News JVTech Retro gaming fans will love this tiny Game Boy
Published on 02/01/2023 at 16:45
Kickstarter allows any professional and amateur to set up real projects. On the site it is possible to meet various projects, including video and console games.
A very small portable console on Kickstarter
Kickstarter allows many projects to see the light of day thanks to crowdfunding. Crowdfunding boomed during the 2010s, thanks in particular to the independent scene which offered a lot of games in the “retro” genre, and as much to say as to type in a player niche as hardcore as pro retro gaming , it’s a godsend.
It is in this same perspective that the Arduboy Mini is born, a tiny portable console, which takes the form of a Nintendo Game Boy. Project creator Kevin Bates wants to make retro gaming fans dream again with this 8-bit mini consolebut also hackers of all kinds.
The Arduboy offers an open source architecture that allows anyone to create games for the console. Hundreds of games are already preinstalled and allow you to play classics from the 80s, such as Zelda or Castlevania.
The Arduboy Mini is a follow-up project to the already much larger Arduboy, on the scale of a real Game Boy. This Mini version has a 128 x 64 pixel monochrome OLED screen, a USB-C port and six buttons directly integrated into the console’s motherboard.
For this project, Kevin Bates offers a 16 MHz ATmega32u4 processor, and does not have any loudspeaker, nor even a battery. The Arduboy Mini is there first and foremost to inspire gamers and developers to rack their brains to create rich experiences, even on a tiny screen. The Mini version console is offered at only $29, and should be in the hands of players who pre-ordered in June 2023.
Tell yourself that this project only required 10,000 dollars, but that the generosity of the project and the rather particular technology of the machine pleased many people. Kevin Bates therefore found himself with 57,000 dollars on his hands to make the Arduboy Mini project a reality.
What are we playing on this Mini Game Boy?
Of course, you clearly don’t have to have big fingers to enjoy this miniature console. The buttons are really small and directly grafted to the motherboard of the machine. Either way, everything is really at your fingertips.
Technically all 8-bit games can run on the Arduboy Mini. From Zelda to Mario via Metroid, Nintendo’s catalog can totally run on the machine. But the main goal of the console is to let users create games adapted to the size of the screen, in particular thanks to the open source architecture, which allows everyone to peek into the bowels of the mini machine. .
Everything is modular, and even if the console does not offer a speaker, the USB-C port works wonders and if you are a bit of a hacker, you will do very well.
