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The Last µGame

A project log for µGame

A handheld game console programmable with (Micro/Circuit)Python.

dehipudeʃhipu 06/06/2019 at 19:577 Comments

Yesterday I received the order for the last µGame on Tindie. That makes it 111 units sold on Tindie (and maybe a dozen more sold elsewhere). Since I don't plan on making any more of them, that was the last µGame being sold.

The project is not finished, of course — I will continue to improve the firmware, and I want to write a few more games for it. I won't be making promises, though — reality has a way of getting into my plans.

If you want to try developing such games with CircuitPython yourself, you can now get the PyBadge board from Adafruit — apart from a slightly bigger screen and much more powerful MCU, it's compatible, so all the games should work on it.

I have certainly learned a lot with this project, and I hope there will still grow a community of users for it.

Discussions

davedarko wrote 06/07/2019 at 08:15 point

I share the sentiment of an "oversaturated" market for handhelds and if I remember correctly your goal was to have a "python"-able handheld for everyone and in the best case someone from China will clone that idea? :D Even better that there are companies like pimoroni and adafruit who work on something like that, because then there will be even more tutorials and examples out there.

Congratulations, I think 111 is a very good number and I will always be a proud owner of one :)

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deʃhipu wrote 06/07/2019 at 11:33 point

Well, yes, that's another thing: Adafruit's pybadge and displayio in CircuitPython pretty much solve that problem for me, so there is no point continuing (unless I get really frustrated with their hardware and revive µGame Turbo, which is always an option).

Thank you, I hope to make them a bit more useful in the future too.

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Frank Buss wrote 06/07/2019 at 07:53 point

play.date is an overpriced toy for hipsters which costs 6 times as much as your µGame, and has only a monochrome display and a crank nobody needs. Different target audience I would say.

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davedarko wrote 06/07/2019 at 08:10 point

it's also a subscription model for games and that's what you're paying for as well. It's not just for the console. That crank is a nice gimmick, makes people think about how to incorporate that into games. I like that more that just having the plain old d-pad + abyx, gives some inspiration to some. Display looks crisp and the console is nicely designed, I can't complain there either.

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deʃhipu wrote 06/07/2019 at 08:16 point

I hate to admit it, but µGame was also supposed to be for hipsters. It was probably a huge mistake on my part to not contact a few indie game devs and contract them to make some games for it.

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Frank Buss wrote 06/07/2019 at 01:29 point

If you don't make new µGame, then the community can't grow. PyBadge is out of stock as well:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/4200

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deʃhipu wrote 06/07/2019 at 07:12 point

There is also PyBadge Lite, PyGamer, and a whole onslaught of other new consoles, like blit32 or play.date. I don't think I can compete on that market.

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