The Task

Our task was to design and implement a game for a console resembling the Nintendo Gameboy. The console should also have a sound output for music and sound effects.

Hardware

The console features two microcontrollers:

• Atmega328 with
  • 32 KiB flash
  • 2 KiB SRAM
  • 1 KiB EEPROM
• Atmega168 with
  • 16 KiB flash
  • 1 KiB SRAM
  • 512 B EEPROM

where the former is responsible for the game logic and controlling the display and the latter is used solely as a sound controller.

Furthermore, it features an EA DOGXL160L-7. This LC display has a resolution of 160×104 pixels, but four vertically adjacent pixels are grouped together in so-called pages and can only be written as a whole. Therefore, when writing to the display, the x coordinate must be below 160 and the y coordinate below 25.

Last but not least, the 8 buttons known from the Gameboy are available:

• left, right, up, down
• A, B
• pause, select