Mod that Console
Hardware mods are a unique subset of gaming. While some mods take the route of emulating the hardware to fit the resulting “console” inside something smaller, I am not focusing on those in this article, maybe (if there is enough demand) I will do one on those later. No, the hardware mods getting discussed here are going to be ones that keep the original hardware, at least the motherboard, of the original console intact. Let me know in the comments which one is your favorite.
First up, optical drive replacements. Get out the soldering irons and magnifying glasses.
The 3DO was launched in late 1993, just in time for that year’s holiday shopping (if only they would have gotten the console price under control). It was pretty much a flop as not many gamers were willing to part with over $500 for the console (something SNK discovered several years earlier). Fast forward almost 20 years and we have gamers creating an IDE hard drive connection for the CD-ROM drive (the number one component of these consoles that goes bad). Mnemonic started work on his 3DO IDE Adapter in 2010 and completed it in 2012. Sadly you can no longer purchase the add-on from the creator as they have stopped producing it. There are some decent homebrew games available for the 3DO (I will cover them soon).
If you prefer USB plugs, there is a USB version of the 3DO drive replacement that was created:
The Sega Saturn, the topic of a recent article by me, is next in line for getting an optical drive replacement. This time it is an SD Card reader modification. The Saturn had the unfortunate fact that it was hard to program for in the first place. This inadvertently helped protect the Saturn from being hacked by modders and from being copied through emulation properly. Both sad things for fans being able to keep your console alive and well years after it is commercially dead. Anyhow, this mod is going to require some detailed soldering skills so it is not for the faint of heart. The rewards, homebrew and indie games, will also be low so this mod may not be worth many gamers time – though unlike the PSOne, there is no real quality emulator for computers to continue playing your Saturn games when the hardware fails you.
Ah, the Sega Dreamcast. Oh how you died way too early for us fans. @Xervantes certainly remembers the Dreamcast well as he states in his article. Other fans remember it quite well too – technically inclined fans at that. This modification gives the Sega Dreamcast a USB port so that you can play homebrew and indie games from a USB flash drive. This is a great modification and might be worth investigating for fans that are tired of hearing the GD-ROM drive grinding away, or are in fear theirs is failing.
Video out mods for retro consoles. Again, get the soldering irons ready.
The Atari 2600 is arguably the first commercial console success story in gaming history. Sure, there were platforms before it, some did one thing while others played games from cartridges, still the Atari 2600 was the first to break sales records and expand the fledgling gaming industry. If you have ever played an Atari 2600 on a CRT television via that RF adapter then you know the picture quality was usually lackluster at best. This was WAY before DVD quality and HD (let alone UHD or 4K) so we didn’t really know what we were playing with, or that it really sucked graphically (not that the Atari 2600 could output much more than basic shapes and beeps and boops).
Over at SmallerSystems.com they have details on how to make your own composite plug in for the Atari 2600. They also have some picture comparisons and I must say, how the hell did we enjoy the Atari 2600 without composite connections?
As you can see in the video, greens are green. What was once brown on CRT is now apparently a vibrant green. Blues are crisp, and who knew the background in Barn Storming was a green pasture instead of a brown mountain?
Finally, the Super Nintendo. A console that most feel had pretty good graphics and sound already. How can a new video out connection make it better? Anyone that has played in this realm for years will tell you, it gets better. Just be prepared, if you cannot stand “jaggies” then you are going to cut your eyeballs on some of the video quality you will see with a modded Super Nintendo.
Over on NintendoAge, forum member “JoeVsFox” has a step by step process of making the Super Nintendo HDMI adapter a reality. The picture quality is improved but only so much, what is more vibrant with this mod is the colors, particularly the color red. JoeVsFox used Super Mario World and F-Zero for his detailed shots and to show the quality of the video improvement. Please be warned before you click over there to read up on it – I am not responsible for any cuts on your eyes you receive from viewing those Super Mario and F-Zero shots.
Do you have a favorite hardware mod? Let’s discuss it in the comments below. Remember to upvote and resteem this post so I can keep writing more of them. Any and all support is greatly appreciated.
Previous Articles:
Gaming:
5 Times Gamers Bought a Prototype Game
Father’s Day with the Dead
Gears of War 4 Comparison
Mod that Console
Sega Saturn – What the Hell Happened?
They Did What to the NES?
What I miss Most About Being a Gamer
Movies:
War for the Planet of the Apes Videos
Sports
WWE’s First Women’s Money in the Bank Match
Steemit
Hard Fork 19 Has Hit
I May Have Cracked Why People Still Swarm to Facebook
Technology:
Amazon Continues Home Infiltration
Bitcoin to Become Legal Tender in India
Canada to Outlaw Locked Cell Phones
Microsoft’s Invasion of Android
There are many of these type of enhancements for old 8-bit computers as well. I'm most familiar with the Commodore 64 and have purchased a couple over the years. One is a cable that will allow you to transfer data to and from a Commodore 64 disk drive or use a DOS based computer as a hard drive. I also have an adapter that allows you to use SD cards as storage.
Back when I had an original PlayStation I also used to have an adapter that would allow you to play backup and import games on it.
Very cool mods you are mentioning there. Those SD card cartridges are big on consoles such as #Sega #Genesis, Super #Nintendo and others.
Excuse me, but I think you missed the NES. Yes, we had the Mini NES in 2016 (or was it early 2017?), but many people won't have access to it and it was limited to 30 games.
Eventually, the alternative is the new Famicom, but still, I would greatly appreciate if you share some step-by-step tutorials for home brew adapters for the original NES console.
I will certainly add an article of just NES mods to my "to do this weekend" list. Thank you for bringing that up. I left the NES out of this article because there were just so many mods available I could not narrow it down to one or two (as you can see I ended up going with two Sega consoles here as it is).