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New Game Alert: Lode Runner!
August 25, 2010 at 9:39 pm

Uze just released his latest game! Lode Runner is a remake of the classic PC/Apple II/C64 game of the same name. The player controls a character who must collect all [...]

New Game Alert: Uze Feud!
July 23, 2010 at 12:30 pm

Flavio Zavan just released Uze Feud! It is very similar to Family Feud, it supports up to 8 families, it has original music, art, random families, some controller detection to [...]

New Game Alert: Frogger!
July 13, 2010 at 11:30 am

Paul McPhee just released Frogger! It is a relatively close re-make of the C64 version of the classic arcade game. Beat your best score or play vs your friends while [...]

New Game Alert: Uze Snakes!
July 11, 2010 at 10:00 pm

Flavio Zavan (aka Nebososo) release his second Uzebox game, an implementation of the classic Snakes game. Using video mode 9 (the highest resolution mode so far at 360×224), it includes [...]

New Game Alert: Tron!
June 15, 2010 at 7:45 pm

Adrastos released his latest Uzebox game. Tron is an open source competitive game based on the 1982 film of the same name. The goal of the game is to get [...]

More News...
About

The Uzebox is a retro-minimalist 8-bit open source game console. It is based on an AVR 8-bit general purpose microcontroller made by Atmel. The particularity of the system is that it uses an interrupt driven kernel and has no frame buffer. Functions such as video sync generation, tile rendering and music mixing is done realtime by a background task so games can easily be developed in C. The design goal was to be as simple as possible yet have good enough sound and graphics while leaving enough resources to implement interesting games. Emphasis was put on making it easy and fun to assemble and program for any hobbyists. The final design contains only two chips: an ATmega644 and an AD725 RGB-to-NTSC converter.

Current Features
  • Low parts count and cost: The system is made of only two chips and discrete components.
  • Interrupt driven kernel: No cycle counting required, sound mixing and video generation are all made in the background.
  • 256 simultaneous colors: Accomplished by using a R-2R resistor ladder DAC.
  • 4 channels sound engine: The sound subsystem is composed of 3 wavetable channels and 1 noise or PCM channel.
  • MIDI In: With a music sequencer, allows the creation of music directly on the console.
  • Retro controllers: The joypad inputs uses standard NES/SNES controllers interface.
  • SNES Mouse Support
  • SD/MicroSD card interface
  • Expandable: I/O lines and peripherals are still available, like the UART and SPI port for one to experiment.
  • Emulator: A fully, cycle-perfect, emulator was developed and greatly eases development.
  • Gameloader (beta): Load and flash games stored on SD cards!
  • API: Develop games using an API that provides multiple video modes, sound driver and more.
  • Open Source: The software and hardware design are totally free and licensed under the GPL.
Specifications

CPU: ATmega644 microcontroller
Total RAM: 4K
Program Memory: 64K
Speed: 28.61818Mhz (Overclocked)
Colors: 256 simultaneous colors arranged in a 3:3:2 color space (Red:3 bits, Green:3 bits, Blue: 2 bits)
Resolution: Up to 360x224 pixels (tiles-only and tiles-and-sprites modes)
Sprites: Up to 32 simultaneous sprites on screen at any time
Video output: NTSC Composite and S-Video
Sound: 4 channels wavetable, 8-bit mono, mixed at ~15Khz and output via PWM
Inputs: Two NES/SNES compatible joypad inputs
Options: MIDI-in interface and s-video output

Showcase

These videos demonstrates some of the features of the Uzebox. The first one is a Tetris clone named "AVR Megatris". The game is fully functional and implements most of the official "Super Rotation System" (SRS) system complete with hold block, t-spins and ghost piece...it even plays classic Tetris songs!

Megatris Movie Uzebox AVCore Movie ESD Attack Movie Moon Patrol Movie Halloween Demo Movie Music Engine Demo Video Player Demo
Uzebox AVCore with Gamecard The Uzebox fully assembled! This unit is made by Embedded Engineering, LLC and is made of a GameCard and AVCoreTM module. Available at Sparkfun Electronics.
Fuzebox Console The Fuzebox is made by Adafruit industries and is 100% Uzebox compatible. It is sold as a kit to assemble and comes with the AD725 pre-soldered.
Latest Stable Version: 1.13
Features   Download   Sources
Tron Thumb
Tron Title
Adrastos

Download...
Sokoban Thumb
Sokoban Title
Lee Weber

Download...
Zombienator Thumb
Megatris Thumb
Sokoban World Thumbnail
Sokoban World Title
Lee Weber

Download...
Uze Snakes Thumbnail
Uze Snakes Title
Flavio Zavan

Download...
Dr.Mario Thumb
Dr.mario Title
CodeCrank

Download...
Lode Runner Thumb

All Games and Demos...


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Copyright (c) 2008-2010 Uze, Belogic
The Uzebox (including source code and hardware design) is released under the GNU GPL 3.0 Public Licence.
Pictures and content of this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Uzebox is a reserved trademark.