Hardware add-ons for the 16bit era – Retro Insight

Anyone who’s a member of one of the MyMedia game site may have noticed that I’ve been posting retrospective articles on a fortnightly basis and just today the most recent article was posted and it covers the hardware add-ons for the fourth generation of consoles AKA the 16bit era.
mywii.com.au
myps3.com.au
myds.com.au
mypsp.com.au
my360.com.au
Click anyone of the above links to check out this week’s Retrospective article.
Well I grew up watching the 16bit console come to light with great interest and I ended up owning both a Sega Megadrive and Super Nintendo, and no I wasn’t some spoiled kid I busted my ass doing crap work for local factories as a kid to fund my gaming hobbies.
See I used to purchase a lot of gaming mags to keep my self up to date with what’s out and what’s on its way. Mind you this was an expensive method of information gathering but it was our only decent information source back then, thinking back now it just makes me say; “thank you Internet”. I used to sit there flicking through mags dreaming about all the cool stuff sprawled across the pages and make myself a virtual shopping list. When I first heard about the Sega Mega CD I just had to have one, it was like; “games on CD they have to be awesome” and to make the Mega CD even more desirable the first game I sampled was Sonic CD which even to this day I think is one of the best Sonic games ever created. I remember one time I stood up for hours in Toys r Us playing the display model until I finished the game…then I got booted out for loitering. Sonic CD was one of many fond gaming moments and this one game alone basically sold me on the Mega CD and the time came when I finally got enough coin to buy my own, mind you it was a second hand one but I wasn’t complaining. I did start complaining when I began to explore the rest of the Mega CD library. 90 percent of the games sucked balls and I only endured them to get my moneys worth. There was nothing but rubbish FMV games and Megadrive ports believe me I was very disappointed and later on my Mega CD only got used to play Sonic CD and music CDs. Live and learn I guess, never get to excided over things you see in a magazine as pictures don’t portray the whole story.

The Sega 32X also caught my interest, back then I though the idea of turning my 16bit Megadrive into a 32bit gaming console was the best idea ever and I just couldn’t wait to get it and play the Virtua series and Doom and on that there were games that were made that required both system add-ons to work. My thinking back then; “If a game requires a Megadrive + Mega CD + the 32X it must be beyond awesome why else would they need all that hardware for?”. I’m glad I came back to reality and my desire to get the Sega Saturn put me off from buying a 32X. It ended up as a dismal failure anyhow and bombed something shocking. Tody I still want to get one because it’s one thing I want to add to my Sega collection. Who knows maybe I’ll snag one on ebay some day but PAL versions are hard to come by and a great deal of them are damaged thanks to the 32X crappy design.

As for the Super Nintendo add-ons I was very jealous of the Japanese because they were the only ones to get Satellaview. I didn’t know much about the system back then so researching and writing about it was very interesting for me as it answered a few questions I had when I first saw it in a magazine many years ago. If you managed to get one now that had some games downloaded onto it I’m sure it will be worth a lot to the right buyer. The Super Gameboy was a cool idea but I never bothered with because I was just playing the same two games which were Tetris and Mario Land and since I played them to death I had no urge to view them on a bigger screen.

Last but not least the Turbo Grafx-16 was something I wasn’t to familiar with because it never was popular in Australia and not many people bothered to import them over. I did like the idea of it have lots of Anime themed games but that was about it. Finding information about the CD add-on was tough as well.

Well there you have it a more personal note about the recent Retrospective.

Gaming Console Modifications

Here's an old article I wrote quite some time ago but I thought it may interest a few people so I decided to dig it up and post it here.

As most of have no doubt noticed people with the knowledge and the willingness have been modifying gaming console and portables, not the most recent of crazes although in my opinion one of the more interesting ones.
All you have to do is check Internet forums, galleries or even a Google search and your bound to come up with some cleaver persons personal creation, so much has been tried, from the more common case, button and light mods right down to creating a portable version of a last generation console.
So why do it? Why bother? You ask, well it would be like saying why modify a car, and being a modified car enthusiast myself, the appeal I would see from having a custom gaming system is, you have something that is truly yours, one of a kind, you can’t buy this in the stores kind of feel, and sometimes you can just look at something and think to yourself; “hmm I can make this better”, or maybe people like a challenge and can’t stop fiddling with things, there’s even been competitions run.

The Nintendo DS has been common grounds for a variation of mods, and since the introduction of the DS Lite, the original DS has been prime target most likely due to the fact the most have upgraded to the Lite.
Here are a few examples:


Original DS – Zelda case theme



Original DS – Donkey Kong game watch theme

Seems lately the DS Lite is no longer safe from modifiers, with case and light mods appearing all over the web and here’s a nicely presented Zelda themed DS Lite.

With backlit shield.

Also complimented with its own matching charging dock.

Just below is a neat lighting mod performed on a DS Lite, the LEDs are sound reactive, to see it in action check out the video.





Not just bound to cosmetic mods the Nintendo DS has received some interesting custom work, most of which seriously deviate from functionality, things like external hard drives and solar panels have been added, even a fully functional super sized DS has been created.


Original DS – with 40GB external HD



So the original DS doesn’t satisfy you for screen size requirements then check out this super sized version and prove it really works have a look at the video below.



The Nintendo Wii has also received it fair share of case mods even though it hasn’t been out for that long, but because of its cheaper price tag modifiers haven’t been discouraged.
With similar theme to the previously shown Zelda themed DS, this Zelda has been nicely done.



Wii – Zelda theme

Even the Wii-mote gets the LED treatment, with the ”A” button illuminating when switched on.


Moving up along the price scale of current generation gaming systems, the Xbox 360 has had a number of themed cases as well.
Here is a few nice examples:



xbox360 - half life mod



xbox360 - Illuminated case mod

One Xbox 360 modification that stands out is the integration of a water cooling system, this kind of cooling is usually reserved for high powered computers.


Now being the most expensive gaming system currently on the market I was quite surprised to see such a silly modification (that’s if you want to refer to it as that) performed to a PS3 a very expensive gag if you ask me or maybe this person just had access to a PS3 shell.
My apologies to PS3 fans this next video might make you cringe.





PS3 - Red case
Apart from this pictured red case PS3(white also available) there hasn't been anything very unique done to the PS3 but give it time.

Here's something I find quite fascinating, turning a current gen console into a laptop. The amount of work that would be required to make these concepts full functional is just awesome.



Wii Laptop
Don't know how you would look swinging around a Wii controller in public, but never the less it's still a cool idea and was created not to long after the release of the console.



xbox360 Laptop



xbox360 Laptop mk2

An xbox360 turned into a laptop could be quite useful as media portable media center, but I wouldn't be expecting quality battery life out of it.
One question on the minds of Sony fans is most likely "who's going turn their PS3 into a laptop?"

I guess many of us still have our older gaming systems lying around either collecting dust or stashed away for safe keeping, well if your not a collector and want to get some further use out of them apart from reliving fond memories from yesteryear why not make them into something else or even create a portable version.
Here are a few good examples:



NES – DVD player



NES – PC



NES cartridge external HD



PS2 – Portable



N64 – Portable



Atari 2600 – Portable



NES Controller – 4 post USB hub


PSP - Clear case with blue LEDs

The list of images could go on and on there has been so many cleaver creations surfacing over time, I know that some of these images have been circulating the Internet for some time and I can’t guarantee that all of these function correctly, but I thought it would be nice to see some of these modifications grouped together, and who knows maybe looking at these images and videos might have motivated someone to create their own master piece.

Written and researched by Matthew Armitage

Here comes Dr Tran

Ok a little of topic here but this is just too funny not to share, this video has been around for some time now and I've personally watched in many times and it still cracks me up. Check out the embedded video and laugh your ass off but beware there is quite a bit of mature language contained. For more Dr Tran related videos go to lonesausage.com there's a few other funny ones on the site as well but there's a few duds too.

Enjoy!!