8BitDo’s Nintendo-themed desk gear is the ultimate retro home office upgrade

Somewhere between "I need a new mouse" and "I have recreated a 1985 living room on my desk," there's a line, and 8BitDo's Retro lineup will happily walk you right over it.

The company's NES-styled mouse, keyboard, and numpad are built on the same off-white-and-red aesthetic, they pair over the same software, and stacked together, they turn a boring desk into something that looks like it should be plugged into a CRT.

While they're sitting at full price - and from what I've seen, rarely get a discount - the prices are still refreshingly reasonable for what you get. For the ultimate retro home office setup, this is an easy recommendation from me.

Go Retro

Why this combination works

The trick with 8BitDo's Retro line is that the nostalgia isn't hiding a corner-cut product underneath it. The keyboard uses genuinely hot-swappable Kailh switches and PBT keycaps, which is the kind of spec sheet you'd expect from a keyboard enthusiast brand, not a novelty NES tribute. The R8 mouse's PAW 3395 sensor and 8,000Hz wired polling are legitimately competitive with mice that don't have a charging dock shaped like a museum display stand. And the numpad, which could easily have been an afterthought, gets its own little identity with the calculator mode.

Buying all three together also solves the problem that usually comes with retro-themed gear: matching. A single retro-styled keyboard on an otherwise modern desk can look like a costume prop. A full matching set — same grey, same red accents, same rounded plastic — reads more like a deliberate aesthetic choice than a novelty impulse buy, and the shared 8BitDo Ultimate Software means the mouse and keyboard's macros and profiles live in the same app rather than three different pieces of bloatware.

An honest take before you commit to the full set: the keyboard's Kailh Box White V2 switches are genuinely loud — reviewers have clocked it noticeably louder than a typical mechanical board, so it's not the pick for a shared office or a thin-walled apartment unless you plan to hot-swap in quieter switches down the line. The numpad also doesn't yet support macro programming through 8BitDo's software, so for now it's a numpad and calculator first, macro pad second. And obviously, the whole appeal here is the aesthetic — if the retro look isn't your thing, the money is better spent on gear with a more neutral design.

For anyone who wants their home office to look like it moonlights as a 1985 living room, this trio is about as complete an NES-themed desk kit as you can currently assemble.

See more from the lineup at 8BitDo's Amazon storefront.

Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!

Bryan M. Wolfe is a staff writer at TechRadar, iMore, and wherever Future can use him. Though his passion is Apple-based products, he doesn't have a problem using Windows and Android. Bryan's a single father of a 15-year-old daughter and a puppy, Isabelle. Thanks for reading!