N64 Advance Portable Gaming System

February 5, 2011 by Mike Nathan 20 Comments

n64_advance

Like many people [Kyle] loves the Nintendo 64 and decided he wanted a portable version of his beloved console so he could play games while on the move. One year, two PSOne screens, and three N64 consoles later, his vision is complete. A Game Boy Advance travel case was gutted and used to house the console, hence the “N64 Advance” moniker. Like many others, his project uses a PSOne screen for the display, and a Li-Poly battery pack that provides up to 3.5 hours of playing time. He made sure to include other members of the Nintendo family in his build by adding a pair DS Lite speakers to the mix.

This build also includes some nice “extras” such as having the N64 RAM expansion pack built-in, headphone and A/V out ports (with a screen kill-switch for TV use), and an external controller port that can be used by either the first or second player. Be sure to check out the video of his build after the jump.

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SNES Arcade Controller

January 30, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 22 Comments

[Daniel] is making a mini arcade cabinet with an SNES housed inside. He wanted to build an arcade controller for it and chose to construct something from scratch instead of destroying an original piece of hardware. We can almost feel you guys sighing with relief at that one. He sent us some nice photos of his build and pointed out that he’s using one of the Evilmadscientist AVR boards housing an ATtiny2313. The arcade buttons are readily available at sparkfun. The source code for this project is available after the break.

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Backwards Mario

January 23, 2011 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

So you’ve long since mastered Super Mario Bros. and it no longer challenges you? Have you tried playing it from right to left? That’s what Backwards Mario is all about. The first portion of the hack is getting the image to display backwards. He’s working with an old CRT television, which uses a magnetic ring to aim the electron gun at the screen. By swapping the left and right wires from that ring you can flip the image horizontally. Now Mario will be travelling right to left, but the controller buttons will send Mario the wrong direction on screen. This is a snap to fix, just crack open the controller and swap the signals for the left and right buttons. Now it’s time to fall in love with the classic game all over again, just like [JJ’s] doing in the video after the break.

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Gaming On An IBM XT Using An NES Controller

December 24, 2010 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

[Frode] felt that using the keyboard for gaming on his old IBM XT computer was simply too noisy. He came up with a much quieter way to game by building an XT adapter for an original NES controller. If you haven’t explored the communication protocol used by the NES peripherals this is a great way to learn. Inside you’ll find a CMOS shift register that captures button states when it receives a latch signal. With that in mind [Frode] came up with a circuit to gather the bits from the controller, and generate input commands using the XT keyboard protocol without using a microcontroller. All of this is explained in the demo after the break.

Most of the NES controller hacks we see permanently alter the hardware. It’s nice to see one used without cracking it open.

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SD Activity Indicator For Wii

December 17, 2010 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

[DeadlyFoez] wanted to know when the SD card in his Nintendo Wii was in use. He built and indicator LED using a PICAXE 08M and added it next to the SD slot. He uses one pin of the microcontroller to monitor the voltage on one pin of the SD card slot. That pin has a specific value when the card is idle, which rises when it’s in use. He didn’t share the details of which pin he’s sampling, or what the magic number from his source code actually represents. But the concept should be enough of a start if you want to do this one yourself. Watch it go blink-ity-blink in the clip after the break.

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Game Boy VGA Using An FPGA

December 12, 2010 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

[ViDAR] was looking for a project to keep him occupied and settled on creating a VGA converter for his Game Boy. He had some difficulty finding pinouts for the LCD and CPU but working with what was known, and an oscilloscope, he found the necessary signal. Tap into just a few lines using those thin blue wires; Vsync, Hsync, clock, and two data pins. From there a development board with an Altera Cyclone II field-programmable gate array takes care of the heavy lifting. The board already has hardware for a VGA connection so it was just a matter of processing the incoming signals into the VGA standard. His demo video is embedded after the page break.

Want a dedicated solution? Check out this Game Boy video adapter inside a VHS cassette.

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NES Controller Gets A Rumble Pak

October 11, 2010 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

Add some feedback to an original NES controller by making it vibrate. This feature is often known as Rumble Pak, a controller add-on for the Nintendo 64 which vibrated as a game feature. This version adds a small DC motor (in the upper right) with a screw soldered off-center to the motor shaft.

[Andy Goetz] and his friend built this as a robot controller, taking advantage of the latch and clock pins. Normally, nothing happens while both pins are held high, a signal that they easily patched into using an AND gate. This is actually a neat find, as the addition of an internal microcontroller could add bi-directional communication when the latch is high and the clock is strobed.