Hasta La Gadget!

This is the Stealth, and arcade emulation cabinet for anyone whose significant other won’t allow then to have an arcade emulation cabinet. It comes in gorgeously glossy black or white finishes, packs 60 retro games and sits in the middle of your living room looking more like a piece of high-end furniture than the gaming rig that it is.

The screen is an LCD panel, with a rather poor 89º viewing angle, and somewhere inside is a “Space” bass speaker, to make sure those 8-bit bloops and tweets really thump.

There are two problems I can see. One is the lack of anywhere to safely stow a couple of pints of beer as you play. The second is the price. Even if you can get the design to pass the Spousal Approval Test, the $3,300 on the ticket might ruin things before you begin. Game over.

Stealth product page [Arcade Tables via Engadget]

See Also:

• Retro Stick-On Joystick Turns iPad into Arcade Machine
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Fujifilm’s hot, retro-tastic X100 has finally gotten a U.S launch date, a price, and a proper spec sheet. The 12.3MP camera will be available in March for $1,200.

We already know about the fancy new hybrid viewfinder, which works as a big, bright optical finder and can also be flipped into electronic mode, or used to overlay information onto the optical view. Also familiar is the fixed, non-changeable 23mm (25mm-equivalent) ƒ2 lens and the big APS-C sensor. So lets get on to the meat of this announcement – the numbers:

ISO runs from ISO 200 to ISO 6400, with extended (read: noisy) settings of ISO 100 and ISO 12,800. The viewfinder sports a massive 1,440,000-dots, and the RAW capture can be tweaked in-camera to mimic Fujifilm’s only film-stocks, including Velvia, PROVIA and ASTIA, as well as several color “filters” for use when shooting in black & white.

The X100 has up to 49 focussing points (or less, depending on the settings you choose), movie-mode gives 720p footage, allows shooting in aperture priority and can send video out via an HDMI port.

Finally, you get various types of bracketing, including ISO and even film-simulation bracketing, and a panorama mode, plus accessories: a leather case, lens-hood and adapter ring and flashes (two models, with guide numbers of 20 and 42).

The mix of features looks to be about right, balanced between consumer-friendly gimmicks and full-on-manual controls. We’ll only know for sure how well it works when we get our hands on one. Sadly, even the press will have to wait until March to get hold of one.

X100 press release [Fujifilm]

See Also:

• So Hot: Fujifilm X100 Mixes Optical and Electronic Viewfinder in …
• Fujifilm Posts New Details of X100 Hybrid Viewfinder
• More Details of Fujifilm's Retro-Tastic X100 Revealed
• X100
• Rangefinder

If you don’t already own an iPad, you have about three months to get one before the iCade is available to retro-gaming nerds everywhere. Let’s face it, the old-school arcade games are admittedly cool looking, but they’re heavy, and extremely expensive. Thanks to the good people at ThinkGeek, you can pretend you’re living the dream.

ThinkGeek teamed up with ION and Atari to create the iCade. ION is helping in creating the arcade-style body that connects the iPad via Bluetooth. Atari will be offering a huge suite of its classic arcade games, like Asteroids.

Gearlog got some hands-on time with a prototype at CES. We learned that the buttons were far from arcade quality, but what do you expect for a product that was originally an April Fool’s Day product from ThinkGeek? The iCade is estimated to be available April 15 at ThinkGeek for $99.99. You can sign up to be e-mailed when the product is ready to purchase. Game on!

LAS VEGAS — Samson is proudly showing off its new Meteor Mic at CES. And rightly so: the thing looks stunning, with chrome-plated retro-styling and cool, fold out tripod legs.

The USB microphone is designed for podcasting, and features a 25mm diaphragm, a cardioid pickup pattern and a stereo one-eighth-inch headphone jack for monitoring. It’s also driverless, showing up natively as a USB audio device. That means you can plug it onto an iPad via Apple’s camera connection kit and it will just work.

I actually have a different Samson mic, and while I don’t use it much, it sounds great – a hell of a lot better than the iPad’s built-in mic. If the Meteor Mic sounds as good as that one, it could prove to be very popular for budget podcast setups, especially at a price of $100. Available April.

Meteor Mic [Samson. Thanks, Mark!]

See Also:

• Microphone
• Touch-4-VoIP: Microphone For iPod Touch Now Available
• Super-Microphone Picks Out Single Voice in a Crowded Stadium …
• Why Does the New Kindle Have A Microphone?

The iPhone is already the spiritual successor to the Polaroid, able to deliver great results, instantly. So instead of wishing that whichever company currently owns the Polaroid brand-name would just make a great new camera already, why not just make your iPhone look like the iconic Land Camera?

Buy this skin, designed by Canada-based Ryan Astle, and you can do just that. The reusable plastic stickers come in a pack of two – one big one for the back, so the subject of your photo can see how retro-serious you are about your snaps, and a little sticker for the bottom panel on the front, adding a fake button on either side of the home button.

Of course, the Polaroid name itself isn’t mentioned, because this might distract Polaroid’s current owner from churning out cynical cash-in crap for long enough for a visit to court. There’s really no doubting what the design is “inspired” by, though, and it can be yours for just $15. The skin will fit any iPhone model, not just the current one.

Photoroid Skin [Infectious / Ryan Astle via Giz]

See Also:

• Polaroid Lives! New Camera Uses Real Instant Film
• Rebel Film Developers Give New Hope to Polaroid Fans
• New, Vintage Polaroid Cameras Sell Out in Hours
• ShakeIt Brings Polaroid Pictures to the iPhone
• Beautiful Polaroid Camera Sculpted in Lego