While it certainly wasn’t the first home game console, the Nintendo Entertainment System is probably the most recognizable, even 30 years after it was first released in the United States. In its lifetime, the NES sold almost 62 million units all over the world and revitalized a video game industry that had seen several years of sagging sales. One of the main features often attributed to the massive success of the NES was the design of the case. It was made to look similar to other home electronics, with the front-loading cartridges being reminiscent of a VCR. And Nintendo was very careful to not treat it like a toy and emphasized that video games were for everyone, not just children. In a lot of ways the release of the NES was the moment that video games started to grow up.
Originally intended as a Christmas gift, Thingiverse user T.J. Owens’ Raspberry Pi B+ Mini Classic NES case project turned out to be a lot more of a complex build that he had originally intended. When he went looking for a mini version of the NES he wanted it to be as close in appearance as possible while also not being any larger than it needed to be. Unfortunately, what he found was either needlessly big, had the ports in the wrong places or just didn’t look enough like the original. So Owens decided to simply build his own mini NES that would be custom built around the newest model of the Raspberry Pi and designed to be as accurate as possible. Similar to a 3D printed mini-NES we saw back in April, Owens’ project is inspired by the RetroPie Project–“it’s the purpose of the case after all,” he tells us.
“I use PLA because of its dimensional stability and waffle smell. I finished the print by wet sanding and priming with a plastic compatible primer.. light wet sand again and spray paint. I normally use Krylon fusion for my projects but this time there were no colors close to NES grey available,” Owens told 3DPrint.com.
Up next for the artist and programmer is extending the design to make it even more accurate to the original. Owens has plans to create miniature NES cartridges that will fit inside of the console. The game cartridges will have NFC tags embedded inside of them so they will automatically launch specific games when inserted. You can read more about T.J. Owens on his Thingiverse profile and see his other projects over on his website Ferreusveritas.com.
Will you be creating this little video game console? Let us know in the 3D Printed NES forum thread on 3DPB.com.