CBC reports that a Canadian engineering student has built what is claimed to be the world’s smallest arcade machine. Victoria Korhonen, who studies electromechanical engineering at Fanshawe College in London, Ont., 3D-printed, assembled, and programmed a fully functional miniature Pong arcade cabinet to achieve the record.
Korhonen’s arcade machine measures approximately 64mm tall, 26mm wide, and 30mm deep. It undercuts the current Guinness champ, which measures 67 x 30 x 34mm in every dimension.
According to the budding engineer and creator, this arcade cabinet project took about six months to complete. It sounds like a labor of love, with Korhonen repeatedly recounting color matching, redesigning, reprinting, and restarting the project from scratch.
The world’s smallest arcade machine isn’t just a (tiny) piece of hardware. "Everything's done completely from scratch, so the coding system, the A.I., the paddle size, the board," said Korhonen. "Everything you see is completely hand programmed, so that took quite a bit of work."
Since the text-based CBC website skirted around this, we were glad to learn from the accompanying news video that an Arduino microcontroller powers the arcade cabinet. The video also shows how well this version of Pong plays on a tiny cabinet with similarly tiny controls.
Korhonen describes herself as a big gamer and a dedicated electromechanical engineer and seems to be very pleased with this world record achievement.
Guinness will officially certify the tiny new arcade machine as a world record. If the submitted measurements, plans, and reports are up to scratch, Korhonen's Pong machine should secure the record in approximately three months.
This isn’t Korhonen’s first world record. After getting together with classmates to take a photo using the world’s longest selfie stick, she already has her name in the hallowed book. Actor Ben Stiller was the previous holder of that particular record.
Korhonen isn’t going to be satisfied with two world records. She already has her sights on creating the world’s most miniature humanoid robot.
