Asteroids Controller with Raspberry Pi

Posted on December 27, 2013

In addition to running this website, your humble blog host likes to tinker.

This past summer I had access to a laser cutter, CNC router, and some creative technology experts in New York — so I decided to learn some new tools and make a desktop Atari Asteroids controller running an arcade machine emulator (MAME) on a tiny Raspberry Pi computer. All you need to provide is power in and audio/video out.

Read the full write-up on my personal site for a walkthrough of the fabrication, plus design files.

And for anyone looking to build an Asteroids control panel, here’s the image I traced from an original:

asteroids_controls.pdf (editable PDF)
asteroids_controls_cs3.ai (Illustrator file)

Asteroids Control Art

Popcade Cabinet

Posted on September 29, 2013

popcade

Joshua Axelrod unveiled his miniature MAME arcade cabinet at the New York MakerFaire, and it’s a beauty. He was inspired by the size of Jürgen Müller’s Asteroids Mini, and decided to expand its roster by making it a MAME machine modeled on the classic Williams Joust cabinet, capable of playing nearly any classic arcade game. Popcade is about three feet tall and thirteen inches wide, perfect to fit in a house or apartment without eating up an entire room.

Aside from spot-on design, the thing that makes Popcade stand out is the marquee and bezel art. Axelrod created files for a number of classic games; selecting a game from the main menu changes the marquee screen up top, and loads the bezel art around the game on the main screen. Each game feels like you’re playing a dedicated cabinet (aside from the Joust bird on the side, and the “Flap” label on the button).

Of course, Asteroids is one of the games, which caught our eye at MakerFaire. The Popcade is the perfect size for a small child, so Axelrod’s own children are learning about the classics.

popcade2

You can buy your own Popcade at the Popcade website. It comes without game ROMs, but will run like a charm when you install them separately.