Stare down your gaming opponent with this dual-screen Raspberry Pi 400-powered console
This isn’t just any games console; it’s a dual-screen tabletop arcade that allows you to stare down your opponent as your on-screen alter ego Hadoukens them right in the face. No, chest. Hadouken is a chest-height move, right? Well, anyway. It was always a fluke of maniacally mashed buttons whenever I managed to pull it off.
Plywood edge grain is responsible for the lovely looking finish, and a Raspberry Pi 400 is tucked inside powering the whole thing. While we are pained that the good looks of a Raspberry Pi 400 are hidden away, we’ll let the maker off due to their gorgeous woodworking.
Parts list
- Raspberry Pi 400
- Power supply, HDMI splitter (to make RetroPie play across two monitors), and micro HDMI to HDMI adapter
- 8Bitdo Pro 2 gaming controllers
- Second-hand monitors (this maker found some on Facebook Marketplace)
- 3/4″ Radiatta Pine Plywood from Home Depot (expert woodworking skills not included)
RetroPie radiance
The maker used this walkthrough to get RetroPie up and running on Raspberry Pi 400. This video helped him get the 8Bitdo gaming controllers talking to the Raspberry Pi. Everything worked on the first try — a rarity for first-time projects where there’s usually some steps forward and back to figure everything out.
While the build video shows the console running Street Fighter, the maker, Block After Block, cites the Tony Hawk series for PlayStation as his childhood fave, and has several other classic games loaded thanks to RetroPie. Personally, I was a Wipeout kind of gal, but I could absolutely not handle the extra pressure of staring down my opponent while racing against the clock with Prodigy’s Firestarter playing in the background. That game had the wildest soundtrack. Shall we think of some less confrontational games to play nicely over dual screen? … Anyone?
7 comments
Jump to the comment form
claudius
I’ll just use my planner and my CNC tool.
nafanz
Looks stylish!
Raspberry Pi Staff Ashley Whittaker — post author
Such a nice thing to have on display, isn’t it?
Anders
Reminds me of Milton Bradley Games version of Battleships of pre- Christmas tv advertising popularity decades ago.
Raspberry Pi Staff Ashley Whittaker — post author
THAT’S what it reminds me of!
Paul Peavyhouse
Would be interesting to try to get this to run two copies of moonlight-embedded on either a single or dual RPi4
W. H. Heydt
Very nicely done. I had something sort of similar in mind as a project for my wife before she died. The idea was to have two monitors, but with the Pi400 out to use as a keyboard so she could type messages that could be read on the second monitor by someone facing her. The intent was to power it with batteries so it could be used in a wheelchair tray. I was intending to use 13″ portable monitors. (My wife died of ALS, which is a progressive neurodegenerative disease with no known cause, no cure, and very few–not very effective–treatments. She could still type when she could barely speak.)