The Nintendo Entertainment System is about thirty-five years old, as is Super Mario Bros. The age isn't stopping fans from enjoying the grey box, or even modifying and creating unique new ideas with it, as someone recently created an NES game that can track the International Space Station.
Fans have been modifying the NES and creating new games for the console for years. Recently a YouTuber named Vi Grey uploaded a video of his newest project that is more of a tech demo than a game, but still remarkably interesting.
Vi Grey created a game he is calling Tracking the International Space Station on an NES. When booted up, the game shows the exact current location of the International Space Station with an icon of the space station on a map of the earth in a semi-3D look. Graphically, thanks to being on the NES, it isn't anything overly impressive to look at. But as a piece of tech that shows off the location of the space station on a map on a 35-year old console, it is rather stunning.
In the video, Vi Grey detailed how his creation was made possible. He created a special NES cartridge with his homebrew on it, and also modified the hardware to show the GPS location of the International Space Station. He has a 32 board that allows him to connect an ethernet cable to the controller port of the NES. The Raspberry Pi gathers data from the internet about the location of the station, sending one second's worth of data to the 32 board for every second. The board then sends input data to the NES, moving the location of the International Space Station icon in the game to whatever location it needs to go to be accurate.
Vi Grey created a custom NES for this project, but the game apparently can work on a standard NES as well (as long as the right external pieces of hardware are attached). There have been a lot of custom NES creations over the years, not many compare to what Vi Grey has put together.
This isn't Vi Grey's only project, as he has worked on other unique ideas in the past and continues to plan to. Vi Grey also shared the emulator, a blog post further explaining the project, and the source code of the work, allowing others to try it out online and even learn from the project. There have been some amazing NES games over the history of the console, but not many are like this Tracking the International Space Station on an NES title.