The Ben Heck Show

Arduino Retro LED Matrix Handheld (9x18)

Air date: May 31, 2019

To many, "retro handheld gaming" conjures images of the Nintendo Game Boy, Sega Game Gear, or even the Atari Lynx, but Matt wanted to take this retro gaming project all the way back to the dawn of an era--before 8-bit processors and dot matrix screens with stereo sound, back when writing words on an inverted calculator could entertain for hours! In the late 1970s, electronic gaming was all the rage. The Atari 2600 and Magnavox Odyssey had already invaded living rooms while Mattel and Coleco were taking their burgeoning electronic toys divisions and gearing up to enter the console market. The Intellivision and the Colecovision might have fizzled out by the early 1980s, but their legacy in gaming had already been written with blinking lights and buzzers.