Interview with Ben Heckendorn, Video Game Portablizer

Call him the God of portable gaming. Ben Heckendorn has hacked, sliced, diced and squashed all manner of home consoles into sleek, compact, do-it-yourself projects, and somehow found the time to write a book about it. His mind-blowing exploits have been featured all over the web, from Engadget to Wired Magazine. Many of us know Ben from his most recent internet fame as the man behind the awesome Wii laptop (pictured below). However, before Ben decided to take on the challenge of downsizing the Wii, he had already accomplished similar feats using the Xbox 360, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, and the original big daddy of home consoles, the Atari 2600. We were curious to find out what goes on inside the mind of the world’s preeminent builder of all things portable, so we contacted Ben for an interview. He was gracious enough to share some of his experiences with us, and we bring them to you here.

Ben began hacking apart Atari VCSp systems with a view to making them portable back in 2000. His job as a graphic designer in a sign-making shop gave him access to all of the tools necessary to fashion cases for his handheld marvels. The guts of the machines were salvaged (read: violently extracted) from consoles found laying around and picked up from Ebay. Ben estimates that he sacrificed 25 Atari consoles while working on his first portable model, and many other consoles of various kinds have fallen to Ben’s soldering iron since then. Ben has managed to transform his fledgling hobby into a full-time business, now regularly commanding over $5000 for one of his custom-built gaming systems!

This Wii laptop takes portable gaming to a whole new level. We asked Ben for a picture of himself playing - but sadly he told us that the one-of-a-kind system had already been shipped to its buyer.


PVG: We’re pretty serious about our portable systems here at PVG but we have never tried to attach a battery pack and screen to a SNES. What is it that makes you want to hack apart perfectly good consoles and make them portable?

Ben: Well, why not? Also, it’s not like these game consoles are rare - it’s a far cry from, say, “modding” the Last Supper. (Although that did occur over the years) Mostly I enjoy the challenge of trying to make something into a different form-factor.

PVG: Of course, changing the form of a console into a portable is where most of the difficulty arises… You have worked on a lot of different portable mods all the way from the Atari 2600 to the Xbox 360. What achievements are you most proud of and what made them particularly challenging?

Ben: I’m fairly proud of the Wii Laptop, while I’m not really a fan of the system I think the portable I built was pretty cool. The finished product is quite small too, though that’s not always apparent from the photos. Finishing the Xbox 360 laptop was quite an accomplishment as well, although the new 360 laptop I’m building is much cooler looking

Ben’s water-cooled, fully functioning Xbox 360 laptop took months to build. The power supply is stored outside of the case.

PVG: I personally loved your Atari Jaguar mod. What kind of battery life could I expect to get out of that thing if I was willing to pony up the $5000 or thereabouts to buy one?

Ben: It ran for about 2 hours. I also put in a wall power adapter, I put those in most of my projects. However, I’m not sure if I’d have time to build one in the near future, but you could hit me up in a few months or so…

[Editors note: Ben's Atari Jaguar mod took several weeks to build, and runs using a screen salvaged from at Ps1 portable console -- remember those?]

PVG: We can live with 2 hours of battery life (which is roughly what we get from our PSPs anyway). From a gamer’s perspective, how playable and practical have you found your creations? Do you play them daily or are they kept in a vault somewhere?

Ben: I think it depends. I know the Atari 2600 units get a lot of mileage and some people are playing them even 6 years later (I made a bunch in 2001).

Forget emulation: Ben’s N64 portable is the Cadillac of handheld gaming

PVG: As someone who obviously follows the gaming market, what goes through your mind when companies like Sony and Nintendo release commercial handhelds? Do you look at the PSP and say “hey that’s cool but I would have used a dual shock analogue stick!!”?

Ben: Yes that’s pretty much what I thought about the PSP. Although I was more disgruntled with Nintendo, for not making the Gameboy Advance backlit in 2001 and not adding X and Y buttons until the DS. The DS is pretty nice though, probably one of the best handhelds ever.

PVG: Hackers and modders sometimes get a bum rap in the mainstream press. What do you think are the positive things that come out of hacking old systems, and what advice would you give to someone considering getting into this as a hobby?

Ben: I think the bad rap stems from the fact the term “hacker” went from someone who figures out hardware (old school hacking) to someone who goes around destroying websites, creating viruses and stealing your identity. The correct term for those people is “scumbags”.

One of the positive results from hacking is coming up with new uses for old hardware and using that to make money. There’s a huge market for doing this sort of thing, and I wish I had more than 2 arms. I can’t even remotely keep up with requests.

Well there you have it folks, a big thumbs up for the DS and a thumbs down for the Wii and PSP from the man who ought to know about these things. Ben’s comments ought to provide lots of material for the fanboys to debate (who knows, maybe a second book could be in the offing?). We would like to thank Ben for sharing his time and insight with us, as well as for providing the cool photos of his creations. See the gallery below for more pictures of the nuts-and-bolts of building your own portable machine. We will be waiting anxiously for Ben to reveal his next project, a souped up, even better-looking revision to his Xbox 360 laptop.

Image Gallery:

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