The Uzebox is a retro-minimalist homebrew game console. It is based on an AVR 8-bit general purpose microcontroller made by Atmel. The particularity of the system is that it's based on an interrupt driven kernel and has no frame buffer. Functions such as video sync generation, tile rendering and music mixing is done realtime by a background task so games can easily be developed in C. The design goal was to be as simple as possible yet have good enough sound and graphics while leaving enough resources to implement interesting games. Emphasis was put on making it easy and fun to assemble and program for any hobbyists. The final design contains only two chips: an ATmega644 and an AD725 RGB-to-NTSC converter.

As of November 2008 you can even buy professionally made DIY kits or fully assembled Uzeboxes. They are 100% compatible with the real thing and can save you a lot of time if you either don't like wire wrap or just wan't want to program some games. Have a look at the forums for more details.

CPU: ATmega644 microcontroller
Total RAM: 4K
Program Memory: 64K
Speed: 28.61818Mhz (Overclocked)
Colors: 256 simultaneous colors arranged in a 3:3:2 color space (Red:3 bits, Green:3 bits, Blue: 2 bits)
Resolution: 240x224 pixels in tiles-only mode, 132x208 in tiles-and-sprites mode
Sprites: 32 simultaneous 6x8 pixels sprites with up to 5 per scanline
Video output: NTSC Composite and S-Video
Sound: 4 channels wavetable, 8-bit mono, mixed at ~15Khz and output via PWM
Inputs: Two NES/SNES compatible joypad inputs
Options: MIDI-in interface and s-video output

The videos demonstrates some of the features of the Uzebox. The first one is a Tetris clone named "AVR Megatris". The game is fully functional and implements most of the official "Super Rotation System" (SRS) system complete with hold block, t-spins and ghost piece...it even plays classic Tetris songs! The second video demonstrates the MIDI in, audio and music engine.