The fun of the Nintendo Entertainment System and it’s iconic controller in the palms of your hands; playable at home and on the road – now that’s playing with power!
Nintendo really was onto something when they made the NES Gamepad – oh and the console itself wasn’t too shabby either. The Gamepad was, perhaps, the perfect trio of form, size, and button responsiveness ever put into a videogame controller of that 8-bit era. What else could it need really… besides maybe the ability to play NES games on the go?
Because that’s exactly what one Sharon Smith did with her incredible HandyNES, a self-made portable NES designed with the NES Gamepad in mind. Not built inside of one as you might preclude, although I can see how you can get easily fooled – it’s down right boss.
After one of her commissioned portable NES mods ran into a string of hardware issues, Sharon decided to flip the script and work out a new idea. The result is a rather cool mod that fuses both a solid retro look – one Nintendo has used several times for special edition hardware (I’m looking at you NES-styled Nintendo DS) – and a dependable mobile system to play the cartridge likes of Castlevania, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda.
The HandyNES features a 3.5” LCD screen, and a rechargeable 3.7v li-ion 1500 mAh battery, which is housed in a custom-built portable that only weighs one flippin’ pound. That doesn’t knock off the current lightweight champ – the Game Boy Micro coming in at 2.8 oz – but it’s darn near amazing the amount of engineering in a relatively tiny package.
Plus, the HandyNES is built around one of the best controllers ever created for a gaming platform, so that automatically catapults it into god mode. So, go ahead and check it out in action below, along with a brief demo by Sharon using the HandyNES’s A/V-out features that can allow it to connect to a TV and enjoy the portable in a suitable, full-sized manner.
Looks great. And you can find more awesome mods like this one, Neon Genesis Evangelion hiking boots, and a MC Escher piece made from LEGOs right here on Walyou.
