We absolutely love seeing the spread of the One True Connector, USB-C! Its many advantages over previous connectors (Power Delivery, no orientation, flexibility in acting as either host or device) make it a great choice for retro-fitting to existing products. Game consoles have been a popular choice, and these awesome projects from GilTesa include USB-C mods for Wii U Gamepads, the Game Boy Micro, and even powering the original Wii console!
The designs are easy to retrofit for those with soldering experience. Each connector is mounted to a small board or flat flex cable, with the correct spots to solder perfectly aligned. Simply remove the old connector (remember to use lots of flux, and pick up some low melting temperature solder if you don’t have a vacuum desoldering pump!), clean the area, and then line up the new connector. Solder the aligned points, either surface mount or onto a right-angle pin header for the Game Boy Micro, and voila! You’ve got USB-C for your game pad or consoles!
This ensures that, as original power supplies die over time, it will be easy to keep original consoles alive with just a quality USB-C cable and a good USB power supply. GilTesa’s USB-C mods aren’t limited to these new ones, either — make sure to check out the full store for more mods for the original Game Boy, SNES, DS Lite, and even the PSP and PS Vita!
Into chiptunes? Are you yearning for that glorious era of SNES music filling your ears? Somewhat of a purist? Then the Fisher SNES Music PLayer V1.5 might be just the thing!
At first glance, you might just think this is a DIY MP3 player or some such device. No, this fabulous build is a dedicated .SPC file player, the file type of choice for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Your next thought might be, “Oh, OK it’s an emulator for SNES music!”, which also is not the case! This system eschews emulation in favour of the original hardware.
The main device onboard is the SPC700 chip which is the Sony chip the original SNES systems utilised for audio. It features 8 DSP channels with each channel being 16-bits, one of the reasons the SNES had pretty high-fidelity sound. If you’re interested in the SPC700 there is a wiki page here.
Aside from the SPC700, the Fisher SNES Music player has a built-in display and a nice looking interface for negotiating through your .SPC files. The files are stored on an SD card and this device comes with a 2GB card with sample files loaded. There’s volume control and the output is a 3.5mm stereo jack socket. Also included is a 9V DC power supply.
It comes fully assembled, which means it’s easy to get up and running quickly! This is a great device for those with SNES nostalgia and it’s definitely worth at least checking out the product page. Check out the video below for an example of how it sounds!
The Tetris Gym V5 is a custom-created NES cart which stacks (pun intended) lots of features on top of the original Tetris game.
These carts feature a brand new custom-designed PCB so the edge connectors won’t have 30 years plus of wear and tear, meaning you shouldn’t have to blow in the edge of this cartridge for many years to come! The PCB has added save RAM with battery backup meaning you can now keep save states and high scores saved between sessions.
It’s a multi-region clone, which means that whether you have an American NTSC or a European PAL console this cartridge will work on your old NES. It’s also been tested successfully to work on clone consoles and the creator, Ericicx tests each assembled cartridge on their NES and on their RetroN1 clone console.
Wrapped up in a custom plastic shell with a lovely label design we think this cart is worthy of display. It’s amazing that after so many years there is still a dedicated fan base and new releases; not only creating clone consoles but cloned console content. We’ve also written about Ericicx before as they are the creator of the goofy foot controllers which are an awesome alternate input device that can give you an edge in gaming and in particular, competitive Tetris!
I’m a southpaw. It mostly goes unnoticed these days but when I was younger I used to get annoyed at the right-handedness of the world. I was truly awful with scissors and would constantly be told off for leaving things the wrong way round! I never really considered the impact on me when gaming, but perhaps I should have! This Goofy Foot NES controller PCB essentially allows you to create a perfectly left-handed NES controller. When the controller is upside down, the D-Pad and buttons are re-mapped to work correctly.
Apparently, this isn’t only desirable for the true left-handed retro gamer. It’s a technique used competitively by professional and amateur Tetris players who prefer the D-Pad to be in the right hand. Digging deeper into the product description from EricIcx they actually offer a range of modifications so you can get the NES controller you require. They offer modifications to vintage controllers and modern aftermarket clones. They are also replacing the rubber button membranes and modifying them to give the best and fastest response. They also offer a range of different key bindings with suggestions as to why they might be beneficial for different player styles and games.
There’s such a level of detail in the product description; you can tell by reading it that EricIcx is really dedicated to getting the best out of this classic controller design which is heartwarming to see!
If you’re looking for retro gaming accessories and products for vintage computers, then Tindie has you covered. Evidenced in part by the likes of this Slow Mole Famicom Cartridge, a fully-featured homebrew video game made in Sweden; now available in physical format!
Slow Mole was designed and developed by Erik Rosenlund, and has music by Linus Rosenlund. It’s a game, they say, which makes everyone a speedrunner – so you can expect frantic action, intricate sections and fiendish puzzles awaiting your Slow Mole self! The unique PCB cartridge design comes with gold print on the underside – with LEDs attached to illuminate through the board when the console is switched on. As well as designing and producing the game, Erik has also individually signed each one! This one of a kind homebrew game is sure to be prized in your gaming collection, alongside the Marios and Donkey Kongs of this world!
It has even been reviewed by HackInformer magazine who summariesed their in-depth review by saying: “I honestly love Slow Mole. It could truly be a game that could’ve come out in 1989 and won the hearts of people all over the globe”. A huge endorsement if ever I heard one!
Slow Mole for the NES/Famicom is sold by Slow Mole Studio who are based in Stockholm County, Sweden. Check out his youtube channel for some in game footage, and watch the teaser trailer below:
We’re huge fans of retro consoles at Tindie, and anything which allows us to use them with modern hardware is always welcome! Whether you’re using a NES, SNES or Genesis (Megadrive in Europe) control pad, the Triple Controller USB Adapter will allow you to plug-and-play with your favourite gaming system, such as Raspberry Pi, PC, or Mac!
It’s powered by an Arduino Pro Micro and comes fully assembled, assembled without the Arduino and as a DIY kit to make yourself. It’ll work with a host of systems and its software is based on MickGyver’s Retro Controller project; an open source coding collection to interface controllers over USB – subsequently, the Triple Controller USB files are available to use and inspect over on the sellers GitHub page. It’s a neat way to play homebrew or emulated games on your Raspberry Pi, Retro Pi, MiSTer, PC, or Mac based systems and offers an experience one step closer to playing on the original hardware.
It’s the first product on sale by TimVille, who ships within 1-2 business days from Pittsburgh in the USA. Get ready to challenge your friends to some Bubble Bobble, F-Zero or Golden Axe with the original controller in your hand!
The Nintendo Gameboy is an iconic piece of retro gaming hardware, with new software still being released – in addition to it being a relevent device for chip music making in the modern era. It’s amazing to see new software developed for the portable console, such as the Cartoon Face Screen for Gameboy – a chance to show off your snazzy new backlit screen with BMO from Adventure Time’s cartoon face!
This unique cartridge loads up the cheeky face with controls to cycle through nine expressions including what appear to be sheer joy, fear, pain and extreme smugness! The intention for the program is to show off new modifictions to the Gameboy, such as backlit screens, colour inversions, and other such upgrades! The cartridge is region-free and will work on the original DMG model of the Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Pocket. Some might say it’s lunacy, but we love the playfulness of it, and the possibility of more software to come for this 30 year old pocket powerhouse!
The Cartoon Face Screen for Gameboy is sold by SuicideBattery who are based in Leeds, England. They have a number of weird and wonderful gadgets, including other Gameboy software and accessories.
While the original Game Boy and its various Pocket/Advance/Color iterations have long been out of production, this venerable system apparently never left our collective hearts. This is evidenced, in part, by the new and/or hacked hardware and software that people have come up to use with the platform; now including an ESP8266 WiFi module for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) from maciel310’s store.
Maciel310, AKA Anthony Maciel, is quick to note that, while he’s not the first to connect an ESP device to the GBA, he believes that this is the first one to be put up for sale. The idea behind adapter is that for the GBAJam2021 event, he wanted to make the first MMO game for the platform, but was limited to using a physical tethered connection.
With this hardware, you could play such a game wirelessly, as you’d expect with a portable console. It’s important to note, however, that it won’t simply enable Internet connectivity to existing games, you’ll need a game designed to work with this hardware.
You can see a bit more info on the Game Boy advance MMO on this playlist, and the clip of a GBA booting off of the ESP8266 WiFi adapter is embedded below:
Of course, this isn’t the only bit of custom Game Boy kit available on Tindie. You can also check out Prima Materia, a new Game Boy game for 2021, or this 2MB Flash Cart for custom firmware storage.
While it originally featured only black-and-white images on a 47 x 43mm screen, the Nintendo Game Boy portable gaming console won the hearts of a generation. Perhaps this was due to the wide variety of games available for the system, combined with the backing of Nintendo, and maybe even (to a much smaller extent) it’s surprisingly good audio output. Since then we’ve seen more advanced portable systems come and go, and be largely supplanted by smartphones. The original Game Boy and Game Boy Color, however, still holds a fond place in many hearts.
So much so, in fact, that there is still an active community of Game Boy aficionados out there, and you can even develop your 8-bit creation with software such as GB Studio. Once that’s done, you’ll need a cartridge on which to store the games, and insideGadgets is offering a 2MB, 32KB FRAM Flash Cart for just this purpose. You can add your own software with programs like GbxCart RW, and it works on every Game Boy sytem, including: GB, MGB, GBC, GBA, GBA SP and the Game Boy Player. There are a few restrictions as outlined in the listing, including the fact your games will need to fit within the device’s 2MB memory capacity.
A neat service which comes with this device is that if you don’t want to have to flash your own ROM, insideGadgets can also flash it for you. On the other hand, if you’d rather just skip to purchasing a new game/cartridge that can be inserted in your GB, you might also check out Prima Materia, which was listed on Tindie in 2021!
Say you find an original NES at a garage sale or flea market for $5, as was the case for Long Island Retro Gaming (LIRG) in the video below. Unless you’re incredibly lucky, such a low-priced unit won’t work, which wasn’t a surprise here, especially considering its heavily yellowed outer shell. In this case, the internals were in very bad shape, which, according to LIRG, meant that it was submerged in water at one point during its lifetime. Therefore, restoring this particular NES to its former glory and/or state of neglect was a non-trivial matter.
Shot boards or not, the NES did provide two elements critical to the device’s operation, intact CPU and PPU chips. The rest, you might say, is just details. In reality, “details” here is just a bit of an understatement, but as it just so happens, Tindarian Low Budget sells something called the NESessity v1.3, a full replacement PCB package for the NES console. This board–or, more accurately, set of 3 boards–is available as a solder kit with components, or there’s a components list if you perfer to source things yourself. This allows you to build up you new NES with (almost) all modern components.
You will have to source the CPU, PPU, and possibly the crystal oscillator (as they can be hard to buy new), along with the actual shell and mechanical components like the 72-pin cartridge connector. Of course, if you don’t have an old Nintendo, clones of the CPU and PPU chips are available, though they may have some issues according to Low Budget. The finished LIRG build seen here features a Blinking Light Win aftermarket cartridge connector, which seems like a good option for your Frankensteined NES console.
A New NES in 2021?
In the video, LIRG goes through the assembly of the board, wisely starting with surface mount and other low-profile parts, before moving on to components that will interfere with the soldering operation. Once things are in place, the board + CPU/PPU chips become a more or less a drop-in replacement for the original NES internals. One does, however need to reverse the power LED leads to allow it to light up with this new board, a fairly trivial operation considering the circumstances.
The video does a good job of pointing out that while this method certainly is much easier than restoring a trashed NES PCB, it does take a significant amount of soldering work to get the board working. One would have to guess that most retro-gaming aficionados willing to open up a console wouldn’t want it to be too easy–or at least wouldn’t want to pay the money to have someone else put it together for them!
New – and Improved!
While you might call it a drop-in, this board isn’t a 1-for-1 replacement, as much an upgrade. It features a modern power supply with a massive heat sink, and an auxiliary switch that you can user for your own purposes. The new boards also feature composite video, along with stereo outputs. If you’d like to take things a few steps further, the device is compatible with NES RGB or Hi-Def NES mods. Either, will take a bit more hacking and sourcing on your end.
What a beautiful heat sink!
A series of 3 potentiometers modify the sound output, one of which is used to control Famicom expansion audio functionality. This allows for sound characteristics that you’ve likely never heard if you’re in the US, with everything able to be adjusted to your taste in terms of volume. The device has a Famicom-style expansion port for such accessories, and even features a microphone so that you can yell at it and have something actually happen (for example in the Japanese edition of Zelda). The system is region-free, and simply requires a cartridge adapter to play Famicom games.
All things considered, it’s an excellent video for what appears to be an excellent board. What’s shown in the LIRG build is the NESessity version 1.3, which has gone through multiple iterations. It’s clearly been a popular choice for many people; it’s currently sold out with new stock arriving soon. The second video below features Low Budget showing off the v1.1 NESessity board himself, which appears to be largely similar to the 1.3 version that LIRG put together.
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