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Announcing the Super Game Controller for the ColecoVision


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On 8/17/2020 at 11:07 PM, doubledown said:

@tripletopper this is what...your 500th post (give or take), detailing your propensity to ambidextrous, and/or other overly complicated controllers.  Please give it a rest.

looking at the pieces parts of what I see,  I see that it could very easily be 180ed, and made into a right-handed joypad.

 

I'm not saying you intended to make it ambidextrous it just happened to be that way.

 

So if it can be ambidextrous, why not embrace it?

 

The most you have to do for a permanent right stick is just drill a couple holes and rewire the connection according to right-hand logic.

 

It would probably take a lot to make it ambidextrous in the sense that it has  user-serviceable ambidextrtity, like 2 extra DB9s of one gender and something that keeps the slant on the appropriate side.

 

by the way there's a difference between that super action pad and the super action controller.  The super action pad CAN be ambidextrous while the super action ontroller MUST be.  The difference?  Holding a genuine Coleco in the air for such a long time gives your muscles cramp and you have to switch joystick positions after a life or level clear when your arms cramp up.

 

as I said I see things that no one else sees but I'm blind to things that a lot of people see in other respects.

 

That's just my mind. I'm sorry.

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First of all, most controllers of that era were not ambidextrous.  Pretty much every which came out of Japan was not, beginning with the Game & Watch/Famicom.  The 2600 stick was not.  Sure, CV, INTV, 5200 were, but those were joysticks.  This is a gamepad, and nearly every gamepad ever conceived is D on left, A-Z on right.  Furthermore, that is still ambidextrous as you are using BOTH hands!  Given that opcode is having a mold made to construct these controllers, there's no way to reverse the buttons like say the Maker Matrix 5200 which has a 3D-printed shell.

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26 minutes ago, Greg2600 said:

First of all, most controllers of that era were not ambidextrous.  Pretty much every which came out of Japan was not, beginning with the Game & Watch/Famicom.  The 2600 stick was not.  Sure, CV, INTV, 5200 were, but those were joysticks.  This is a gamepad, and nearly every gamepad ever conceived is D on left, A-Z on right.  Furthermore, that is still ambidextrous as you are using BOTH hands! 

Of the 8 machines that were considered current at the crash, Bally astrocade, Intellivision, ColecoVision, 5209, and Arcadia 2001 were all OEM ambidextrous.  The Atari 2600 had lefty/ambi solutions, mainly from third parties though.  The only 2 systems that "forced a side" was Odyssey 2, which had "hard wired" right stick only, and Vectrex, which was at the time "left stick only". Though on ebayz someone sells a "flipper adapter".

 

I'll admit that, at least for me, pads are less "one sided" than a stick because 2 thumbs (or in my case, 2 sets of index and middle fingers) doing similar things is more balanced than a joystick in one hand and a button layout in the other.

 

Ambidextrtity is less important in pads vs sticks.

 

I just commented that the pad mold is ergonomically symmetric.  I didn't say everything else needed to flip it is just as easy to flip.

 

But the NES pad, SMS pad, 7800 pad, and TG16 pad are fairly easy to flip.

 

Unfortunately, the serialized joystick code makes flipping harder.

 

The hardest thing in making the Coleco flippable is the 12 button keypad coding.  It's not a simple row/column matrix, like the 5200 or INTV.

Edited by tripletopper
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I have an old Gravis gamepad than can be used left or right handed.  It has a switch for left/right and you just flip the thing 180deg.  I still use it right-handed.  I guess all you righties are okay playing pacman left-handed.

 

And lots of handheld electronic games in the early days had the dpad on the right or in the middle.

 

Mattel-ArmorBattle.jpg

Edited by mr_me
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  • 2 weeks later...

I know that.  I said the INTV has a weird code where the 3 buttons and 12 keys are mixed combinations of the nine pins in a DB9.

 

I know the CV uses 4 pins of the DB on a Negative voltage cycle to actuate one key at a time  (pressing more that one key confuses the pad).

 

If it were arranged like the 5200 or INTV with a row/column matrix, you can have left column swap with right column. And the rows invert ordrr when 180ing the stick 

 

The only way to make an easily flippable pad is to have each key have its own wire instead of a row/column combo. And Y each wire to the opposite coordinate. So 2 left handed would be 0 right handed, 1 would be #, etc.

 

I looked at the Coleco button code. And it:s not as easy as row,/column.  It might be too much to redesign it.

 

Only do it it you can figure out the wiring, and don't make it just for me. For me, pads are less vital to right move than sticks.

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On 8/30/2020 at 1:26 PM, Serguei2 said:

I just checked the emulators I have.

 

None of them defines 0-9#* keypad using a joystick.

 

Even if I have this gamepad, I would still need keyboard to use colecovision keypad.

A usb adapter would turn the colecovision keypad into twelve usb game controller buttons.  In the colecovision emulator you can map any emulated keypad function to any game controller button.

Edited by mr_me
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Some thoughts: Why not get a D-pad and colored buttons from the same source Handheld Legend gets them from? Would save you the cost of molding your own, and you'd be able to match the Super Game Controller button colors. Making the keypad fully rubberized might shave a few pennies too.

 

Any size comparisons with the original Coleco controllers? Would be nice if they could fit into the controller wells of an original console.

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1 hour ago, dankcomputing said:

This isn't happening is it

It is, just not this year. This is our first year of full time Opcode, lots of things happening, but anything that isn't game has been pushed to next year 

 

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