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I have done seven Instructables to reproduce some among the most popular old arcade games by means of a bare Arduino and few basic components. The main feature is the generation of a VGA signal, thanks to the VGAx library, published on GitHub by Sandro Maffiodo aka Smaffer. On the other end any games needed a slightly different configuration, i.e. a different number of buttons and/or potentiometers to drive it. Finally I decided to build a single game platform, and to correct the codes consequently, for all games, in particular: Pong, Tetris, Breakout, Snake, Bomber and a drawing toy inspired to Etch-a-Sketch. In this Instructable you can find three codes, (Tetris, Snake and a code for the other four games put together), and the instructions to build a “console” as the one shown in this page. I decided to split it in two units: one with a potentiometer and four buttons for the single player games, the other with one button and the second potentiometer for the second player (i.e. for Pong). Thus in total you need 5 buttons, two potentiometers, a VGA connector (DSUB15 female) and, of course, an Arduino! Most importantly, there is no need of supporting IC or special shields! You can see the complete setup in this video. The VGAx library allows to use four color with a resolution of 120 x 60 pixels, not many but enough for this retro-game “console”. The graphic is raw but all the games run smoothly. Simple sound effects are included too.”

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