dbrand is at it again.
The Toronto-based gaming skin and accessory maker has released new Retro Darkplates inspired by the Nintendo 64’s (N64) classic transparent colours, including the very familiar-looking ‘Atomic Purple,’ ‘Ice Blue’ and ‘Fire Orange & Smoke’ colours gamers from the mid-2000s will likely fondly remember.
The Darkplates come in ‘Fire Orange,’ ‘Ice Blue,’ ‘Smoke Black,’ and ‘Atomic Purple,’ though only the first three colours in this list are “hue-matched” to look identical to their N64 counterparts.
These aren’t your average panels and skins, either. dbrand’s CEO Adam Ijaz says the company x-ray scanned a PlayStation 5’s internals to create them.
“To pair with the translucent side panels, we worked with a metrology lab to scan the PS5 with industrial-grade 450Kv x-ray equipment. After multiple scans were performed, we stitched them together, then added a colour-splash to hue-match each Retro Darkplate,” said Ijaz to MobileSyrup.
In The Verge‘s hands-on with the Darkplates, the publication says there’s a very dbrand easter egg inside the transparent plates: binary that translates to a section of Sony’s cease and desist regarding the first release of the accessory maker’s Darkplates. While dbrand initially pulled its Darkplates from its website, they eventually returned after discovering Sony didn’t hold a registered design patent for the PS5’s side panels when it launched the accessory.
Each Darkplate kit costs $99.95 USD for either the Disc or Digital Edition of the PS5 (roughly $135 CAD), which is a pretty steep ask. Still, the new transparent Darkplates look undeniably cool, especially if you’re a late-90s to early-2000s gamer like myself.
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Image credit: dbrand
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