Mignon DIY game kit
By Barb Dybwad 
posted Apr 7th 2005 1:40PM
posted Apr 7th 2005 1:40PM
In direct contrast to the philosophy of building
locked, proprietary gaming systems, the
Mignon game kit has as its core philosophy that of the DIY designer/hacker/programmer. The kitset was created by Olaf
Val to allow console owners to develop highly individual and personal relationships with their devices through the
process of construction and self-production of a minimalist "gameboy"-like unit. Ideal for first time forays into
micro-electronics as well as advanced game programming, the Mignon kit is incredibly reasonably priced, starting at
about $37 for a bare bones kit on up to $89 for the deluxe version.
[Via Near Near Future]
Wow! With an astonishing resolution of 7x5 your game is sure to have stunning graphics! This unit probably has an ample 16 BYTES of video memory! I wonder if those are tri-color LED elements?
Seriously, this is a neat looking little programming toy, but they could have added a couple more LED drivers on there and used a few smaller LED matrices. It would have added only a couple bucks to the price without significantly having to change the design.
It would be cool if it wasn't for the screen (or lack thereof).
An OPTIONAL higher quality screen would be good IMHO. As is, you could probably create some interesting puzzle and strategy games with it (particularly if the led's ARE 3 color). Such games would be based largely in math and logic...good things for young ones (and I suppose anyone with an active mind really) to be playing with.
But a better screen would be a fairly natural progreesion for it down the road as the user becomes more adept with programming for it. As is, even making a simple 'hangman' game would be kinda hard graphically...
It's pretty neat, but the XGameStation (http://www.xgamestation.com) is lightyears ahead of this.
If they installed a higher resolution LCD, the price would be higher too. So they would compete with GP32 or GBA, for which are excellent Programming tool kits available for free. Because of that, it makes sense that they aim for a different market segment.