This stunning Raspberry Pi arcade clock is the only way I want to wake up in the morning

Clocks are kind of boring, aren't they? I mean, sure, they do their job just fine, but when should we ever make do with doing the bare minimum? Clocks have the potential to look a whole lot cooler, and thankfully, the SBC community is full of people who share my opinion.

If you want a way to track the time in style, then allow me to point you toward the LEDarcade clock. It's a DIY project that runs off a Raspberry Pi and shows the current time while a cool rendition of a popular arcade game plays in the background. And the best bit? It was all designed from scratch, without any tutorials used.

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The LEDarcade is an amazing project for people who love retro games (and telling the time)

In a post on Reddit, user Datagod showed off their LEDarcade. Turns out, they've been working away at making this thing for years now, but they took the time to show off the progress they've made on their newest game screen, Blasteroids.

While the games appear to be a ton of fun to play, it seems that each title operates independently, so all you need to do is sit back and watch the pretty pixels. Honestly, it's probably for the best; if you could actually play these games, I don't think I'd get anything done.

And yes, I do mean games in the plural form. Remember, this project has been in the works for years now, so there are plenty more games the system can show you. The LEDarcade GitHub page claims that there are nine titles in total, including games such as SuperWorms, Dot Invaders, Outbreak, and Defender.

The most impressive part is how Datagod didn't use any help when making the LEDarcade:

LEDarcade is a powerful and deeply customized Python engine for rendering retro-style graphics and games on an RGB LED matrix attached to a Raspberry Pi.

Unlike most projects, LEDarcade was created entirely from scratch — without relying on internet tutorials, prefab game engines, or outside design templates. Everything from gamma-corrected color blending to real-time physics and sprite animation was hand-coded, tested, and refined by one mind.

If you want to make one yourself, the bill of materials appears to be quite affordable. It requires a Raspberry Pi 3 or higher, an Adafruit LED Matrix (64x32), an Adafruit RGB Hat, and hzeller's RGB LED Matrix code. Datagod says the above video was recorded on a Raspberry Pi 4, but also notes that it was "complete overkill," so a Pi 3 sounds like the perfect fit.

If you love marrying SBCs with games of yore, check out that one time one of our authors created a wall-mounted retro gaming station with a Raspberry Pi.