Games

670 Articles

This M5Stack Game Is Surprisingly Addictive

March 19, 2025 by 4 Comments

For those of us lucky enough to have been at Hackaday Europe in Berlin, there was a feast of hacks at our disposal. Among them was [Vladimir Divic]’s gradients game, software for an M5Stack module which was definitely a lot of fun to play. The idea of the game is simple enough, a procedurally generated contour map is displayed on the screen, and the player must navigate a red ball around and collect as many green ones as possible. It’s navigated using the M5Stack’s accelerometer, which is what makes for the engaging gameplay. In particular it takes a moment to discover that the ball can be given momentum, making it something more than a simple case of ball-rolling.

Underneath the hood it’s an Arduino .ino  file for the M5Stack’s ESP32, and thus shouldn’t present a particular challenge to most readers. Meanwhile the M5Stack with its versatile range of peripherals has made it onto these pages several times over the years, not least as a LoRA gateway.

Run Xbox 360 Games On Your PC With XenonRecomp

March 7, 2025 by 8 Comments

Inspired by the N64: Recompiled project, XenonRecomp does something similar, except for the PowerPC-equipped Microsoft Xbox 360 game console. Based around the triple-core IBM CPU codenamed ‘Xenon‘, the Xbox 360 was released in 2005 and generally quite successful over its lifespan despite its Red Ring of Death issues. Although the current Xbox Series X supports running a number of Xbox 360 games, this is done via emulation and only 632 games out of 2,155 are supported.

This is where XenonRecomp not only promises turning the games into native (x86) software, but also allowing for a range of graphical improvements. Best of all, it allows for Xbox 360 games to be preserved instead of linked to an obsolete console. That said, much like with N64Recomp, it’s not a simple matter of running a tool over the PPC binary. You’re expected to have in-depth systems knowledge, with the tools in XenonRecomp assisting with the decompilation (into C++) and the recompilation into x86 binaries, but support for PPC instructions, VMX (vector instructions) and aspects like jump table conversion and (currently missing) MMIO support are likely to present an enterprising developer with hours of fun to implement and debug when issues arise.

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What Game Should Replace Doom As The Meme Port Of Choice?

February 27, 2025 by 113 Comments

DOOM. The first-person shooter was an instant hit upon its mrelease at the end of 1993. It was soon ported off the PC platform to a number of consoles with varying success. Fast forward a few years, and it became a meme. People were porting Doom to everything from thermostats to car stereos and even inside Microsoft Word itself.

The problem is that porting Doom has kind of jumped the shark at this point. Just about every modern microcontroller or piece of consumer electronics these days has enough grunt to run a simple faux-3D game engine from 1993. It’s been done very much to death at this point. The time has come for a new meme port!

Good Game

Doom became a popular meme port for multiple reasons. For one, it’s just complex and resource-intensive enough to present a challenge, without being so demanding as to make ports impractical or impossible. It’s also been open-source for decades, and the engine has been hacked to death. It’s probably one of the best understood game engines out there at this point. On top of that, everybody plays Doom at some point, and it was one of the biggest games of the 90s. Put all that together, and you’ve got the perfect meme port.

However, you can always have too much of a good thing. Just as The Simpsons got old after season 10 and Wonderwall is the worst song you could play at a party, Doom ports have been overdone. But what other options are there? Continue reading “What Game Should Replace Doom As The Meme Port Of Choice?” →

Game Bub Plays ROMs And Cartridges

February 15, 2025 by 10 Comments

With today’s technology, emulating video game consoles from the 90s or before is trivial. A Raspberry Pi and a controller of some sort is perhaps the easiest and simplest way to go to get this job done, but to really impress the masses some extra effort is required. This handheld from [Eli] called the Game Bub not only nails the appearance and feel of the first three generations of Nintendo handhelds but, thanks to its FPGA, can play not only ROMs but the original game cartridges as well.

As [Eli] notes, the FPGA is not strictly necessary for emulation, but does seem to be better at interfacing with physical hardware like controllers and game cartridges. For this task an Xilinx XC7A100T with integrated memory was chosen, with a custom PCB supporting the built-in controller, speaker, a rechargeable lithium battery, and a 480×320 display (that had to be rotated out of portrait mode). An SD Card reader is included for any ROM files, and there’s also a ESP32-S3 included to give the handheld WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities, with future plans to support the communications protocol used by the Game Boy Advance Wireless Adapter.

There are a few other features with the Game Bub as well, including the ability to use an authentic link cable to communicate with the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color, and a Switch-like dock that allows the Game Bub to be connected to an external monitor. It’s also open source, which makes it an even more impressive build. Presumably it doesn’t include the native ability to dump cartridges to ROM files but you don’t need much more than a link cable to do that if you need to build your ROM library.

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A Second Rare Atari Cabinet 3D Printed

January 23, 2025 by 5 Comments

Last year we covered the creation of a 3D-printed full-size replica of an original Computer Space arcade machine, the legendary first glimmer from what would become Atari, one of the most famous names in gaming. The flowing exuberance of glitter-finished fibreglass made these machines instantly recognisable. Not so well known though is that there was a second cabinet in a similar vein from Atari. Space Race is most often seen in a conventional wooden cabinet, but there were a limited number of early examples made in an asymetric angular take on the same fibreglass recipe as Computer Space. They’re super rare, but that hasn’t stopped a replica being made by the same team and documented in a pair of videos by [RMC – The Cave].

Just like the earlier project, a start was made with a 3D model. In this case an owner of a real cabinet was found, who ran off a not-very-good scan with a mobile phone. This was then used as the basis for a much better model, and the various pieces were printed. Using all manner of reel ends gave the assembled cabinet a coat of many colours look, but after a coat of filler, paint, and then glitter lacquer, you would never know. Electronics come courtesy of modern emulation hardware and a Sony CCTV monitor, and the joysticks were made from a mixture of common hardware and 3D prints. Both the videos are below the break, and you’ll now no doubt also want to see the original project..

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It’s Never Too Late For A Fixed SimCity 2000

January 23, 2025 by 32 Comments

Some retro games need a little help running on modern systems, and it’s not always straightforward. SimCity 2000 Special Edition is one such game and [araxestroy]’s sc2kfix bugfix DLL shows that the process can require a nontrivial amount of skill and finesse. The result? A SimCity 2000 Special Edition that can run without crash or compromise on modern Windows machines, surpassing previous fixes.

SimCity 2000 Special Edition was a release for Windows 95 that allowed the game to work in windowed glory. The executable is capable of running under modern Windows systems (and at high resolutions!) but it’s got a few problems lurking under the hood.

There are crash issues during save/load dialog boxes, and a big visual problem. Animations rely on palette swapping for the game’s animations, and the technique originally used simply does not work right on modern displays. A fellow named [Guspaz] created SC2KRepainter to partially deal with this by forcing window redraws, but it’s an imperfect fix with a few side effects of it’s own.

[araxestroy]’s new solution eliminates dialog crashes and restores the animations, letting them look exactly as they should even on modern systems. It does this elegantly not by patching the executable or running a separate process, but by making the changes in memory at runtime with the help of a specially-crafted .dll file. Just grab winmm.dll from the latest release and put it into the same folder as simcity.exe, then launch the game to enjoy it as the designers intended!

Patching old games is a scene that helps ensure not only that classics never die, but also helps them be appreciated in new ways. Heck, even E.T. for the Atari 2600 has gotten tweaked, highlighting the misunderstood nature of the game in the process.

Photo of 3D Tetris LED matrix

From Retro To Radiant: 3D Tetris On A LED Matrix

January 21, 2025 by 8 Comments

We love seeing retro games evolve into new, unexpected dimensions. Enter [Markus]’ adaptation of 3D Tetris on a custom-built 3x3x12 RGB LED matrix. Developed as a university project, this open-source setup combines coding, soldering, and 3D printing. It’s powered by an ESP32 microcontroller with gameplay controlled by a neat web interface.

This 3D build makes the classic game so much harder to play, that one could argue whether it’s still a game, or has turned into a form of art. Although it is challenging to rotate and drop blocks on such a small scale, for die-hard Tetris fans (and we know you’re out there), there is always someone up to become best at it. Just look at the FastLED-powered light show, the responsive web-based GUI, and fully modular 3D printed housing, this project is a joy to look at even when nobody is playing it. Heck, a game that turned 40 only a year ago should be so mature to entertain itself, shouldn’t it?

From homemade Pong tables to LED cube displays, hobbyists keep finding ways to give classic games a futuristic twist. Projects like this are about pushing boundaries. Hackaday’s archives are full of similar innovations, but why not craft some new ones?

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