FPGA Platformer Game Written Entirely In VHDL

FPGA enthusiast and nostalgic gamer Ben created a 1980s-style side-scrolling platformer game (think Super Mario Bros.) entirely in VHDL. Hence there is no microprocessor present. Ben’s game was originally written to run on an Altera dev board, and some other hardware.

The hardware consists of:
•A single FPGA
•Power and clock circuitry
•A controller, which is an imitation of the original NES controller
•Three resistors and a VGA connector for video output

I originally wrote this for an Altera development board which was actually a TQFP breakout board with the chip soldered onto it. This was fragile and poorly soldered so it fell apart after a while. I have now changed all the ROMs to be generic VHDL instead of LPM macros so it works with the Xilinx tools (and, presumably, any other VHDL synthesizer).

Cool project, Ben! I’m thinking it would be sweet to get this game running on the Papilio with the Arcade MegaWing.  Anyone up to give it a shot?  Be sure to hit up the links below to dive into the code, and check out Ben’s project page while you’re at it!

• Project page
• Game code (VHDL)

(via CircuitBen)