Arcade-style control schemes are practically a must for some gamers, even outside of fighting games. This design merges a Gameboy Advance SP with that arcade-like input. It’s not really the prettiest of designs, but after OhGizmo! reported it, we simply had to share. This setup looks more like a modded Donkey Konga peripheral with its drum-like extensions made of dark wood. Unfortunately, the mixture of wood with electronics doesn’t so much add any sort of steampunk or similar aesthetic to it, and instead makes it look like something from the ’70s or ’80s. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you’re going to go retro, you might as well go full retro like an Arcade Cocktail Table.
It’s a pretty neat design regardless, the “drums” lifting the GBA SP a few inches off whatever surface you place the device on. The joystick is what you’d expect from an arcade game, and the four buttons are nice and chunky, begging to be pressed. The seller, Toy and TV Games, is asking $399 for it, and while one can respect that quite a bit of time no doubt went into crafting this, it’s not exactly the Mini Game Boy Arcade or the Game Boy iPod Mod. Implementing the actual GBA SP into the design is interesting, but one could easily think of ways in which something like this could have been improved. Keeping the SP’s innards and replacing the screen with something at least 6″, would help justify the bulk of the arcade tabletop. Leaning down to peer into the portable’s screen while mashing buttons and waggling the joystick off to the sides, however, is awkward at best. Here’s hoping that in the future, the designer(s) of this neat idea will expand further and implement some much-needed changes to justify the steep price tag.
