It's alive! Heck admits the final product is thicker than he'd have liked, but he wanted a bigger-capacity battery placed in a secure way.
Credit:
Ben Heck
It's alive! Heck admits the final product is thicker than he'd have liked, but he wanted a bigger-capacity battery placed in a secure way.
Credit:
Ben Heck
When the worlds of retro gaming and customized hacks collide, chances are, you’ll find Benjamin Heckendorn (better known as Ben Heck) standing by with a soldering iron.
The finished product (right) and the source plastic shell (left).
The finished product (right) and the source plastic shell (left).Ben Heck
The “before” image. The retail Neo-Geo Mini’s worst element, arguably, is its use of an analog joystick sensor system, even though original Neo-Geo cabinets relied on clicky, digital controls…
The “before” image. The retail Neo-Geo Mini’s worst element, arguably, is its use of an analog joystick sensor system, even though original Neo-Geo cabinets relied on clicky, digital controls…
…and you can see that joystick construction in this teardown of the retail unit. The first video includes lengthy descriptions of what tweaks need to be made for a smaller form factor.
…and you can see that joystick construction in this teardown of the retail unit. The first video includes lengthy descriptions of what tweaks need to be made for a smaller form factor.
The “before” image. The retail Neo-Geo Mini’s worst element, arguably, is its use of an analog joystick sensor system, even though original Neo-Geo cabinets relied on clicky, digital controls…
…and you can see that joystick construction in this teardown of the retail unit. The first video includes lengthy descriptions of what tweaks need to be made for a smaller form factor.
The second video opens with these four clicky switches, which Ben figures out in approximately 0.7 seconds, in terms of how to set them up as a clicky-joystick base on the cheap.
Schematics…
…including a thoughtful touch: the circular, thumb-friendly axis on which the four Neo-Geo buttons are arranged.
Getting the system’s guts to fit into Heck’s 3D-printed shells.
Almost there.
It’s alive! Heck admits the final product is thicker than he’d have liked, but he wanted a bigger-capacity battery placed in a secure way.
Ben Heck
Another size comparison.
The clicking sounds in the video, as Heck tests a Metal Slug game, are quite satisfying.
But this week’s newest Heck hack stands out for a few reasons: it delivers an incredible fix to the recent, flawed Neo-Geo Mini, and it sees Heck returning to YouTube after saying goodbye to his official and popular “Ben Heck Show” on the platform.
The Neo-Geo Mini only recently shipped to retailers, and while its game selection and screen quality have generally been applauded, its hardware design puzzled a lot of fans. Why was the new joystick analog when the original system famously used clicky, eight-way digital joysticks? And why were the A-B-C-D buttons placed out of order?
Heck asked these questions loudly in a teardown video last week, all while murmuring about how the NGM’s innards seemed easy enough to reconfigure as a handheld system. On Tuesday, Heck followed through by posting a half-hour video on his personal YouTube account. His Neo-Geo Mini handheld hack video, summarized in the above gallery, shows everything from joystick engineering (a 0.7-second process, give or take), to Adobe Illustrator schematic design, to soldering, to 3D-printing, and to playing Metal Slug games on the final product.
We documented the results in the above gallery, but we really encourage you to click through the embedded video below when you get a chance, as it combines Heck’s meticulous crafting process with his agonizingly cheesy puns and jokes. (We missed those, Ben.)
In an interview with Ars, Heck confirmed that he’s interested in “making easy, low production value videos,” as opposed to the more regular and carefully edited videos that filled his show for the past eight years while the hacker took on “prototype contracting” jobs to pay the bills. We jokingly asked if Heck would hurry up and produce a few thousand of these customized Neo-Geo Mini handheld systems, to which he responded: “Maybe a PCB kit could be made to easily convert the Neo-Geo Mini board.” Yes, please.
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