Awesome Retro

These days, most wallpaper is printed using industrial printing presses. But check out this wild 1960s footage of a British wallpaper factory, who still made the rolls of wall art using hand-carved block printing, and hand-applied flocking.

Rather than just another black box, 8bitdo’s Bluetooth speaker takes its inspiration from the classic Nintendo Entertainment System’s game controller, with a giant D-Pad for power, play and volume, and red speakers that look like A/B buttons. Measures about 3″ on each side.

The bear attack isn’t nearly as gruesome, and the cinematography pales in comparison to Emmanuel Lubezki’s masterwork, but we’d still like to play this retro RPG version of The Revenant, brought to life by CineFix, animator David Dutton and chiptuner Henry Dutton.

Turn any PC or Mac into a retro arcade system with Rec Room Masters‘ Xtension control board. It packs arcade-grade buttons and joysticks for 2 players, a trackball, and 10 LED menu buttons. Preconfigured for MAME. Also available in classic game color schemes.

Inspired by the classic 1980’s computer game, you can now die of dysentery without ever having to turn on your monitor or touch a keyboard. The objective of the 2 to 4 player card game is to get one member of your wagon party safely from Missouri to Oregon.

Starting 8/1/16, VH1 Classic will become MTV Classic, a channel dedicated to the company’s original series and music programming with a focus on the 1990s to the early 2000s, such as Beavis and Butthead, Pimp My Ride and MTV Unplugged. We hope they put it online too.

The New Yorker traveled to the West coast to put together this clip, which does its best to compare the exact locations shot in 1940s stock footage of Los Angeles to the same places in modern times. Progress is great, but it’s kind of sad to see how little remains.

For those of you who don’t have that awesome poster from Pop Chart Labs, here’s another way to recall some of the greatest – and oddest – video game controllers which have kept us playing our video games since their earliest days, courtesy of Super Deluxe.

In 1947, a group of young men founded a hot rod club called the Oilers. In 2008, the club was revived as The Race of Gentlemen – a beach race and car show featuring early to mid 20th century American cars and motorcycles.

Paul Williams is a talented singer and songwriter – best known for his 1970’s hits like Rainy Days and Mondays and Rainbow Connection. He also had a role in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Fresh off the set back in 1973, he dropped by The Tonight Show.

An electronic musician’s dream tool, this Kontakt audio sample library lets you play a huge variety of chiptune sounds from classic gaming and computer systems like the NES, C64, SNES, GameBoy, SEGA Genesis and more. The library includes over 5,500 samples.

It took quite a bit of planning and engineering prowess, but the end result of Daniel Perdomo’s recreation of Atari’s arcade classic PONG as a game played with mechanical paddles and ball cube is quite impressive. (Thanks Philip!)

Kermit the frog calls into question Fozzie Bear’s very existence, and Piggy and Kermie share an intimate moment in these improv screen tests between Jim Henson and Frank Oz during the filming of the 1979 classic The Muppet Movie.

We can’t imagine how much work it took Alexey Zakharov to create his short film, in which he created entirely new moving pictures using antique still photos digitally projection mapped onto 3D models.

Sketchfab contributor d0rkmushr00m used MagicaVoxel to make this awesome 3D voxel model of the original 128k Apple Macintosh. The exploded drawing shows the full innards and outards (is that a word?) of the classic Mac. Read how it was created here. (Thanks Brent!)

The hilarious 1993 point-and-click adventure gets an HD update for today’s gaming systems. The new artwork is hand drawn, and you can bounce to classic mode, view concept art, or listen to commentary from the game’s creators. Out now on Steam, GOG, and PS4.

Today’s mobile games work pretty well with a touchscreen, there are still lots of arcade games which are best played with a gamepad. This SNES inspired Bluetooth controller comes with a dock that fits all smartphones, and works with iOS, Android, Macs and PCs.

The camp classic 1970s Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning series gets a reboot as a madcap comedy, starring Grace Helbig and My Drunk Kitchen’s Hannah Hart as the eponymous superheroes. For those of you to young to remember the original show, here you go.

A seemingly endless chase sequence from the 1925 Buster Keaton film Seven Chances, as he’s pursued by a massive horde of women, through city streets, a football stadium, the suburbs, and into the countryside. Indiana Jones has nothing on Keaton’s epic boulder scene.

The Fine Brothers‘ React series puts a group of teenagers in front of thoroughly outdated mid-90s computers to see if they can figure their way around these recent technological dinosaurs. Can you imagine how many floppies Fallout 4 would have needed to install?

If you ever used a dial-up modem back in the day, you know it produces one of the world’s most annoying sounds. But slow those screeches down 700%, and you’ve got a relaxing soundtrack for a day at the spa lying face down on the massage table.

(PG-13 Language) The smartasses of Regular Car Reviews take on one of the worst, but still fondly remembered vehicles ever – the Subaru BRAT. This mini-ute had a cramped cabin, tiny bed, drove like crap, and had rear-facing seats that couldn’t have possibly been safe.

This 1967 Oscar-nominated animated short by Les Drew and Kaj Pindal envisions a day when Martians look down on Earth, and surmise that our planet is not occupied by humans, but by cars and other machines. Maybe they should have bought a better telescope.