If you’re a true child of the 80s and spent time at the arcade, well, you probably remember classic driving games such as Sega Rally.
Interestingly enough, some enterprising geeks recently took an old Sega Rally arcade cabinet and revamped it with Arduino-powered tech – effectively creating an uber-cool remote to control model cars using the original arcade steering wheel and pedals.
Essentially, the arcade cabinet controllers allow two players to race their real-life remote-controlled vehicles simultaneously. Video from the cars streams back to the monitors on the arcade console, showing players where they are driving.
The Sega Rally arcade game hack was showcased at the Codebits VI event in Portugal. As noted above, the bulky hardware originally designed for the Sega racing game was pulled and replaced with an Arduino-powered computer system.
Basically, the computer system maps the steering wheel and pedals to the remote-controlled vehicles using Xbee wireless technology. The system allows players to choose between two camera views as they drive the remote-controlled cars – including the arcade classic look down view or a view from the front of the car.
The project creators apparently tried to use the original CRTs from the arcade cabinet. However, they ultimately ran into problems, forcing them to secure other third-party displays.
