Michal Zalewski's Sir Box-a-Lot XL Revisits a Handheld Console Project to Address Part Availability
A display component going end-of-life means a redesign for this portable Sokoban console — and you can still build your own.
Michal Zalewski has revisited a handheld game project, dubbed Sir Box-a-Lot, in the face of a critical component going end-of-life — releasing the resulting "XL" redesign for anyone to build themselves.
"I designed this open-source handheld Sokoban game back in 2023, but the original OLED display module is no longer available," Zalewski explains. "In a bid to revive the project, I did a major redesign for a new display module. You can now build your own — enjoy! Sokoban is an obscure yet remarkably cool puzzle game from the 1980s. Wait, don't leave!"
Familiar to multiple generations of gamers as the game where you push boxes into holes or specific locations, Zalewski's take on Sokoban was written for the Microchip AVR Dx-series microcontroller family — and implemented in hardware as a single-game handheld console, complete with sound and full color graphics. It's the latter, however, which brought about the need for a redesign: the project's original OLED component went end-of-life, making it impossible to build unless you can find new-old stock somewhere.
A move to a new screen bought about a full redesign, delivering the Sir Box-a-Lot XL — now featuring a readily-available 160×128 RGB OLED panel connected to the builder's choice of Microchip AVR128DA48 or AVR128DB48 microcontroller. "It features a careful selection of 300 levels with progressively increasing difficulty," Zalewski says. "It has smooth animations, retro sounds, and crisp graphics rendered on a responsive, full-color SSD1353-based OLED screen. It also supports multiple users and per-level achievements. Last but not least, it has low power consumption, for at least 40 hours of gameplay on a single set of batteries."
Sir Box-a-Lot, in original or new XL form, isn't the only handheld game Zalewski has created: Bob the Cat is a similar project based around the Microchip S70/E70/V7x series microcontroller family, developed using the same bare-metal firmware approach. Rather than Sokoban, though, Bob the Cat implements another classic of gaming history: Tetris, complete with a period-appropriate simulated CRT display.
Both Sir Box-a-Lot and Bob the Cat are detailed in full on Zalewski's website, with source code, schematics, and Gerber files available for free download.