The Raspberry Pi is a tiny computer which you can use as an inexpensive, low-power system for programming, watching videos, playing games, or general-purpose computing. But it might not be tiny enough for some uses — so when hardware hacker Ben Heckendorn decided to build a Gameboy-like handheld gaming console from a RaspBerry Pi, he had to make the little computer even smaller.

Raspberry Pi game console

That involved removing the Ethernet jack, moving the USB port, and making other changes to reduce the profile of the Raspberry Pi.

You can watch him do it in the first video of a 2-part series on creating a Pi-powered game system for playing classic arcade games.

The project also involves hooking up a small LCD display, adding a series of game controller buttons, installing a battery and voltage regulator, and building a custom case.

While this isn’t necessarily the sort of project that’s easy to do at home, it’s still kind of fascinating to watch the whole device come together — and it might give you a few ideas of other things you can do with a $35 Raspberry Pi mini-computer.

via Digital Trends

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11 replies on “Ben Heck rips apart a Raspberry Pi to make a handheld game console”

  2. The project is hindered only by the choice of LCD screen, which is poor quality.

    1. No, it’s also hindered by being based around a Raspberry Pi. A single core ARM11 CPU isn’t powerful enough to decently emulate anything beyond an 8 bit machine, even when overclocked to 1 GHz.

      1. Sadly I have to agree.
        I’m not sure why he shot for MAME emulation on that thing when it is among the more demanding emulators.
        Still as a demonstration it give a ton of insight into the process.
        I found it entertaining.

        1. Are you saying the Pi isn’t up to running MAME adequately? I was running MAME on a 33MHz 68LC040 Mac years ago. Has the emulation become more demanding?

    1. Not everyone who can create is necessarily going to be great on camera.
      This guy’s body of work is nothing less than amazing, so I’ll cut him some slack when it comes to media productions.
      I’m just glad he’s sharing his knowledge.

      1. I said nothing derogatory about him, in fact I commented his work is amazing.

        1. Your comment was ambiguously phrased. It was unclear as to whether you were referring to the quality of the Ben Heck episode, or the video output of the little gizmo he built when you stated that “the video sucks”.

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