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.