not enough pins

Projects General Guidance
1

ok, the project i want to accomplish is a re-creation of something a buddy of mine had done back in the day when we were coding DS games:

now, from what i see.. i'll use up 14 pins BEFORE i even attempt to even attach 6x (7 seg displays) & and MAYBE a graphic lcd display (dynamite sticks exploding / win image) - much much later down the road...

for example purposes only..

  pinMode(redPin, OUTPUT); // pin 2
  pinMode(greenPin, OUTPUT); // pin 3
  pinMode(bluePin, OUTPUT); // pin 4
  pinMode(levelButton, INPUT); // pin 5
  pinMode(Speaker, OUTPUT); // pin 6
  pinMode(guessButton, INPUT); // pin 7
  pinMode(combo1Up, INPUT); // pin 8
  pinMode(combo1Down, INPUT); // pin 9
  pinMode(combo2Up, INPUT); // pin 10
  pinMode(combo2Down, INPUT); // pin 11
  pinMode(combo3Up, INPUT); // pin 12
  pinMode(combo3Down, INPUT); // 13
  pinMode(resetstartButton, INPUT); // pin 14.................1 pin too many already

  // ALL 6 (7 seg display) pins here!!!...............

 // MAYBE and i mean MAYBE a graphical lcd display here... more pins yay!

i know i'll have to use some 74HC595's... but my mega only has 13 pins.. but ummm... yeah... starting to see my concern?

and yes keep in mind my sig.. eventually it will be a standalone on a pro mini with a battery pack.. for now tho i will be using my mega 2650.. i'll get to that later.. just wanted everyone to keep that in mind before they attempt to help is all..

2

Have you considered a MAX7219 IC for the 7-seg displays?

i'll use up 14 pins BEFORE i even attempt to even attach 6x (7 seg displays)

14 pins? I don't see it. Use a resistor network for the pushbuttons and read them with 'analogRead()'.

3

You can considered using analog buttons

https://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/Keyboards-MultipleButtons

4

You'll need something to drive the 7seg displays (if you go that route instead of LCD) - people usually don't drive 7-seg displays directly off the microcontroller. You may need to analog button trick or matrix the switches - but I would be very surprised if you ran out of pins with that; you're not trying to do very much there.

There are of course other options with more pins, like the '1284p (and the less-flash-full versions) which there are a number of unofficial boards available for, or the Mega - but I don't think you need these.