In 2002 Nintendo released a ridiculous looking GameCube controller with a keyboard embedded in it so that Phantasy Star Online players could type to their friends. In 2021 someone’s modded it into an equally impractical but much prettier custom keyboard that I wish I could type all of my shitposts on.
“Y’all thought the gamecube keyboard was a joke,” creator HolyChipmunk recently wrote on the Keyboard subreddit in a post sharing their project that was first spotted by PCGamesN. Inspired by another modder’s build from a few years back, HolyChipmunk drilled out some of controller keyboard’s original plastic to make room for the new, higher-quality aluminium plate and Preonic PCB. Here are the full specs:
Keyboard: Preonic placed into a Sammy Gamecube Keyboard Controller
Case Material: 18 year old Nintendo plastic
Plate: Aluminium tray mounted
Switches: Lubed Glorious Pandas
Stabilizer: Durock v1 lubed with 205g0 and dielectric grease
Dampening: none
Keycaps: DSA Vilebloom
HolyChipmunk went a step further and replaced the GameCube controller’s existing sticks and buttons with custom ones which perfectly match the Vilebloom colour scheme. Best of all, the whole thing works. HolyChipmunk demoed switching from typing out messages to playing Super Smash Bros. Melee in a video on YouTube:
The battle between gamepads and keyboards was been waged by people with too much time on their hands for years, but the solution has been right in front of us all along. Plenty of PC games now support various controllers, and plenty of console games now support the use of a mouse and keyboard. But why choose when you can get the best of both worlds in super lux-looking, decades old GameCube controller.
Bring back the ASCII keyboard controller. Bring back the Xbox chatpad. Give the Switch Pro a slick keyboard Joy-Con attachment and bless it with colourful keycaps. Anything to make interfacing with the internet hive-mind feel a little more whimsical.
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