Hackaday Prize 2022: An NES Eastern Bloc Clone

While Nintendo is known for anything outside of its top-notch characters and video games, it's ruthless to fans when it comes to using their intellectual property. They take legal action against people simply for showing their games emulating non-Nintendo hardware, and have even attempted to shut down the competitive scene for games like Super Smash Bros. To escape the prying eyes of Nintendo's legal team, extreme measures must be taken, such as building your Nintendo console clone behind the iron curtain.

[Marek Więcek] grew up in such a place, so the only way to play Famicom (aka NES) games was to use a clone system like this circulating in the eastern bloc era called Pegasus who could get the job done with a few tweaks. [Marek] recently came across some CPU and GPU chips from this clone console and got to work building his own. Using a perf board and cable he was able to test the chips and confirm they were working properly but had a problem with the video memory which he took a while to find and fix. repair.

After that, it basically has a fully functional Famicom that can read any cartridge. While we hope living in Eastern Europe still puts it far enough away to avoid being hassled by Nintendo, we can never be too sure. Unless, of course, you're using this device that lets you emulate SNES games legally.