As an avid portable gamer, you might assume smartphones, and their app stores filled with million of titles, would be my ideal device. But part of me still yearns for physical buttons to mash, like my beloved Game Boy had. That’s probably why I find this case that puts a bunch of basic video games on the back of a smartphone so appealing.
The “Wanle Gamers Console For iPhone” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and equally unimpressive is its use of an ancient, segmented LCD screen to play basic clones of 10 different games such as Tetris and Snake.
The case appears to hearken back to the days of Tiger’s low-tech electronic handheld games, which look impossibly crude by today’s portable gaming standards. But those games still managed to hold my attention for hours on end as a kid, which is probably why I remember them so fondly, and am happy to recreate that experience.
What the Wanle Gamers Console case has that my Tiger electronic games didn’t is a fully-featured smartphone on the back. So I imagine that when I get tired of stacking blocks, I could just go visit my favourite social networks, and vice-versa.
This $US25 ($32) case, however, appears to be the first product from Wanle, a company that seems to have only emerged online this January and sells one product. If it works as promised, the case looks like it a neat distraction for your distraction, ensuring you may never have to do actual work ever again. But before we can get our hands on one, don’t get yourself too worked up. Australians will also need to add on some dough for mail forwarding.
[Wanle Cases via Popular Mechanics]