Some retro gaming enthusiasts are so preoccupied with what they could build, they won’t stop to question if they should. One such diabolical maker has combined his love of retro consoles with his expertise in 3D printing and robotics to build the NESdestroyer: a repurposed NES console shell with a fully mobile, circular-saw-equipped combat robot inside. It is a delightful work of destructive art.
Having previously built fabulous creations such as the world’s fastest Roomba and an aquatic drone with a first-person camera controlled via head-tracking, Australian maker Electrosync’s latest creation is likely to inspire fear in the hearts of Sega Master System owners. Featuring a dangerous blade capable of easily slicing through flesh, watermelons, and beer cans, Electrosync’s NESdestroyer is a mechanical death machine you can’t help but fall in love with. Observe, from start to finish, the birth of this beauty via his YouTube channel:
Inspired by his love of the great sport of competitive combat robotics, Electrosync saw fit to do what might make more than a few retro gamers squirm: dice up and repurpose an actual Nintendo Entertainment System shell to serve as the suit of armor for a battle-ready robot. Its high-speed blade inspires dread, but it’s also cute as hell, especially in this video from Electrosync’s Instagram featuring delicate acoustic guitar played over motorized carnage.
Isn’t it adorable?
Built for “exhibition matches” in the BattleBots TV show’s beetleweight class (for robots at three pounds, or 1.36 kilograms), the entire original guts of the NES console had to go to make way for conversion into a combat machine. The actual robotic parts were made of repurposed parts themselves, including a pulley from a 3D printer, and a motor Electrosync salvaged from a drone he crashed.
Once built and ready for fighting, Electrosync sicced his creation on a watermelon, a fake NES game, and a can of Australian beer (Victoria Bitter). While the NES cartridge’s plastic proved an unbeatable foe (causing the blade’s motors to jam up), NESdestroyer made quick, messy, gory work of the beer and watermelon.
Electrosync has also teased that more is to come. Describing the fruit and beer as mere “training,” he closes his video by saying the NESdestroyer’s next challenge will be the Nintendo Entertainment System’s arch nemesis: The Sega Master System. This will be a fight for the ages.
Electrosync has made the design files for the NESdestroyer available on his Patreon, should you harbor ambitions of destruction yourself.