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Left-Buttoned Arcade Joystick for PS2?
GusherJizmac writes "I just got the Midway Arcade Treasures game for my PS2, and, as I found with Activision Anthology, the games are very difficult to play with my left thumb on the gamepad or "analog" stick. What I want is a proper arcade style joystick with big fat buttons. Even a souped-up 2600 joystick would work. The catch is that a number of those games in the arcade (and on the Atari 2600 as well) had a right-handed person holding the joystick with their right hand and using your left thumb/fingers to hit buttons. All of the arcade/retro controllers I've seen for modern systems have the stick on the left side. I guess there was some cultural shift to using your left hand, but I missed it, and I really want to play these games properly, and without building a MAME cabinet and joystick myself. Anyone have any leads on classic style controllers for PS2?"
If we're gonna have these ask slashdot style articles in the games section, couldn't they get their own category? I don't like the regular ask slashdot, and I'd really rather not have it filtering into my games section stuff.
hot foreign sheep.
Play with your hands crossed.
I have been pwned because my
Mad Catz Joystick
It does'nt look very classicly but does have a controller layout how you wanted, and pretty big buttons, just maybe too many for your needs.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 00JDFT/103-4105171-0097428?v=glance
A sidewinder precision pro blahblahblah. Its done well for me for years now, more so for flght sims though. Im not sure if it would specifically fit your request,butit is a solid piece of hardware.
I personally use a X-Arcade joystick.
I couldn't be happier with it. It is incredibly sturdy , and just feels right (especially for my capcom fighting games or bizarre japanese puzzle games ie. puyo puyo)
If the left buttoned nature is so important to you (and you are using mame.. ) , you could just rebind the movement to the right joystick and use the left's buttons.
I personally find left joysticked better to use.
Morals.. isn't that some fancy kind of mushroom
haven't most Arcade cabinets always had the stick on the left? I usually play cross-handed in the arcades as I too have difficulty using my left hand with a traditional joystick (although I am left thumbed when it comes to console d-pads / analogue sticks) I guess if you buy a sturdy enough joystick playing cross-handed would be the answer
Real life tennis, that is.
Left handed people actually have an advantage in that sport.
Back to the topic at hand [pardon the pun]
The Left Hand doesn't carry video game controllers.
But, Lik-Sang carrys a left-handed PS2 controller
Imagine what 2 minutes of Googling for 'left handed playstation' could do for you
Leftorium, the store Ned Flanders dreamed about that only sold lefty stuff
I tried playing a Gameboy recently but didn't do very well trying to use the left-handed directional controller. Why don't they have the controller in the middle and buttons on BOTH sides so that people can do it either way? The Atari way of left hand button, right hand directional controller makes so much more sense - why IS it the other way on systems these days? I e-mailed Nintendo asking them this but got no reply. Does anyone have any insight into this?
Why make sense when you can make pizza? - Zippy the Pinhead
#1: Get a stick that uses arcade components, and move the switches (that are attached to the controls) around to how you like it.
#2: Make one. happcontrols.com has a fairly wide selection of sticks and buttons, I'd recommend using the Ultimate or Competition sticks myself (approx $15/ea) and the buttons with the horizontal switches work better than the verticle ones, they run about $1.60/ea. Just run some wires from there to a controller for the console you want, Madcatz controllers work well as donors since they have larger, more durable pads than most. By using some DB37 connectors I managed to make a stick w/ full arcade components that can be swapped from PS2, to DC, to PC (USB) in a couple of seconds. I'm considering adding GC capabilities but haven't settled on a button arrangement.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Well, the left-handed bit got a little more emphasized in the article than I want. Basically if you look at an Atari 2600 controller, you hold the control in your left hand, using your left thumb to hit the button, and move with your right hand. I guess I got used to this, and in a lot of arcade games, there was a fire button on either side of the joystick, so I did it Atari style. Even Mortal Combat had this, if IIRC. Now, there is no more fire button on the left side of the stick, and this is reflected in the various arcade controllers available. The X-Arcade is almost right. Just needs buttons on the other side, so I can hold the stick with my left hand. Anyway, it looks like making on for PC is not terribly difficult, and hacking a PS1 controller also is possible (PS2 controller is much more complicated due to analog buttons). So, I'm gonna see what that can do for me....
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
I also recently bought the Midway collection. Fortunately I'm ambidextrous, so I haven't had too many problems. That said, some games aren't as much fun without specialized controls (which I am too cheap to buy).
Vindicators isn't the same without the real tank controls.
And the racing game, don't remember the name, is damn near impossible with the stock PS2 controller.
But I could play Marble Madness, Rampage, and Gauntlet all day.
I'm very left handed, but with most computer periferals being made/designed for right-handers I've graduly adapted to it. :)
But give me a right handed Golf Club and I won't know how to use it
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Oh my children... you have much to learn... Prior to 1985, lots of arcades had buttons on the left and right side of the joystick.
Then the NES came out, millions bought it, and the buttons were on the right, because that's what the Japanese in general (and Nintendo in particular) decided was right.
Combine that with the ever-increasing popularity of 2 player games, limited space on the control panels of most arcade cabinets, and the rise of conversion kits, which caused arcades to take the old dual-side-button cabinets out of service and replace them with two player games, and there you have the one-sided conclusion. Speaking of kits, Street Fighter II was the most crucial of those, and it had 6 fighting move buttons per player. Imagine the same duplicated for left and right hand:
2 players x 12 buttons + 2 joysticks + 2 start buttons - 28 holes in the control panel, which the players proceeed to beat on until it falls apart because there isn't enough wood left to keep it together. Not to mention the labor and hassle to drill and wire this panel.
So it is that joystick-on-the-left became standard.
The buttons are on the right because most of the world is right handed. The multiple buttons require more presicion than using a Stick that has four directions. When you have to press buttons in specific sequences in order for the game to do specific things, you need the dexterity of the dominant hand, IE, your right.
Well, I don't think there's any reason why people can't simply get used to having the buttons on the other side. Guitars are normally set up to have all of the (rather complex) fretting done by the left hand, and just having the right hand strum/pick.
how bout a whole cabinet?
http://www.arcadeshopper.com/multiplatform.htm
Yeah, but you're generally running the controls with your thumbs, which are your least desterous finger to begin with. You play the guitar with your left fingers, not the thumb, right? I can play PC games with the arrows on the right, but I don't use my thumbs on the keyboard, I use my index, middle, and sometimes ring fingers with my thumbs just hanging there useless.
And does not play golf.
you can always buy a 'normal' one, open it up and switch the cables from the 4 stick microswitches up/down, left/right and voila', here you have a left handed version ;)
-- the cake is a lie
For very simple games where joystick movement is the most important factor, maybe you have a point.
But if your manipulating 3 or more buttons, and need to be able to do complicated button combinations, then the better dexterity of your primary hand is probably going to be required.
Think about this:
PC based FPS shooters have people using mouse and keyboard controls. In those games, aiming is most important. So you end up doing it with your right hand, and moving with your left hand.
END COMMUNICATION
I searched high and low and wasn't able to find a site with any information or a picture of the product but good old eBay came through again. I hate linking to eBay as the links expire so I swiped somebody's photo and put it on my site. You can see it here. I found it by searching for "gravis gamepad" and wading through the results. The best part is they seem to be selling for about $1 (U.S. funds) so it might be worthing buying one just to try it out.
I hope someone finds this useful.
Maybe you could write a email or a letter to the Playstation company asking to flip their contoller so that the main joystick and gamepad are on the right side and the buttons and second joystick are on the left side.
"Remember, you were a n00b once." - Me!
guess there was some cultural shift to using your left hand, but I missed it
You didn't play fighing games at the beginning of the previous decade or the end of the decade before that one. It is my understanding that this is when the change occurred. I can't think of a single game before Street Fighter that was designed with a "Joystick for the left hand/Buttons for the right hand" setup.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano