Space Invaders Played On A 16×2 Character Display

This Space Invaders game does more with less. [Rjk79] managed to make a video game using a two-line character display. The game consists of a wave of invaders on the top line, with the defender cannon on the bottom. The invader isn’t just stationary, but randomly moves to the left and the right. The image above captured a little bit of motion blur from the defender moving into position before firing on the enemy.

An Arduino board controls the 16×2 HD44780 character display. The game also includes sounds generated by the piezo buzzer seen on the breadboard. All the way to the right you can see the Wii Nunchuk breakout board which provides directional control and the firing trigger. If you want to recreate this one for yourself [Rjk79] is sharing the source code on Pastebin. There’s also a demo video found after the jump.

If you don’t have a character LCD on hand you might try this other Space Invaders clone that uses an 8×8 led matrix.

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10 thoughts on “Space Invaders Played On A 16×2 Character Display

    1. I’m not sure how many custom characters are allowed, but I have used 8 in the code, 3 of which are different types of enemies (the others being the gun and various shooting effects). I posted this on Reddit and someone mentioned the idea of scaling it up to a larger lcd, so I have been looking to find a larger lcd that would work with my limited Arduino skills and thinking about ideas that could be implemented using that extra space.

      1. You can get displays with 8×40 with the same interface (but the 8×40 uses 2 controller chips)
        You can only use up to 8 custom characters. Else you need to go to a grahical LCD, which also has an arduino library.

        (I’ve done 4 column tetris with a 16×2 display, also a fun to code)

  1. if want to configure bluetooth controls to Control How Could it do ? help please oh and there would be a way to put Clearer picture on connections or video. I am new at this

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