No Quarters Required For This Sidescrolling Game In A Box

teagduino_game_in_a_box

[Adam] from Teague Labs wrote in to share a new gadget they built to help demonstrate the capabilities of the Teagueduino. Their table top video game in a box was made with a bunch of electronic components they had sitting around, as well as soda straws, plenty of painter’s tape, and some popscicle sticks.

When someone pulls the string on the front of the box, a servo opens it automatically, and a second servo starts spinning the game reel. As the reel moves, the player is presented with a set of obstacles to dodge, guiding the “hero” via a knob-controlled servo. A hall sensor attached to the back of the character is tripped when passing over any of the obstacles, which are attached to the reel with magnetic tape. When the hero collides with an obstacle, the game ends and proceeds to close itself, much to the chagrin of the player.

As you can see in the video below, it’s a pretty entertaining and challenging game.

Looking to make one of your own? Swing by the Teagueduino site to grab the game’s code and be sure to share your creations with us in the comments.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/28781718 w=470]

22 thoughts on “No Quarters Required For This Sidescrolling Game In A Box

      1. The game board servo speeds up the longer you ‘survive’, so the game does get increasingly harder relatively quickly.

        Similar effect as delaying the movement servo, just a different means of getting there.

  1. really really like the use of a physical game, although I agree it’d be nice if mario was controlled mechanically rather than electronically.

    it’d be nice if it didn’t have a ‘finish’ point, but instead continued to get harder as it ran up a time-based score on a little LED screen so you could compare against your friends.

    I also like the idea of having an electromagnet on a servo that would attempt to reposition the obstacles on the backside of the level, creating a haphazard and random game on every pass.

    1. or, it’d be neat if the servo was programmed to default to it’s fullest position, and the knob was switched out for a button, effectively adding gravity and jumping to the game instead of shifting :)

      1. Totally! We didn’t originally start with Mario and had the same thought as soon as we switched.

        We also thought about using the polarity of the magnets to drive points -vs- bad guys. so if you run into a goomba, you lose health, or if you jump and hit a ?-block you get points.

        Guess we’ll have to make another one… :)

    1. I know, right? We realized this after we had hot glued everything in place :( We could switch the direction of the servo driving it, but it would have bubbled the paper up on top instead of pulling it taught. Next version for sure though!

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