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Rotating Arcade Game Control Set-Up Exposed

Posted by simoniker on from the round-and-round-and-round dept.

Ant writes "Over at the 1UpArcade site they've been making a rotating game controller, including a normal arcade stick, as well as '...a 3" trackball, a Discs Of Tron-style up/down spinner, and two 8-way trigger joysticks.. [and] a genuine Star Wars yoke', all in the same arcade cabinet." Other interesting projects on the page include replacement joystick handles for 'Tron' and hacking a Crayola Kidsball into a MAME cabinet as a trackball.

2 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. My plans by WTFmonkey · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'm planning on building a mame cab as soon as I can clear some room in the garage for a tablesaw. I think my plan (unpatented, which I now share with the world out of the goodness of my heart) is a little more elegant.

    It assumes that all input devices can be mapped to one input cable, I haven't done the reserach yet. But basically, it works like this:

    The buttons (probably 6 of them, Street Fighter style) stay where they are. Want to play Street Fighter? Drop the joystick box in the control panel and play. Want to play Centipede? Drop the spinner ball box into the control panel. I want to support four players (for games liek TMNT) so having that godawful big rotating contraption is out. I also want it to look like furniture, not something Sanford & Son built.

    So you know all the wasted space in the body of a (mame--the real cabs have guts) cabinet? I'm envisioning that as a cupboard that has 6 or 8 different style control boxes in it, any of which can be dropped into the slot at any time.

    I know, there are problems here (some are analog, some are optical; are they able to be hot-swapped; can all of the interfaces be mapped to one input line, etc.) but I'm working on it. If there's interest I'll post a design drawing somewhere sometime, then let the y'all critique it.

    Regards.

  2. i don't think its unfinished. by fireduck · · Score: 2, Insightful

    this site has been mentioned before (it was even slashdotted previously.)

    However, in regards to it being an unfinished product, the page linked in the story goes to the prototype page, which indeed is unfinished. However, going to the rotating control panels page, shows what looks like a fully operational rotating control panel mame cabinet. He's done with it, in terms of getting it to work. It just looks like he wants to tweak it and add a set of removable controls to one of the sides so he can play Terminaotr 2.

    This guy has serious skill. There's even a section where he describes how to destroy current game controllers (like a sidewinder) and reincarnate them as 80s classic controllers.