This project is really important to me. I know there are people who will find it pointless. That's fine. I enjoy working on this, and it's already brought immense joy and inspiration to my step daughter, who has always dreamed of creating her own video game. I mentioned it to her and she loved it. It felt really nice to have someone else so excited about my project and to see her light up so brightly and often over the weekend. This project evolved from simple little EEPROM chips to SD NAND Flash chips, once I learned the latter existed. I still plan on doing the super simple EEPROM carts as well as the multi-gigabyte SD chips. The little tiny EEPROM chips are special to me, as they force the programmer to really think carefully about what goes on them. Very minimalist, which is the general lifestyle I live these days. The EEPROM carts should be far cheaper as well, which is great.

With that thought out of the way, I have another to explore: the micro Pi HAT form factor or "uHAT". Basically hats for the Pi Zero family. These could be used for memory-only carts, where no extra hardware is included on the board. It's quite wasteful to use a full size HAT board when only a few SD or EEPROM chips are needed. Smaller form factor, cheaper board and case. More could fit into a pocket, perhaps. That brings up another thought, though I don't know good of an idea it is... Connect the carts to each other for storage if a GPIO passthrough is used. Could be used as a HAT riser that also adds mass storage to the GPIO. I've just been going crazy with the possibilities of this project lately. Anyway, I think I want to make the case out of wood or something organic. I could also just resin cast the uHATs to make them more rugged. Been looking for an excuse to learn resin casting anyway. Cases are all still up in the air. I do know that I want to create custom PCBs, write the games, and make nice boxes and manuals for the carts, like commercial games used to have. Even if just for my own portfolio and collection. 

New hardware! It's been rough lately, with a car repair, campsite fees, food, and such. Not much fun money flying around these days, sadly. I did manage to spare enough to order an HDMI to USB capture card for this project. I also got my first ESP32 board in the same order. That's for a different project. The capture card is to use my laptop as a monitor for the Pi 400 as I don't have a monitor or tv in the tiny camper these days. I've yet to get the Pi, or the proto HATs, but those are coming up very soon. I live near a Microcenter, so I'm just going to pick one out in person, like the olden times. Getting the Pi 400 kit for use with this and other projects. I've also decided on a Logitech trackball as my next mouse. I often end up with limited table space these days, so that will help. I'll be ordering the Adafruit perma-proto HATs with EEPROM soon for development. I'll place the order for the EEPROM and SD flash chips soon as well. Hoping to have all the hardware arrive as I have the money for the Pi saved up so I can go get the Pi and start work that day. So excited to get started on this one. I'll be learning Pygame and practicing programming on other projects while I save up and wait for stuff to ship. I've got a few Raspberry Pi Pick boards sitting around to play with as well. I was actually one of the very first people to every buy one from the Microcenter near by. That was a very fun day for me. I plan to incorporate the RP2040 chip into a cart in the future as well. Once I get some experience with board design and such. 

Lots going on here these days, struggling to survive the off grid life in the eastern US. Not a good place to be a full time RV person. The people are horrible and restrictive. Good thing I move to the west coast in October. The projects should really take off then when I don't have to pay top dollar to park a camper every single night. Until then, I'll continue to chug along through this project and others.