14 DAY TRIAL // Portable arcades aren't exactly a new thing. Today they mostly come in all shapes and sizes and they manage to pack enough power to offer a huge catalogue of arcade/retro games to boot.
Nowadays it is not the mobility that is the main issue of portable arcade cabinets, but rather their style. Since many of them come in the classic micro-cabinet-style layout, there isn't much you can do about that. However, Love Hulten, the famous DIY artist of beautiful portable arcade consoles, decided to exit this trend and went further back in time, emulating the wooden heavy video computing systems like the Atari 2600 or the Fairchild Channel F.
Those machines, although built for kids and games, were incredibly elegant for their purpose and consisted of materials considered aesthetically luxurious, like wood. These days you can't imagine consoles without being full of glossy plastic and LED-heavy, but back then these sorts of machines had to be more in tune with your house's furniture instead of expressing futuristic technology via cubistic angles and colors.
Somebody had to go back in time and bring back the style
Harkening back to those design choices Hulten decided to build the Battlecade, a '70s inspired console for two, clad in American walnut wood in a 30x22x16cm form factor. Being inspired by the game Battleship where players are facing each other, the new console ditches the classical portable console for one and takes the retro concept of multiplayer to levels unheard even for the '80s.
The new DIY arcade for two consists of a mid-section that includes two 12" LCD monitors, a deck with controls for both players with removable joysticks when folding the package. It also has a built-in storage space for quick access to accessories like power supply and the detachable joysticks.
Although no details are available for what sort of hardware the console is running on, we can speculate that is enough to run Duke Nukem 3D, as seen in the presentation video. We can only hope Hulten will sell the new arcade for two like it does for its previous creations, the R-KAID-R and PIXELKABINETT 42.
