Category Archives: game

Tony the Pinball Wizard 3D Prints Full Sized Pinball Machine

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[Tony] has designed and 3D printed a full-sized pinball machine and it’s absolutely incredible. And by 3D-printed, we mean 3D-printed! Even the spring for the plunger printed plastic.

The bumper design is particularly interesting. The magic happens with two rings of conductive filament. the bottom one is stationary while the top one is a multi material print with a flexible filament. When the ball runs into the bumper the top filament flexes and the lower rings contact. Awesome. Who wants to copy this over to a joystick or bump sensor for a robot first? Send us a tip!

The whole …read more

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SNES EPROM Programmer with Arduino

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Most video game manufacturers aren’t too keen on homebrew games, or people trying to get more utility out of a video game system than it was designed to have. While some effort is made to keep people from slapping a modchip on an Xbox or from running an emulator for a Playstation, it’s almost completely impossible to stop some of the hardware hacking that is common on older cartridge-based games. The only limit is usually the cost of an EPROM programmer, but [Robson] has that covered now with his Arduino-based SNES EPROM programmer.

Normally this type of hack involves finding …read more

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SNES EPROM Programmer with Arduino

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Most video game manufacturers aren’t too keen on homebrew games, or people trying to get more utility out of a video game system than it was designed to have. While some effort is made to keep people from slapping a modchip on an Xbox or from running an emulator for a Playstation, it’s almost completely impossible to stop some of the hardware hacking that is common on older cartridge-based games. The only limit is usually the cost of an EPROM programmer, but [Robson] has that covered now with his Arduino-based SNES EPROM programmer.

Normally this type of hack involves finding …read more

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Navigation Thing: Four Days, Three Problems, and Fake Piezos

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The “Navigation Thing“ was designed and built by [Jan Mrázek] as part of a night game activity for high school students during week-long seminar. A night-time path through a forest had stations with simple tasks, and the Navigation Thing used GPS, digital compass, a beeper, and a ring of RGB LEDs to provide a bit of “Wow factor” while guiding a group of students from one station to the next. The devices had a clear design direction:

“I wanted to build a device which a participant would find, insert batteries, and follow the beeping to find the next stop. Imagine

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Turning Broken Toy Into Laser Target Practice

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[Mathieu] wrote in with his laser target practice game. It’s not the most amazing hack in the history of hackery, but it’s an excellent example of the type of simple and fun things you can do with just a little bit of microcontrollering.

First off, the gun is a broken toy gun that used to shoot something other than red collimated light beams. The Arduino knockoff inside reacts to a trigger pull and fires the laser for around 200 milliseconds. The gun also has a “gas gauge” that fills up with repeated shots and cools down over time. And therein …read more

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It’s a Clock! It’s a Puzzle! It’s The GoonieBox!

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[Dr.Duino] recently completed the latest piece of what he calls “Interactive Furniture” – the GoonieBox. It took over 800 hours of design and assembly work and the result is fascinating. Part clock and part puzzle box, it’s loaded with symbols, moving parts, lights, riddles, sounds, switches, and locked compartments. It practically begs visitors to take a closer look.

The concept of Interactive Furniture led [Dr.Duino] to want to create a unique piece of decor that visitors could interact with. That alone wasn’t enough — he wanted something that wouldn’t require any explanation of how it worked; something that intrinsically invited  …read more

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Arcade Button Pressing Game

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When every month brings out a fresh console blockbuster game that breaks new boundaries of cinematic immersion in its gameplay, it’s easy to forget that sometimes the simplest of game interfaces can be rewarding.

“Hele Norges Knapp” (“All of Norway’s Button”), is a good example. As you might expect, it’s a button, a large arcade-style one, and the gameplay is simple. Press the button as many times as you can in 30 seconds. It’s a project from Norwegian Creations, and it was produced as a promotion that toured the country for one of Norway’s debit card payment systems. …read more

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Bogus Pokémon GO guide app roots Android devices

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The popularity of Pokémon GO is apparently on the wane, but there are still more than enough players to make it a good lure for cyber crooks. In fact, fake apps like the “Guide For Pokémon Go New” recently spotted on Google Play can end up being downloaded by as many as half a million users. At least 6,000 users ended up installing and running it, Kaspersky Lab researcher Roman Unuchek notes, and additional victims … More → Continue reading Bogus Pokémon GO guide app roots Android devices→

Open Source SNES to USB Converter Lets You Emulate Legally

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[Andrew Milkovich] was inspired build his own Super Nintendo cartridge reader based on a device we covered an eternity (in internet years) ago. The device mounts a real cartridge as a USB mass storage device, allowing you to play your games using an emulator directly from the cart.

This uses a Teensy++ 2.0  at its core. [Andrew] had to desolder the EEPROM pins from the SNES cartridge and reverse engineer the pinouts himself, but the end result was a device that could successfully read the cartridge without erasing it, no small accomplishment. The finished cartridge reader is build …read more

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Electroshock Timer Will Speed Up Every Game of Settlers of Catan

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The fun of playing Settlers of Catan is only matched by the desire to punch your friend when their turn drags on with endless deliberating. [Alpha Phoenix] has solved that quandary of inefficient play by building the Settlers of Catan: Electroshock Therapy Expansion.

[Alpha Phoenix] is holding back on the details of the device to forestall someone trying this at home and injuring themselves or others, but there’s plenty to glean from his breakdown of how the device works. An Adafruit Trinket microcontroller connects to a single pole 12 throw switch — modified from a double pole six throw rotary …read more

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