A couple years ago a soldier injured in Iraq asked him to make a game controller that could be operated with one hand. Heckendorn did it and is now working with a peripheral maker to sell a packaged product.

"There was such a large response to it. Lots of motorcycle accidents, you would not believe it," Heckendorn said. He hopes to donate some to wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

His efforts have also gotten him noticed in the halls of major console makers such as Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

"There are no offers to throw bundles of money at me but I do hear from them now and then," he said.

An electronics hobbyist as a child and trained as a graphic designer, Heckendorn learned basic machining skills working for a sign-making business.

"I destroyed a lot of video-game consoles and burned my fingers a lot. Now I know which end of the soldering iron to hold," Heckendorn said.

Where others might have a beloved old car they are lovingly restoring, Heckendorn's personal project is designing a pinball game based, oddly, on Bill Paxton, who has starred in movies such as "Titanic" and "A Simple Plan."

One thing Heckendorn hasn't done much of, ironically, is play video games.

"I didn't used to play, but last year I went out of my way to play more video games," Heckendorn said. "I would probably maybe buy one game a year. Last year I said you know what, this is ridiculous."

(Reporting by Scott Hillis, editing by Phil Berlowitz and Patricia Reaney)

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