Piece Together Your Own Portable 8-Bit Game Console
The Open Game Station is a modular, open source platform for creating customizable handheld gaming devices.
Longan Labs has taken to Crowd Supply to launch the Open Game Station, an open source platform for building handheld 8-bit game consoles. While not a new concept, the idea here is that instead of being a single game, it's a sort of “PCB ecosystem” with modules that allow you to change code and customize the way you use it.
The base “Game Board” looks reminiscent to a simplified PCB-based version of a PlayStation controller, with grips, a directional button pad, and A/B action buttons. In the middle, and towards the top of the controller section, however, are slots for expansion cards, which can include a 128 x 64 pixel monochrome display, buzzer, and AAA battery pack. In addition, a Pro version comes with a sound sensor card, a 9DoF sensor card, and an extension board that enables you to take advantage of more cards than with standard hardware.
The Open Game Station is designed around an ATmega32U4 microcontroller, capable of running Arduboy games, including the collection found here. The console is Arduino-compatible, and with the ATmega32U4’s HID capabilities, one could see all kinds of novel uses for the device — perhaps it could even be used as an auxiliary computer input.
The Open Game Station is now live on Crowd Supply, where the Basic and Pro models sell for $25 and $35, respectively.