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Making it work - What are some of your DIY gaming set ups?

fart town usa

Gold Member
With the Switch being completely portable and prior to that, handhelds being somewhat on par with actual consoles... What are some funny console gaming set ups you've come up with over the years?

Here's some examples of what I'm talking about.

2 years ago, first anniversary with the Wife. We took an extended weekend and camped at 3 different state parks. The first night we were directly in the eye of the storm, just raining like it's a biblical event. I brought the Wii U in case of such event (state parks generally have electrical outlets at each site). While it rained, I had the Wii U hooked up in the tent and played Breath of the Wild, wife was on the Switch with Mario Odyssey. We ate Cheez-Its.

When I was a teenager we took a family trip to Disney World. Drove from Michigan, it's like a 24 hour drive. My older brother and I had a 13" TV in the van and had a PSX hooked up to it. We played THPS2 pretty much the whole time, it was amazing. I'm still impressed that the minivan cigarette lighter outlet was enough to power a TV and PSX.

When I was a child, we had this tiny ass portable TV that ran on batteries. The screen was like 3". I don't remember how we did it but my brother and I somehow hooked the SNES up to the portable TV via an RF adaptor and we were playing Street Fighter 2 on a screen roughly the size of an old Nokia cellphone, lol. The TV had a magnifier you could attach that made the screen appear slightly larger.

it was something similar to this, can't remember the brand.
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Anyone have any similar stories? I'd love to hear them. I get such a kick out of daisy chaining shit together in order to get stuff to work
 
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Kuranghi

Member
On the day HL2 came out in 2004 we had been in university dorms for a month or so but it was newly built so the ethernet wasn't available in every block yet. They put in some temporary wifi and it was terrible, but I was able to pre-download the game files over the course of a few days really slowly.

This was basically the first proper big steam release/unlock, so with the terribly slow connection + the steam servers getting so hammered on launch day it was going to take 12 hours just to verify and unlock the files. We were impatient of course so we ended up getting a really long ethernet cable and slinging it over to the other building and using their internet for an hour or so while it unlocked.

Got it done in a few hours instead of 12 that way and we ended up playing until the next day since we took turns to play the same part 4 times over lol. So first person plays Chapter 1, then we restarted the game 3 more times, etc. It was so new and amazing looking and fun that we didnt care about repeating the content.

Well actually maybe we didnt replay the very start over and over that would be boring, just from where you gain a bit more control so when Barney gives you the crowbar probably.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
Many times as a kid ran an extension cable out of a window to power a TV, PS1 and N64 in a tent in the garden. World's Scariest Police Chases was a popular choice for whatever reason.
 
Running LAN cables to my neighbors so we could play multiplayer games before broadband was a thing. At one point we had cables from three different houses hooked up to a network switch in my bedroom. Drove my parents nuts.
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
Hell yea, love these stories. Especially the LAN setups. Man that must have been exciting.

I guess this is another one of mine.

The last 2 nights I've been playing RE4 in bed via the Wii U gamepad. Wiimote and all. I get such a kick out of it, Wii U gamepad on the nightstand, chilling in bed with the wife and pups, blasting fools in the face and taking names. Damn good times.

And yes, the Wii U itself is in another room. I lucked out with my house layout, Wii U can stay in the living room and I still get a perfect connection upstairs in our bedroom.

edit-

Here's another one, not so much a DIY console set up but a DIY immersive experience. We had B-17 bomber for the intellivision, and the audio attachment that allowed for "voices" to be played in certain games. My dad would set up a couch fort for us and set a box fan behind us and would turn it on. It was like the planes propeller. It was so cool even though I had no clue how to play the game. I just remember shouting "B-17 BOMBER!!!!" while playing, lol.
 
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Kuranghi

Member
Had to run this afternoon when I wrote that story but just want to add:

The security guard came and told us the ethernet cable between windows wasn't allowed due to health and safety but we bribed him with booze to ignore it for an hour haha.

Off-topic but that morning when I went to pick up my physical HL2 copy was also a funny story, I presented my preorder receipt and asked for the game and the guy started berating me about how shit PC gaming was and that the game was going to be shit and I shouldn't buy it (wtf?) and I had to ask him like 3 more times before he would actually sell it to me.

He was obviously mad at something else but I've never had such a bizarre retail experience outside of that, the employee telling you they won't sell you something after you've asked to buy it lmao.
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
Had to run this afternoon when I wrote that story but just want to add:

The security guard came and told us the ethernet cable between windows wasn't allowed due to health and safety but we bribed him with booze to ignore it for an hour haha.

Off-topic but that morning when I went to pick up my physical HL2 copy was also a funny story, I presented my preorder receipt and asked for the game and the guy started berating me about how shit PC gaming was and that the game was going to be shit and I shouldn't buy it (wtf?) and I had to ask him like 3 more times before he would actually sell it to me.

He was obviously mad at something else but I've never had such a bizarre retail experience outside of that, the employee telling you they won't sell you something after you've asked to buy it lmao.
What a weirdo. Reminds me of a Funcoland employee berating me when I was like 12 cause I said to my friend that I thought Tomb Raider had terrible controls. Dude came out from behind the counter to inform me of how wrong I was. He was probably in his early 20s. lol.
 
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