Games

721 Articles

Wolfenstein 3D Clone Makes Arduboy Debut

December 3, 2023 by 12 Comments

The 8-bit Arduboy isn’t exactly a powerhouse by modern gaming standards, or even really by old school standards for that matter. But for the talented developers that produce software for the system, that’s just part of the challenge. To date the monochromatic handheld has seen miniaturized takes on many well-known games, with several taxing the hardware beyond what most would have assumed possible.

But the latest entry into this catalog of improbable software, WolfenduinoFX, is easily the most technically impressive. As the name implies, this is a “demake” of 1992’s iconic Wolfenstein 3D. It features 10 levels based on the original game’s shareware release, with the enemies, weapons, and even secret rooms lovingly recreated for the Arduboy’s 128 x 64 OLED display.

Arduboy FX Mod-Chip

Now, those of you who have experience working with the ATMega32u4 microcontroller at the heart of the Arduboy might think this is impossible…and you’d be right. The only way developer [James Howard] was able to pull this feat off was by leveraging the extended flash memory offered by the Arduboy FX.

This upgrade, which was developed in conjunction with the community, allows the handheld to hold hundreds of games by loading them from an SPI flash chip. For WolfenduinoFX, that flash chip is used to hold graphical assets for the game that would otherwise be too large to fit on the MCU alone.

When we looked at the Arduboy FX back in 2021, it was clearly a must-have upgrade, so it’s no wonder that the newest version of the handheld has the capability built-in. Now that games are actually requiring the expanded flash to function, it seems we’ve officially entered into a new era for the quirky little handheld that [Kevin Bates] first sent our way nearly a decade ago. Long live the Arduboy!

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Bowling With Strings Attached: The People Are Split

November 28, 2023 by 52 Comments

There’s a bowling revolution in play, and not all bowlers are willing participants. In fact, a few are on strike, and it’s all because bowling alleys across America are getting rid of traditional pinsetting machines in favor of a string-based system.

In hindsight, it seems obvious to this American: attach strings to the tops of bowling pins so they can be yanked upward into holes that settle down the action so that the pins can be reset. In fact, European bowling “houses” have used string pinsetters for decades, instead of lumbering machinery that needs regular maintenance and costs several thousand dollars a month to maintain.

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General Instruments Video Game Chip Rides Again

November 13, 2023 by 17 Comments

Early video games like Pong were not computer-controlled. They used discrete logic to generate the TV signals. As you might expect, the market exploded when you could get all the logic on a chip. Many of those games used the General Instrument AY-3-8500-1 chip, and [Jeff Tranter] shows us the chip and the many different yet similar games it could play. You can check out the retro gameplay in the video below.

These were marvels of their day, although, by today’s standards, they are snoozers. All the games were variations on a theme. A ball moved and hit paddles, walls, or goals. A few available light gun games were rarely seen in the wild because they took extra components.

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Perfect Dark: Recompiled

November 5, 2023 by 55 Comments

There’s an interesting renaissance of Nintendo 64 gaming, powered by the ability to decompile N64 ROMs back into C code using Ghidra. There are projects around multiple classic games, taking the Ghidra output and renaming the generic function and variable names. There are two approaches to these projects, sometimes happening in parallel. The first is to perfectly recreate the original work, and get a bit-perfect binary that matches the original ROM. The other approach is to fix bugs, optimize the code, and add new features, often porting to new platforms in the process. Right now, we’re seeing the latter happen with 2000’s Perfect Dark.

There is a project by [Ryan Dwyer] to produce a matching C codebase, and that project is functionally complete with an over 99% bit-perfect output. But as impressive as that is, we’re interested in making code even better, and that’s what [fgsfdsfgs] has accomplished with the Perfect Dark port.

The game now runs on Windows or Linux, has mouse support, and runs at a solid 60 frames per second (FPS) at multiple screen resolutions. Want an ultra-widescreen Perfect Dark experience? The upgraded rendering engine handles it wonderfully. Mods? No problem. In the future, the developer is also looking to support high-definition textures.

To play, you do have to provide your own legally sourced copy of the original Perfect Dark game. That is the only way this project is remotely legal, and we suspect that even then it’s in a somewhat grey zone, as a derivative work of a copyrighted game. Big N hasn’t shut the project down, but the Mario 64 port was killed for attempting the same thing. We’ll hope for the best, and enjoy the nostalgia trip in the meanwhile!

Mini DDR Cabinet Gets Maximum Upgrade

November 3, 2023 by 2 Comments

Those shrunken-down arcade cabinets are a nifty idea, but they sure do suck in practice. At least, the Dance Dance Revolution game is full of empty promises. With the $25 cabinet, all you get are three songs that come out of a crappy little speaker, and a not-great display to match.

[BigRig Creates] endeavored to make it better, however, and managed to cram a Raspberry Pi 4 in the cabinet without disturbing the stock components too much. They did have to trim every extraneous piece of plastic from the inside of the cabinet and trim the I/O pins down, but it fit.

What didn’t fit are the fans that [BigRig Creates] needed once it was clear that it was necessary to overclock the Pi. As [BigRig Creates] points out, a custom PCB would have saved some room. And perhaps time. And definitely some wires.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple on the software side. (It never is, is it?) Even getting the screen to work was no picnic. But in the end, it worked, and even survived a bunch of gamers testing it out at LTX. Check it out after the break.

Got an old PS2 DDR controller? You could make it play Simon instead.

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Real NES Plays Frame-Perfect For You On Twitch

October 29, 2023 by 3 Comments

Have you ever wanted to be the best Super Mario Brothers speedrunner, but you just couldn’t do the frame-perfect inputs? Fear not, because [Gregory Strike] is here to save the day with his automatic NES controller!

In his previous video, [Greg] already made an automatic controller that plays a sequence of inputs at the perfect time, but it still failed some of the frame-perfect tricks. So what gives? Deviation in the timing of the NES itself gives, as he shows how the NES doesn’t sample inputs at exactly the same time every frame. To account for this, he used the latch signal, which starts the controller reading process as a time reference, and replaced his digital “mixtape” with a more time-flexible Arduino. After the modification, he shows it pulling off frame-perfect inputs every time he plays Super Mario Brothers.

But if you have a controller that can do frame-perfect inputs and it can be connected to a computer, you can connect the controller to the internet! That’s right, [Greg] created a Twitch bot that tells the Arduino exactly what inputs to send, which then relays it to the NES. It accepts simple sequences of inputs via chat, and you can try it out right now on [Greg]’s Twitch stream.

This project shows promising results, and we think it’s possible to do much more with its internet connection. We’re certainly looking forward to what [Greg] decides to make next.

Video after the break.
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The Many Ways To Play Colossal Cave Adventure After Nearly Half A Century

October 27, 2023 by 15 Comments

Born from a passion for caving and the wish to turn this into a digital adventure for all ages, Colossal Cave Adventure has grown from its quiet introduction in 1976 by William Crowther into the expanded game that inspired countless others to develop their own take on the genre, eventually leading to the realistically rendered graphical adventures we can play today. Yet even Colossal Cave Adventure has recently got a refresh in the form of a 3D graphical version, which has led [Bryan Lunduke] to take a look at how to best revisit the original text adventure.

Your Colossal Cave Adventure awaits... (Credit: Bryan Lunduke)
Your Colossal Cave Adventure awaits… (Credit: Bryan Lunduke)

For those who are on Linux or a BSD system, the easiest way is to hop over to the package manager and install Colossal Cave Adventure straight away with the package bsdgames on Debian-based systems, or colossal-cave-adventure on others. A port by Eric S. Raymond of the 1995 version of the game can also be found as Open Adventure, and there’s a 1990-era DOS version you can experience on real hardware or even in a browser window, if that’s your thing. Or get it for your Amiga, Macintosh or OS/2. These days you can even get ready-to-use maps of the entire cave and surroundings, which along with walkthroughs can make things far too easy. Continue reading “The Many Ways To Play Colossal Cave Adventure After Nearly Half A Century” →