
The Adafruit PyGamer, a New Maker-Friendly Handheld Console - tosh
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pygamer
======
_paulc
Also see the 32blit by Pimoroni:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimoroni/32blit-
retro-i...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimoroni/32blit-retro-
inspired-handheld-with-open-source-fi?ref=)

~~~
x3ro
Interesting. I was about to back this when I realized it doesn't appear to
have an SD card slot to store multiple games and/or save game state... Feels
like an odd choice to me, given the capabilities of the hardware.

~~~
jaak
That and the onboard flash is only 32MB. No networking support (WiFi or BT).
Mono audio, no headphone jack. Some interesting limitations for a 32 bit
portable console.

~~~
indigochill
That and the comments on their previous projects are pretty poor. Reading
those, I got the impression they tend not to support products after launch,
which ultimately led me not to back it.

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tosh
official website & specs: [https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-
pygamer](https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pygamer)

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lotophage
Another similar project in this space:
[https://www.clockworkpi.com/](https://www.clockworkpi.com/)

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hwj
Some specs:

* ATSAMD51 (Cortex-M4 with 512KB of flash and 192KB of RAM)

* 8 MB of QSPI flash

* Micro SD Card Slot

* 1.8" 160x128 Color TFT Display

* 1 thumbstick

* 4 buttons

* 5 NeoPixels

* triple-axis accelerometer

* light sensor

* stereo headphone jack

* mono speaker driver

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b_tterc_p
Only two primary buttons feels pretty limiting

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Brozilean
Nintendo had only two buttons until the Gameboy Advance. Even the NES just had
two.

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dlbucci
Only their portables, though. The SNES had 4 plus two shoulder buttons in
1990, 10 years before the GBA. Honestly, I always felt like that was a missed
opportunity for Nintendo, since the GBA was basically powerful enough to run
SNES games, but lacked the buttons (and the screen was smaller). Made it
impossible for it to be a port machine for all those great SNES games...

~~~
tosh
iirc in a recent episode [0] of The Talkshow, John Gruber and the people from
Panic are discussing the button layout on the Nintendo Switch. They were
wondering why the Switch has so many buttons and whether it was a pragmatic
choice by Nintendo to make porting games from other platforms easier.

Made me wonder whether we're observing some variation of Hotelling's Law [1]
in controller design.

PS: the episode mostly is about Panic's upcoming handheld game console Play
Date [2] which also has two primary buttons (and a crank!).

[0]
[https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2019/05/30/ep-252](https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2019/05/30/ep-252)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law)

[3] [https://play.date/](https://play.date/)

~~~
bitwize
The Switch has the standard number of buttons for a home console: four face, a
D-Pad, two clickable sticks, Select and Start or their equivalents, and two
shoulder triggers per side. Much of the escalation in number of buttons was
done by Nintendo itself: the SNES was the first to have four face buttons and
two shoulder buttons (Sony would follow up by adding two more shoulder
buttons), and the N64 was the first console to feature both an analog stick
and a d-pad (Sony would follow up by adding another stick). The current
standard is right in the happy medium: enough buttons to enable a variety of
actions beyond, say, "attack" and "jump", but not enough to overwhelm and
confuse the player in the heat of play. Plus, the Switch controller can be
broken into two, each allowing SNES levels of control for impromptu
multiplayer play. So if it seems like there are too many buttons at times,
it's because of games that deliberately use fewer buttons to take advantage of
different play modes with the Joy-Con.

------
fenwick67
Why is this a Medium post?

Here's the actual product page, with more details:

[https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-
pygamer](https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pygamer)

~~~
tosh
I found this after the submission, maybe the mods can update the URL when they
see this

~~~
dang
Sure. Changed to that from [https://blog.hackster.io/the-adafruit-pygamer-is-
a-brand-new...](https://blog.hackster.io/the-adafruit-pygamer-is-a-brand-new-
maker-friendly-handheld-console-c40d5d31f4ba).

