We love our handheld consoles here at XDA, but just how small can a console get? Turns out, with a little bit of DIY ingenuity, you can make one that's the size of a coin. Such is the case of the Epic Minimalist Entertainment System (EMES) which features a screen, some mini buttons, and some cute little cartridges to swap out games.

The Epic Minimalist Entertainment System is the tiniest handheld console you've ever seen

This cool project was the idea of Michael on Hackaday.io. This cool project is a console all by itself; it has a screen, buttons to interact with the game, and cartridges to swap the games out. Michael discussed the hardware he used on his project page:

A very minimalist handheld console with removable cartridges. It features Plessey GPD340 vintage LED display IC for the screen, 4 buttons, and a buzzer for sound. There is no MCU on the baseboard, instead an ATTiny10 MCU is placed on each cartridge, sort of like the Microvision console (the first handheld console with swappable cartridges).

If you're interested, here's what Michael lists as the ATTiny10's specs:

• Main clock frequency: 8MHz
• Program/data flash: 1KB
• RAM: 32 bytes
• 8-bit ADC
• 4 GPIOs

Sure, those specs aren't going to dethrone the Steam Deck any time soon, as it's restricted to games that are playable on as minimal pixels as possible (like Pong and Snake). But it's still an amazing project by its own right, pushing the standard features of a pocket-sized console to their absolute limits.

If you're in the mood for something a little bigger, check out these cool Raspberry Pi retro projects and consoles that you can build yourself. Or, if you have a few busted consoles sitting around, why not check out that one time someone resurrected a PS1 using a Raspberry Pi for some ideas?