I too found this arcade 3D print and had huge problems getting the diplay to work. Thanks to this old post I got it working after all. For all of you who also stumble over this post the code that has to be executed has changed a bit: "sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev python-smbus python-pip python-pil python-numpy git" otherwise it aborts with an error.
Thanks watson49 for posting your solution. I wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise!