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godzillajoe

Track and Field controllers with SI and Phoenix

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Got some T&F controllers today

 

Tried them out with other games

 

They actually work quite nicely and add a bit more of the realistic arcade feel.

 

If only there was a way of doing hyperspace / shields in Asteroids

 

What would be really cool is to hack Asteroids to use the second joystick for input

 

You could put TWO T&F controllers sorta next to each other, using one for left/right and fire and the second one for thrust and hyperspace/shields

 

Anyway, just thinking out loud.

 

What other games use only side to side motion and fire?

 

Galaxian for sure. And I guess 5 million other shooters but for some reason I'm drawing a blank. Hafta rummage through the collection....

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What would be really cool is to hack Asteroids to use the second joystick for input

 

 

If you have two track and field controllers, I'm sure I or 100 other people around here could cook up a Y cable to let you use one to control the traditional joystick Left, Right and the other to act as Up, Down. I'm pretty sure you could have both fire buttons active.

 

If you didn't mind hacking up one of your T & F controllers, you could just add in a DB-9 port into which you'd plug the other T & F controller and accomplish the same functionality with both controllers plugged into one port.

 

I bought some old arcade type parts the other day with plans to hack together my own T & F style controller so I could get really good at Decathlon...:ponder:

 

It wouldn't be a major feat at all to pick up some arcade push buttons and build yourself a 5 button panel to do what you want.

Edited by BigO

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You should just try and acquire a Starplex controller. It has five buttons and is like the Asteroids arcade configuration. I think AtariAge has details on it. I have one boxed that I got off of eBay for a reasonable price. Not too hard to track down, though this was about a year ago...

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You should just try and acquire a Starplex controller. It has five buttons and is like the Asteroids arcade configuration. I think AtariAge has details on it. I have one boxed that I got off of eBay for a reasonable price. Not too hard to track down, though this was about a year ago...

 

Cool. Never heard of that one.

 

There's one on ebay with a Buy It Now of 24.99

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/BRAND-NEW-STARPLEX-CON...6QQcmdZViewItem

Edited by BigO

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Galaga uses side to side only, and I know you have a 7800 to play it on. also Commie Mutants can be played that way.

 

Hmmm, was thinking of another one and it slipped away...oh, yeah, Astroblast might do ok with that controller.

 

Commie Mutants

Galaga

Astroblast

Laser Blast

Enduro

Crackpots

Dragster

Cross Force

 

Probably bunches of others...

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Skiing & Sky Jinks for all you "timed-game" fans! Any other vertical scrollers?

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I dunno but vertical shooters to me need left/right Joystick control to get that vintage arcade feel.

 

Only the u.s. cabs of Space Invaders and Phoenix had those wacky buttons. The originals had joystick :)

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Has anybody ever seen a "reconfigurable" panel? Not sure it's a great idea, but just occured to me while reading this thread. I'm envisioning something of a 1" x 1" x 1" group of receptacle "cubicles" in a grid. Each receptacle has electrical/mechanical contacts in the bottom. Each physical button could have some means of identifying its function (resistor(s) would probably be simple enough to detect): up, down, left, right, fire. The button could be plugged into whatever position on the board, blanks in all the unused positions.

 

Some minor electronics would be required to recognize the assigned function of the button being pressed and translate the signal to the proper control line.

 

Maybe a standard joystick module could occupy more than one cubicle for stability. Maybe you build the joystick function by placing the buttons around a central cubicle and insert into the central cubicle a mechansim that has a center stick and outriggers to manually activate the surrounding buttons.

 

Hmm...starting to sound like a Lego-ish product...

 

Meh, lots of issues - strength and durability not being the least. Just noodling.

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