Awesome Retro

The Knight Industries Two Thousand was a modded 1982 Pontiac Trans Am. Retro Recipies wanted to update the design with a modern car, so he took a Tesla Model 3, fitted it with replica Turbo Cast wheels, LED chase lights, a spoiler, and blacked-out trim. It also plays KITT’s voice, and performs a light show to go with.

In 1977, this unusual helicopter appeared on the cover of Popular Mechanics. To lure in high-end customers, Winnebago worked with a small aviation company to create the Heli-Home, a complete mobile home that could take to the skies. Calum has the full story behind this fascinating flying machine and the man behind its creation.

If you were in Paris in the 1960s or 1970s, you might have seen one of these Citroen Cityrama 55 buses. This double-decker bus featured panoramic windows offering spectacular views for all passengers. The Tim Traveler got up close with the last remaining Cityrama. It needs some TLC, but you can contribute to help restore it.

When you think of pop music, it’s usually pretty upbeat stuff, but back in the 1960s, a strange trend emerged – pop songs about tragic accidents and death. Yesterday’s Papers offers an intriguing look back at this unusual fad and some of most popular “splatter platters”. It’s worth watching for Wayne Cochran’s epic hair helmet alone.

Jody Del Bianco’s award-winning design for a dedicated typing device pays homage to the cylindrical platens of vintage typewriters, while embracing modern technology. As you type on its round keys, words appear on a high-contrast, curved E-Ink display. To scroll backwards, turn the knob like on a classic typewriter.

This unique tabletop clock combines retro and modern tech for a cool cyberpunk look. At its core is a vintage IV-18 vacuum-fluorescent display that sits atop a custom circuit board. It can show the time, temperature, and date, complemented by ambient RGB lighting effects. Its modes are controlled by touch sensors.

CG and video game animation have gotten very good over the years. But sometimes we long for the simpler and less realistic graphics of classic video game consoles. Hoolopee took footage from the Pixar movie Lightyear, and remade it in the style of the original Sony PlayStation, complete with low-poly, pixelated 3D models.

While some cars still offer the ability to wash the dirt off of headlights, today’s tech relies on powerful sprayers. Back in the day, car companies came up with all kinds of clever designs for tiny wipers to keep headlights clean. After you watch that, enjoy a satisfying montage of modern headlight washers.

A compilation of six classic SEGA Dreamcast games, playable on your Windows PC and enhanced for HD widescreen gameplay. The bundle includes Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, NiGHTS Into Dreams, SEGA Bass Fishing, Sonic Adventure DX, and Space Channel 5: Part 2.

These metal bookends from Pendulux look like the rayguns that astronauts and aliens might have used to battle each other in a 1950s sci-fi movie. They’re made from cast aluminum, iron, and brass and are perfect for displaying vintage comics, books, and magazines.

Shargeek’s adorable USB-C charger pays tribute to the classic Apple Macintosh computer. The palm-sized charger looks like a tiny Mac and cranks out up to 35-watts for charging laptops and other gadgets. Its screen displays a Happy Mac icon with color backlighting to indicate charging status.

A new compilation of the best games of the Pac-Man series, including maze games, puzzle games, and platformers. Titles include Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Pac-Land, Pac-Man Battle Royale, and more. SuperStar7650 posted a gameplay compilation of all 14 titles. Drops 5.27.22 on PS4, PC, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

To celebrate 40 years of 4Runner, Toyota will produce 4040 of this special SUV with retro 1980s graphics in yellow, orange, and red. It rolls on 17″ bronze finish wheels and has a body-color grille with matching stripes. Inside, you’ll find bronze stitching and 40th Anniversary logos on the headrests, dashboard, and floormats.

Arcade1up brings 10 classic Atari arcade games to your TV screen, along with an arcade-quality controller you can enjoy from the comfort of your couch. Its base station plugs into your TV’s HDMI port, and the wireless controller has real arcade buttons, a trackball, a spinner, a soft bean bag bottom, and a built-in carrying handle.

Like many of you, we’ve played Wordle almost every day since it broke out. Squirrel Monkey imagines what the hit word game might have been like if it came out in the 1980s and ran on an MS-DOS-based PC. You’ll also need a dot-matrix printer if you want to share your score.

This industrial-style wristwatch packs a pair of vintage IN16 Nixie tubes for its display. It features a scratch- and fingerprint-resistant sapphire crystal and comes with a wireless charging base. Its case is made from aluminum oxide, and a blue LED accent light differentiates between hour and minute displays.

Want to see what a website looked like on a specific date? You can always go to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and type in a URL to find out. Or, you could do what The Science Elf did and build a box that runs the Wayback Proxy and lets him dial in a specific date to surf old versions of websites on vintage web browsers.

Film fanatic Denis-Carl Robidoux is on a mission to preserve as many old movie trailers as he can. So he built a machine he calls the Gugusse Roller that plays 8mm, 16mm, or 35mm film reels and captures each frame digitally. Thus far, he’s digitized more than 500 trailers from movies dating from the 1960s to the early 2000s.

“My spreadsheet doesn’t do that!” This 1992 promo spot for Microsoft Excel 4.0 seems like it was directed and performed by a team that wished they were doing more meaningful work. Instead, they ended up pimping the ubiquitous productivity software with a level of gravitas typically reserved for serious TV dramas.

We recently were reminded how painful it was to get on the Internet in the 1990s. Installing software on a computer without a CD-ROM drive was even more of a chore. Tech Tangents walks us through the slow but somewhat meditative task of installing Microsoft Office 97 from its 46 floppy disks onto a Gateway 2000 laptop.

Geeky pillow maker Throwboy teamed up with the Mineola Knitting Company to create a colorful series of throw blankets inspired by classic Apple Macintosh imagery. The 50″ X 60″ throws are woven from recycled cotton and polyester, and feature images of the MacOS startup face, the iMac G3, and the 5th-gen iPod.

These days, we’re used to whipping our phones out and connecting instantly to the internet. But back in the 1990s, it was a much slower task. Gough Lui dusted off an old PC running Windows 98 to walk us slowly down memory lane to surf the web using a 31.2k baud dial-up modem and some vintage web browsers.

Love the look of mid-century modern design? Spring River Studio makes 1950s-inspired light switch and outlet plates. The plates come in boomerang and blobby trapezoid shapes, with colorful and kitschy patterns sure to take you back in time. The interchangeable patterns are sandwiched between two layers of acrylic.