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This $2,799 emulator is the fanciest retro game console around

This $2,799 emulator is the fanciest retro game console around

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Photo: Love Hultén

Retro games keep resurfacing in all types of emulators, but Swedish artist and craftsman Love Hultén has created one that goes the extra mile if you really want a full, nostalgia-fueled experience. His newest design, called Yesterday Vision, is a handmade midcentury-inspired monitor enclosure that can play games from classic systems.

The Yesterday Vision contains a 19-inch 4:3 monitor that’s designed to have the curvature distortion of an old CRT monitor. It also has full-range loudspeakers and a built-in Raspberry Pi computer that emulates gaming systems like the SNES, NES, Genesis, NeoGeo, MAME, Atari 2600, N64, and PSX. You can also play modern games or connect your laptop to Yesterday Vision via an HDMI input on the back. It can also support connecting up to four different controllers via Bluetooth. Use your own, or you can request for Hultén to create a pair of wireless hardwood arcade controllers when you make your purchase.

Hultén has designed loads of fun emulators, like the more portable R-Kaid-R that made rounds in 2016 and featured an arcade joystick and buttons, and the Pyua, a Nintendo “shrine” with a bubble dome. It’s an odd juxtaposition to see modern tech that allows retro games to be played in a shell that predates the games themselves. For Hultén, that’s the point. By creating these odd pairings, he hopes the pieces he makes challenge our assumptions about how we tie an object’s design with its function.

If you want this artistic mashup of past meets present, the Yesterday Vision is available to purchase for $2,799 (excluding VAT and shipping).