Thumby Is a Tiny, Keychain-Friendly Portable Video Game Console

Electronic miniaturization has come a long way and we're now reaching the point where transistors cannot physically be any smaller. That means that we can fit an incredible amount of processing power in a very small IC chip package. As such, designers today often make devices larger than they need to be in order to keep them at a human scale. A smartphone that is too small to handle wouldn't be very useful, after all. But Thumby, an upcoming keychain-friendly portable console, pushes miniaturization to its absolute limit.

Thumby isn't just small; it is tiny. It measures 29.5 x 18 x 8.5 mm (1.2 x 0.7 x 0.3 inch) — about the size of the last segment of your thumb (hence the name). Despite the miniscule size, Thumby is a fully-functional portable video game console. It has Game Boy-style buttons and a graphical display. TinyCircuits, the team behind Thumby, is no stranger to miniature devices. They've created miniature arcades and TVs in the past. But Thumby takes this to a whole new scale.

Inside Thumby's itty bitty enclosure is a custom PCB containing a Raspberry Pi RP2040, which is the same powerful microcontroller in the Raspberry Pi Pico. There is also a buzzer, battery, power switch, control buttons, a 72x40 pixel monochrome OLED screen, and a micro USB port for charging and programming. Thumby will come pre-installed with five retro games (Tetris and the like), but users can also create their own games. The TinyCircuits team plans to publish programming tutorials.

Thumby will launch through Kickstarter on September 28th, 2021. The standard model will be a classic gray color, but other colors will be available as stretch goals. The normal price for a Thumby will be $19, but there will the first 50 Early Birds will get 50% off. To ensure that you're one of the lucky 50, you should sign up for the waitlist here.