This Farkle DIY Handheld Console Channels Vintage Tiger Electronics Games

While you’ll only find them in dollar store bargain bins these days, companies like Tiger Electronics used to make standalone handheld games that were somewhat popular. Unlike the Nintendo Game Boy or Tiger Electronics’s own Game.com, those standalone “consoles” didn’t have interchangeable cartridges, which meant you could only play one game. Other cost-cutting measures, like partial LCD screens overlaid with printed graphics, were commonplace. They were mostly just cheap devices that people could purchase for their grandkids when they asked for video games. Sunyecz22 seems to have been inspired by those standalone games when he built this dedicated Farkle handheld PCB game console.

Farkle is a dice game with mysterious origins dating back to at least the 1980s, with a baffling set of rules that nobody should be forced to remember. It has something to do with throwing dice and adding them or discarding them each round. Frankly, I can’t be bothered to figure out the rules, which is why Sunyecz22’s device is so great. It handles all of the dice throwing and nitty gritty math for you, so all you have to do is decide which dice to keep and reroll. Like those Tiger Electronics handhelds of yore, this device is only capable of playing this one game. And like those, it uses a purpose-built “display” instead of a generic LCD like most handheld consoles today. That is a boon in this case, because it let Sunyecz22 create an electronic gameboard that looks like it contains real dice.

In reality, those dice are actually little 3D-printed LED covers that were designed in Autodesk Fusion 360 along with the console’s enclosure. They’re attached to a custom PCB that was designed in EasyEDA. That PCB contains six LEDs for each of the six dice, two MAX7219 chips for driving the LEDs, six capacitive touch sensors for selecting the dice, two additional tactile buttons, a four-digit seven-segment display for the current score, an OLED screen to track each player’s overall score, and an Arduino Pro Mini 5V board to handle the game logic. Power comes from a repurposed battery powerbank that has a 2600mAh lipo battery cell and a USB charger/regulator board. Currently, this electronic Farkle handheld supports 1-6 players, though Sunyecz22 is working on adding a mode to play against a computer opponent. If you’re a Farkle fanatic, this is the DIY console for you.