A Tiny Arduino-Based Cyclone Arcade Game

When you think of an arcade, you picture either a room full of video games in big cabinets, or a room full of gambling machines for children that run on a ticket-based economy. In the latter style of arcade, the goal is to maximize your ticket payouts so you can buy a fancy eraser or whatever. In that arena, no game is as tantalizing as the Cyclone-style machines, and Redditor Perkinsb1024 has built a tiny clone powered by an Arduino.

This miniature Cyclone game doesn’t pay out tickets, but it could certainly help hone your reaction times. More importantly, it lights up with some neat effects and looks like a lot of fun to play with. Inside is a custom PCB that’s inspired by the Arduino-compatible SparkFun Fio v3 development board. An IS31FL3731 LED driver IC controls the SMT RGB LEDs through Charlieplexing. The enclosure is 3D-printed, and the clear plastic dome comes from a security camera. The result looks great, and would be as fun as the full-size original if you could use it to win erasers.