Still having a hard time finding a Nintendo Switch in stores? Or maybe you’re tired of waiting for Nintendo’s promised online store full of retro games? Tim Lindquist took things into his own hands and built a Nintendo Switch clone from scratch that can emulate games from over 50 classic systems.
Lindquist spent his winter designing, engineering and building his Nintimdo RP (slow clap) console which shares a lot of features with Nintendo’s Switch, including a generously-sized LCD screen flanked by (non-removable) controls on either side.
He fully documented his project here, but you can get a better sense of what goes into making your own portable gaming console through this timelapse video Lindquist made.
The custom Nintimdo RP housing is thicker than the Switch’s, but that’s because it’s filled with off-the-shelf parts like a Broadcom BCM287 processor running Linux and emulators, a full cooling system, a massive 10,000mAh rechargeable battery (the Switch’s is a mere 4310mAh) and a motherboard facilitating two USB ports and an HDMI port for playing games on a bigger screen.
According to Hackaday, Lindquist’s creation runs the RetroPie emulator, giving the console access to a massive library of classic video games, as well as EmulationStation so the Nintimdo RP’s home screen looks as slick as the Nintendo Switch’s does.
We don’t know how much this homebrew console ended up costing Lindquist to build, but whatever the price tag was, the final results seem totally worth it.
[Nintimdo RP via Hackaday]
Leave a Reply