Build the tiniest gamepad ever

TinyCircuits, makers of tiny, open-sourced electronics, recently posted instructions for building the smallest video game console I’ve ever seen.

With a few dedicated components available from the TinyCircuits’ online shop, you too can play Space Invaders on a thumbnail sized screen.

The build calls for a TinyShield Joystick board, which has two analog joysticks and two shoulder buttons, a 96 x 64 pixel OLED TinyScreen, a TinyDuino Processor, which is a quarter-sized version of Arduino Uno, and a USB TinyShield, which is a quarter-sized chip with a micro USB port for charging and programming.

All you have to do is snap the pieces together and connect the USB TinyShield to a micro USB cable and then connect that to a power source. Once fully charged, you can then connect the device to your computer to program the TinyDuino. TinyCircuits has a number of game emulators, plus there is a blog where more games are being added regularly. There is even a TinyCase in the works. Hopefully, they will provide a PDF to print it out on your own 3-D printer.

So far, games include a Mario style mini game where players rack up points for killing Goombas, a Flappy Bird clone (that game is hard enough on a smartphone sized screen), and an Asteroids clone. Apparently, there is a racing game in the works.

While this is a do-it-yourself project, it isn’t exactly inexpensive. All of the parts combined will cost a total of about $88. However, it would be pretty cool to have the smallest console game player ever to show off to your friends.