Benjamin Heckendorn

Last updated
Benjamin Heckendorn
Benjamin Heckendorn.JPG
Heckendorn at Midwest Gaming Classic 2007
Born (1975-10-19) October 19, 1975 (age 48)
Website BenHeck.com

Benjamin J. Heckendorn (born October 19, 1975) is an American console modder and Computer engineer. He is better known as Ben Heck on the Internet. Heckendorn is also an independent filmmaker and he was the star of element14's The Ben Heck Show, a popular online series, until leaving the show in late 2018.

Contents

He has two podcasts, one which he runs with the help of a friend, Jason Jones, [1] and the other on Warpath.TV with George Force, Mike Zucker, and Anthony Carboni. [2]

Most of Heckendorn's mods are done by taking apart old video game consoles such as the Atari 2600 and Nintendo Entertainment System. He then reconfigures internal printed circuit board (PCB) into a smaller form factor. The newly configured circuit board is enclosed within a custom case (done by a CNC machine) and any peripherals are assembled by Heckendorn.

His creations have been featured in such publications as Wired , Popular Science , and Maxim , and on television shows such as The Screen Savers , Attack of the Show!, and X-Play . His mods are also commonly presented on popular blogs such as Engadget. [3]

History

He had an interest in electronic and video games as a child, as a young man in film-making and in later life while working as a graphic artist he made a GeoCities site covering his project to make a portable Atari 2600, this led to an appearance in 2004 on The Screen Savers (following the temporary injury of the normal maker Yoshi) and then to a book deal and requests for custom electronics creations to YouTube videos in 2010. [4] In 2015 he restored the only known surviving Sony/Nintendo Play Station prototype console, the Super NES CD-ROM. [5] [6]

Systems

Atari

Heckendorn has created a line of portable Atari systems, almost always using some form of Atari 2600 board cut up into a smaller PCB. The only exception is the Atari Jaguar "64-Bit" Portable and the Atari 800 laptop. He has also turned two Atari 800 computers into laptops.

Xbox 360

Xbox One

Nintendo

Heckendorn has created five (3 NESp's) Nintendo portables:

PC

Sega

SNK

Sony

Heckendorn has made three Sony portables, a "laptop" version of the PS3 based on the Slim version, and a "PS360" controller, which is a PlayStation 3 controller built into an Xbox 360 controller's shell.

Apple

Commodore

Combo systems

Heckendorn has made four combo system to date.

Pinball

Hacking Video Game Consoles

In February 2005, Heckendorn released his book Hacking Video Game Consoles, published by Wiley Publishing Inc. and printed under their ExtremeTech line. It contains step by step instructions for creating two Atari 2600 portables, two NES portables, two SNES portables, and two PlayStation portables, each in hand-built and CNC-cut designs.

Podcast website

On December 13, 2006, Heckendorn started benheckpodcast.com, a website for storing all of his podcasts. In addition, posts are made detailing all the projects he is currently working and the projects he has worked on in the past.

Heckendorn's other podcast is entitled Sonic Boom, and is available on the Warpath.TV digital network. This podcast is no longer in production.

Movies

Heckendorn is also an amateur film maker. He has completed 6 films since 1995, including his comedic love story, Port Washington, released in 2006. His most recent movie, released on October 31, 2008, was entitled Possumus Woman, and is the sequel to his 1995 film, Possumus Man. All of his films have been released independently.

Films
YearFilm
1995Possumus Man
1996Adventure!
1999The Adventurous
2000The Lizard of Death
2006Port Washington
2008Possumus Woman

The Ben Heck Show

Ben Heck starred in a weekly online TV program called element14's The Ben Heck Show, hosted on YouTube and the element14 Community. [8] As of June 2016, the show had recorded more than 33 million views worldwide. [9] A typical episode has Ben creating a new product or hacking existing devices, such as an Xbox, for different uses, sometimes based on viewers' suggestions. [10] [11] [12]

As the host of element14's The Ben Heck Show, Heckendorn has made celebrity appearances as an attendee or judge at numerous industry events and competitions, including Maker Faire Detroit and Engadget Expand. [13] [14]

It was announced during an interview with an Element14 Community member that Ben would be leaving The Ben Heck Show after June 2018. [15] The Ben Heck Show was replaced with Element14 presents, a similar show featuring a new cast of hosts.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari 7800</span> Home video game console

The Atari 7800 ProSystem, or simply the Atari 7800, is a home video game console officially released by Atari Corporation in 1986 as the successor to both the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. It can run almost all Atari 2600 cartridges, making it one of the first consoles with backward compatibility. It shipped with a different model of joystick from the 2600-standard CX40 and Pole Position II as the pack-in game. Most of the announced titles at launch were ports of 1981–1983 arcade video games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video game console</span> Computer system for running video games

A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a television or other display devices and controlled with a separate game controller, or handheld consoles, which include their own display unit and controller functions built into the unit and which can be played anywhere. Hybrid consoles combine elements of both home and handheld consoles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Game controller</span> Device used with games or entertainment systems

A game controller, gaming controller, or simply controller, is an input device or input/output device used with video games or entertainment systems to provide input to a video game. Input devices that have been classified as game controllers include keyboards, mouses, gamepads, and joysticks, as well as special purpose devices, such as steering wheels for driving games and light guns for shooting games. Controllers designs have evolved to include directional pads, multiple buttons, analog sticks, joysticks, motion detection, touch screens and a plethora of other features.

A console game is a type of video game consisting of images and often sounds generated by a video game console, which are displayed on a television or similar audio-video system, and that can be manipulated by a player. This manipulation usually takes place using a handheld device connected to the console, called a controller. The controller generally contains several buttons and directional controls such as analogue joysticks, each of which has been assigned a purpose for interacting with and controlling the images on the screen. The display, speakers, console, and controls of a console can also be incorporated into one small object known as a handheld game.

The history of video game consoles, both home and handheld, had their origins in the 1970s. The concept of home consoles used to play games on a television set was founded by the 1972 Magnavox Odyssey, first conceived by Ralph H. Baer in 1966. Handheld consoles bore out from electro-mechanical games that had used mechanical controls and light-emitting diodes (LED) as visual indicators. Handheld electronic games had replaced the mechanical controls with electronic and digital components, and with the introduction of Liquid-crystal display (LCD) to create video-like screens with programmable pixels, systems like the Microvision and the Game & Watch became the first handheld video game consoles, and fully realized by the Game Boy system.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atari Flashback series</span> Line of dedicated video game consoles

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The 2000s was the fourth decade of the video game industry. It was a decade that was primarily dominated by Sony, Nintendo, newcomer Microsoft, and their respective systems. Sega, being Nintendo's main rival in the 1980s and 1990s, left the console market in 2002 in favor of returning to third-party development, as they once were. Overall the decade saw the last of the low resolution three-dimensional polygons of the 1990s with the emergence of high definition games, and often focused on developing immersive and interactive environments, implementing realistic physics, and improving artificial intelligence. The sixth and seventh generation of video game consoles went on sale, including the PlayStation 2, Wii, Xbox, PlayStation 3, Game Boy Advance and Xbox 360. Notable games released in the 2000s included Half-Life 2, Wii Sports, Grand Theft Auto III, The Sims, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Super Mario Galaxy, the Halo trilogy, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Super NES CD-ROM</span> Unreleased video game console add-on

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References

  1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2007-01-25. Retrieved 2018-11-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. "Sonicboompodcast.com". Archived from the original on 2013-07-18. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
  3. "Topic: BenHeck articles on Engadget".
  4. 1 2 Ben Heck interviewed on the TV show Triangulation on the TWiT.tv network
  5. "Hacker Makes the 'Nintendo PlayStation' Fully Operational". 5 May 2017.
  6. Good, Owen S. (May 6, 2017). "The 'Nintendo Play Station' is working, thanks to Ben Heck". Polygon . Retrieved February 14, 2020.
  7. "Commodore 64 Original Hardware Laptop | Web Portal for Benjamin J Heckendorn".
  8. "element14's The Ben Heck Show". element14 Community. 29 January 2023. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  9. ""The Ben Heck Show" on element14 Marks 10 Million Episode Views With Coin-Operated Tabletop Arcade Build". Premier Farnell. Retrieved 14 October 2013.
  10. Alexis Santos (30 July 2013). "Bicycle turn signals get the Ben Heck mod treatment (video)". Engadget. Retrieved 14 October 2013.
  11. Nicole Lee (12 March 2013). "Ben Heck combines PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U into one console to rule them all (video)". Engadget. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  12. Dougal Shaw (12 September 2014). "Ben Heck: How I miniaturised the ZX Spectrum". BBC TV. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
  13. "Updates in store for Maker Faire Detroit in Dearborn". Dearborn Press & Guide. 2 April 2015. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
  14. Michael Gorman (26 September 2013). "Meet the judges for Expand NY's Insert Coin competition: Ryan Block, Ben Heck, Hilary Mason and Peter Rojas". Engadget. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
  15. The Ben Heck Show (2018-02-07), A Conversation with Ben Heck , retrieved 2018-02-07