iPad Arcade Cabinet is Real If You Make It

One of the heartbreaking April Fool’s Day jokes for gamers this year was ThinkGeek’s iCade iPad Arcade Cabinet. Oh, how we wished that was real. Turns out that with a little ingenuity, you can make it so. Brian Lockwood spotted the cardboard iPad arcade cabinet at Tokyo Make Meeting 05. In the video, the demonstrator controls a racing game on the screen with an analog joystick in a surprisingly solid looking cardboard construction. “Not sure how this was accomplished but the developer seems to have made a Joy stick and button firing mechanism for a iPad turning it into a mini video game Arcade,” Lockwood writes.

A commenter on GameSetWatch may have the winning theory: “It looks like it’s hooked up to the charge stand, probably with a keyboard attached, so I’d assume the joystick is just making contact with the keyboard to control it.” I’m not sure what games you can control with the iPad’s keyboard dock, if any, but theoretically gaming through the keyboard dock would allow you to create your own cabinet pretty easily. Now, where’s that cardboard? [Brian Lockwood via GameSetWatch]