You, too, can make this ESP32 handheld console that can play retro games
Summary
- All-in-one ESP32 handheld: entire console and main screen fit on a single board.
- Dual displays: main screen plus 128×64 OLED for system info and in-game stats.
- Fifteen built-in games (Tetris, Space Invaders, Doom-style raycaster) + OTA updates via SD card.
You can do a lot with SBCs and microcontrollers, but one project we see pop up a lot is handheld consoles. It makes sense they’re so popular; the hardware is so small that you can stick it on some simple hardware and use it to play retro games on a pocket-sized device. Such is the case of this cool ESP32-S2 game console, where all the hardware, including the screen, fits on a single board.
This ESP32 board is a whole console in one
And yes, it plays Doom
Over on the ESP32 subreddit, user ea147 posted images of their new ESP32 handheld console. If either that name or the board itself looks familiar, it’s because they previously used this board to make an ESP32 plane tracker. At the time, they said they were making a console and pivoted a little to look at planes; now, it seems they’ve gotten back on track.
One of the cooler elements about this handheld specifically is that it comes with two screens. DIY handhelds usually come with one, but this one comes with an auxiliary 128×64 OLED screen dedicated to showing device status and in-game stats. It’s sort of like a DS but without the hinged design.
This project even has 15 games coded just for it:
The games range from Tetris and Space Invaders to a Doom-style raycaster, a Mode 7 racing game, and a top-down dungeon crawler. A custom OTA bootloader allows new games to be flashed from an SD card without reconnecting the console to a computer, while the OLED display is used for system information and high scores.
If you’d like to make your own, visit the project’s website and its GitHub for more.
