Playdate

A box of nostalgia that you can plug directly into your TV’s HDMI port. Young or old, the Nintendo Classic Mini lets you relive your childhood memories, or make new ones in glorious High Definition 8-bit magic. Fitting in the palm of your hand, this mini console comes with 30 NES games built in. Game like PAC-MAN, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kirby’s Adventure and of course Super Mario Bros. If unlike me, you have friends, you may want to buy an extra NES Controller as only one is supplied.

You may know this console by it’s rumoured name the Nintendo NX. Available to buy in March 2017, this console bridges the gap between a stay-at-home console and an out-and-about gaming machine. The beauty of Nintendo is it’s inclusiveness. Other consoles have evolved to rely heavily on network multiplayer gaming rather than the old-school style of actually being in the same room. Nintendo has kept this tradition alive with it’s modular controller that can be taken apart to be used as two controls so you can bust out a game of Mario Karts with your mates in the park.

Teenage Engineering have never made a boring object, and the EP-133 K.O. II is no exception. It’s a sampler and sequencer about the size of a hardback and just 16mm thick, laid out like a piece of industrial equipment from a 1978 stockroom. Point the built-in mic at anything… a kettle, a door, your own voice, and it stores in one of 999 sample slots, ready to be chopped, pitched and sequenced. There’s 128MB of space to fill it with, MIDI in and out for the rest of your gear, and a speaker so you don’t have to dig out headphones to hear what you’ve done. All of this running on four AAA batteries, or USB-C when you’re near a plug.