People have turned Nintendos into toasters, doorbells, espresso machines, antiquated Palm Pilots and more.
To some people, tearing apart an old Nintendo Entertainment System is sacrilege. To a very, very closely-related group of people, merely one Internet subculture over, tearing apart an old Nintendo Entertainment System is art.
I always find NES modifications intriguing, as both a Nintendo fan AND a soldering fan. Perhaps one a little more than the other.
I’ve been collecting photos of my favorite old school Nintendo mods and inventions for a while and finally decided to dig deep and get to the 11 I’d need to put together this list. Here are 11 brilliant inventions hacked out of old school Nintendos (and accessories).
Quick note: Bravo to the Internet for not modding a Power Glove into a sex toy.
1 | NES controller doorbell
This is a fully functional wireless doorbell (you can see the video of it here). Some people in the comments lamented that every button rang the bell, meaning it didn’t require the Contra code to work. (That would’ve been theoretically cool but devastating for trying to receive FedEx packages.)
2 | Nintendo Lunch System
This guy decided to gut a (broken) Nintendo to make himself a lunchbox. Although I’m surprised he didn’t turn the cartridge lid into the handle. Or bring a dessert.
3 | NES cartridge breathalyzer (and game)
These guys didn’t just turn an old NES game into a functioning breathalyzer. They also created an 8-bit game that records the blood-alcohol levels from that breathalyzer. Of course, none of that is particularly fitting for Nintendo, since they famously wouldn’t allow any signs of blood OR alcohol in their games. (See: Mortal Kombat‘s “sweat-colored” blood; Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out eliminating the arcade character Vodka Drunkenski and replacing him with Soda Popinski.)
4 | Nintoaster
Here’s a toaster with a fully-functional NES shoved inside. The toast lever works as the on-off switch. It no longer makes toast, but from the looks of that toaster it’s the $11.99 one from Tuesday Morning that has a half-life of around 17 slices.
5 | Toasterendo
If you can shove a Nintendo into a toaster, you can shove a toaster into a Nintendo, right?
6 | NES controller wallet
I guess it’s more of a change purse than a wallet. But, for the sake of its creator, we’ll keep calling it a NES controller wallet; don’t want to turn him into Kirk van Houten through that change purse branding.
7 | Duck Hunt sniper rifle
Back when G4 was the video game channel (before they aggressively betrayed that), they used to do things like take the guts from a NES light zapper and insert it into a sniper rifle. And yet, even with all this sniping technology, the guy plays Duck Hunt just like we all used to — three inches from the TV.
8 | Niketendo
There’s a functional NES inside of that shoe. And it’s not, like, a giant Shaquille O’Neal shoe. It’s a regular sized shoe. Clearly the components you need for a working 8-bit video game system have significantly decreased in size.
9 | NES alarm clock
This guy actually put some time in — rather than doing what I would’ve done and just buying a small alarm clock that could fit in the slot, setting it before I jammed it in, and hoping my wake-up time never changed. He wired it so the power button turns the alarm on and off… a controller can set the time… and the reset button works as the snooze. (And shutting the lid lets you sleep in forever and ever, I guess.)
10 | NESpresso
This is a nice espresso machine that’s been hacked so you can control it with the old Nintendo controller. On this guy’s blog, he says he’s not really a Nintendo modder, he’s an espresso machine modder. There are really modders for everything, huh?
11 | The NES PDA
I love everything about the ghetto-ness here. (1) The screen was clearly cut without abiding by “measure twice, cut once” rule or even the “it looks better to cut a straight line” rule. (2) This mod is from 2007, albeit before the real modern smartphone era… but certainly a decade after the rudimentary Palm Pilot era. (3) He chose to make his mod on a Jaws cartridge, because he clearly wasn’t willing to destroy a decent game for this project. And yet, in spite of all that, I would pay $200 for this on eBay.
