The most amazing Nintendo hardware mods

The sound of chip

There’s something undeniably cool about bleepy chipsound music, and as powerful as modern synths and emulators may be, the only way to get that truly authentic retro tone is to use the original 8-bit hardware.

The NES, with its mono sound output, wasn’t exactly designed for high-quality audio, but it’s possible to fix some of its problems. This particular audiophile NES (below) was made by musician and circuit-bender Will Goodden. Joey Mariano, aka chipsound artist Animal Style, sells Game Boys (above) modified for live performance. All the buttons are hooked up to pedals and the Game Boy is mounted on a mic stand, leaving your hands free to play guitar.

Kotomi’s stuff

French modder Kotomi built up quite a reputation for arty and slightly random projects including an NES that looks like a PS2, an NES that looks like a Wii, and probably the sleekest portable SNES anyone has created so far.

Remote modding

The humble Wii remote has been subject to hundreds of software-based ‘mods’. With the correct drivers, any bluetooth device, from a PC to a mobile phone, can communicate with remotes and Nunchuks, leading to some very creative applications that Nintendo probably never thought of when they were designing the controller.

Remote mods we’ve seen range from simple stuff like controlling Half-Life 2 on a PC to more bizarre inventions such as 3D holography, robot arms and lawnmowers. One man’s work on a head-tracking virtual reality display earned him eight million hits on YouTube and a job at Microsoft, building similar functionality into the Natal camera gizmo for Xbox 360.

Famicom DS

Your painting skills will have to be of a high standard to come up with something this slick. Even after you’ve created your design, it takes a lot of effort to clearcoat it and buff it up to a professional finish, but just look at the results. This has to be worth a few weekends of any modder’s time.

May 4, 2010