Nostalgia never goes out of fashion, it just moves to new eras. Right now, the early days of 3D gaming are all the rage, with the latest indie games aping the low-polygon, low-res texture look of PC and PS1-era games from the 90s and early 2000s. The latest Higround mechanical keyboard brings a chunk of those games into the real world.
We’ve featured Higround before, who’s no stranger to sweet keyboard designs, like this one featuring a full-width Sonic retro print. The “BLUR” variant of the Basecamp 75+ keyboard (spotted by PCGamer) features keycaps meant to mimic the look of in-game computers from games like the original Half-Life and Deus Ex. No, you don’t need to reload the page, that’s what they’re supposed to look like. Even the Higround logo on the spacebar is blurred and faded, as if your desk itself was being rendered by a GeForce 256 that was chugging on the game engine.
Higround
The keyboard itself is kind of pricey at $160 for a wired design with a plastic case, but this is an artsy, limited-edition kinda product. With a 75% layout, hot-swap switches (disappointing TTC switches included in the box), RGB lighting, an aluminum plate, and multiple layers of sound dampening, it’s definitely not a value proposition.
I kind of wish Higround would just sell me a set of those PBT keycaps alone. The keyboard is limited to just two orders per buyer at the moment, but the keycaps might show up here at a later date, like the Sonic ones did a while back.