History of video games/Platforms/Arduboy

Development
The first version of the Arduboy was made in February 2014. By March 2014 the 1.6 millimeter thick Bateske Arduboy was shown off online as a business card that plays a clone of Tetris and goes viral.

In January 2015 the creator of the Arduboy quits their job and moves to China to begin working in a co-working space at hardware accelerator HAX in Shenzhen, China. Interestingly, Bunnie Huang, a key developer of the earlier MOMA handheld game console, would serve as a HAX partner, though it is unknown if there was any deeper connection with the Arduboy. By May 2015 the Arduboy Kickstarted is launched, receiving four times their funding goal on the first day.

In February 2016, the production version of the Arduboy Schematic was released. Around that time, production of the Arduboy was handled by a factory operated by SEEED Studio.

Launch
The Arduboy was launched in August 2016.

A version of the Arduboy called the Tetris Microcard was launched in April 2017 at a cost of $54, and was built around an officially licensed Tetris Game.

In April 2019, Kevin Bates demonstrated the Arduflexboy, a one off flexible version of the console. Using a 2 layer flexible polyimide substrate PCB created with OSH Park services, the system was 2.5mm thick at it's deepest point. . Despite its proof of concept status, it is perhaps one of the first game console models to be foldable.

The size reduced Arduboy Mini was announced on July 4th, 2019 with plans for a limited release.



In October 2019 the Arduboy was used in the Roanoke Public Library in Roanoke, Virginia for its first official use in an educational workshop. The economic and logistic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic affected both shipping and the education program.

By mid 2019, a community made cartridge system was developed for the console by making use of existing test pads, leading to plans for an official expansion capable of handling multiple different games. By November 1st, 2020 the Arduboy FX official modchips began shipping. Seeed Studio was given an order for 1,000 Arduboy FX consoles by November 30th, 2020. By March 4th, 2021 the chips had shipped, which included a 16 megabyte W25Q128 flash chip for keeping multiple applications loaded on the system storage at once. The rear silkscreen of the FX module included community artwork.

On February 1st, 2021 an Arduboy Nano was demonstrated, featuring the same compute resources as the full model in well under a square inch, but with only a 25mAh battery.

Compute
The ArduBoy uses an ATmega32u4 clocked at 16 megahertz as it's processor. The ATmega32u4 is an 8-bit AVR architecture CPU capable of 16 DMIPS of performance.

The Arduboy has 2560 bytes (2.5 kilobytes) of SRAM. The Aduboy has 32 kilobytes of flash program storage and one kilobyte of EEPROM.

Hardware
The Arduboy uses an SSD1306 OLED display, a black and white display incapable of grayscale shades, and a resolution of 128 by 64 pixels. The display uses horizontal addressing by default, but can also use vertical addressing. For audio, the Arduboy has a piezo speaker with two channels for basic sounds.

The Arduboy is powered by a 180 miliamp hour thin film lithium polymer battery. The Bateske Arduboy business card was powered by a coin cell battery for around 9 hours.

The Arduboy is five millimeters thick. The Tetris Microcard has a thickness of about ten credit cards. Both the Arduboy and the Tetris Microcard are designed to be stored in a wallet.

Community Technology
A modified version of the Arduboy with a crank controller on the side was demonstrated on June 5th, 2019.

A PCBless 3D printable design was demonstrated by a community member by February 2020.

A number of community projects involved repurposing old hardware to function as Arduboys.

Games
Despite limited system capabilities, a number of games have been developed or ported to the system. While the system is optimized for 2D games, a few 3D games have been developed for the system.

MicroCity
A city simulation game with 3 terrains, eight buildings, and disasters.

Mirco Arcade Series

 * The Oregon Trail
 * Tetris
 * Missile Command & Centipede Combo
 * PacMan
 * Asteroids & Breakout Combo
 * DigDug
 * Qbert
 * Space Invaders
 * Galaga
 * Millipede & Combat Combo

External Resources

 * Arduboy website
 * Arduboy Kickstarter
 * ProjectABE - Open source HTML5 Arduboy emulator and IDE.