, Jun 12th 2009 Discuss [1]

A platform can't really be taken seriously until it runs Doom, and so we're glad to report that Palm's webOS has graduated with (almost) flying colors. Software tinkerer Sargun has managed to port the classic game to the Palm Pre, and it carries across "most of the functionality" of the original onto the new smartphone. To do so, Sargun used the open-source version of Doom, PRDoom, which uses SDL for its rendering backend. That meant he had to rework the game to use webOS' DirectFB graphics library, something which sounds difficult but which Sargun describes as "actually fairly trivial". Video demo after the cut Read The Full Story

Pocket Retro Game Emulator keeps it old school

Brenda Stokes, Jun 4th 2009 Discuss [0]

If you're a lover of older games, then you'll love this new Pocket Retro Game Emulator from ThinkGeek. This gaming device is completely portable and lets you relive the glory days of NES and Sega Genesis in style. Read The Full Story

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 ported to iPhone?

Chris Davies, May 13th 2009 Discuss [0]

It looks like Myst was just the start of iconic games being ported to the iPhone and iPod touch. A video apparently demonstrating Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 being played on the iPhone has hit YouTube, and while the game might be nine years old from its original launch, it looks pretty darned impressive on the Apple handset. Video demo after the cut Read The Full Story

Super Mario Bros controlled by sound & music

Chris Davies, May 13th 2009 Discuss [0]

People like gaming, and people like music - how about mixing that up? We're not talking about anything so boringly sensible as Guitar Hero or Rock Band; no, we want classic Super Mario Bros controlled by clapping, strumming and singing. That's exactly what artists and tinkerers Marc Sciglimpaglia and Phoenix Toews came up with. Video demo after the cut Read The Full Story

PXP-900 retro gaming with a familiar face

Chris Davies, Apr 29th 2009 Discuss [1]

From a mockup to a mockery, here's one of the more blatant gaming rip-offs we've seen in recent months. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Sony PSP, this PXP-900 may borrow the styling but it doesn't bother with the titles: instead, it plays retro gaming ROMs. Read The Full Story

Commodore 64 Laptop mod: Ben Heck strikes again

Chris Davies, Apr 6th 2009 Discuss [0]

Ben Heck has been at it again, this time taking a Commodore 64 and transforming it into a laptop that "looked exactly like a computer from the early 80's, yet in a new form." As well as fully-functional C64 hardware, the laptop has a 15-inch screen, original keyboard and even a separate sub-screen for memory status. More photos and video of the C64 laptop after the cut Read The Full Story

Tomy Space-Invaders Piggy Bank video demo

Chris Davies, Apr 3rd 2009 Discuss [0]

The Space Invaders Piggy-Bank was one of the more recent gadgets to make us wail at not living in Japan, and just to rub it in the Akihabara team have been playing with one. Made by Takara Tomy, the 1/6th scale table has a working game built into its lid, triggered by feeding it coins. Video demo after the cut Read The Full Story

DIY Dreamcast Tablet [Video]

Chris Davies, Mar 31st 2009 Discuss [1]

Take the guts of a Sega Dreamcast, fashion an ejecting GD-Drive mechanism and stuff it all into a 15-inch monitor housing, and you may end up with this: the Dreamcast Tablet. Maker WERD of the Benheck forums also stuffed some batteries in there too, meaning the console is now good for up to 3.5hrs of standalone runtime. Video demo after the cut Read The Full Story

GAME-800 PMP & retro game emulator

Chris Davies, Mar 31st 2009 Discuss [0]

Chubby, lurid and with a definitely Apple-inspired UI, the GAME-800 PMP could easily be dismissed as yet another Chinese knock-off. In doing that, though, you'd be missing out on some retro gaming action, as this "MP5 Player" not only has video and audio playback but an emulator for NES, Famicom, GameBoy, GameBoy Color and Sega Mega Drive games. Read The Full Story

NES Advantage modded into Xbox 360 controller

Chris Davies, Mar 30th 2009 Discuss [0]

There's something about taking retro hardware and hiding modern gadgets inside that appeals to a certain type of mod-happy geek. Today's example takes the venerable NES Advantage arcade controller and stuffs the guts of an Xbox 360 wireless controller inside. Video demo after the cut Read The Full Story