Kiran Patil’s Pocket Arcade Officially Recognized as the World’s Smallest Functional Arcade Machine

Photo credit: Guinness World Records
Kiran Patil, an aerospace engineer from Bangalore, India, is receiving a lot of attention for the small arcade game he made in his studio. Patil’s device has officially been recognized by Guinness World Records as “the world’s smallest arcade machine.” The compact box is only 24.85mm tall, 15.25mm long, and 15.1mm wide, making it smaller than a regular AA battery.

Patil first discovered this record existed while quarantined at home due to the pandemic, and although having already began work on an early prototype, life and education got in the way, forcing him to put it on hold until the summer arrived.

Makers like Patil, who are engineers by trade, are constantly pushing the limits of how small things can be and still function. The question is, can you actually build something this small and have it work at all? Patil has been working on this little hobby project for years, messing with microcontrollers and very small displays, all of which was a steep learning curve to say the least.

Patil’s first priority was to locate all of the necessary pieces and figure out how they all fit into that small box, which could be held on the tip of a thumb. After that, it was only a matter of tweaking around until everything fit together. Those four little buttons on the front have a hard task on their hands, trying to keep everything operating, and the screen, which is so little you’ll need a magnifying glass to see what’s on it, is attempting to squeeze as much information onto it as possible. This isn’t your typical Space Invaders; it’s an emulated version that loads up quickly and plays as smoothly as can be, given the hardware.
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