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Socoder -> Hardware and Technology -> Mini Arcade Machine

Fri, 23 Feb 2018, 02:53
Jayenkai

Mini Arcade Machine




My sister bought me a cheap-tastic little arcade machine for my birthday.

It's not the bestest selection of little games in the world, but I thought I should point out that...
A) It's a neat little form factor.
B ) It's got a decent tiny screen.
C) The sound also seems quite loud and clear on it.

Size wise, it's slightly taller than my iPhone, about 1.5 iPhones wide, and 1.25 iPhones "deep"..

The (240, apparently) games on it are some of the worst things I've seen, and the joystick's not exactly the best thing in the world.
But I imagine if you were someone like... say.. Spinal, you could probably do something fairly interesting with the shell/screen.

It's labelled as a "Funtime Mini Arcade Machine", and a quick google shows prices averaging from £15 to £25.

I took a couple of pics of the screen, and through the magic of mathematics, I've worked out it's a 320x240 screen. (probably could've guessed that!!)
The screen's a decent quality, given its size, but it's rather evident that it's supposed to be viewed in portrait. It has that weird "darker in one eye" thing that happens when you look at a screen the wrong way around.

The little joystick's a bit shit, so you'd probably want to replace that with something a little more microswitchy.

And the onboard stuff's abysmal.

This Guy seems to have had a bit of fun with one.
Doesn't look "easy", to me, but does at least look like something you could hack apart and play with.

> Reveal 🔎

-=-=-
''Load, Next List!''
Fri, 23 Feb 2018, 03:34
rockford
Nice little machine that - I've seen a few similar dedicated retro arcade cabs - Frogger, Defender, PacMan sort of thing on sale in the US. Hacking it might be fun, but probably more hassle than it's really worth. But it's a nice little bit of kit
Fri, 23 Feb 2018, 03:36
Krakatomato
I've got some of those

One I took apart, put another screen in which I drove that from the GPIO pins of an RPi Zero. Bit of faffing around with wires for the buttons and stick and I had a working RetroPie setup (almost - had to faff around with configs for the buttons). Gave it to my bro as an xmas present

Would I do it again - probably not. Those screens are too small for my aging eyeballs =/

The other downside is that the RPi is Linux - so you have all the disadvantages that come with it - slow start up time and requirement to shut it down properly or risk SD card corruption.

I have a slightly larger arcade case www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-arduino-arcade-bartop-43331 I've 3D printed (and modified for a bigger screen) that I'm working on. But I want to go back to baremetal RPi programming to complete it - so no more Linux