Hasta La Gadget!

Do you remember growing up in the 1980s and the early 1990s? The Nintendo NES did take the world by storm, where it popularized the home videogame console genre, sending the Atari 2600 into the consumer electronics retirement home along the way. One thing about the NES was its library of games that definitely appealed to a wide range of gamers, and it opened up the imaginations of millions of kids, too. When the SNES arrived on the scene to succeed where the NES left off, Sega’s Genesis has delivered 16-bit gaming goodness for quite some time already, and with the $54.99 Genesis Arcade Ultimate Portable Console, you can roll back the years by enjoying 80 pre-loaded games right out of the box.

The Genesis Arcade Ultimate Portable Console comes with TV-Out capability, not to mention an internal battery that delivers anywhere from 4 to 6 hours of gameplay on a full charge. This means you can just tote around this little puppy without worrying about removing those mint looking carts from your video game collection at home. Some of the games include Altered Beast, the Golden Axe trilogy, and Sonic the Hedgehog I and II, just to mention a few. Games will be played off the SD memory card, and you can once again settle the score with your mate over a round of Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition or Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers.
[ Genesis Arcade Ultimate Portable Console copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

LEGO creations never cease to amaze me. You can do so much with these little plastic bricks. Is there anything they can’t do? Is there anything they can’t replicate? LEGO is all powerful!

This has to be one of the neatest LEGO creations that I have seen in some time. It’s an amazing reproduction of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System, done up in stunning detail by weltall1028. It has the power button, the reset button, the A/V hookups. It’s all here. It even lights up when powered on.

The detail is so nice that you wonder if it can actually play games. It obviously can’t, but it makes you wonder.

[Flickr via Neatorama]

Microsoft has shown off the handiwork of its 3D prototyping for the Xbox One, revealing the stack of rapid-prototyping samples the company went through as it refined the next-gen console’s design. Showing off the 3D prints at the Worldwide Partner Conference 2013 this week, Microsoft discussed its more than 200 mock-ups of the Xbox One controller and “dozens and dozens” of core hardware ideas, as it turned to the latest in prototyping to streamline the process.

“We found that, when people put these [controller designs] in their hands, [they] could tell the difference between a 10th of a millimeter in size” Xbox creative director Carl Ledbetter told Polygon. The team of roughly thirty people started by sketching out possibilities then sent them to the in-house model shop next door, where physical versions of the designs could be created.

The models, Ledbetter says, were then deployed into real-world settings, to see how well they worked. Meanwhile, the engineers tested for exactly how practical they would be, and whether they would accommodate the internal hardware for the Xbox One required.

Some of the designs are more outlandish than others. Although the angular shapes that made it through to the production Xbox One are clear in many of the prototypes, Microsoft’s team also flirted with curves, Stealth Bomber-style planes, and even a suspended “X” design.

The main goal, though, was to get something that worked under the TV and wasn’t too distracting. “How do we make the font look high quality,” Ledbetter said of one of the challenges, “just like the high definition televisions in people’s living rooms?”

Some of the production processes Microsoft settled on are surprisingly advanced. For instance, the colored buttons on the Xbox One controller are injection-inserted to keep them vivid, while two different types of motor are used for rumble effects and completely new springing has been introduced for the sticks compared to the Xbox 360 pad.

Xbox One prototypes show Microsoft’s outlandish 3D printing journey is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Xbox is a household name today, but a recently unearthed EDGE interview with Seamus Blackley has revealed that this name almost didn’t make the early cut. Microsoft asked Blackley’s team for a name change due to legal reasons, and it suggested a wave of cringe-worthy acronyms that included MARZ (Microsoft Active Reality Zone) and VERV (Virtual Entertainment & Reality Venture). We all know who won the debate, but it’s entertaining to think of what might have been. Check the full list of rejected names at the source link — and be glad that you’re not lining up to buy the latest Halo game for your Microsoft Entertainment & Gaming Attendant.

[Image credit: Evan-Amos, Wikipedia]

Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft

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Source: EDGE

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