I had ideas about incorporating circuit bending as a visual element in my piece for gamelan and electronics and looked around at what people are doing with video game consoles. I’ve circuit bent keyboards and toys, but the glitchy images gotten from playing with games are really something else.

I decided, rather than opening the console itself, I would try a softer approach first and modify a game cartridge in hopes that I might find something stable enough to trigger short circuits from my arduino. I haven’t found any yet that are cool enough, but when I do, I am going to start exploring digital potentiometers. It might be the case, that the ICs on cartridge are too unstable and I have to go inside the console for what I’m after.

I just soldered wires to every pin on both sides of two IC inside SimCity. This way, I can run the game and connect potentiometers between points I wouldn’t be able to get to.