Swedish designer Love Hultén is freaking obsessed with classic arcade games. You’d have to be, to hand carve a beautiful wooden console to house a massive collection of them. Awesome.
At first, Hultén’s R Kaid-42 (“arcade for two”, get it?) looks like an old, hand-crafted box. It’s made of dark walnut with brass fittings, and it measures about 18cm x 18cm x 36cm, which is considerably smaller than even the tiniest mini-fridge.
But the box, which is held together by magnets, magically breaks apart from this compact package into a console with two controllers. Some basic assembly is required.
The controllers are wireless with rechargeable batteries. They’re big and beefy, just like you want them to be.
Beneath the wooden exterior, the R Kaid-42’s console box is a small 1.8GHz PC that instantly boots to a homegrown interface that lets you pick between some 2000 classic titles (see the video below). The console has VGA connectivity so you can connect a display of your own — none is included with the R Kaid-42.
You too can have a beautiful arcade like this one. Pricing starts at about $US1000, but Hultén doesn’t specify a final price for the package, saying each unit is a custom job that will be tailored to each customer’s needs.