Rewind: 30 projects from 2015 that gamers will love

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A look at some gaming-inspired projects that caught our attention over the last 12 months. 

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Arduboy

A credit card-sized device that allows you to play, program and share 8-bit games.

TinyArcade

A shrunken-down cabinet that lets you relive the golden age of arcade games.

8-Person NES

A system that transforms 8-bit side-scrolling games into a totally immersive multi-player experience.

Tetris MicroCard

An ATmega32U4-powered gadget that puts Tetris right in your wallet.

Game:ref

A hardware anti-cheat solution for online gaming.

MAME Game Machine

A game machine driven by a Cosino Mega 2560 (running the AdvanceMAME) with a 7″ LCD display and an Xbox-compatible joystick.

Grand Theft Auto iPhone App

An Arduino Leonardo, an Ethernet shield and a PC enables your iPhone to be used as a GTA controller.

Auto-Leveling Destiny Robot

A robotic mechanism comprised of a servo motor, an Xbox controller and an Arduino Uno that allows you to level up in Destiny without even lifting a finger.

Arduinocade

A creative way to play classic video games on your TV from an overclocked Arduino Pro Mini.

Gloveone

A glove that lets you sense and interact with virtual objects onscreen and in your VR headset.

KADE miniConsole+

An open source gadget that allows you to play all old-school games with their original controllers.

Impacto

An Arduino-driven band designed to make it feel as though you’re hitting and being struck in VR games.

Bedroom Cockpit

A full-scale Cessna 172 cockpit simulator, complete with everything from pedals that control actual airplane rudders and brakes, to a steering yoke, to an Oculus Rift running Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D software.

Scrapyard Simulator

An actual dashboard for a truck simulator.

Dashboard Simulator

A real dashboard for your car simulator.

Arduino Game Boy

A super-sized Arduboy.

Tetris on an ARM Cortex-M4 MCU

A game of Tetris on an Atmel | SMART SAM4S MCU.

KeyChainino

An Arduino-programmable keychain game.

Super Hexagon

An Arduino Nano attached to a fan blade displays Super Hexagon in a more “circular” format.

Claw Machine

A DIY claw machine that’s faster, fairer and more controllable than anything found in yesterday’s arcades.

Storefront Pong

An interactive storefront game played on a giant 6 x 8 pixel grid display comprised of 18.5” bulbs illuminated by ultra-bright NeoPixel rings.

WideRun

A fully-interactive bike trainer specifically designed to deliver engaging fitness sessions through VR headsets and external screens.

Doorstop Game

A one-dimensional dungeon crawler game that uses a doorstop spring as its controller and an LED strip as its display.

Talon

A motion control ring that enables you to play games and control apps with simple gestures.

Pico Cassettes

An old-school gaming cartridge for your smartphone.

TeleBall BreakOut

A retro-style handheld gaming device.

DIY Game Boy

A portable, 3D-printed console embedded with a Raspberry Pi and Teensy 2.0.

Barebones Console

An extremely low-cost, minimalist gaming console that will take you back to a much blockier 8-bit era.

Arcade-Style Puzzle Box

A vintage, arcade-style puzzle box that resembles the ubiquitous wooden audio equipment of the ‘70s.

UFO Escape Keychain Game

A game of UFO Escape on your keychain? Sure, why not?

Gbg-8

An 8-bit instant photo camera masquerading as a toy gun, which consists of an old Game Boy, a camera, a thermal printer and an Arduino.

Playing 8-bit video games on an Arduino-powered Game Boy

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One Maker combined the case, buttons and LCD screen from his classic Game Boy with a pair of Arduino.

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Earlier this summer, Kevin Bates launched a Kickstarter campaign for his credit card-sized, 8-bit gaming system. For most of us, just one glance at the Arduboy conjured up childhood memories of playing our Game Boys in the backseat of our parents’ car or on the bus en route to school. But what if you could combine the two?

That’s exactly what Daniel O’Shea has attempted to do by converging the case, buttons, LED indicator and screen of his classic Game Boy with a pair of Arduino boards to create an Arduboy-like device on a larger scale. The Maker embedded the same brains as the Arduboy, the ATmega32U4, along with an ATmega328 as a coprocessor to handle the LCD controller.

Aside from that, he used a 2K dual-port RAM chip and an 8-bit flip-flop which together serve as a memory buffer between the Arduino Leonardo and Nano, and the Game Boy’s power PCB to get the negative 20V required by the LCD. At the moment, the entire setup is attached to a breadboard while he sorts out the interface.

“I had a breakout board made for the 21-pin connector which allows the ribbon cable from the Game Boy’s front daughterboard to connect straight into a breadboard for prototyping. And then started out with just the Nano and the daughterboard, working on hooking up all of the LCD’s control signals and getting something (anything!) to show up on the LCD – the awesome research into this by mARC at robotdialogs.com was a great foundation to be able to start from,” O’Shea adds.

Looking ahead, the Maker hopes to drop in a motherboard replacement for the retro-themed gaming system. This next step would include transitioning to a bigger FIFO and an MCU with more RAM, like the ATmega1284P or Teensy. He has already sourced the parts for the power switch, power jack and volume dial, and says that there is ample room for the new electronics on the original footprint.

Interested? Check out the Maker’s entire breakdown of the project on its original page here, and be sure to see it in action below.

Gbg-8 isn’t like any other Polaroid camera

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With a click of the trigger, the gbg-8 shoots… a photo!

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No stranger to Bits & Pieces, Moscow-based artist Dmitry Morozov has created a rather strange yet innovative DIY camera unlike anything you’ve probably seen before. In essence, the gbg-8 is an 8-bit instant photo camera masquerading as a gun, which was designed using an old Game Boy, a camera, a thermal printer and an Arduino.

How it works is pretty simple. The camera is used by pointing the barrel at something and pulling the trigger. This captures a picture through the camera, displays it on the old Game Boy screen, and sends it to the thermal printer where it’s printed on to receipt paper.

While the device probably should not be brought into public, Morozov’s project is certainly a clever piece of cyberpunk gadgetry. You can watch it in action below, or read up on the gbg-8 on its official page here.

Using Arduino to catch Pokémon

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Gotta catch ‘em all but have no one to play with? Luckily, there’s Arduino. 

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If you’re looking to “catch ’em all,” you’re going to need to have two Game Boys, two copies of the same game and, of course, someone else to play along with. Those not lucky enough to score all three, Pepijn de Vos has devised a solution.

“Sadly, not a whole lot of people own a Game Boy, a Pokémon game, and a link cable. So I decided to get creative and trade Pokémon with my Arduino,” the Maker writes.

De Vos has created an Atmel based system that acts as a Game Boy, storing a single Pokémon in EEPROM. This enables a user to trade between first-generation games using only a single console.

How it works is pretty simple. Compatible with both Pokémon Red and Blue versions, users connect their Game Boy, Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance to the Arduino via a Game Link Cable, inserting the cartridge to the desired game and complete the trade. Meanwhile, the data is saved in the Arduino’s EEPROM — made possible through the on-board Atmel MCU.

“The Game Boy communicates over what is essentially a 5v SPI bus that can act both as a master and a slave. At 8KHz it is slow enough to bit-bang, so it works on any 3 GPIO pins,” the Maker explains. “I salvaged a connector from a GBA wireless adapter, and hooked it up to three Arduino pins with 1KΩ series resistors to be sure. Because both ends can in theory drive the clock line, I don’t want to short them out.”

All in all, the project will enable multiple trades in one session, and allow you to cancel them as well. What’s more, you can easily swap Pokémon between the different versions of the game by initiating a trade, swapping out cartridges, and re-trading. However, de Vos does advise users to remember to reset the Arduino when resetting the Game Boy, or else “bad things will happen.”

Ready to attain all 151 Pokémon? You can find all the necessary code for the project here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlqMkfmCZfM