Chevy Work Van With Custom Nintendo 64 In-Dash Install Is How You Do Lunch Right

In the days before in-car subscriptions and overcomplicated interfaces, screens were fun. I’m reflecting on that period now as I look at what one tinkerer and retro gaming fan, Eric, did to his work van years ago. That’s a Nintendo 64 shoved into the dash of a Chevy 3500 utility van, complete with four controller points, the stock power-on LED, and a cartridge slot arranged in a gleeful four-eyed face; overhead, a flip-down display shows the original Super Smash Bros. running.

This is what it looks like when screens work for us, not the other way around. It’s the realization of all the potential that the intersection of cars and technology seemed to promise; your car could still do car things, but you could also throw fists 1v1 on Kongo Jungle over break. It’s brilliant. Eric wrote on Facebook that that’s exactly what he and his co-worker did during lunch, usually in a grocery store parking lot, because that’s where their old jobs took them.

I got in touch with Eric because I had to know more about this install. He told me the main challenge was separating the cartridge slot from the motherboard, as they’re typically oriented perpendicular to each other on a real N64. “I had to desolder the pin connector from the main board, and reconnect it pin for pin, with jumper wires,” Eric said. “This way, the connector could be moved independently from the board.”

What you’re seeing in the Chevy’s dash is effectively the top of a real N64 facing outward, with holes for the controller ports drilled out above it. Jumpers were soldered in for the power supply as well, and once Eric had disassembled the console and moved around the components appropriately, the rest of the job was “pretty straightforward.” An inverter powered the system.

The project was a rewarding one, Eric said, and while he and his coworker Johnny would usually play Smash Bros. together, during long road trips, the passenger could swivel the display toward them and play some Super Mario 64, Donkey Kong 64, and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, among other N64 classics, on the move. But that wasn’t the only system they had at their disposal; below the built-in N64 laid a Nintendo Entertainment System in a cubby near the base of the center stack.

Ultimately, when Eric was later laid off from that job, he didn’t feel like reinstalling the original head unit into the work van, so he left it all there. Who knows what became of the vehicle, though we hope the setup provided his successors with some enjoyment. And if you’re ever browsing Facebook Marketplace out west and come across a Chevy 3500 circa 2012 with a built-in N64, you can be sure who put it there.

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