iCade

Every April Fool’s Day, ThinkGeek comes up with a spoof product. Usually the product is so coated in awesome that it ends up becoming reality – like the 8-Bit Tie and Tauntaun Sleeping Bag.

This year’s idea, two days before the launch of the highly anticipated/unanticipated Apple iPad, is the iCade, a gaming cabinet of sorts which you’d slide your iPad into, and play any number of classic video games… arcade style.

The iCade’s fantasy specs go like this: you slide the iPad in and it becomes the brains and the display of the cabinet. You would then run old arcade games in emulation, games like Donkey Kong, Dig Dug and the frankly awesome-looking Super Steve Bros (Jobs and Wozniak vs. Ballmer), with the cabinet controls talking to the iPad through the 30-pin connector. There is even a companion MAME application to run all the games, and which is “coming soon to the App Store”.
(via Wired Magazine)

iCade Games

ThinkGeek’s fantasy price is $150, but that’s a small price to pay if you’re serious enough about old-school games to put a miniature arcade in your house/apartment/parent’s basement. If you want this – go tell them to make it… because right now it’s just an incredibly clever fantasy.

See the fake product page at thinkgeek.com.

iCade

(thanks to Rami Daud for the heads up)

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Ricky Salsberry is an interactive designer working in Chicago and the editor of The Donut Project. In his spare time he reads/rants about technology, watches hockey, wrecks his bike, and designs some more.