Hardware – Page 4 – Obsolete Gamer

The SteelSeries Diablo III Headset Review

The USB extension cable will be important, because if your keyboard does not have a built-in USB port, the cable on the headset might be too short. SteelSeries realized nobody likes excess cables that you can trip over so they reduced the main cable length and included the USB extension cable. This gives you more options than other headsets where you would have to hide the excess cable. The only thing to note is that the USB extension cable isn’t gold plated or braided. But since it would probably be routed behind your desk you wouldn’t even see it.

Erik V

Nintendo Computer TV Game

The technology wasn’t really ready for this kind of commercial home release, but Nintendo went ahead anyway, believing there would be market for it. The company achieved the conversion by simply incorporating a complete arcade board, resulted in a big, heavy machine that required a fat power supply that weighed more than 2 kilograms alone. It was expensive too, retailing for ¥48,000, for a machine that only could play Othello. Three years later the Family Computer, able to play hundreds of different games – including Othello – could be had for less than a third of that price.

Patrick Scott Patterson

What are the best-selling video game consoles of all time?

Even with such numbers, however, the lifetime figures of Atari’s classic console have been beaten many times over. While 1996’s Nintendo 64 failed to catch on like retailers had hoped, it still managed to outsell the 2600 in the end my almost 3 million units. Nonetheless, it was tagged a failure by Nintendo compared to previous consoles.

Holiday Hardware Guide

You would think that you could not replicate that feeling once you are buying your own gifts, but that isn’t true. When I purchased my black Xbox 360 I felt just like a kid again even though I was spending my hard earned bucks and the same can be said for games like Batman Arkham City and the upcoming Star Wars, The Old Republic. So you may have purchased your gifts this year and if you are lucky you have others buying gifts that you know you will love. Here at Obsolete Gamer, we look at modern games and systems that can also have a Retro twist to it, but in the end will bring smiles to our faces when we open it.

The Memorex PS3 Quad controller charger Review

Memorex of CD-R, and for you old people like me, VHS cassette fame, have manufactured a pretty nifty controller charger for the PS3. With this contraption you can charge 2 controllers and 2 Move controllers at the same time. The normal Ps3 controllers plug into two slots on the front of the device, and the move controllers plug into holsters on both sides. It works pretty well, the coolest thing being the charging light on the front. Red if it’s charging, blue when it’s done. It’s pretty quick too.

Patriot Memory Wildfire SSD 120 GB Review

Based on this data, the Wildfire was insanely faster than the hard drive in every performance aspect, not just in raw speed but in responsiveness as well. In a the pure MB/s tests, both including reading and writing, it was about 90.97 as fast as the hard drive. That is a huge difference and in the real world I felt this when I compared how fast the SSD would load games and copy data over in comparison to my hard drive. Under this benchmark, the Wildfire responds 203.29 times faster than the hard drive on the average for any kind of activity. The benchmark gave us a score where the Wildfire is 19.28 times as fast as our lovely hard drive.

SteelSeries Siberia v2 Gaming Headset Review

It is established that the Siberia v2 has high-quality sound, but what about volume and noise reduction? Earlier we talked about the leather padded cushions made with sound dampening foam. How does this translate into the real world? The staff at Obsolete Gamer travels often and of course we game or listen to media on the plane. With too many headphones you get the high quality sound and high volume, but you still hear too much outside noise which kills the immersion factor.

Console Wars: SNES vs Genesis

Ah, the console wars of the 1990’s it was a time when most people only had one and whichever side you were on you believed it was the best. Either you were a Super NES fan or Sega Genesis fan and both companies took advantage of this, but Sega really played to their fanboi audience.

Erik V

Nintendo Color TV Game Series

Before Nintendo released the Family Computer in 1983, it had already created five home-use TV video game machines in the Japanese market. Between 1977 and 1979 four games were released in the Color TV Game series. The fifth game was Computer TV Game (CTG-HC10), which came out in 1980.

Razer DeathAdder – Transformers 3 Collector’s Edition Review

Razer has released their Transformers Collector’s edition of the DeathAdder mouse and I had a chance this weekend to try out the purple Decepticon model. The mouse has a shiny metallic purple color to it and both the scroll wheel and Decepticon logo lights up. The design looks great but in the dark with the neon-like colors, it looks awesome.

Dual Controller Charging Kit for XBOX 360 Review

I recently got my hand on the Memorex dual controller charging kit and it works perfectly for not only charging my controllers, but storing them as well. The unit itself is lightweight and is pretty stylish as well. Since I have a black Xbox 360, it fits perfectly with the style. The charging kit comes with two of its own rechargeable controller batteries, which is great because mine have been undercharging for a while now.

Arcade Works: The Omega Entertainment Machine

Retro gaming is incredibly important today. There’s a huge market of underserved retro gamers who are not looking for the next Call of Duty. Maybe they don’t want to deal with playing online, or they just want something less involved. Whatever the case is, they’ve basically been disenfranchised by the extreme focus on huge titles. This makes sense of course for the big studios, who need to target large audiences, but that still leaves a market unfulfilled.

Ad Spotlight: Light Boy

The Light Boy was a necessity for the original Gameboy because there really was not a backlight to the LCD for the original handheld. Strangely enough, it has become a popular collector’s item for classic gaming fans.

The Sentey Arvina GS-6400B

As we were successful in South America, Sentey wanted to bring that same spark to the United States. We knew this would be a challenge, but with a history of success in Argentina, Brazil and Peru, we felt we could bring this same spark to the North American market. So far, the results of this endeavor have been outstanding.

The Alienware M11x r2 Review

Let me start by saying this review is more for the casual gamer meaning it will not be filled with charts and graphs and a ton of numbers that most would not understand. There are a ton of super technical reviews on the Alienware M11x r2 that provide every benchmark number and rating score you will ever need, this, is for the rest of us.

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

The TI 99/4A

TI 99/4A, usually referred to (well by us gnomes at least) simply as the Texas Instruments, was the first computer I ever touched and the only computer of mine I just can’t remember where to find. Damn! This Space Invaders cartridge was so utterly amazing, and so unbelievably better than its Atari 2600 version, I’d just love to play it again… Show it to them silly Atari loving kiddies. Take it out for a beer even. Ah, the days, the days…

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

CD gaming from the late 80s

You see, oh patient and wise reader, CD gaming had hit the mainstream gaming market since the late 80s. The very late 80s actually, or to be more precise since December 1989, when Codemasters (then publishers of such classics as Dizzy, Ghostbusters and Jet Bike Simulator, now found here) released their famous CD Games Pack, an impressive collection of 30 games all on one CD. The compilation was available for 8-bit home computers like the Amstrad CPC, the Spectrum and the Commodore 64.