[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x23TWrInpI&w=580]
Released 25 years ago, the Nintendo Power Pad, a plastic mat that plugged into an NES, saw very limited success despite its prevalence in basements and attics. In total, only six games for the Power Pad were released in North America, and only 13 worldwide. The guys over at cyborgDino thought they should celebrate the sliver anniversary of the Power Pad by creating its 14th game, using an Arduino and a bit of playing around in Unity 3D.
The first order of business was to read the button inputs on the Power Pad. Like all NES peripherals, the Power Pad stores the state of its buttons in a shift register that can be easily read out with an Arduino. With a bit of help from the UnoJoy library, it was a relatively simple matter to make the Power Pad work as intended.
The video game cyborgDino created is called Axis. It’s a bit like a cross between Pong and a tower defense game; plant your feet on the right buttons, and a shield pops up, protecting your square in the middle of the screen from bouncing balls. It’s the 14th game ever created for the Power Pad, so that’s got to count for something.
Video of the game below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn9moRgzrNo&w=580]
How many times did he say the word “Power”? The one to answer correctly wins a Power Pad
0 that we know of. We only know that he typed it.
9
Nine times. POWER!
Soooo, where’s the NES?
I think the game is made for the Power Pad, not the NES. It uses the controller, but not the console.
In that case I’m not really sure it’s fair to call this the 14th game for the Power Pad. Yes it uses the NES peripheral but as it doesn’t actually go near the console surely this is just a game that uses a shift register based input? I was kinda looking forward to reading nitty gritty about someone creating a fresh NES game. THAT would be impressive!