Hey guys, video gaming teacher, Mr Whiz here. So in the past, I’ve told you about my class and how we learn to code video games and that we’ve also built an arcade machine to put the games on. I wanted to show you guys that machine. So this is our chaos. That is what the students decided to name it. It is a simple computer monitor with joystick and two buttons for player 1 and for player 2 and a couple buttons at the top there to control the game. It is built with Plexiglas. This Plexiglas was leftover after our Covid. We had a bunch leftover. And so we asked them if we could use it as a building material. And most of it is built with plexiglass with some, you know, metal and other things along the way to help connect it. Altogether, the wiring, it all goes through a simple Raspberry Pi Zero right there. So the wires and the pins are all connected, which creates a fun little visual effect, kind of retro 90s back when everything was clear or there was that whole fad of clear video game controllers, we kind of went with that field. But also it allows the kids to see how the machine works when they play it. So there’s a Raspberry Pi, the wires go to the joysticks and the buttons. And then we also added to it a cooling fan just because of the fact that it was getting a little bit hot in the early stages of youth use.
All right, so then the way the game works is when you turn on, it takes you to this screen, which is the menu, and it shows you the different games that are on here. So these games were built by last year’s 6th graders. Just going to give you an example of how it works. You would press the button, it jumps into the game. This one’s kind of loud. It has some music. So let me use the settings button to turn the volume down here. I forget if you go through the intro first.
All right, so I’ve turned the volume off so that I could talk during this. But this is an example of one of the 6 graders games. In this game, you are supposed to eat the fish as the shark and avoid the submarines. It’s called Shark Attack. You get different points for different things that you eat. Who is made by Bryce in my 6th grade class. The hearts give you health, the fish give you points, and the submarines take away lives. Oh, and there we go. I just hit a submarine. So this is just one example. But yes, my students build games and then if their game is good enough, I get it on the machine. Not everybody’s game makes the cut because I have a lot of students and they build a lot of games. But I thought you guys might be interested in seeing that firsthand and how that works. Now, if you’re interested in learning how to build games like these, or if you’re interested in learning how to build an arcade machine, it is all done through Make Code Arcade. I do have a YouTube channel, which is YouTube dot com slash m Wizner, where I teach how to build the actual games itself. And for building the arcade, you would want to go to make arcade website to find instructions on that. And I talk a little bit about that in one of my early videos.