Robert, a Nintendo R.O.B. simulator

Presenter: Lucas Newton

Faculty Sponsor: Allan Brockenbrough

School: Salem State University

Research Area: Computer Science

Session: Poster Session 3, 1:15 PM - 2:00 PM, 163, C6

ABSTRACT

In 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game console was released in the United States. Along with the system itself, it was available in a bundle with a toy robot called R.O.B., the Robotic Operating Buddy. The purpose of R.O.B. was to help you play two specific games: Gyromite and Stack-Up. In each of these games, R.O.B. would look at the TV for a specific sequence of flashes, which would then tell the robot to act in a specific way. Nowadays, it’s impossible to play the games which required R.O.B. properly without having an actual unit, which have become hard to find and expensive.

Robert is a software-based simulation for R.O.B. which aims to solve this problem. The main part of Robert is an app made in the Godot game engine which features a 3D model of R.O.B. that can move around and act in an identical manner to the real unit. Because R.O.B. needs to communicate with a NES console to do anything, Robert supports two ways of connecting to a running system: either to a software NES emulator through use of a special plugin, or to a real NES console with a microcontroller.

The purpose of Robert is to be a proper historical preservation of R.O.B.. Potential users could range from museums which have the program running as part of an exhibit of historical video games, to home users which never had the opportunity to use R.O.B. in the first place trying it for the first time.


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