THE LATEST FROM BEN HECKENDORN – THE NESTARI

It’s been awhile since we last checked in with console hacker extrordinaire Ben Heckendorn, so we figured it would be time to head over to his website and see what he’s been up to. Turns out, it’s another handheld system – the NEStari.

This time, Ben has taken an Atari Flashback 2, one of those "Nintendo on a chip" systems and some technical know-how and built a combination Atari 2600 / NES handheld. I don’t know about you, but I really do wish I had this guy’s technical expertise – I’d probably spend all day building consoles. (ok, I’d at least spend all day starting console projects)

Be sure to check out his earlier projects if this is the first time you’re visiting his site – you’ll probably be drooling in no time flat.

• The NEStari – BenHeck.com

NEW BEN HECKENDORN NES PORTABLE

Ben Heckendorn, creator of the Atari 2600 handheld VCSp and author of the ExtremeTech book “Hacking Video Game Consoles“, has created his latest portable masterpiece. The nPod is a handheld, cartridge based, NES that merges a NES cartridge port to the processor of one of those “multi-game” NES clone TV units. I picked up Ben’s book at the same time I grabbed ExtremeTech’s other book “Project Arcade”, and the projects are all well laid out, but I just haven’t gotten a chance to build any them yet. I figure the next thing I build will probably be the tabletop arcade machine I worked out last summer, but the temptation to build a VCSp is always pretty strong. Check out the nPod here.