iCADE 8-Bitty to debut at Toy Fair 2012

You know that with the advent of tablets and smartphones, we are now very used to touchscreen displays – something which used to be in the domain of science fiction is now widespread reality. Even our ATMs these days tend to have a touchscreen display in order to keep up with the times. Well, having said that, touchscreen displays do do their part in making sure new genres of games are churned out in order to take advantage of this new interactive format, but what happens when you port over old school games onto a touchscreen display equipped device?

Sure, the memories of yore might roll back the years as you indulge in a little blast from the past on your iPad or smartphone, and I am quite sure that deep down inside, you would probably feel that your gaming experience would have been far better with physical controls instead of just tapping on a glass display. Enter the iCADE 8-Bitty then, which is set to debut at the 2012 Toy Fair in New York City.

Just in case the iCADE 8-Bitty seems familiar to you, it is actually the smaller sibling of the iCADE gaming cabinet, where that itself started off as an April Fool’s joke which ended up as one of the most anticipated ThinkGeek products ever. The iCADE 8-Bitty certainly lives up to that, bringing the magic of the iCADE to the pockets of smartphone and tablet users.

According to Ty Liotta, head of ThinkGeek’s GeekLabs, “We’re excited to extend on the success of the original iCADE. And with millions of iOS and Android devices in circulation it only makes sense to widen the field and bring the fun of iCADE to every possible device.”

The iCADE 8-Bitty functions as a wireless game controller which comes with the classic D-Pad and button layout that will remind you of retro 8-bit game consoles back from the 1980s and 1990s. It is battery powered, and will hook up to your device wirelessly, letting your fingers run all over the fully-functional directional game pad and eight buttons. A $24.99 asking price is not too much to fork out, is it?