When [Press Play on Tape] entered their game Prince of Arabia into the Arduboy FX Game Jam, we bet they had no idea that they’d be taking home a prize quite like this — designed by Arduboy creator [Kevin Bates], this gorgeous new variant of the handheld system brings some exciting new capabilities to the platform. Plus, it looks awesome.
The system, which is made up of a stacked pair of PCBs, has been designed to resemble an audio cassette. Thanks to the full-color silkscreen service offered by PCBway, it certainly looks the part. But it’s also a fully functional Arduboy, which means it has access to all the games already written for the 8-bit system.
It would have been impressive enough if this new handheld was just a “classic” Arduboy, but instead, [Kevin] made it a considerable upgrade over the version of the system that’s already on the market. If you squint just right, you might even catch a glimpse of what the future of the Arduboy might look like.
For one thing, the system features six capacitive touch pads for the directional and action buttons. This capability has been implemented by pairing each pad with its own dedicated touch IC, which means existing software doesn’t have to be modified to take advantage of them. It’s also got a 64 MB flash chip, which makes the 16 MB used in the Arduboy FX look like…well, a cassette tape. Under the hood there’s also some new RGB LEDs, an IR transmitter, and a real-time clock. In a particularly clever move, [Kevin] has taken over a few pins of the USB-C connector and tied it to the chip’s I2C lines, which lets a standard USB-C cable link two of the handhelds together.
The finished product looks and works great, which has [Kevin] considering doing a small run of them so folks other than the FX Game Jam winners can get in on the action.
Why do all those homebrew consoles must use such diminutive screens? We need bigger pixels to appreciate all the nice pixel art in those games.
Because you buy them as a (cheap)module and come with an arduino library.
ducks and runs away
That’s for sure how I got started with it!
Sure I’ll try to connect my Arduino to my 32″ QHD and figure out how to make Arduino throw out nearly 28MB worth of data per second in black and white only mode.
Arduino isn’t made for speed and it would struggle to handle high res display. If anyone wanted to drive something far bigger than VGA and old TV, they are looking at something different like STM or Pi.
Why going from one extreme to another?
Its about pixel size not resolution. The OG gameboy also only had 160×144 but its way easier to look at.
Which part of “bigger pixels” you didn’t understand?
They are affordable and widely available. There is a 2.54″ OLED that looks beautiful, but it’s almost 3 times the cost… But keep an eye out for Arduboy XL!
Also.. you can play all of the games on PC on the website, with the simulator, there is also a retroarch core for Arduboy so you can play it on a whole host of gaming consoles!
You and I are getting old and new prescription for our eyeglasses.
B^)
This is beautiful :-)