[Coco] The Tri-Annual CoCo 4 Thread

[Allen Huffman]

Here is something I wanted to see about hooking to a CoCo:

http://excamera.com/sphinx/gameduino/

Gameduino is an add-on expansion card ("shield") for the Arduino that can do things like the old 8/16-bit game machines did. It has sound, sprites, backgrounds, etc. There are a variety of video demos online of things it can do, from recreating Frogger to animating 256 sprites at the same time...

The lowly 16-bit Arduino just talks to it over a serial protocol. It sells for $29.

http://www.cutedigi.com/arduino-shields/gameduino-for-arduino-a-game-adapter-for-microcontrollers.html

Now, there is also an add-on shield that can do video overlays. If that overlay chip were combined with this sprite chipset, you could have an add-on that plugged in to the CoCo and then the video output from the CoCo went to it, and then to the monitor. You'd get CoCo mode, and be able to have an enhanced mode to the same monitor. Perhaps just overlaying sprites and such on the normal CoCo video modes...

I wonder how many users are buying things like Arduino Gameduino, or some of these other retro gaming add ons?

HackVision is a $43 Arduino built like a joystick with buttons. It provides 120x96 black and white output to a composite monitor and there are some games for it. It can also plug up a Nintendo Nunchuck (not the wireless, but the thing that plugs in to the Wii's controller) or potentiometer paddles to play games like Pong:

https://nootropicdesign.com/hackvision/

The Video Game Shield is a $22 kit that uses the same trick to do low res video. It has places to plug up two controllers (but no paddle):

https://store.wayneandlayne.com/products/video-game-shield-kit.html

There is a Hacky, which is an Arduino built like a Gameboy with an LCD screen, and the Gameduino 2 which is a more expensive LCD based gaming add on...

How big is the market for this? The "TVout" library has been out for years, after someone figured out you would hook up two resistors to an RCA plug and then use clever software to generate a video signal.

Just a fun thought. This is why I am researching interfacing certain things to the CoCo...

		-- A