vladutz2000 has published plans for an overclocked Atmega32 based 8-bit game system. Dubbed the Penguin, this project runs the chip at 27 MHz instead of the usual 16 MHz and uses a 128×64 monochrome KS0108 based display along with a speaker and handful of resistors and pushbuttons. The schematic couldn’t be simpler and it, along with the source code written in Mikroelektronika MikroC pro for AVR v1.45, sprite and modeling tools are available on Sourceforge. (Unfortunately the music creation tool is not yet available due to vladutz2000 hard drive crash.)
Projects like the Penguin are part of a growing scene of homebrew consoles built on cheap microcontrollers. What makes these builds appealing is the constraint: a 128×64 monochrome screen and a few kilobytes of RAM force developers to think carefully about every sprite and every sound effect. The results tend to be simple arcade-style games, puzzle titles, and the occasional side-scroller.
Some builders in the AVR community have gone further, writing clones of classic card and slot games that run entirely on the chip with no network connection. A few of those projects drew direct inspiration from sweepstakes casinos and retro arcade cabinets, recreating simplified versions of familiar game loops within the tight memory budget. The appeal is less about the genre and more about the technical challenge of fitting recognizable mechanics into a system this minimal.
vladutz2000’s sprite and modeling tools should make it easier for others to develop their own titles for the Penguin. Having those resources on Sourceforge means anyone with a programmer and a handful of components can flash the chip and start iterating. Once the music tool is recovered from the crashed drive, the platform will have a reasonably complete creative pipeline for a system that costs under ten dollars in parts.
Via Instructables.
I’d like to make, but my ATMEGA32 dev board uses default 4Mhz crystal. If I replace the crystal to 16Mhz(max) will not the game played?