Motodrome Drifter - A Game For Arduboy

Like the majority of the world it's very possible you missed my first game, Super Bubs Adventure.  So for my second game I thought I'd reduce the audience even further, make the graphics far worse, and develop it for the Arduboy, a niche handheld.

PLAY IT IN THE BROWSER HERE

I wanted to make a super sprint style game, and didn't want to take 6 months developing it in Unity. I’ve had the little Arduboy sitting in a drawer since the original Kickstarter (10 years ago?!?).  So I used the Arduino IDE and took 7 days to create the game, mostly evenings.

The game is called 'Motodrome Drifter' - You race around a track trying to beat your lap times.  You accelerate with the A button, then while accelerating, if you hold the B button, you'll be able to drift around sharp corners. It probably won't win an award for graphics (it's all basic lines and geometry), but the gameplay is still rather fun if you like the drifting physics.  

There's also a 2 player mode, where you can pass the Arduboy between players, and try and win the championship.  There are 7 courses, but it's possible to mod the code and create your own. 
The complete version of the code can be found here

There's a little tool that can help you plot the coordinates here
And there's a single track version of the code to help speed up development

...just copy and past the coordinates into line 14 onwards. You might need to adjust the starting point coordinates (line 41) and where the car starts from (line 44, 45, and 46).

My Game Is Now Available

My little game ('Super Bubs Adventure') that I've been working on over the last few months is finally available on the Google Play Store. 

It's completely free, and should take you about an hour to complete.  Have fun and happy new year :-)

Click Here to get it on the Google Play Store 

Nintendo Gameboy DS Repair

Something I found quite satisfying was repairing a batch lot of broken game boys brought cheaply from ebay.  All were in grubby condition so everything was stripped down and cleaned before any repairs could begin.

Old Cases Being Washed

Repairs were mostly simple, replacing broken cases where the hinge had snapped.  This meant ordering new cases and transferring them over, something that does require a bit of patience but is not impossible.  Of the 13 ordered, I was able to repair 10, with the parts of the other 3 being donated to make the others usable.

A common fault: Faded Screen

Faded Screens

For faded screens I found re-soldering the brightness trimmer pot usually worked, if not replacing the pot entirely with a spare.

Broken Screen Underneath 

Screen Not Working

A few models I brought the screen was no longer working, confirming the unit worked using another gameboys screen, I choose the best working parts to make a frankenstein gameboy, with the less reliable ones becoming doner machines.  You could also order a replacement screen from the internet if you don't have the space machines.

Parts Harvesting

Cartridges Not Being Read

The card reader: A pain, but not impossible.

When game cartridges could not be read, first I'd try re-flowing the solder, and cleaning the pins with alcohol.  If this didn't work, then you'd have to de-solder the whole thing and replace it with a new part.

Mutilated Board with working Vol Slider Pot removed

Broken Volume Pots

When some people try and replace the cases to their Nintendo Ds's, they end breaking the volume slider when forcing the case back on (I didn't do this I promise you! - be sure to check the alignment).  The only way I found to fix this was by using a spare from a doner machine.

The most common problem: A broken Hinge

What I gone Learnt

Repairing these was a good lesson in fault finding, as well as the art of patience (Nintendo really over-complicated the design of these things).  It's also pretty good to have rescued some broken machines from the rubbish dump.

So if you're thinking about trying to repair some old Gameboys, I'd say go for it.

A selection of Repaired Gameboys

With new cases and screen protectors they looked as good as new.

Ready for a new life

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