This Arcade Cabinet Fits In Your Palm, Runs Pac-Man And Donkey Kong

When most people think of an arcade game cabinet, they think of units measuring six-feet tall. Sure, we've seen home-friendly devices in the past that use an iPad as the display, but Adafruit's latest creation takes the idea of shrinking things down to a whole new level. The DIY Raspberry Pi Zero wizards have put together a MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) cabinet that measures less than 3 inches tall, uses a 0.96-inch RGB OLED display, and is still fully playable.

The tiny little joystick and buttons work just as you expect, an audio amplifier pumps out the tunes, and the list of playable games includes Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Xevious. The unit was put together by Adafruit's Phillip Burgess as a weekend project, and is not a kit they plan to sell. "Honestly the whole thing's a bit gimmicky for the sake of smallness. Sharing it for a laugh," he wrote.

Burgess notes that his write-up is not a detailed step-by-step guide of how to build something similar, but for all the creative tinkerers out there, he does explain the software and hardware he used to put the mini cabinet together. In the end is measures only 67.2mm tall, 33.6mm wide, and 35.8mm deep.

Of course, trying to actually play the games on the tiny machine is far from an enjoyable experience. The low-resolution screen doesn't exactly make the fast-paced gameplay clear, and twitchy movements are hard to pull off. "I suspect a lot of the 'playing' is just muscle memory from past experience," Burgess said.

SOURCE Adafruit