The Gamebuino META is a cool and colorful gaming handheld that features an Arduino-compatible ATSAMD21, 160x128 color TFT screen, speaker, and 8 buttons.  It's an amazing platform for writing small games and is a great looking handheld!

Since Arcada boards, like the PyGamer and PyBadge's are also Arduino compatible, it's easy to compile any Gamebuino games for these boards. The PyGamer/PyBadge have much faster processors with more memory and the same size screen (in fact, it's the same exact screen). We will not be 'emulating' the Gamebuino games - we really will just re-compile them.

The buttons, sound, display all work the same. A huge amount of the hardware interfacing code is all from Adafruit already, so adapting the Gamebuino library from the SAMD21 to SAMD51 was not too difficult!

You can use the SD card on the PyGamer if you like but we will prefer the internal QSPI memory since it exists on all Arcada boards.

The program-from-SD card bootloader wasn't ported, we'll be sticking to the UF2 bootloader we know and love.

What can I use?

We use the Arcada Arduino library to interface with the hardware, and can run on:

Step 1. Install Arduino IDE, drivers & board package

Before you start, you'll need to follow the guide for your particular board to install the Arduino IDE, drivers and board support package so that you can upload code to it via Arduino

Step 2. Install Arcada Libraries

We use quite a number of libraries to access the display, sound, buttons, etc.

Visit the Arcada library page to install all the libraries listed (yes that's a dozen!)

Step 3. Install Adafruit Version Gamebuino Library

In addition to the Arcada libraries, you'll need the Adafruit-tweaked versions of the Gamebuino lirbary. We will install it manually, not through the library manager, so download the Zip and then select Add .ZIP Library... to install

These replace the existing library but adds support for Arcada boards, for that reason, you should remove any existing library you have with this name!

OK, let's test out that this worked. Restart the Arduino IDE and select the board you'll be uploading to, then open the Gamebuino META for Arcada examples. Start with a_hello

Be sure to select your Arcada board. You don't need to overclock or optimize so leave those settings alone.

You must select TinyUSB as the USB Core - that's what we use to have the internal storage appear as a disk drive. It's not the default so be sure to re-select it whenever you open the Arduino IDE

Compile and upload a_Hello to your board. You will see the starting animation and GAMEBUINO text...

The next one we suggest you try is c_Controls because you can test the D-Pad (move the ball) and buttons (make sounds)

Disk Drive Usage

You'll note as you run these tests that a CIRCUITPY drive will appear on your computer. This disk drive has the contents of the filesystem (QSPI or SD Card) that you can browse and manage with your computer. Folders appear on the disk drive for each project/game you compile & upload, and will contain files or settings for that game.

Using the Filesystem for Games

Some games will want you to store files on the filesystem. Normally this is an SD card only, but we can use the QSPI storage as the USB disk drive. To demonstrate, load up the Audio demo

In the code A should trigger this line:

In this case its looking on the filesystem. Press reset to restart the sketch, the next time the USB drive appears you'll see a new folder called Audio

Download and save this test.wav file into the folder

Once it finishes writing, wait a moment, then try pressing A on the sketch to play the audio!

There's over 100 games available, and we don't want to play any favorites! We did try a couple games that are good demonstrations of the Gamebuino platform. Here are ready-to-go UF2s you can drag-n-drop onto the BOOT bootloaders of a PyGamer or PyBadge

METAtris

This Tetris-like has awesome graphics and sound, incredibly addicting!

The source code is on github, you can download/fork it from there

META-Picomon

This Pokémon alike is a port from a pico8 game, thus the name

Source code is on GitHub you can download/fork it here

This game comes with audio files, so after you run the game once, reset the Arcada board, and find the picomon folder on the USB drive that appears:

Then, from the downloaded source code, go into the binaries/picomon folder. You'll find a musics folder, ICON.GMV file and more. Drag all but the picomon.bin file into the CIRCUITPY/picomon folder

Yield

The Gamebuino library defines a function called yield() but this is internally used by Arduino for USB and other RTOS tasks, for Gamebuino's yield we've renamed it to gb_yield()

SD vs. QSPI Filesystem

By default Arcada sets up to use the internal QSPI filesystem. If you want to use SD cards instead, and your board has an SD card slot, open up the Adafruit_Arcada.h and find the definition block for your board, for example

#elif defined(ADAFRUIT_PYGAMER_M4_EXPRESS)

Then change

to

And recompile your game

Audio Format

Audio WAV files must be in Mono, 8-bit, 44.KHz which is a little different than what we normally use in Adafruit projects. Still, our audio-conversion guide may help!