Take a Look at Some of the Best DIY Gaming Projects From Around the Community

Gaming and the maker community

Playing games, whether virtual or in-person, has become deeply ingrained in modern culture. Massive industries and groups now exist around many of our favorite brands, franchises, characters, and devices, with the maker community taking these creations and adapting them into something unique involving the creative use of hardware. And to celebrate Gaming & Retro Tech month here at Hackster, we've decided to recognize these achievements by listing some of our favorite gaming-related projects.

Arduboy

Created in 2014 by Kevin Bates, the Arduboy originally began as a simple handheld gaming system based around an Arduino microcontroller. This quickly grew into a company and spread around the world, allowing enthusiasts and students alike to learn more about hardware programming. A plethora of games and libraries have since been created by the Arduboy community and shared online, helping others to even build their own systems.

ESP32-powered NES emulator

The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was the iconic video game system from the 1980s, with a large library of games and plenty of nostalgia to boot. This tiny NES emulator made by moononournation uses an ESP32 to run classic games and display their output on a 320x240 LCD screen. Inputs on the gamepad are fed into an ATtiny861 microcontroller, which converts them into an I2C signal for the ESP32 to read, and all of this is housed within a custom 3D-printed controller.

Digitized Settlers of Catan board

Settlers of Catan is a very exciting, yet difficult, game to play owing to tile placement and the random luck of a dice roll. Based on the number rolled on a pair of dice, players can earn resources from the tiles belonging to that value. Sam March's Settlers of Catan board is able to automatically generate a random number with the push of a button, display it, and then illuminate the tiles for that resource, thus letting players focus on playing the game rather than how gets which resource.

Raspberry Pi Zero handheld console

The Raspberry Pi Zero crams a relatively powerful processor into a credit card-sized form-factor and for very little cost, making it ideal for miniaturized projects. Great Scott's DIY handheld gaming console combines this piece of hardware with an old Nintendo Game Boy shell and a RetroPi installation to make an emulator capable of playing a wide variety of games. Even better, this device uses a backlit LCD screen with a much greater resolution and color depth compared to the original Game Boy.

DIY adaptive controllers

Improving accessibility in the world of gaming is an ongoing challenge, but with the release of the Microsoft Xbox Adaptive Controller, it has become quite a bit easier. In this guide made by Adafruit, they go over how someone could design their own input method and interface it with the Adaptive Controller. Some of their ideas include a foot pedal, light-touch limit switch, and a hefty on/off toggle switch.

Playing the Chrome dinosaur game by jumping

Almost everyone has lost their internet connection at one point or another and, out of boredom, has resorted to playing the built-in dinosaur game in the Chrome browser. Although simple, its ever-increasing pace and difficulty has made it surprisingly fun. Ryan Chan has gone even further by creating a project based around the Arduino MKR Zero, which lets players physically jump or duck through the use of force/stretch sensors for a more immersive experience.

Intelligent chess board

Traditionally, chess is played against another person on a physical 8x8 grid of square tiles, in which players take turns moving their piece and attempting to capture the opposing king. To improve this experience, one maker known as MaxChess built a smart chess board that uses a combination of reed switches and magnets to detect when a piece is lifted and subsequently set back down. After the Arduino Uno recognizes the move, it's sent to an instance of Stockfish running on a Raspberry Pi that checks the validity. If there's only one player, the board can be set to play in a human vs computer mode with options for changing the difficulty.

Fitting a whole arcade into an NES controller

The first arcade machine originally fit inside of large wooden cabinets that were several feet tall, but due to the shrinking of computers, it is now possible to incorporate them into much smaller spaces. YouTuber Taylor Burley did just that when he crammed a fully working arcade machine into an original NES controller. After removing the logic board and screen from an existing Tiny Arcade toy, he cut slots for the 0.96" OLED display along with space at the top for buttons that select the game to be played. With this, Burley was able to enjoy Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and more in this tiny format.

An air hockey table that plays against you

For their thesis, a group of students came up with a twist on the air hockey table. Instead of playing against another human at the end of the table, a two-axis robotic gantry uses a pair of powerful stepper motors to block every attempt at scoring. Their system is comprised of a Raspberry Pi and overhead camera that watches where the puck is headed and calculates where it will end up near the goal. From here, it moves the striker with precise timing to prevent the opponent from scoring.

Retro emulation with the Raspberry Pi Pico

This final project takes advantage of the Raspberry Pi Foundation's custom RP2040 chip by using it in a portable emulation station. Peter Misenko's creation, called the RetroVGA, runs the Multi Computer Machine Emulator software, which can emulate several classic computers and video game consoles. The RetroVGA can be connected to a joystick, a VGA port for video output, and a set of 37 switches that act like a keyboard.