Haynes Retro Arcade Kit

If you are used to soldering, this kit will be a piece of cake. For some people this seems to have been a show stopper. You need to do some soldering to put this kit together.You only need to solder wires for 2 pots(potentiometers – variable resistor), battery box and the PCB which really is the entire game itself. The soldering took about 45 mins.The Game itself is whole seconds of fun. Not really like TV Pong. Since it is on a LED Matrix instead of a CRT TV.The original game just used a B&W TV set. Not really like Arcade Pong. But then probably not a commercially viable prospect to sell a kit which would have involved soldering 100’s of TTL Logic chips into a huge PCB. But then Atari’s Home Pong only involved a single custom chip.Pong is probably the most famous pre-microprocessor video game. This was not the first arcade game folks, that was Computer Space. But that one was a flop. Pong was the first successful arcade video game.Unlike the original 2 player only Pong Game, there are options to play against the computer. There is supposedly the option to get the game play itself. I have never managed to activate this. You need to remove the batteries to reset the game totally. The Number of player options only seem to appear when you do this.I have to say I think the scoring is crap. Unlike the original TV Pong game, you don’t get on screen scoring, which would have been possible even on a LED matrix, what you get is a crap line growing longer and longer on each side of the screen representing each player. This just seems to be lazy programming to me.You may need a bit of blue tac to keep the battery in place.The instructions are probably a bit better than the Haynes Radio Kit, in terms of how complete it is in telling you how to put it together.

Just as described and good fun to make and play. You will need to solder. We were missing the additional screen cover but I emailed the seller who sent a replacement straight away, excellent service.

Great gift husband loves it.

Purchased for a birthday gift 5 weeks inadvance open on day and missing components yet cant return as been over 4 weeks

Fun kit which I received as a gift. I've never soldered before but did have an old soldering iron and some solder knocking about the garage and was keen to have a go. Picked it up fairly quickly but it is fiddly and tricky. I ended up burning some bits of the packaging that I shouldn't have but was all fine. So this kit is really for someone with reasonably good general technical ability/interest and a bit of patience. There are about 16 points which need soldering and some basic build elements. I was amazed when it worked first time. The game is basically PONG and is quite fun. It can be played against an opponent or computer. The instructions are pretty good though there are a few bits where things are not totally clear and need a bit of initiative. Took me about 1.5 hours to put together with no previous soldering experience.The coin slot to activate the game is a nice touch. It doesn't work until the game has ended and the machine switches off. This confused me at first as I though it wasn't working.Overall a fun kit. But don't give it to someone unless they are a bit of a tinkerer as they will not appreciate it!

I bought this for my daughter to put together, I thought it would really be fun for her to make the first video game.But you need a soldering iron to make it! It should say that on the packet - you shouldn't have to find out by reading in the booklet that you can go online to their support page, where there will instructions on how to solder ... and then you find out you have to have a soldering iron.

The kit was great. Perfect kit to do with the kids.