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?"

Comments

Two good options.

[Demon-Xanth]

#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.