Mechanical Donkey Kong game tests your barrel-jumping skills, patience

Mechanical Donkey Kong game tests your barrel-jumping skills, patience

We've seen quite a few NES mods in our day, but we can't say we've ever seen one hooked up to anything quite like this. Built by DIY-er Martin Raynsford, this contraption / work-of-art makes use of an Arduino (naturally) to relay signals from the NES controller to the Donkey Kong screen brought to life above, which was constructed with near pixel-perfect accuracy out of laser-cut parts. As Raynsford points out, though, things are still a bit limited in the game's V1 state. There isn't much of an actual "game," for starters -- just Mario stuck in the middle with a never-ending loop of barrels / ball bearings that you can jump over. A second version is planned with a greater degree of control, but we're guessing the video for it won't be quite as hypnotic as the one after the break.

Engadget