Redditor Crafts Steampunk NES

Marshall Honorof

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Feb 16, 2011
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Redditor Crafts Steampunk NES


Finally, a gaming console exists worthy of Queen Victoria herself!

When you think "retrogaming," you probably think back to the gems (and sometimes the dubious stinkers) of the 1980s and 1990s. Reddit user Andrew5785, however, thought back a little earlier - specifically, about 100 years earlier. In order to confer a love of old-school gaming in his nephew, this Redditor took a top-loading NES model and remade it into a steampunk work of art that would look at home in any sci-fi take on Victorian London.

Aside from the unconventional casing, the steampunk NES is just a functional console, still chugging away after all these years. Andrew5785 used a variety of parts, including copper, aluminum, plumbing equipment, and rivets in order to give the whole device a distinctly clockwork feel. The whole device exudes a pleasant silvery-copper color scheme with all the traditional NES trappings, including a light to indicate whether the system is on or off, and two controller ports.

At present, Andrew5785 does not have any plans to create more of these steampunk novelties, but he did provide a fairly comprehensive procedural [http://imgur.com/a/yVhog] if you want to try it yourself. Just think: You, too, could know just what it would feel like to trade a few rounds of Punch-Out!! with Queen Victoria aboard her royal zeppelin equipped with Gatling guns. Alternatively, you could just show it off to your friends and family, but where's the fun in that?

Source: Geek.com [http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/10js4i/steampunk_nintendo_built_this_for_my_nephew_that/]

Image: Imgur [http://imgur.com/a/yVhog]

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dragongit

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Feb 22, 2011
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The Fonsz said:
I got first
Hope you enjoy your first ban too.

As for the device. Pretty awesome. I wonder if you need 50 pounds of coal to play world 1-1 mario.
 

Tanis

The Last Albino
Aug 30, 2010
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Eh, okay then...

I don't really care for these kinds of mods unless they do something 'beyond looking pretty'.

It'd be cool if it had some kind of moving parts, or whatever.
 

NvrPhazed

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Dec 8, 2010
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Man this thread was so misleading it pissed me off. I don't consider something mechanical steampunk unless, it runs on steam energy. Topic should be renamed Guy remodles NES to look steampunk, or Redditor crafts a steampunk-like NES.

PS note look steampunk not is steampunk.

Edited for clarification.
 

Moontouched-Moogle

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Nov 17, 2009
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Yeah, I was disappointed too. It's just a fancy case for an NES. Whoop de doo. Now, if it actually ran on steam power, like that one steam-powered record player that was shown here a while back, that'd be pretty cool.
 

Evil Smurf

Admin of Catoholics Anonymous
Nov 11, 2011
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Moontouched-Moogle said:
Yeah, I was disappointed too. It's just a fancy case for an NES. Whoop de doo. Now, if it actually ran on steam power, like that one steam-powered record player that was shown here a while back, that'd be pretty cool.
you can get emulating machines from thinkgeek that play the games perfectly if you have lost the console
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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poiumty said:
And here I thought he managed to make transistors out of old cogs and steampowered hydraulics. And then linked them together in a giant-ass contraption that can run NES games at full power.

A man can dream, I guess.
I had similar (though not identical) thoughts. I was able to deduce what the article was about, but honestly I'm finding a lot of this kind of stuff irritating now that everyone is doing it. Steampunk was cool when it was more on the fringes, nowadays it seems like everyone is taking a bunch of metal junk to make steampunk looking versions of everything. It was cool for a while, but it's actually getting to the point where not only do you have stuff like this happening more and more frequently, but you can walk into a lot of gift stores and they will have steampunk sections.

To really impress me at this point someone would have to do pretty much what you mention, actually engage in some retro engineering. If someone could actually make a steam powered system that could generate enough electricity to run a Nintendo (to be fair, your not going to do circuit boards or anything with what amounts to mechanical steampunk tech, but you could make a power system), then that would be cool. What this guy did was pretty much create a custom case, and it's only noteworthy because he made it steampunk, where if he had say just glued a bunch of model airplane parts on it, or airbrushed an actual portrait of Queen Victoria on the side, nobody would have bothered to mention it on a site like this.

On a side note, I'd also like to see some real steampunk (as opposed to what is the commonly viewed version that replaced it). Real Steampunk is VERY rare as it's hard to point fingers at more than a scant few examples. That being the blending of the retro-sci-fi with 80s fashion when the US punk movement was at it's height. Rather than "what if Jules Verne like technology was everywhere" it was kind of like "What if Jules Verne Technology interpeted by a blowtorch artist dominated a world where everyone wore punked out versions of victorian costumes". So instead of a "proper" gentleman you might see some guy walking around wearing an Edwardian styled suit in white and black zebra stripes, giant chrome skulls with spikes coming out of the eyes for epaulets, a monocle that looks like he stole it from a Borg from Star Trek, and a 2' tall red white and blue liberty spike mohawk. The point being that "Steampunk" today has become entirely retro-science fiction, and that's cool, but there is nothing Punk about it. Sid Vicious wouldn't remotely fit into 99% of the Steampunk scenes you see today, and that's just wrong when you use the term "punk". :)
 

Not G. Ivingname

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Nov 18, 2009
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This really isn't that hard to do. As long as the computer components can fit in the casing you made, and you have holes big enough for the power cord/controller ports, it just require to pop open the NES and taking out everything needed.
 

Shinsei-J

Prunus Girl is best girl!
Apr 28, 2011
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Really not as well done as most but it's still pretty cool I guess.
It's just not that great.
 

Snotnarok

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Nov 17, 2008
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Very pretty mod, it'd just be nice to see a console that ISN'T a NES or SNES getting a fabulous mod for once.
 

Proverbial Jon

Not evil, just mildly malevolent
Nov 10, 2009
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Richard A. Kiernan said:
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=266

The first comic here sums up my thought process when it comes to "steampunk" designs which don't go for steampunk technology as well. It's not all that inventive to put a lot of copper piping onto an electronic device.
That comic is brilliant! I often wonder what Brunel would think of today's technology.

It is curious that we seem so enamoured by the aesthetic of Victorian industry when the designs were purely functional; all elegance was more or less just a side effect. Certainly the great icons of industry had a great pride in the designs of their work but at the time they were seen as great technical achievements rather than works of art.
 

insanelich

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Sep 3, 2008
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I came here just to post that Hark, A Vagrant comic.

It's not Steampunk when the piping and cogs do nothing. In fact, it's still not Steampunk when the piping and cogs DO do something - you aren't allowed to use modern power, either.