Think your iPhone is the most beautifully designed portable gaming console? Think again.
I’ve owned a lot of game consoles in my life, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the GameBoy Advance SP. It was Nintendo’s first clamshell console design – a form factor since embraced by the Nintendo DS and 3DS consoles – but it was just perfect. It felt great in the hand, it looked cute, and it had a fantastic library of games that still hold up.
I don’t have a GBA SP anymore, but here’s something even better: a beautiful handheld wooden emulator made of walnut that plays original GameBoy Advance games.
Designed by Love Hultén, a Swedish artist who marries classic furniture design with modern computers, the PE358 is a pocket-size portable game system inspired by the GameBoy Advance SP.
Crafted out of solid walnut, it doesn’t use “real” GBA hardware, but instead runs on a Raspberry Pi A+ microcomputer, which makes it fast enough to emulate original GameBoy, GameBoy Advance and Nintendo Entertainment System games.
Photo: Love Hultén
Honestly, it’s just gorgeous. Better yet, while Hultén usually designs one-off art pieces, he told Gizmodo that this one actually might end up being mass-produced and going on sale.
When that happens, I’m going to be the first one in line.
Source: Love Hultén
Via: Gizmodo
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
2 responses to “GameBoy Advance: Mad Men edition”
Very cool, but original hardware or at least the capacity to play carts would’ve been more in line with the retro aesthetics.
Not sure why anyone hasn’t pointed this out yet… Those games are all original NES games, not Game Boy Advance titles….