Learn how a young entrepreneur combined his maker know-how, art skills, circuit board design skills, and open-source network to make a mini arcade game kit that teaches kids to solder and code.
Way back in September 2020 (Issue 38), we met young Jack Daly and his DIY Retro Game Console, aptly named 8BitCADE. This clever kit was a way to get kids into electronics and coding.
Recently, Jack got in touch with us about his most recent venture, a mini console called microcade.
We caught up with Jack to find out all about it.
What has happened since we last spoke about your 8BitCADE?
Phew, where do I start?! A lot has happened since that point. It was September 2020 when we first spoke, I was 17 starting my A levels (college) while launching my first ever product to market - the 8BitCADE XL.
Since then, I launched the 8BitCADE Original to the public as well as run a successful Kickstarter releasing the Level UP, my first-ever pre-made console! A completely different product to your normal DIY kits that come with a variety of new (and higher) expectations. With this larger portfolio, I started hiring to build a team to support the growth. All of this came with a bunch of new challenges which were super awesome overcoming and I've learned a lot from that.
I also graduated from college and decided to become a degree apprentice studying electrical engineering at Warwick University while working at Jaguar Land Rover. Due to this, I decided to step down from 8BitCADE and pass it on to someone who can continue the vision, to have a summer break before taking this next step in my career. It was a much-needed break from the mayhem of studying four A levels while also managing multiple teams & products at 8BitCADE.
During this down period, I went back to my roots of tinkering with new processes, parts and exploring unique ways of doing things. It really allowed me to get back in touch with what I love most - making things! I started playing around with PCBs, what their limitations are and how I can stretch that. That's when I came up with the first-ever prototype for microcade which allowed traces to go from 1 panel in 1 axis, to another in a completely different axis. In this case, it was the motherboard to the control panel, allowing the button inputs to travel across PCB to the processor.
I thought this was awesome and started exploring how I could make the mini console look as close to the real cabinets as possible - and the biggest thing was the art! I started exploring how you can use solder mask, copper, FR4 and silkscreen in combination to create a colour palette of 5 colours that can then be used to create art.
This led to the creation of the space invader cabinet. For
obvious reasons, this is not for sale due to copyright, however, I am trying to get the license as I think it would be awesome to have the original art on the microcade!
Art is such a big aspect of microcade that we even have our own Artist Handbook that goes over everything an artist would need to know if they were designing for the microcade. Everything from what PCB art is, the available colour palettes available to how to create custom splash screens for the menu system - it truly is 100% customisable.
In light of this, the first console needed to reflect that. I reached out to two members of the Arduboy community called Filmote, an Australian software developer, & Vamprics, a Canadian graphic designer who created Press Play On Tape (PPOT). Together, they have coded over 35 titles for the Arduboy platform as well as 23 for pokitto.
To celebrate this, I decided to reach out to them and create the Road Trip edition. It took one of their popular games, Road Trip, and allowed Vamprics to create awesome themed panel art as well as collate their 35 titles into the PPOT game cart allowing you to play all of their great titles on the Road Trip.
For me, it was an awesome way to celebrate these two creators and give the fans something tangible to showcase their love for these titles.
In addition, Mstr Blinky, the creator of the homebrew, helped adjust the software to allow for the marque to be lit and to make it much easier to program in Arduino! A huge thank you! https://twitter.com/MstrBlinky
It's awesome mentioning all these people that believed in the idea, supported and helped bring it to life. It's something I mentioned I wish I did more of when we first spoke - and now I can actually showcase how I made it work! This is actually a theme I plan to move ahead with for future
consoles. I've already reached out to and got confirmation from the creators of Mystic Balloon, a fun platformer where you navigate through levels with your balloon and sucker, and Catacombs of the damned, an FPS dungeon crawler where you navigate dungeons collecting loot and blasting enemies with fireballs, to work with them to bring a themed console to life so stay tuned for those! They will feature even more fun games from the creators, bringing to light some awesome hidden gems!
I’ve also partnered with Steph Piper from https://www.makerqueen.com.au, an awesome Australian maker who does her own PCB soldering kits as well as a lot of work with Makerspaces. We are working on exploring how PCB art can be used to create a new themed console to help get more girls involved with STEM & in the game industry. We are also exploring using multiple solder masks to add even more colour possibilities - a lot of cool stuff coming!
We have featured the talented Steph Piper in our mag a few times. Was your plan for microcade to be a teaching aid like your 8BitCADE?
To be completely honest, it was actually a prototype for a medium size arcade console. When I showed it to kids in a classroom, they all fell in love with the micro size and so I decided to move ahead with it. It was kind of perfect as it is a good compromise for schools who are interested in running it in their curriculum as it can fit within their budgets as well as makes for the perfect little nifty coding tool.
Can you go into more detail about how it works?
The microcade kit is a mix of soldering components and PCB panels.
The first thing you will do, weirdly, has nothing to do with building the kit! It's to locate the practice soldering board and the 3 sets of 20 header pins included in the kit and to scan the QR code.
This will take you to the “Learn to solder video” where you will follow along with me as we learn how to solder, identify poor solder joints and how to remedy them! We are here to learn so making mistakes is natural. This is, surprisingly, something you don't really see in DIY kits.
There's a lot of anxiety for beginners when they start soldering their kit as they don't want to “mess it up” - and that's okay!
The solder board gives the beginner a little playground to experiment with, and practice and then allows them to move on to the main event - soldering their own arcade machine!
Once you’ve practised and mastered that, we can move on to soldering the components onto the motherboard. You'll also learn how to use ribbon cables, JST connectors and butterfly connectors. Once you've wired everything up and the motherboard is soldered, we then test the console works.
What's awesome is that this can be done before any other assembly takes place so you have full access to the board. This makes debugging easier although I can guarantee you won't need much of that! Turn the console on, play a few games, make sure everything is working and then we can move on to the chassis.
I'm currently working on a BETA arcade-themed coding platform with six courses, from beginner to advanced, written by Filmote and I. That will take you through how to code in Arduino, as well as how to code games for the microcade! It's quite exciting as you’ll be learning from the developer who coded the games you'll be playing and learning why he decided to do certain things! Everyone who has a microcade will get access to it, more info on the early BETA release soon!
- Intro to Arduino: Learn the basics of coding in Arduino by creating aspects of a space invaders game.
- Code Etch a sketch: Learn about screen buffers, UI and user input.
- Code Frogger: Implement your learnings to code an entire side scroller arcade game that has a high score, menu &
game over screen, collision and some simple graphics. - How arrays work: A short course on a fundamental principle.
- How to create high scores: Learn how to implement a high score feature into
any game! - How state machines work: Learn a fundamental mechanism that powers all retro games - state machines!
These will soon have short videos to go alongside!
What other games can you play on the microcade?
The current model is called Road Trip.
Of course, you can play Road Tip. If you've ever plated Enduro on the Atari 2600, it will feel quite familiar. It's one of my favourite games from the talented duo Filmote & Vamprics of Press Play On Tape. In fact, all the games on the system was created by them & the community.
Some of my personal favourites:
"The Curse of AstaroK" is a push-your-luck dungeon crawl game where players must battle the evil AstaroK and his allies in an old castle to break the curse on their town, Griford. Players strategically cast runes to gain various powers and collect Skill Points (SP) to acquire advanced skills and gold. They must decide whether to push deeper into the dungeon or return to town to purchase supplies, with the risk of losing SP and equipment if defeated in battle.
In the new adventure of The Curse of Astarok, players reunite with beloved characters as they compete in trials to become the village champion tasked with protecting them from Astarok. By strategically choosing runes, players navigate different courses of varying difficulty, aiming to progress as far as possible in the trials.
A classic, Kong, along with some other Game & Watch games. I love the replayability and usually find myself trying to beat my previous high score and competing with my father!
Experience the nostalgia of an absolute classic side-scrolling shooter with captivating chiptune music. Immerse yourself in the fast-paced action, shoot down enemy planes, collect power-ups, and strive for new high scores in this must-play game.
We are also working on turning Ardynia into a themed console. An exciting RPG adventure game inspired by Zelda's Link's Awakening. Utilise the boomerang to stun enemies, retrieve items, and activate switches as you explore a vast overworld, conquer challenging dungeons, face formidable bosses, encounter diverse enemy types, and discover hidden secrets in several areas.
How did you go about designing it and finding a manufacturer?
My experience running 8bitCADE came in handy. During running 8BitCADE, I had to bring products to market within 3 months (twice) and so had learned a lot of lessons from making mistakes and had built up a contact list that I could reach out to.
What design challenges did you need to overcome?
The big one was making it fun and easy to assemble. There's no fun-o-meter or way of really understanding as a designer how easy something is to make. Too many times I would feel like I made something super intuitive but…that was just for me. It was really the feedback from the community that made microcade what it is now.
It's interesting as that was something I mentioned in our first article - what would I do differently? And, I'm proud to say I listened to my own advice as I truly feel the microcade is a really good kit, from the start, because we had the community involved early on.
Some other design challenges are mainly to do with finding the best way to make the console easy to assemble, manufacture and fun. One of the weird constraints I gave myself early on was that the two sprues needed to be 100mm by 100mm however, you then need to add 5mm rails for SMD so you lose some space. It's about trying to estimate what requirements will be needed down the line so you can design them early on.
Another challenge, weirdly, was the packaging. Trying to find the best way to package it that would be light, space efficient and still fun to unbox. Below you can see I explore foam + some sort of foam tray, just foam and a spacer and then little boxes.
The boxes were the lightest and could actually be used to hold the panels in place. They also make actually producing the kit easier as we can make these little boxes first when the raw components come in and then build the kit when it's needed! The render shows a 2-part box being used, however, this was later changed to a single folded box.
What did you learn since launching your 8BitCADE XL that you have applied to your product.
The 8BitCADE XL was an awesome console to design, however, was made from the start for more advanced users with a bit of know-how about soldering. The microcade, however, was designed from the start to be intended for people that have zero soldering experience, hence the solder practice board and included tools!
I learned a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff as well. There’s a lot more than you think that goes into getting a product into your hands, from the initial design and testing, all through manufacturing and logistics to actually get it to you. You’ll also notice how I took a different approach this time, launching independently, not through a Kickstarter. Something I am experimenting with and wanted to try. And that's the key, is to keep trying, failing, learning and evolving.
It’s great that you produced some support videos. These videos must add a lot of value to your product offering?
Video format is the closest thing to me being there with you, helping you. The next best thing is live calls - something I do 1 to 1 with support emails. Videos are a great way for me to locate pain points such as “how to install a game” and make a video covering that. Soon you build up a big library of content that users can go to first before sending me an email!
It's also crucial that they are entertaining. If you look at the microcade make video, compared to other videos, it's a lot shorter, snappier and gets straight to the point. It's broken into multiple videos instead of one big one and, hopefully, is entertaining to watch with me being a bit goofy! With TikTok on the rise, people's attention span is getting shorter and so it's important that we use fun digital content to go alongside the physical product to keep the user engaged and learning.
A constant motif of microcade is, learning from the creator. Aka, the make video was done by myself, the person who designed the microcade. The coding tutorial on the BETA platform was written by Filmote, the developer of all the games on the microcade. And the graphical artwork for the roadtrip was made by Vamprics, the artist who did all the game art. STEM platforms, especially coding ones, really focus on teaching the syntax of how to code, which I get as it provides the fastest results and makes you feel like you can code. However, it's the decisions that experienced developers make that make them great coders. Why did they write the function in this way or use a pointer instead of just passing the variable. Yes, it's key to understand what a function is, but it's the ability to make the key decision and problem-solve that make developers great.
A really interesting fact, at Jaguar Land Rover I’m a part of an embedded systems software development team. Weirdly enough, I expected us to be coding away every day. How wrong I was. Actually, we spend a lot of time at the whiteboard trying to understand the problem and discussing with each other the best way to implement I, and for large companies, a lot of the time they use models to generate the code for them - to reduce debugging time. So yes understanding syntax is important, and you'll learn that, but the focus is on the mindset.
Building up a library of content is also something I want to do more of. We have a few interviews with the developers of the games themselves to go over how they made the game, how they got to where they are and tips and tricks to inspire the listener. All in an effort to show anyone how to get into STEM, with microcade and coding games being their first step!
Where can our readers learn more or buy a microcade for themselves?
The best place to go is direct and support us at https://playmicrocade.com. This is the hub for all things microcade, including all our new products, themed consoles and learning platform.
You can also join the awesome Facebook group we are building here to talk to other makers about Arduino, arcade games and electronics! https://fb.com/groups/microcade/
I've taken a different approach with the microcade, I'm trying to push hard on getting the console into local distributors to make it more accessible. For you lovely readers in Australia, you can find it at https://pakronics.com.au.
Great! Thanks for sharing your project and experience with us. We hope we have inspired our readers to get cracking on their next project and possibly take it to market.