This Nintendo Emulator Runs on an Arduino Due Board

A microcontroller is essentially an entire computer crammed into a single tiny IC chip. They contain a processor, RAM, generally some sort of persistent memory, and programmable input/output pins. Unlike an SoC (system on a chip), microcontrollers usually have little computing power and are intended to be used for monitoring sensor signals and low-level control of components like motors or LEDs. Engineers, makers, and hackers have managed incredible feats with the limited power of microcontrollers. One fantastic example is this NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) emulator that runs on a cheap Arduino Due board.

Like the incredibly popular Uno, the Due is a development board. The official board costs about $40, but third party boards can go for less than $15. The Due has a number of upgrades over the Uno, including a more powerful 32-bit Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller and many more I/O pins. Nathalis Cortex took full advantage of that hardware for his NESDUE emulator. While the Arduino Due has far more memory and a much faster processor than the NES, this is still a really remarkable achievement. The NES had proprietary hardware that was optimized for gaming, and the Due has to virtually recreate that in real-time.

That is made even more challenging by the fact that NES ROMs (the cartridge data) have to be loaded into the Due’s memory. Those ROMs can range anywhere from 8kB for Galaxian up to 1MB for Metal Slader Glory. The latter is obviously far more than can fit in the Due’s RAM. NESDUE has a ROM size of limit of 49,168 bytes (about 50kB), which is enough for many games, including Super Mario Bros. — though you won’t be able to run larger games like The Legend of Zelda. To make that work, the NESDUE is based on the Nofrendo Remix with memory hacks. Games can be played by attaching a small ILI9341 LCD screen via SPI and an SNES controller directly to the Due’s I/O pins.