My new NES arcade joystick controller - Ikari Warriors

[doubledown]

I figured I’d take a stab at building myself an arcade joystick controller for the NES…as I haven’t yet done so, and I personally find the NES Advantage to be, a little bit lacking; especially now as an adult, with adult sized hands.  I really like to create arcade game themed controllers (versus system/console generic), as their original cabinets, controls, and artwork, offer a lot of inspiration to draw from when building custom controllers like these.  So unveiling my:

 

Ikari Warriors Edition – VVG Enhanced Controller

 

 

I am by no means, a die-hard Ikari Warriors fan (I’ve personally played more Commando and Front Line), but I do have memories of playing the original arcade game at a Pizza Hut near me in my youth, and it’s hardware controls are truly iconic.  So when I was able to source an arcade original, SNK/Seimitsu LS-30 joystick, I knew that I had to build an Ikari Warriors themed controller; the only question was do I build it for the 7800, or the NES.  As the NES has ports of all three Ikari Warriors games (I, II, & III), as well as a port of SNK’s Guerrilla War, I figured I would build this one for the NES. So built into a beefed-up, and weighted, Hammond Mfg. powdered-coated aluminum sloped-top 14" x 8.25" enclosure, it features:

 

** Seimitsu LS-30 joystick (arcade original)

 

** Ultimarc GoldLeaf push-buttons (yellow)

 

** Nintendo control pad PCB w/ Cable, and rear mounted cord cleats for cable management

 

** Ikari Warriors arcade cabinet inspired CPO

 

I think it came out pretty good, and its a nice change to wire an easy one like this one, versus some of the others I've made here in the past.  Enjoy!

[homerhomer]

Wow! It looks great.  Just curious, why not try to configure it MAME?

[doubledown]

9 hours ago, homerhomer said:

Wow! It looks great.  Just curious, why not try to configure it MAME?

Simply the fact, that I don't use emulators to play video games.  As a fan of "hardware", I like to build controllers for physical consoles.  And as I didn't yet have an arcade stick for the NES, I wanted to build one for it.  

[Shawn]

You must have a ton of these controllers made for yourself with all the ones you have posted about making for yourself. Any chance you have a pic with them all in it? I dunno how you could have enough room with all the controllers like this you have made for yourself that you have posted about. You would need a shelving unit at least. 

[doubledown]

Hey @Shawn...good to hear from you...its been quite a while.  In fact, it's been so long since you posted a reply in one of my threads, that I feared maybe you left AA; but here you are, so good news, and I'm glad to know that you're all right!

 

If memory serves, the last time you posted a reply to me, you were teasing me, that you were going to "ignore" my posts...but I knew you were just kidding around.  I knew that you would be secretly lurking, and admiring my work silently...I'm very flattered, and humbled.  

 

Thank you for your concern about my storage capabilities, but I am very much all set in that regard.  I spent a lot of time, and effort for that very thing when I bought and re-modeled this house a few years back; and I have plenty of storage space, and shelving, for all my hobbies.  Since you asked, and to give you some ideas that maybe you can use in your own home; in my basement alone, I have a 32' long work bench with storage underneath that runs the entire length.  Then I have a steel racking unit that's 12' wide x 4' deep x 7' tall, with 4 levels of shelving.  Additionally I built 3, 8' wide by 7' high walls, that have adjustable shelving standards on them, and that are currently set up with 23, 8' wide shelf boards, with varying dimensions of vertical separation, and varying shelf depths from 16" - 24", depending on what I'm storing on them.  Then 1 of my bedrooms is the video game room, where I have the systems that I play the most, the NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, Switch, PlayStation, Genesis...and I think a couple of others.  Another bedroom is the computer room, which is where I have one of my modern computers, and then my vintage PC, my XEGS, and one of my ADAMs.  Each of these rooms is also set up very well with floor to ceiling adjustable shelving standards in the closets, and at least one of the walls in each room has the same.  It just depended on how much I was planning on keeping in each room, when I was setting them up.  Here's a few pics to give you some inspiration for possible storage solutions that maybe you can use (let me know if you need any construction tips):

 

 

 

 

Anyway, here's the controllers picture that you requested:

 

 

I'm very sorry that I couldn't get all of my controllers into one picture for you, but my photographic area just isn't large enough to set them all on there at once.  If I was just making cheap little half-featured controllers, and crappy little controller adapters that I didn't really care about, I would have just thrown them all onto one tiny garbage-like pile, so that you could see them all at once; but my controllers are way too nice to be treated like that, so I carefully squeezed in as many as I could for you.  I do have individual pictures of all my controllers on my website, so if I wasn't able to fit in any one of your favorites of mine into this picture, you can always follow the link in my signature to my website, so that you can admire them there.  Stay safe out there, and let me know if you have any other requests.  

[TIX]

Awesome work on the controllers, and an amazingly clean basement ?

 

I'm trying for the last couple of months to get a pair of ls-30 joysticks or alternatives (for some SNK game goodness),

but they seem to have vanished from everywhere ☹️

Can you point me to the right direction ?

 

[doubledown]

6 hours ago, TIX said:

Awesome work on the controllers, and an amazingly clean basement ?

 

I'm trying for the last couple of months to get a pair of ls-30 joysticks or alternatives (for some SNK game goodness),

but they seem to have vanished from everywhere ☹️

Can you point me to the right direction ?

 

To my knowledge, there were 3, maybe 4, different 12-position rotary joysticks made over the years:

 

*Seimitsu LS-30 (yellow octagon knob)

 

*WICO Rotary (yellow barrel knob, or yellow ball knob) (built for the Data East rotary joystick games like Heavy Barrel, and sold as a replacement for the LS-30s...I have one of these barrel knob models in stock too, I'm just waiting for a project to use it with)

 

*Coin Controls (red ball knob with red tapered shaft cover)

 

*and I think HAPP made a Bat Knob version for some time too

 

There were a few other rotary joysticks made, but most of those used an optical encoder, versus the 12 position mechanical switch found in those above.  So depending on how you were going to wire it, and what you were going to use it with (with regard to whether the I/O can be read by the device), that would depend on which of them you would be able to use. 

 

I generally source most of my vintage arcade hardware from ebay, and/or the arcade forums over at KLOV.  The LS-30s have definitely jumped up in price quite a bit over the years, and from what I've seen currently, they usually sell in the $75-$150 range, depending on condition.  I got mine as a single joystick (a lot of times they're only sold in pairs, as removed from a cabinet) that needed a little mechanical work, for something around $40 or so, about 4 or 5 months ago from a guy at the KLOV forums.  There are currently several of each of the above mentioned joysticks on ebay, granted in the U.S.  Do a search for:

 

Rotary Joystick

 

then you can select the categories Collectibles / Arcade, Jukeboxes & Pinball, Arcade Gaming / Replacement Parts

 

to filter out unwanted results.

[Shawn]

11 hours ago, doubledown said:

Hey @Shawn...good to hear from you...its been quite a while.  In fact, it's been so long since you posted a reply in one of my threads, that I feared maybe you left AA; but here you are, so good news, and I'm glad to know that you're all right!

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, here's the controllers picture that you requested:

 

 

 

 

That is an amazing amount of space you have there. Clearly you could house thousands if you felt like it. Yes I had you on ignore but I still see topics even with that in place and I wanted to chime in on this one. You stay well too!

 

[CPUWIZ]

What is the rifle on the shelf?

[doubledown]

25 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

What is the rifle on the shelf?

 

The boxes in the very background of the workbench pic, at the top, on the steel shelving?  The bottom box is from a Beeman Dual, .177 caliber, double break-barrel air rifle, and the one above it, is from a Benjamin Trail Stealth, .22 caliber break-barrel air rifle.  

[Shawn]

I really did think that if you kept them around you would have had like 20 or 30 of these arcade sticks across all the various platforms which you have posted about making for yourself over time. Would be cool to see them all set up on one of those huge shelves.

[doubledown]

Unfortunately the shelves are all currently nearly full, and pretty well organized...and the amount of work that it would take to move all of that stuff, just to set up a for one photograph of all of the controllers that I currently have, isn't worth it to me.  Especially since I have well-lit, white-backgrounded photos of each individual controller. 

 

Not to mention...any photo taken now, wouldn't be a "finished" photo, as I still have more to build.  

 

 

[Tanooki]

Unless I missed it how does that original SNK stick work there?  Is it just wired up as a standard NES joystick, or did you do something unique to it to use original twist function?  That would be interesting if it were possible.

 

I wish I could make those, but while I could mount a joystick and buttons to plate, even probably figure out how to split wires and loop them into some NES or SNES style controller holes to pick up too, there's no way I could make one of those enclosures.  I'd end up with some no carpentry skills horrid wood box or cardboard on my end.

[doubledown]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

Unless I missed it how does that original SNK stick work there?  Is it just wired up as a standard NES joystick, or did you do something unique to it to use original twist function?  That would be interesting if it were possible.

As-is, this arcade controller is simply an NES compatible, 8-way joystick, with 2 buttons (B & A), plus the Select & Start buttons, which features an original LS-30 for its authentic joystick look & feel.  The rotary function of the LS-30 in this instance, is non-operational for the NES, as the software wasn't programmed to handle the additional I/O.  Had they developed and sold a specific peripheral controller for this port, than maybe it would have been a different story.  The NES versions of Ikari Warriors I, II, III (and other rotary joystick arcade ports, across most all vintage 8-bit & 16-bit consoles), is simply programmed using the, "shoot in the direction you are running" concept.  Obviously it's not the same as the arcade...but what 80s home port was?  The easier/cheaper choice for this build, would have been to simply 3D print a look-a-like knob to install onto any modern Japanese stick, but I wanted the true original, even if it's not being 100% utilized.  

[Tanooki]

Well what home port? Smash TV on the NES was.  If you plugged in a 2nd controller each D-pad was used for (left) walk and (right) shoot.  Using I believe the four player adapter choice, 2nd player could do the same too keeping it very authentic which was surprising, but it was an outlier not normal.

[doubledown]

Functionally/control-wise yes (graphically absolutely not, which is more what I was referring to about not being the same as a port's arcade counterpart), Smash TV on the NES was playable with 2 controllers like the arcade, albeit with two sideways d-pads vs 2 joysticks, unless you were using 2 NES Advantages, but I prefer the graphically superior SNES Super Smash TV myself, to the NES port...which is one of the reasons I built myself this a while back:

 

 

The 2nd stick is wired as an alternate control input for the Y/X/B/A buttons, for the SNES ports of Super Smash TV, Total Carnage, Robotron: 2084, Crazy Climber...and I think that there was one other twin-stick arcade port on the SNES too...but it escapes me right now.  

[Tanooki]

Total Carnage which was the sequel unofficially so to Smash TV as it used the same engine and character designs.

[atarilovesyou]

Man, I'd love a pair of those rotary sticks for MAME. Ikari Warriors would be near the bottom of the list for me, though.  Time Soldiers, Calibre 50, Guerilla War...oh yeah!

[doubledown]

11 hours ago, atarilovesyou said:

Man, I'd love a pair of those rotary sticks for MAME. Ikari Warriors would be near the bottom of the list for me, though.  Time Soldiers, Calibre 50, Guerilla War...oh yeah!

They could definitely be made, you would just need to install an I/O interface board, with the additional rotary joystick compatibility.  

 

True story, I had never seen, or even heard of, CAL.50 (CALIBER-FIFTY), until a few months back...it apparently didn't make it to an arcade near me when I was a kid.  But I check ebay listings with regularity, for original arcade control hardware, when a few months back I ran across a pair of what looked like Seimitsu LS-30 joysticks, but they had green octagon knobs (instead of the iconic yellow).  So initially I was thinking that someone had 3D printed replacement knobs for these joysticks, in green, for some reason.  After a little bit of research, I found out that they were specially made in green, for 1 game, and 1 game only, CAL.50.  As a port for the Genesis exists, I contemplated buying them, but figured, nah, I didn't want to spend the money (they were listed with a starting price of $150 for the pair, and with a BIN of something like $200).  But I kept an eye on the listing, in case they didn't sell, and then were re-listed at a lower price.  Well apparently these green variants are incredibly rare (as they were only made/used for 1 game), and I believe the auction ending up selling for something like $650.  Really wish I would have hit the BIN at $200!  

[Blagrone]

I am desperately looking for ikari sticks. I have 4 rotary controllers but I can't find anyone willing to help and I don't have the skillet. Is this something you could help with?  Thanks. 

[MaximRecoil]

That's awesome, but it seems like a waste to use it with a bad port of Ikari Warriors. I consider all ports of Ikari Warriors to be bad, since they all omit the best feature of the game: the rotary control over the gun, which allows you to aim the gun in a different direction than you're walking. Using it with MAME isn't all that great either, because, for some strange reason, MAME treats the rotary function in Ikari Warriors as an analog dial even though it's supposed to be a switch. Someone makes, or made, an interface that allows a rotary joystick to work with MAME but it takes a lot of fiddling with the analog dial settings in MAME, and even then it's never going to be perfect.

 

Also, you already said you don't use emulators, but rather, you're a fan of hardware, so why not get a real Ikari Warriors arcade boardset and build a supergun for it? There are several other arcade boardsets you could use it for too. I have an original Ikari Warriors arcade machine and in addition to the Ikari Warriors boardset, I also have Victory Road, Guerilla War, TNK III (which was the first rotary joystick game), and Heavy Barrel boardsets, all of which I can easily swap into the cabinet and work perfectly with the SNK/Seimitsu LS-30 joysticks.

 

On 1/16/2021 at 11:53 AM, doubledown said:

To my knowledge, there were 3, maybe 4, different 12-position rotary joysticks made over the years:

 

*Seimitsu LS-30 (yellow octagon knob)

 

*WICO Rotary (yellow barrel knob, or yellow ball knob) (built for the Data East rotary joystick games like Heavy Barrel, and sold as a replacement for the LS-30s...I have one of these barrel knob models in stock too, I'm just waiting for a project to use it with)

 

*Coin Controls (red ball knob with red tapered shaft cover)

 

*and I think HAPP made a Bat Knob version for some time too

 

There were also the early rotary joysticks that SNK used on TNK III. I have a pair which came with my TNK III boardset but I've never used them for anything. They have a short, wide, black octagonal knob:

 

 

The one on the left is just a standard LS-30 which probably replaced a worn out original one, and they just swapped the weird knob from the original onto it. The one on the right is an original one, and it has a different design in general, as well as a hardwired harness for the rotary switch (early standard LS-30s had a hardwired harness too). I don't know if that one on the right is considered an LS-30 or if it had a different model number.

 

By the way, when microswitches go bad in an LS-30, I don't know where to find new ones. The original ones were Matsushita AH76515 or AH76525, with the newer equivalent being Matsushita/Panasonic AM51661A5 or AM51661C5. They have a 13.5mm lever, which is shorter than most microswitch levers. I have a few LS-30s here with one or more bad microswitches. Fortunately, the LS-30s in my Ikari Warriors cabinet are like new, and I also have a pair of NOS ones that I've been saving for when I refurbish the cabinet (I also have an NOS control panel overlay and NOS sideart for it).