Exp.pack

Handheld Summer is around the corner 👀

Back in 2008, BAPE and Nintendo collaborated on a special DS Lite. The launch coincided with BAPE’s 15th anniversary. At the time, the DS Lite was the prime handheld from Nintendo, as the collaboration launched months prior to the DSI’s launch in Japan.

As with any hype collaboration, the BAPE Baby Milo DS Lite was an instant need for gamers and hypebeasts alike. The handheld was released on April 1, 2008, exclusively in Japan (peep the last slide for a look at the lineup). The white model was made available only at the location in Tokyo, with the gold model only being available for BAPE CARD holders. Reports suggest that the gold model was limited to around 100 units total.

As gamers rekindle their love with vintage handhelds, the price of the Baby Milo DS Lite has shot up. Currently, you can find the console for around $1,000. Listings that include the complete packaging are closer to $2,000, though.

As a result, the Baby Milo DS Lite has become a grail in the gaming space- especially now that seemingly every gamer is back on handhelds.

Sega and Swatch almost gave us the first internet watch back in 2000.

On February 14th of 2000, Sega and Swatch held a joint press conference to announce their ambitious project. They wanted to provide a watch with internet access.

Though using a smartwatch today may be part of our daily routine, this was almost unheard of at the beginning of the Internet age.

The idea was to use the internet to link the Sega Dreamcast with the collaborative watch. The Dreamcast’s built-in modem would download information, like movie showtimes, from the internet and transfer it into the memory chip on the watch.

The scope of the project was ambitious, as Sega and Swatch intended to place special adaptors where you could connect your watch to popular areas like movie cinemas and museums. That said, it was not unrealistic, as Swatch was already using something they called “Swatch Access” that stored ski passes at 500 Sky resorts in 30 countries.

Special prototypes of the watch and the connecting accessory were made and displayed at the press conference. There was even a special Dreamcast console that was created for the announcement. None of that was ever released to the public, though.

The watch, which was going to retail for between $130-$180, never officially launched, though. There was never an official reason given for the cancellation. It is speculated that the cancellation was related more to the discontinuation of the Dreamcast rather than the project being too ambitious.

Ultimately, the only watch to release from the partnership then was a Sonic the Hedgehog watch in 2001. It had no internet access, unfortunately.