retro

Tron gaming peripherals soothe your nostalgia with calming blue light (video)

We don’t have the foggiest idea whether Tron: Legacy will serve to reboot Disney’s venerable light cycling franchise, but it’s certainly got peripheral vendors in high gear — you’ll be able to hack the ENCOM Digitizing Molecular Laser with a genuine Tron keyboard and mouse or toss virtual light discs with an Tron-themed Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii controller this holiday season. Gaming favorite Razer crafted this $130 laser-etched keyboard with swappable numpad and programmable macros; it will ship alongside a $100, 5600dpi laser mouse in October, and PDP will provide the console controllers for $50 at an unspecified date


Sony’s last cassette-blastin’ boom box is precisely how Ruff Ryders roll(‘d)

Sony may not shed a tear for the 3.5-inch floppy disk when it meets its maker in March , but you’d better believe the company’s crafted a retirement plan for the format that propelled it to fame: the compact cassette. To be fair, the CFD-A110 CD / cassette boom box above isn’t actually a new product — it’s a relabeled CFD-A100TV from 2003 minus the nigh-obsolete analog TV band — but if you’re rocking magnetic mix tapes we’re guessing you’ll welcome this blast from the past. For your projected ?20,000 (about $215) you’ll get a pair of full-range speakers, 14 AM/FM presets, an external microphone port for karaoke and a remote when it launches in Japan this June 21st


Olympus dishes silver PEN E-P2 Micro Four Thirds camera

Look, we’re not saying Olympus’ original all-black PEN E-P2 had no retro whatsoever in its blood, but you’ll be hard-pressed to convince us that this newer, silver-er model doesn’t have a whole lot more. Nearly six months after the (admittedly overpriced) Micro Four Thirds camera got pushed through the ringer , Olympus has decided that the world needs a second color option, though outside of the hue, there’s no difference whatsoever between the two models.


Wooden Level Eleven PC gets inspiration from Thermaltake Level 10 chassis

Let’s face it — if you had a never-ending stack of cash and a computer room with no particular size constraints, you too would own a Thermaltake Level 10 enclosure. Regrettably, both financial and square footage constraints do indeed play major roles in most of our lives, including one Jeffrey Stephenson . This fine gentleman is quickly becoming the Ben Heck of wood-grained mods , this time cranking out a lovingly crafted iteration of the aforesaid chassis, but with that special wooden flair


Wooden Level Eleven PC gets inspiration from Thermaltake Level 10 chassis

Let’s face it — if you had a never-ending stack of cash and a computer room with no particular size constraints, you too would own a Thermaltake Level 10 enclosure. Regrettably, both financial and square footage constraints do indeed play major roles in most of our lives, including one Jeffrey Stephenson .


Polaroid returns to instant photography with the 300, thinks you’ll pay a premium for it

When Polaroid left the instant film market back in 2008, it left a gaping hole that Impossible Project has attempted to fill with its overpriced reproduction paper. We’re guessing someone at Polaroid saw that and thought: “Hey, why don’t we charge too much for instant film, and make an overpriced camera to use it in?” And thus the $90 Polaroid 300 was born. Yes, $90 for the sort of instant point-and-shoot that, a few decades ago, you could pick up for under $20