It Takes 8 People to Collaboratively Play These ‘Octopad’ NES Controllers! | #atSAAM @americanart
Octopad and other indie games will be on view – for playing! – at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s SAAM Arcade 2018 taking place later this month on Sunday July 22 from 11:30AM-7PM.
Octopad is an alternative interface for the Nintendo Entertainment System that divides eight buttons between eight players to transform classic single-player games like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Tetris (or Yo! Noid, Gremlins 2, and Hatris) into multi-player puzzles where participants must divvy up tasks, share information, and work together to progress. It’s Tetris as a team sport, complete with callouts, commentary, and crowds!
Inspired by the treasure trove of photoshopped interfaces that Richard van Tol, Barrie Ellis, and Sander Huiberts posted at the Game Accessibility Forums over ten years ago, Octopad reimagines a historic platform in the paradigm of one-switch games—a genre of single-button videogames designed for and by people with limited manual dexterity. Rather than thinking about accessibility as a single-player issue, this controller engages the social, political, and environmental aspects of disability to reimagine how we play.
Here’s a video of some people using the Octopad to play Tetris:
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: New Raspberry Pi Products, 503 CircuitPython Libraries and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey