Arduboy Brings New Life To Dreamcast VMU

The Dreamcast VMU was a curious piece of hardware. Part memory card, part low-end LCD gaming toy, its fate was sealed once SEGA abandoned the console platform on January 31, 2001. With a limited market penetration and no major killer app, the VMU is a largely forgotten piece of ephemera from a past era. All the more reason to refit one with an Arduboy, instead.

[sjm4306] has taken the Arduboy and repurposed it into a VMU-friendly form factor. The PCB is designed to fit snug inside the plastic case, with conductive traces for the original rubber membrane buttons already in place on the main board. There are some minor fit and finish issues with the first prototype – problems with drill sizes, and connectors that don’t quite fit flush with the housing. Mistakes like these are familiar to any maker who has built a custom PCB or two in their time, and [sjm4306] is confident the bugs will be worked out in the second revision.

It’s a fun project that brings some fun gaming action to an otherwise forgotten platform. If an Arduboy isn’t enough, you could always try to fit a Pi Zero instead. And if you don’t have a VMU, you can always emulate one. Video after the break.

9 thoughts on “Arduboy Brings New Life To Dreamcast VMU

    1. No, seeing your health in Resident Evil without having to go the menu was the best part about the VMU. I wonder if it would be possible to build a pi version of this that actually does VMU emulation and can interface with the DC via the controller port. That way you could still use it for storage/osd whole playing.

    1. I’ve just ordered a small batch of v2.0 boards to fix the issues I’ve found. Once I verify everything’s all good I’ll open an order (will link in my hackaday.io page for this project).

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