1upForge

I am an avid old school gamer who spent many hours as a child playing the Atari 2600. When I wasn’t grasping that joystick with the one orange button (yep, all you needed was one button in those days) I would have my hands filled with pencils and drawing paper doodling and coloring. I always knew I wanted to combine these two things I loved the most: art and video games.

With this idea always brewing in my head I eventually became a high school art teacher and repaired vintage video games on the side. When I could not fix something instead of throwing it out I turned it into something new and usable. My very first upcycle was turning a broken NES console into a lunch box. I started having more fun playing with the broken stuff rather than the working stuff. I had so much fun, in fact, that I decided to quit my teaching job to pursue my realized dream of working with video games and art full time.

I’m constantly stretching my imagination to come up with new and innovated ideas for recycling video game peripherals. To me a pile of broken video game equipment is not trash but rather a pile of possibilities. It’s a new medium that has vast applications in the modern era. I’m keeping these pieces out of landfills and curating small bits of video game history at the same time.

I use almost any gaming system you can think of including: Nintendo NES, Super Nintendo, N64, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Wii and Wii U, Playstation 1, PS2, PS3, PS4, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Sega Dreamcast and others.

Let me know if you need any further information, I am happy to answer any questions you may have.