Merry Christmas!

This electronic Christmas tree fashioned in the likeness of a Pac-Man map, complete with Pac Man, power pellets and ghosts, shows the Spanish know what they're doing when it comes to the holidays. Currently in downtown Madrid, the tree not only features all the elements of the game, but Pac-Man and his nemeses are partially animated, shifting back and forth in place.  Original post from gizmodo-kaokensho

The Real Game Boy Advance

It may look like an original Game Boy on the outside. But this modified Game Boy’s insides have been replaced with parts from a gutted Game Boy Advance SP, which means that it can play all Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance titles. The creator, CRTdrone, says that more details are on the way with photographs of the entire process. We’re looking forward to seeing how he put it all together.
Originally posted on Engadget-kaokensho

Star Wars vs. Nintendo

I remember buying Star Wars and Star Trek <gasp> model kits and creating my own starcrafts'.  I still think about restarting that hobby to this day.  Well this fellow blogger has found an excellent cross pollination of Super Nintendo and iconic Star Wars vehicles.  Check out this post by Mike for his review of Custom N64 Tie Fighter Mk II and SNES Snow Speeder.

-kaokensho

Retrode

The Retrode (formerly: snega2usb) is an easy to use USB adapter for *Super Nintendo / *Super Famicom and *SEGA Mega Drive / *Genesis game cartridges. Play your favorite 16-bit games – legally! – on your PC, smartphone, laptop, network router, *Wii, or *Pandora. There is a huge number of emulators for virtually all existing systems, and the Retrode is the link that enables them to load the ROM data straight from the cartridge. Of course, the savegame RAM on many *SNES cartridges can also be read and written.

What’s needed?

• Game cartridges, and lots of them
• Emulators for SNES/SFC and Genesis/Mega Drive: SNES9x, ZSNES, Gens, Fusion, …
• A computer with a USB port, running any of the above (Windows/Linux/MacOS/*NIX)

The Retrode is for you if…

• you like playing legacy video games on your PC, and doing so legally
• you want to preserve your investment in these games, even after all hardware has expired
• you want to back up your game progress, e.g. before replacing the cartridge battery
• you like emulator cheats, but prefer to finish the boss on the real console
• you simply think it’s cool to plug huge game cartridges into a PDA or cell phone

The Retrode is not for you if… you don’t see the difference between making private backup copies of games that you own, and downloading 10,000 ROMs from the internets.

This is ripped straight from their homepage.  After searching around a bit I found that most people were pleased with the product in that it delivered as intended. The Retrode II is also in production as we speak! -kaokensho

iCast

The iCast is a Sega Dreamcast combined with an iMac (with the CRT screen converted to LCD). Plug in the controllers on the front of the machine and you’re good to go for a little Jet Grind Radioor Rez. And look, even the controller matches.  Not impressed yet? No matter how beautiful (or in this case, large) a gaming console, it an almost always be improved upon in some way. In this particular case, the marriage of two classics has produced one harmonious construction that provides everything you need to get your Dreamcast on… and it’s all packaged up like an iMac.  -kaokensho