You might think that making your own electronic games would require some kind of LCD, but lately, [Mirko Pavleski] has been making his using inexpensive 8X8 WS2812B LED panels. This lets even a modest microcontroller easily control a 64-pixel “screen.” In this case, [Mirko] uses an Arduino Nano, 3 switches, and a buzzer along with some 3D printed components to make a good-looking game. You can see it in action in the video below.

The WS2812B panels are easy to use since the devices have a simple protocol where you only talk to the first LED. You send pulses to determine each LED’s color. The first LED changes color and then starts repeating what you send to the next LED, which, of course, does the same thing. When you pause a bit, the array decides you are done, and the next train of pulses will start back at the first LED.

It looks like the project is based on a German project from [Bernd Albrecht], but our German isn’t up to snuff, and machine translation always leaves something to be desired. Another developer added a play against the computer mode. This is a simple program and would be easy to port to the microcontroller of your choice. [Mirko]’s execution of it looks like it could be a commercial product. If you made one as a gift, we bet no one would guess you built it yourself.

Of course, you could play a real robot. You could probably repurpose this hardware for many different games, too.

What’s more fun than playing video games? Designing your own video game hardware, of course! If you’ve followed these pages long enough you’ll have seen dozens of great examples of homebrew hardware, and perhaps been inspired to try such a project yourself. This often starts with assembling the basic bits onto a solderless breadboard, which is fine for programming but not so great for testing: squeezing pushbuttons into your breadboard works for basic debugging, but is not very user-friendly or reliable. A better solution can be found in [Dimitar]’s GameBug: a set of breadboard-compatible joypad-like controllers.

The GameBug’s design excels in its simplicity: a miniature analog joystick, four buttons arranged in a diamond pattern, a shoulder button and two sliding switches are sitting on a neat purple PCB. On the bottom are two rows of pin headers to ensure a snug fit on your solderless breadboard. There’s even a little vibrating motor for haptic feedback.

Interfacing with the GameBug is simplified by the integrated readout electronics. A Schmitt trigger-based debounce circuit ensures clean signals from all the pushbuttons, while a motor driver chip provides stable current to the haptic feedback system. An RGB LED can be used as yet another user feedback device, or simply for decorative lighting.

All design files are available on [Dimitar]’s GitHub page, along with an Arduino sketch to help you try out the GameBug’s functionality. Having a proper gamepad might come in handy with breadboard-based game systems like Tiny Duck Hunt or this impressive mess of wires that makes up a Colecovision.

The classic arcade game Cyclone has attracted many players, along with their coins, thanks to its simple yet addictive gameplay. In its most basic form it consists of a light racing around a circular track, which the player then has to stop at exactly the right place. Arduino enthusiast [mircemk] made a home version of this game, which allows addicts to keep playing forever without running out of quarters.

Instead of an arcade cabinet, this smaller version has an upright 3D-printed ring that holds 60 WS2812 LEDs. A further six in the center of the ring act as a score counter. An Arduino in the base drives the LEDs and runs the game, which is based on an earlier iteration built by [oKeeg]. An interesting addition is a large homemade “arcade button”, which is large and sturdy enough to withstand any abuse inflicted on it by a frustrated player.

Retro-style sound effects and flashing light sequences give the game a bit of an arcade vibe, even without a big cabinet and piles of coins. Simple LED games like this are always great eye-catchers in any home or office; if you like this one, be sure to check out other LED games like the handheld LEDBOY, the one-dimensional dungeon crawler TWANG, and this LED racing game.

If you’ve ever played chess or even checkers, you’ve probably thought about making a board that lets a computer play you without having to enter your moves and look at the board on a screen. [Greg06] not only thought about it, but he built it.

The board looks great and uses foamboard which makes it easy to reproduce. Each piece has a small magnet within and an electromagnet on an XY motion system can selectively pick up and move pieces. In addition, a reed switch under each square can tell if a square is occupied or not.

This system is pretty simple, but it is effective. After all, you know the position of the pieces at the start. So if a bishop leaves a square and a new square gets a piece, you can assume it is the bishop. There is no need to actually distinguish the pieces.

An LCD and some buttons act as a chess clock, and note if a move is illegal. The Arduino has a pretty basic chess algorithm known as Micro Max that runs on the Arduino, but we wondered if you couldn’t connect to a remote computer to get more sophisticated gameplay or even interface to the Internet to play remote humans, something we’ve seen before. You could even adapt it for other input methods.

Another LEGO Star Wars game is heading to Apple Arcade, and it's the first social, action-adventure title in the franchise. The upcoming game, entitled LEGO Star Wars: Castaways, will have you building and customizing your own in-game LEGO minifigure character. Once you're done designing your own blocky hero, you'll head to a new planet where you can team up with friends to battle enemies and solve puzzles. Along the way, you can unlock collectibles to solve a mystery and save your merry band of LEGO minifigures.

When you're not out on adventures — of if you really just want to hang out in a virtual world with friends — you can stay in the game's Social Hub or race Microfighters. LEGO Star Wars: Castaways is an Apple Arcade exclusive, just like LEGO Star Wars Battles. The latter is a real-time strategy game that will let you collect upgradable characters, troops and vehicles and then pit you against other players in one-on-one showdowns. In Star Wars Battles, you'll also have to build and defend your own LEGO towers, as well as attack your opponent's.

LEGO Star Wars: Castaways will be playable across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV, so long as you have an Arcade subscription. You can now sign up to be notified when the game becomes available for download from the Mac Store and the iOS App Store, but the game won't be available to play until November 19th. 

Video games are great and all, but sometimes you just want the thrill of manipulating actual objects in addition to watching action on a screen. This must have been the reason why Nintendo’s Duck Hunt became so popular despite the simplicity of its gameplay. Prolific hacker [mircemk] similarly made a computer-plus-physical game called “Laser Shooter“, which somehow reminds us of the good old NES game.

The game is based on an Arduino Nano, to which five LEDs as well as five photoresistors (LDRs) are connected. When the game is started, the LEDs light up at random and the player has a limited time to “shoot” the corresponding LDR with a laser pointer. This time limit is decreased as the game progresses, and the game is over once the player fails to hit the target on time. The “Game Over” message is accompanied by a sad tune, but luckily no giggling dog.

Complete schematics and code are available for anyone willing to try their hand at replicating or improving this game. And no, you can’t simply sweep your laser across the five LDRs all the time, because you lose if you shoot at the wrong target. For more laser pointer-based games, try this Laser Command clone or this laser tag badge system.

Tic-tac-toe (or “Noughts and Crosses”) is a game simple enough to implement in any computer system: indeed it’s often used in beginner’s programming courses. A more challenging project, and arguably more interesting and useful, is to make some kind of hardware that can play it in real life. [mircemk] built a simple yet elegant machine that can play tic-tac-toe against a human player in a way that looks quite similar to the way humans play against one another: by drawing.

The robot’s design and programming were developed at PlayRobotics, who named the project TICO. The mechanical parts are available as STL files, to be printed by any 3D printer, and a comprehensive manual explains how to assemble and program the whole thing. Since it’s all open source, anyone can build it from scratch and modify it to their liking. The pictures show the original design by PlayRobotics, while the video (embedded after the break) shows [mircemk]’s version, which includes a wooden frame that gives it a bit more presence.

The electronic components are an Arduino with an OLED screen and a buzzer, plus three servos to operate the mechanical parts. Lacking a 3D printer, [mircemk] cut the plastic parts from a 3 mm sheet of PVC, which seems to have worked surprisingly well. The game board consists of a small whiteboard on which the robot and the human can draw their O’s and X’s.

The mechanical structure of the robot looks a bit like a tiny human using both arms to draw with an enormous marker. When starting a game, the robot clears the whiteboard using a little eraser, then draws the standard 3×3 grid and makes its first move. The human then draws their move and uses a remote control to tell the robot what they did (no machine vision here), after which the game continues until there is either a winner or the game results in a draw.

Although it looks like the program’s playing strategy may need some fine-tuning, the mechanical part is well-designed and the arms’ motions are quick and steady. We love the celebratory “cheering” at the end of a game, which TICO does whether it won or not.

The robot’s basic design is inspired by the Plotclock, which uses a similar setup to draw the time. We’ve seen other tic-tac-toe ‘bots before, as well as some clever electronic implementations of the game.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga won't arrive until next spring, but another game from the franchise is coming soon — and it's an Apple Arcade exclusive. Lego Star Wars Battles is a real-time strategy game that pits players against each other in one-on-one showdowns.

You'll amass a collection of upgradable characters, troops and vehicles from all eras of the Star Wars universe. You'll be able to pit porgs against Boba Fett, for instance. Don't expect to stick to one side of the Force — you'll have a deck of light side and dark side armies, with different play styles for each. You'll have a number of abilities at your disposal too, such as Darth Vader’s Force Slam and Luke Skywalker’s Force Push.

TT Games Brighton/Warner Bros. Games/Lucasfilm Games

Battlefields will feature Lego towers that you'll build, defend, attack and use to claim territory. The locations include some familiar environments, including Hoth, Naboo and Endor.

TT Games Brighton is developing Lego Star Wars Battles, while Warner Bros. Games is the publisher. It won't be the first Lego game to hit Apple Arcade, though. Lego Brawls and Lego Builder's Journey both landed on the service in 2019. The latter was ported to PC and Nintendo Switch in June.

Like many of us, [Emily’s Electric Oddities] has had a lot of time for projects over the past year or so, including one that had been kicking around since late 2018. It all started at the Hackaday Superconference, when [Emily] encountered the Adafruit Hallowing board in the swag bag. Since that time, [Emily] has wanted to display the example code eyeball movement on a CRT, but didn’t really know how to go about it. Spoiler alert: it works now.

Eventually, [Emily] learned about the TV out library for Arduino and got everything working properly — the eyeball would move around with the joystick, blink when the button is pressed, and the pupil would respond visually to changes in ambient light. The only problem was that the animation moved at a lousy four frames per second. Well, until she got Hackaday’s own [Roger Cheng] involved.

[Roger] was able to streamline the code to align with [Emily]’s dreams, and then it was on to our favorite part of this build — the cabinet design. Since the TV out library is limited to black and white output without shades of gray, Emily took design cues from the late 70s/early 80s, particularly the yellow and wood of the classic PONG cabinet. We love it!

Is Your Pet Eye the worst video game ever, as [Emily] proclaims it to be? Not a chance, and we’re pretty sure that the title still rests with Desert Bus, anyway. Even though the game only lasts until the eye gets tired and goes to sleep, it’s way more fun than Your Pet Rock. Don’t miss the infomercial/explanation/demonstration video after the break. If one video is just not enough, learn more about [Emily’s] philosophy of building weird projects from the Supercon talk she presented. It’s also worth mentioning that this one fits right into the Reinvented Retro contest.

Why are eyeballs so compelling? We can’t say for sure, but boy, this eyeball web cam sure is disconcerting.

Thanks for the tip, [Jake_of_All_Trades]!

Remember Simon? We sure do. Simon — as in “Simon says…” — from the leading edge of electronic games in the 1970s, which used four buttons, colored lights, and simple tones as the basis for a memory game. Players had to remember the specific sequence of lights and replay the pattern in order to advance to the next round. It was surprisingly addictive, at least for the era.

For those who never quite got into the Simon groove, fear not — the classic game has now been fully automated. While there were plenty of approaches that could have taken to interfacing to the game, [ido roseman] went with the obvious — and best, in our opinion — technique and simulated a human player’s finger presses with servo-controlled arms. Each arm carries a light-dependent resistor that registers the light coming from the key it’s poised above; the sequence of lights is sensed and recorded by an Arduino, which then drives the servo fingers’ replay attack. The fingers aren’t exactly snappy in their response, which might cause problems — if we recall correctly, Simon is somewhat picky about the speed with which the keys are pressed, at least at higher levels of play.

On the whole, we really like this one, not least for the nostalgia factor. We’ve had a lot of recreations of Simon over the years, including a Dance Dance Revolution version, but few attempts to automate it. And a crazy idea: wouldn’t it be fun to replace the replay attack with a machine learning system that figures out how to play Simon by randomly pressing keys and observing the results?