Raspberry Pi Cyberdeck Multiplayer Arcade Is The Perfect Winter Project

Almost daily, one extremely cool project or another surfaces, centered around Raspberry Pi. We’ve seen creators build vintage-looking internet radios, for example, using Raspberry Pi. Others have built Game Boy-inspired handheld gaming consoles. One maker even put a Raspberry Pi Zero inside an SNES controller to home-brew a terrific retro console.

The latest creation to materialize makes for a perfect winter project. Think CoCo (Tandy Colored Computer) aesthetics merged with the diminutive but powerful Raspberry Pi to provide your essential computing functions and a portable, two-player retro arcade.

Redditor Crookdmouth got inspired by the TRS-80 MC-10 he had growing up, along with other machines in the CoCo family. His creation features a small screen set between two sets of arcade controls along the top, and a classic mechanical keyboard at the bottom. Two handles on the sides help with portability.

Inside, you’ll find a Raspberry Pi model 3B. The screen is a Pimoroni HyperPixel 4.0 Square, and an Anker PowerCore 26800 keeps the computer chugging along for up to 12 hours without plugging it in.

Crookdmouth built the case himself from scratch, primarily out of maple wood spray painted with Krylon Fusion in a sleek gray and black motif. He built in a micro-SD card slot, one USB port, one HDMI output, and a headphone jack on the side. There’s also a USB-C port for powering the computer or recharging the battery.

One of the joysticks, an analog stick, serves as a mouse for computing functions. The creator also attached two knobs to serve as horizontal and vertical scroll wheels. Even though it functions perfectly as a basic computer, Crookdmouth says he mainly uses it to play Brutal Doom, along with retro arcade-style games of the Commodore 64, Amiga, and classic arcade days (via the Mame emulator built into RetroPie.)

When he was in the middle of the build, Crookdmouth says he considered making additional copies to sell. However, the price of many of the components (especially the keyboard, but also Raspberry Pi boards themselves) has risen too dramatically for that to be an affordable, yet still profitable, venture for the DIYer.