estimated reading time: 2 min

We see quite a lot of projects that recreate arcade game machines on a smaller scale, including most of the classics, like Pac-Man and Tempest. But some of the machines you find at arcades just don’t work at anything but their normal size. You would think that would be the case with those machines that test punching force by challenging players to hit a speed bag as hard as they can. However, you’d be wrong, because Guillaume Loquin found a way to do it and this adorable Flick-Out!! machine is the result.

The name is, of course, a reference to the Punch-Out!! series, which started as an arcade game back in 1984. It had conventional arcade controls, but Loquin’s Flick-Out!! is more like a miniaturized version of those punching game machines where you physically hit a target and receive a score based on the force. Because it is tiny, Flick-Out!! wouldn’t be suitable for a punch from an adult fist. Instead, the player flicks the little cherry-sized speed bag and gets a force score for that.

Like its full-sized cousins, Flick-Out!! has a mechanism to drop the speed bag down when the game starts — wouldn’t want someone punching it before paying! And after the flick, the score shows up on a full-color screen. That also displays nifty graphics to entice potential players. There are NeoPixel RGB LEDs for nice lighting effects and an audio board for sound effects. The entire thing is battery-powered and portable.

Loquin 3D-printed the machine’s enclosure, using multi-color printing to great effect. The most important component is a LilyGO T-Display S3, which is an ESP32-S3 development board with a built-in display that acts as the scoreboard. The ESP32 handles the game logic and monitors an FSR (force-sensitive resistor) to detect the flicking force. A mechanical latch, released by a push button, drops the speed bag to start gameplay. The sound effects play through a DFRobot DFPlayer Mini MP3 player.

If you want to build your own Flick-Out!! machine, Loquin published all of the necessary files and a nice tutorial over on GitHub. FSRs aren’t very accurate and so this isn’t any kind of reliable measure of flicking force, which might be a disappointment to the finger boxers out there. But it is good enough for a fun game and that’s what matters.

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