Retro Gadgets

What I like about the Joytron Singibigi is that it is very much old school. Not only does it bring back the days when video game controllers were actual joysticks, and buttons were concave and very big, but it brings back the wooden look.

Have you ever noticed that things made of wood are generally considered antique? I’m not talking about that Wal-Mart faux wood furniture which is nothing more than pulp with a plastic sticker over it, real nice solid wood.

It was about time that someone took that look and applied it to video games. I guess since video games took place in the age of plastic, we don’t ever consider ever giving them a wood finish.

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What a great idea. This is a sofa which as a pool table built into it hideabed style. Okay, actually, it’s a snooker table, but still. What an ideal addition to an apartment/mancave. According to Craziest Gadgets the couch is about 6 foot long and apparently, it’s quite popular in the UK where they’re fairly cheap.

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With the new Star Trek movie finally out, fans are showing their geeky colors a bit more proudly.  Not that they were ever really hidden to begin with, but now manufacturers are coming out with new fun gear.  For those that like to run around in their blue pajamas costumes and try to look as authentic as possible, there is a new recreation coming out.  This Tricorder is the one from the original Star Trek series, which means it’ll have a nice vintage look to it.

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Video gamers have this thing about retro games, and more often than not, they don’t mind going back to the good old days once in a while and indulge in a little bit of nostalgia, where pixelated graphics ruled the day and the gameplay experience coupled with an overactive imagination proved to work better than just flashy graphics. For those who missed out on Sega’s heydays as a home console manufacturer, here’s the Sega Mega Drive Twin Player Console that allows you to go through a bunch of 16-bit classics.

Simply plug it into the telly and you’re away. It might be smaller than the original but the Sega Mega Drive Twin Player Console is preloaded with 15 Sega licensed games, including Sonic and Knuckles, Alex Kidd, Golden Axe and many more. Better still you can bung in all those old Mega Drive and Genesis cartridges that have been languishing in the loft. Indeed, this nifty region-muncher doesn’t care where your games originated.

You will be able to bring home the Sega Mega Drive Twin Player Console for just £39.95 – a small price to pay for those glorious moments of yore without having to contend with the taint of downloading illegal ROMs.

I can’t help but think that Sanyo’s newest digital phone frame, the ALBO, sounds like a major brand of dog food. As far as I know, ALBO isn’t a fancy acronym for something, but it is one of the coolest digital picture frames that I have ever seen. Considering that there is currently a huge market for digital picture frames now, that is saying something.

The seven-inch LCD frame has one of the most interesting designs, straight out of a science-fiction TV show’s prediction of what television would look like in the future. Just look at the design, and that last sentence will make sense.

As you can see from the photo, it is possible to turn the screen on a swivel for various formats. You can see them in slideshow format with a quick turn, and the photo frame has some other features and effects.

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I miss the age of the jukebox. I’m not old enough to remember the days when a real Fonz would hit a juke to play tunes that we now call oldies, but I do remember seeing jukeboxes in pizza parlors in the seventies and eighties. They were slowly dying out by that time, and so they had a Bauhaus form-follows-function look to them. They never regained that look from the jukes of that bygone era.

For those of you who miss that gaudy look of the jukebox from the 1950s, you might want to save up some money (a lot of it) and get the Xi, a jukebox designed to play tracks from the iPod.

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If you have a thing for vintage technology, these coasters are a great way to show your love for old LP records.  Granted you could just pick up your own favorite records from the local thrift shop, that is if you don’t have your own already.  However, having a cold drink, dripping with condensation will end up damaging the label on the top.  These particular records have been laminated on both sides to prevent that from happening.  Now if you happen to find a way to do the laminating yourself, it’d definitely be more fun to just pick out your own LP records.

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One Etsy seller has a cute and definitely eco friendly idea to make use of those old records.  The seller artyfakt takes the recycled records and sleeves and creates a box for CDs.  Which almost seems a bit late.  Isn’t it time that we start making holders for our USB drives out of old CD cases?  Either way, if you’re for reusing old items, then this little box would likely work well for more than CDs.  I think anymore I own all of four actual CDs.  To which there isn’t a case for a single one, I just have a book for them.  It just seems a bit ridiculous to have the plastic cases sitting around when  book takes up so much less room.

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