nowfound

Life & fun · July 19, 2022

I built a handheld CHIP-8 game console to teach myself embedded systems

A while back I wrote a CHIP-8 emulator (which is considered the Hello, World! of emulators and is more accurately a virtual machine since historically CHIP-8 was an interpreted language running on top of the COSMAC VIP to make game programming easier). But a few months ago I got really interested in embedded software, so decided it would be neat to port my emulator to a STM32 MCU and design a console around it as a learning experience, since CHIP-8 never existed as a physical system. I didn't know much about embedded software when I began, and even less about electronics, but I managed to…

I built a handheld CHIP-8 game console to teach myself embedded systems launched on July 19, 2022 with 128 votes, #222 of 2,916 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 4 years on.

Visit github.com ↗Alternativestop 8% of July 2022

In plain words

This is a handheld game console built around a CHIP-8 virtual machine emulator ported to an STM32 microcontroller. The maker designed it as a learning project to teach themselves embedded systems and electronics, writing the firmware from scratch and designing the custom PCB. The project includes documentation, a development blog, and a build guide on GitHub for others interested in emulation and embedded development.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

A custom-built CHIP-8 hand-held gaming console powered by a STM32 microcontroller. - kurtjd/CHIPnGo

In the maker’s words, at launch

A while back I wrote a CHIP-8 emulator (which is considered the Hello, World! of emulators and is more accurately a virtual machine since historically CHIP-8 was an interpreted language running on top of the COSMAC VIP to make game programming easier). But a few months ago I got really interested in embedded…

Does a similar job

all alternatives →
  • CHIP-8 console implemented in FPGA2018 · github.com · ▲120

    CHIP-8 console on FPGA. Contribute to pwmarcz/fpga-chip8 development by creating an account on GitHub.

  • Chip-8 emulator written in JavaScript2025 · github.com · ▲35

    A Chip8 emulator written in JavaScript. Contribute to victorqribeiro/Chip8js development by creating an account on GitHub.

  • My x86 emulator written in JavaScript2013 · copy.sh · ▲765

    Run KolibriOS, Linux or Windows 98 in your browser

  • Gameslab, a FPGA powered handheld game console2019 · craigjb.com · ▲406

    Adventures in hardware hacking, low-level software, FPGAs, and more!

  • MP
    My platforming game written in C 892023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · ▲127

    I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…

  • GB
    Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld2025 · eli.lipsitz.net · ▲274

    Hey HN, Over the past ~1.5 years, I built an open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld that can play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges. To my knowledge, there isn't an existing open-source FPGA emulator that can play physical cartridges like this. One of my main goals was to do all of the pieces myself, and be able to understand every component of it, so I designed my own PCB, wrote the firmware, wrote a Game Boy and Game Boy Advance emulator for the FPGA (using the Chisel HDL), and designed a 3D-printed case. I detailed the design and development process in the…

Questions this answers

More life & fun this month

the category →

Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part

Launched alongside, July 2022

the whole month →
  • Locofy.ai▲720

    Hey there, I am Honey - Co-founder at Locofy. We, along with other makers, have been building Locofy.ai to help massively accelerate the builders - the designers, developers, product managers & founders, and we're excited to share it today with the HN Community. Locofy.ai simply converts designs into production-ready frontend code for web and mobile apps. It adapts to your preferred design tools, tech stack, and workflows with ease and lets you launch upto 4x faster, while letting designers design the way they want and giving high-quality responsive code that developers love. With this…

    Dev tools · 2022 · locofy.ai

  • PO
    Porting OpenBSD Pledge() to Linux▲571

    Life & fun · 2022 · justine.lol

  • PocketBase – Open Source realtime backend in one file▲563

    Open Source realtime backend in 1 file. Contribute to pocketbase/pocketbase development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Dev tools · 2022 · github.com

  • ruttl▲552

    Visual & Design Feedback Tool that helps you review design, content and report bugs on websites, applications, PDFs and images.

    Dev tools · 2022 · ruttl.com

  • Pipes puzzle (a.k.a. Net) on a hexagonal grid▲537

    Hello, HN - I wanted to share this puzzle game I made during my vacation. I'm rather fond of the pipes puzzle where your goal is to restore a scrambled network of connections by rotating tiles. It's usually played on a grid of squares and this all started when I decided to make a programmatic solver for that kind of puzzle. Then I realized that with some minor changes the solver could generate new puzzle instances. I thought about what kind of puzzle to make and someone suggested a hexagonal grid. Adapting the generator wasn't too hard but then I had to create a way to play this variant. So…

    Life & fun · 2022 · hexapipes.vercel.app

  • Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking▲536

    We're building Parsnip to create a "tech tree" of cooking skills that allows anyone to level up on the building blocks of cooking knowledge while tracking their progress over time. It took us a few iterations to figure out the right product; here's the story of our latest pivot: [https://parsnip.substack.com/p/a-new-hope] The goal is to create a personalized way to learn any recipe on the Internet, then use this as a springboard to help home cooks of all levels solve the problem of repeated meal planning in a 10x better way:…

    Work · 2022 · parsnip.ai