I'm a martial arts instructor who is new to arduino. I am in the process of reconstructing a reflex-timing game we have. In the game, a buzzer goes off and whoever hits the target (pushes the button) first gets the point.
The game essentially needs to have 4 pushbutton inputs and 4-5 lcd outputs. Also, a speaker or buzzer of sorts will be needed and a knob to adjust the interval between each buzz. Which board would be best for this? I was thinking about getting the 20x4 lcd from web4robot.com. also, what would be a good sound component?
For a small, cheap and simple sound source, use a piezo sounder. You can find these in musical greeting cards, toys that go 'beep' and even at electronics shops! Should be sufficient to get the circuit working to a level where you can test all the functions. For the final version, you'll probably need rugged switches (video/arcade game suppliers) and a louder bleeper (small loudspeaker and amplifier).
The sale price on the Duemilanove board makes it about the cheapest deal you can get on a ready-to-use board (Although I personally use boards with serial ports on them, because many of my projects require an RS-232 interface, and all of my computers are old enough to have at least one standard serial port).
The "protoboard shields" are really handy: I bought several when they were on sale for $3 apiece. I have one that I built up with machine pin sockets that makes it easy to hook up signals to a solderless breadboard with jumper wires. Since you're going to be connecting several switches, and the wires for the LCD, the shield gives you a convenient place to solder them so they're not always disconnecting themselves when you move your prototype. Think of it as an "Arduino plug".
If you're going to be building several of these, I recommend the RBBB:
They're really cheap if you buy them in kit form, and you don't actually need the ability to plug in standard Arduino shields, or to have an RS-232 interface (except when you're downloading to it: be sure to buy one of the adapters on this page: