“Galaga, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong are three of the most iconic arcade machines. Galagino brings them onto the ESP32 in perfect emulation.
Recently while on the GitHub website, I came across a miniature playable laser cut arcade emulator called Galagino - ESP32 Arcade Emulator by Till Harbaum. It incorporated ESP32 variants of three of the greatest arcade games of the early 80s. These are Pacman, Galaga and Donkey Kong. I was so impressed by the quality of emulation using a ESP32 microprocessor that I had to make one. Unfortunately I don’t have access to a laser cutter so instead I set about redesigning the case for a 3D printer.
3D printing the case
Most of the printing for the case was done using white PLA at a 0.2mm layer height.
“Case - Marquee.stl” should be done using transparent PLA.
“Case - Knob V2.stl” should use a 0.1mm layer height. I also printed it using red PLA.
The control panel and coin button holder were redesigned to remove the screw holes giving the final unit a “clean” look.
Most pieces fit to each other via the use of tabs similar to the laser cut version. You will probably need to file the tabs so they fit cleanly into their respective tab slots. Ensure everything fits before painting and adding the components.
The case is held together with 4 x M2 nuts pressed into the bottom and top pieces with 4 x 12mm M2 screws connecting the sides.
Control board
The Eagle files have been included should you wish to have the boards commercially made or you can do as I did and make them yourself. I used the Toner method.
One of the changes that was made was to replace the four tactile switches that made up the joystick in the original with a more reliable 5-way switch. This along with the other two buttons are mounted to a printed circuit board
CPU board
The CPU board holds the ESP32 development kit and the PAM8302 3W Amplifier Module. It also contains pin headers to connect to the screen, control board, LED strip etc.
Start by adding links if you board is single-sided and add the pin headers.”