NES Reborn As Nexus Player And NES

Anyone who has a Raspberry Pi and an old Nintendo has had the same thought. “Maybe I could shove the Pi in here?” This ran through [Adam’s] head, but instead of doing the same old Raspberry Pi build he decided to put a Nexus Player inside of this old video game console, with great success. Not only does it bring the power of a modern media player, it still works as an NES.

If you haven’t seen the Nexus Player yet, it’s Google’s venture into the low-cost home media center craze. It has some of the same features of the original Chromecast, but runs Android and is generally much more powerful. Knowing this, [Adam] realized it would surpass the capabilities of the Pi and would even be able to run NES emulators.

[Adam] went a little beyond a simple case mod. He used a custom PCB and an Arduino Pro Micro to interface the original controllers to the Nexus Player. 3D printed brackets make sure everything fits inside the NES case perfectly, rather than using zip ties and hot glue. He then details how to install all of the peripherals and how to set up the Player to run your favorite game ROMs. The end result is exceptionally professional, and brings to mind some other classic case mods we’ve seen before.

8 thoughts on “NES Reborn As Nexus Player And NES

  1. The arduino sketch seems like it would have a problem of no more than six buttons pressed simultaneously (among both players). Probably not an issue with the NES, though.

    I was thinking of using a similar method of using a Teensy-based SNES Pad-to-keyboard, but it looked like I’d need two teensy’s. Unless someone can make one ATmega32u4 present as two separate USB keyboards…

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