A movie based on Nolan Bushnell's founding of Atari was sold to Paramount on Friday and Leonardo Dicaprio is set to play the lead. Most people remember Bushnell for Atari, but I remember him for the scathing pit of rancid pizza and yuppie spawn called Chuck E. Cheese.

When the local mall's Gap wouldn't take me as a sales associate, I got a job at Chuck E. Cheese for $4 an hour stamping a greasy matching digit on the forearms of children and parents alike as a kidnapping security measure. (No one got outside with a kid without the same digits on their paws.) You'd be surprised that the kids weren't scared of a 6-foot rat but thought the rubber stamp was a tazer. Later, the managers realized I would be much more acquiescent to tasks like answering phones and sweeping up than the kids from the wrong side of the tracks in Hackensack, so I got those jobs, too, while everyone else got to sneak in games of Outrun. It was then that I decided I should go to college. By the way, I worked 10 hours shifts and the music soundtrack to the place was 20 minutes long on infinite repeat. [Hollywood Reporter]

Jesús Díaz: Great mix and cool retro look. Are these regular motherboards you are using?
Richard DaLuz: The systems inside the Super Genintari aren't anything you have to special-order. They're all the same old systems myself and many others grew up with through the '80s/'90s and regularly find floating around at garage sales to this day.

I used the beloved old gray and white "toaster" NES board, a model 3 Sega Genesis, the smaller redesigned SNES and an Atari Flashback 2 for the 2600 portion, since it's much smaller and easier to work with than retrofitting the original board from the '70s. It's still official reworked Atari hardware and completely compatible as far as I know, so all is well. The basic rule was that if any of the systems couldn't play ANY game I threw at it, it was out. I tend to avoid the much smaller "pirate/clone" systems for this reason.

JD: You didn't have to do any modifications to the boards to make them fit?
RD: The only board I really had to do any "major" modification to was the NES, and that was just a simple A/V amplifier mod using parts that can easily be found at any Radioshack for pennies. Other than that, just a lot of tedious rewiring and soldering to relocate the cartridge connectors.

JD: You have any background in electronics?
RD: Believe it or not, very little! I took one class way back in high school that basically just taught me how to operate a soldering iron without burning myself and/or others. (I still can't even tell you what the hell Ohm's Law is without Googling it.) Other than that I have no official training. Just a lot of dinking around by myself, finding out what works and what doesn't. It's an area that I've been curious about since I was a kid and still have yet to pursue professionally. This should be inspiring news to anyone else that's interested in this kind of stuff.

JD: What was the final bill for this wonderconsole?
RD: Mmm. You'd have to shell out whatever the going rate is for the four different consoles, plus about $50 or so for the casing materials, adhesives, machine screws and whatnot. Easily a couple hundred bucks if you're starting with nothing. But that's assuming you already have access to the necessary tools you'd need. (Soldering/desoldering irons, screw drivers, clamps, wiring, etc.) I ended up spending much more than that considering how many changes I made along the way though and that's something you have to consider when you're doing this kind of work. Nothing ever goes according to plan and the ole' wallet ends up taking the hit.

JD: And for how long have you been working on it?
RD: As far as what it's cost me in time... my God, I don't even know where to begin. I've been working on this damn thing on and off since early 2002! Granted I've taken many "sanity breaks" for several months at a time during the process and changed many things along the way, but that's still a long freakin' time. It's hard to come up with a figure for the time I've put into this thing, but know this... I wouldn't allow myself to part with it for less that a few thousand. I'm pretty sure this thing literally has my blood in it somewhere!

According to Richard, the system is very easy to hook up. Just one A/V cable is needed and you don't have to depend on any external transformer: he put all the necessary power in the case itself. Playing with it is as easy as the video shows: just plug in, put the cartridges in, turn the Super Genintari on, and enjoy.

[Stupidfinger —thanks Jenn and Richard]

If you're a mad breakout fan, however, one of the two could be yours, as it's up for auction right now. The bids are up to $385 as of this writing with about a day left, which ain't half bad for such a rare nugget of Atari history. Of course, it being a non-working prototype might have something to do with that, but just look at it! It's awesome! [eBay via Kotaku]

So we thought it was about time we looked back on over 18 of Ben Heckendorn's fantastic Atari projects that got him to this point, so we've put together this awesome, spectacular, fantabulous timeline fit for any console modder's wet dream.

In the seven years since Ben got to work, he has produced some crackers and they are all here for you to see. The initial Atari 2600 VCSp, right through to the Atari rev 5.1 are all here. The evolution is simply amazing, especially when you look at the original projects which were essentially 9/10 sized 2600s in your hands.

So go ahead and give your eyes some candy. We've seen Ben grow from a guy with a hobby to a beautiful butterfly an accomplished designer/modder and we respect that. Drop your words of admiration/jealousy below. From all of us at Gizmodo: Ben, you rock. Party on Wayne, party on Garth. [Ben Heck]

It's (apparently) a fairly basic experiment in circuitry that you can conquer in a short amount of time. There aren't instructions on how to actually stick it inside a random gadget like a phone, though.

[MAKE: Atari Punk Console]

Yes. Those who succeed in the minigame will see a payout up to 7% higher—which is a huge amount in Vegas where the minimum payout is 75%. We're not big on the slots, but with PONG and the possibility of Breakout coming down the line, our mad gaming skills could pay off...literally. In all reality, we'll just be losing 7% less than all of our money. [forbes via therawfeed]

So, if you want 135 large file folders stuffed full of original sketches, early designs and proofs of games such as Dig Dug, Bezerk, Asteroids, Pong and Mario Bros., then get thee to Sotheby's, stick your bidding paddle in the air and wave it around like you just don't care. It'll cost you, though...

You'll need to stump up between $150,000 and $250,000 for the privilege of owning these early 80s objects. Do you think those dudes who dress up as Pacman and run round the place will bum rush the show? I do hope so. – Ad Dugdale

Sotheby's Atari Auction [Cool Hunting]

Atari 2600 Joystick TV Remote Control [Hacked Gadgets]

Atari joystick candle-holder [Boing Boing]

Technology Review has rounded up a bunch of objects that it feels are design classics from the past 30 or so years and got a bunch of industrial designers to talk about them. And you've gotta admit they're right—on some of the candidates, at least. First up is the Polaroid SX-70, which dates back to 1972.

Polaroid's first fully automatic, motorized camera was an instant design classic. Detailed with tan leather, it folded into a rectangle the size of a paperback book. Andrew Logan, principal designer at Frog Design, admires it for the "immediacy of a favorable output." He explains: "Instead of waiting days to see if you took a good photo, you could take it again right away."

There's a gallery below, and after the jump you can vote for your favorite piece of shiny loveliness.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled Web browser.

Mine has got to be the Sony Walkman, because I was always in my room making mixtapes as a kid. – Ad Dugdale

Objects of desire [Technology Review]

VCSp Rev 5.1 Prototyped at 7 Year Mark [Via Gadget Lab]

Now to hook these bad boys up to some monitors and fire up the Joust. Home decorating officially became cool about 1000 times dorkier. – Mark Wilson

Product Page [via uberreview]

VCSp Revisions 7 [Via Kotaku]

Atari Founder Trashes PS3, Sony [via Red Herring]

We're not quite sure what the point of having a Dungeons & Dragons laptop is, considering that if you're the type of person who might want one, you're also most likely to be the type that never leaves their mom's basement. Oh but wait, through the magic of portable computing and WiFi, you can count your pieces of electrum while sitting on the toilet. We understand now.

If you want one, you'd better hurry as they're only available in a limited edition of 100, as an Atari UK promotion for Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach. Prices start at £999 for what's actually a Pegasus 650 gaming notebook, you can customize it up to a single-core 2.26GHz Pentium M, 2 GB of DDR 2 SDRAM and a 120 GB hard drive, and your choice of either an ATI Mobility Radeon X700 or a Nvidia GeForce Go 6600 graphics card.

Pegasus 650 - Dungeons & Dragons Online Stormreach Limited Edition Notebook [rock, via Tech Digest]

The Atari-Xbox 3600: A Retro Mod for Your Next-Gen Gaming System [Informit]

Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, was at DIEC 2005 and voiced his opinion of today's video gaming world. He recalled his heyday when there wasn't a lot of storage space for games, so gameplay came first, graphics second. But then Bushnell ventured into the choppier waters of corporate criticism, clearly taking sides. He complained that the PS2's controller is too complex and noted that people have "interface phobia."

The 3D controller that Nintendo is onto is a very good idea, he says. If you look at today s controller with triangles, Xs, squares and circles, it s scary. It s like a keyboard. People are interface phobic.

I'm not sure if I'd call it an interface phobia with the PS2 selling so well, and the Revolution is pretty far off, so perhaps Bushnell should tone down his accusations and go back to Chuck E. Cheese's for some delicious pizza.

DIEC: Atari s Founder Slams Sony, Praises Nintendo [Kotaku]

Reader Niles took 6 months to build this beast out of old Atari parts. My favorite thing is that the chip holders on each side are made of busted-up 2600 case tops. Folk art + video game obsession = FUN!

Atari poker table w/ integrated Atari 2600 game system [Ebay]

Yeah we know it's a few days old, but we're cool with saving the best for a Friday, ya dig? Ben Heck, maker of all systems portable and custom, has busted out his latest (and probably greatest) creation: An Atari 800 XE laptop. This baby sports old-school wood panelling, an 8" screen, a CF drive to act as the 16mb hard disk, full-sized keyboard, and a lot more geeky stuff. He's been slowly working on this laptop since 2003 and finished it only recently. That's some dedication to such an ancient system. Everything was painstakingly hand-made and cut properly, etc. in classic Ben Heck fashion. The final result looks probably 400x better than a normal Atari 800, and if he sold these, you can bet we'd all be picking up one. Excuse me while I drool some more.

BenHeck.com Project Page

Among certain fetishistic subcultures of the consumer electronics world, there seems to be a common credo: If it s not hackable, it s worthless. Putting this saying to the test is Roger Ibars, a designer-slash-researcher based in London. Ibars work involves hacking into and modding vintage console game controllers and other devices such as alarm clocks and calculators. Instead of repurposing or altering the objects themselves, Ibars connects one or more devices up to one another in order to challenge the relationship between branding and consumption. The result is a series of devices that subvert their manufacturer's intended uses, to say the least. The Nintendo Controls Sony project (where an 80s Nintendo controller is connected up to a Sony Clock Radio) presents a figurative challenge to the branding and marketing of devices that often compete for attention in the living room or toy closet. GIZMODO caught up with Ibars to talk about his practice, ideology, and his current show at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, France.

Name: Roger Ibars
Age: 30
Education: Sociology (UAB), Industrial Design (ESDI), Interaction Design, MA(RCA)
Affiliation: Device Designer, User Researcher
Exhibitions: Centre Pompidou (Paris), Bienal de Lisboa (Portugal), Digital Hub (Dublin), H20 Gallery (Barcelona), Game Paused (London)

"Self Control" (Ibars, 2002)

GIZMODO: How did you first become interested in augmenting / hacking consumer electronics devices?

RI: I wanted to create interactive electronic objects, but I had a lot of coding limitations. I still have them; I come from a sociology background. But then I started to experiment with low-tech electronics and the concept of control. For example I was obsessed with the film "Alphaville" from Jean-Luc Godard. In this film a computer and a mad scientist start to take control of all Paris citizens, removing their ability to love each other. This film is a classic of control and film noir. I designed a remote control that is only controlled by the film. With simple electronics, I hard-wired a light sensor directly to the fast forward button of the remote control. Then I attached the light sensor to the TV screen with a suction cup. When there is light on the screen, the film itself presses the button and fast-forwards to the next scene. As a result, the viewer is only allowed to watch the dark parts of the film, the Film Noir. "Self-Control" was my first augmented device.—a film with the ability to control the TV remote.

GIZMODO: The retro gaming consoles and peripherals in your "Hard-wired Devices" series seem to be favorite objects of yours, what is your attraction to these devices?

RI: I have another obsession apart from films: joysticks. They are such beautiful devices! The shape and forms are ergonomic and gentle in the hand, the buttons are big and colorful and the quality of the plastic is extremely good because they have to suffer a lot of mechanical movement. Just think of the classic Atari joystick. It is so robust, strong, it s like a Mies Van Der Rohe chair but from electronic, modern times.

"Atari Controls Phillips" (Ibars, 2004)

GIZMODO: The self-made objects series presents objects that react to their own mechanisms; such as the "Alarm clock that wakes up the alarm clock." Do you see these types of functionalities being built into future devices?

RI: I would like to see products doing more interesting things with their functions! In product design we still have this idea of labor saving devices. Things have to work first and the most important thing: things need a user. With self-made objects I wanted to question this idea. I designed objects with a common premise: removing the user of the object. What would happen if we design objects without a user in mind? Are users using objects or are the objects using users? I'm not sure but I think design is nowadays more interested in designing users rather that objects.

"Nintendo Controls Phillips" (Ibars 2003)

This is the core idea of this project, which I materialized in eight different objects in animated illustrations. These self-made objects are designed to have an experience of their own functions. For example, there is a kitchen scale that turns itself over and weighs itself. This is an example of an object having a self-reflection experience because the function for which the object has been designed has turned into the one that gives it meaning.

"Alarm clock that wakes up an alarm clock" (Ibars 2003)

Some products on the market already have self-referential functions. I think we are in a new era of automatism what I'm saying with self-made objects is that all this automatism has to be acknowledged to the objects and not taken for granted. Kind of Marxist ideas adapted to the object's way of life. Otherwise the relation between technology and us will be based on functional slavery. Maybe I'm talking about this in very basic terms of how we understand technology in western societies, but this is what interests me from the sociological point of view. Like Bruno Latour would say, we have to look from the point of view of the technology.

"Nintendo Controls Sony" (Ibars 2003)

GIZMODO: Your work often challenges the brand names of devices such as in "Nintendo Controls Sony" and "Atari Controls Philips." Why is this conflict important to your work?

RI: I used to do a "casting" for the objects I choose to connect. I always look for devices with interesting design and I have to admit that some brands more than others did a great job in some of their products. Why not admit it. If you open a Sony alarm clock, inside you will see a very well designed electronic product. You can dismantle everything and put everything back easily. Screws are strong and don't break the plastic after 10 years!

I don't connect two objects having only in mind a conflict of brands. I only did that twice: with Donkeytron II, where you can play a handheld Nintendo with a Sega pad and with Karatetron, where you can play the game with controllers from Scalextric and TCR - two companies that were competitors in the market. They were like Mac and PC for car racing tracks. I had TRC by the way.

"Donkey Tron II" (Ibars 2004)

GIZMODO: Consumer electronics like the iPod and the mobile phone are becoming a global phenomenon. How does the social adoption and use of electronic devices play into your work?

RI: The iPod is a great example of mass consumer fetishism. I love it. In Hard-wired devices I aim to combine objects which trigger some kind of fetishism libido. The same electronic fetishism that some brands played at some point: Bang & Olufsen for example plays that role but my taste is more about round corners and shiny plastic than the untouchable and arrogant cordless phones from the Danish company.

"Unknown Controls Casio" (Ibars 2003)

At the moment I have few hard-wired devices on exhibition at Centre Pompidou. My pieces are in a section next to the iPod and the Bootleg Objects from designers Markus Bader and Max Wolf. The thing is that the iPod is inside glass boxes so nobody can touch them. My objects can be touched and used. It is interesting to see the different exhibition strategy for each product, even though our goal is the same: to trigger desire for electronic devices.

Visitor to Pompidou Exhibition (Ibars 2005)

GIZMODO: What is your most recent work about? How is it similar or different from the previous projects?

RI: On 17th of September I'm presenting a whole new series of Hard-wired devices for the Biennale of Lisbon in Portugal. This new series includes 8 new commissioned pieces and they will have on exhibition until 30th of October. And in the beginning of November, there is a very interesting event in London called GAME PAUSED in which hopefully I will present a few more pieces, some for sale. This work keeps the same idea of connecting amazing electronic devices from the '70s and '80s, but there are also a few new things, which are different from the previous work. For example in one piece I used a zip drive (the classic blue 100MB from Iomega) to switch on an old Philips radio. The sound and the movement of ejecting a 100MB zip disc from this drive is so pleasurable! And I wanted to rescue this function from unstoppable technological forgetfulness.

References:
www.selfmadeobjects.net
SocialRobots Blog

Look at it. It's obscene. Even NESBuckle says it should never have been made into a belt, but they did it anyway just for that reason. Plus imagine the many Atari systems that will go unused because someone took the controller just to make a belt buckle.

However, we still think you should totally get this. If, you know, you want to be ridiculed. Or be a hit with the ladies.

The controller buckle itself costs $50, and a belt and buckle combo costs $65.

Related
NES Belt Buckle

Atari Buckle [NESBuckle]

Atari 2600 Emulator for PSP [BoingBoing]
Stella Atari 2600 Emulator for PSP [PSP Emulation News]

The page is currently Slashdotted (Kotakued?) so there's no way to get to it but rest assured the detailed instructions will truly allow you mastery of your gaming domain.

Hacking The Atari Flashback 2 Video Game Console [Atari Museum via Kotaku]