Adafruit Unveils World's Smallest MAME Arcade Cabinet
The
Raspberry Pi Zero is available for $5. It has a single-core processor clocked at 1 GHz, 512 MB of system memory, a HAT-compatible 40-pin header and composite video and reset headers. The system also packs a micro SD card slot, where the arcade cabinet's operating system is stored.
Burgess says that one of the major challenges he faced while making the tiny arcade cabinet was adjusting the image quality on the small screen. Burgess used a program called nanoscreen, which can scale the original imagery at a 1:4 ratio using 4×4 pixel averaging. This helped Burgess to preserve the details of the games on a small display.
The final dimensions of the cabinet produced are 67.2 x 33.6 x 35.8 millimeters deep (2.65 x 1.32 x 1.41 inches).
The MAME arcade machine can play several loved games such as
Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and more. However, playing these games on the tiny cabinet is extremely difficult.
Adafruit has posted a video on YouTube that shows games being played on the MAME arcade cabinet. The video has been watched by more than 16,000 times as of writing and many people are praising Burgess' efforts.
"Wow!! That is so cool!! and impractical. Huge sausage fingers trying to manipulate tiny controls. That thing belongs in the entertainment room of a very cool and modern [dollhouse]. Then you could show visitors the cool to-scale fully operational game console next to the tiny popcorn machine model," says a commenter
Check out the tiny MAME arcade cabinet in action.
