A couple of years ago a friend introduced me to a cool little device. I had been interested in playing around with Arduinos and, of course, because I love video games, I was particularly interested in writing video games or video-game-like software for them. For those who don’t know, Arduino is a name for a set of different embedded systems; basically tiny open source computers that can do specific tiny tasks, like water a plant or measure temperature or control a motor. I was interested in using them to play retro video games, which it turns out is quite a cottage industry. The Arduboy is particularly cool because it’s very polished; it came out of a project a man did on his own to create a video game business card; essentially a version of tetris that was small enough and cheap enough that he could hand it out to potential business contacts, like at a conference. He then developed that idea commercially into a sort of thin and light Game Boy-esque device which is simultaneously very old school and has some modern touches, like a micro USB charging port. Most importantly, it’s programmable. I’ve spent the last year or so occasionally working on a game project which has been a fun way to exercise my creative muscles; I imagine I’m about 3-6 months away from being done with it.
If you’re interested, there’s a whole community and website around the Arduboy at, of course, www.arduboy.com. Check it out!
