This 4-in-1 Atari 2600/NES/Genesis/Super NES combo system actually began its life sometime circa early 2002, and at the time it only consisted of a Sega Genesis/32X and Super NES. Soon after accidentally destroying the 32X (no big loss) and moving to the smaller Genesis 3 board, I decided to throw an NES into the mix, making it a 3-in-1 system. It went through a few redesigns before I finally chose to go all out and add the Atari as well since i'd already spent so much time on it. I worked on it on and off for several years (taking sanity breaks for several months at a time) and finally have a finished machine to show you! This is to date the most involved and time-consuming project I've ever worked on, and I'm happy to finally call it done.

The whole box measures about 14"x10"x5" and is made entirely of transparent bronze acrylic, formed and shaped on a homemade strip heater. All of the openings for the buttons, cartridges and controller ports were carefully cut with a cordless Dremel. The face buttons are clear acrylic domes with each system's logo epoxy glued in place and back-lit with orange LEDs when pressed. The entire system is incredibly easy to hook up, consisting of only one standard power cord and one A/V cable. It's a little on the large size considering the room needed for all the boards, cartridge connectors and built-in transformer, and there's also the fact that I refused to use clone systems since I wanted 100% compatibility and faithful reproduction. (No Yobos, Super Joys, etc.)

The basic idea of how this thing is wired is actually pretty simple, yet extremely tedious in practice. The system select buttons are hooked up to one of those little A/V selector switch boxes you can pick up from gamestop, but it re-routs the voltage through the unused s-video connectors, as well as the A/V signals through the RCA ports. This can be done electronically but I liked the clunky mechanical feel of the switch box. Relocating the cartridge connectors was probably the most difficult part, what with the literally hundreds of solder connections that had to be made.

Unfortunately, most of my progress shots were lost over the years due to the fact that they were taken with 5+ different cameras and moved from hard drive to hard drive until they were either misplaced or accidentally erased. But please, enjoy the following images below and check out the demonstration video on YouTube! (LINK)