Hello and welcome to my long road to the personal arcade blog
The Odyssey Part 1
Just to give a short introduction, last year I bought a run of the mill arcade conroller to play old games, little did I know that this simply purchase would end up in a year long quest on getting things right, and building lots of woodwork, digging my 35 year old electronics knowledge out again and having happy kids in the end who enjoy those old games as they are, just good games for a quick shot of entertainment.So what did happen? I bought an run of the mill arcade controller with one digital stick and 8 buttons and ended up after a short period of happyness, being unhappy.
The thing worked, and probably would work quite well for a certain number of games like fighting games or some of the old arcade games, but in the end, one feature of the arcades was that specialized controllers gave a specialized feeling for certain games.
Especially in the early era arcade machines often tried to differentiate themselves with exotic control schemes.
The prime example of that was star wars arcade machine with its famous yoke controller, or Centipede being one of the first games utilizing a trackball.
So I started to search around and found this beast - the X-Arcade tankstick. While thise came close to what I really wanted it fell short.
There were no analog controls, no side buttons for the pinball feeling, no spinners for the perfect game of breakout or pong.
Sure I am aware that really exotic control schemes like the yoke never can be properly supported unless you buy a yoke controller. What I wanted was a controller which could cover most of the games decently up to a close to original feeling.
So in the end I already had the X-Arcade in my shopping cart and emptied it and started my almost yearlong quest on my very own personal arcade controller.
The Odyssey Part 2: How I got lost and could not find a way
So I got lost. Well I had a vague idea how my travels should start and where they should be going, but I never had the idea which ship I would use or what perils I would encounter on my travels.
To the start, my idea was, that I needed a controller which both supported analog and and digital inputs, also i wanted a trackball for a good old round of Centipede and also how about Pong? In the end also modern games should be supported by an XBOX controller simulation.
Impossible you might say? Simply plug in various controllers! No, too easy. In the end I had an idea and started to search for the parts. Well I did the same mistake every beginner does, to cheapen out on the parts. After all how hard is it to get the controls right, you just buy a bunch of cheap chinese stuff, a presoldered all in one board as a set and a bunch of cheap buttons and be done with it.
Not so fast my friend, just as Ulysses ran into many perils and pitfalls, to cheapen out won´t work. Expect to spend serious money if you want to have a serious solution.
But thanks to a small bug dedicated scene of arcade collectors home brew builders and general arcade lovers a handful of vendors exist worldwide which can sell you good parts, often even being the originals used back then in the arcades or improved versions.
Also thanks to this scene a handful of small new manufacturers have arrived which try to seriously improve on the arcade old designs and try to bring the controllers forward into a new age.
In the next blog post, I will write about what parts you can use and where to get those. But until then, happy gaming my friend and don´t let the ghosts of Pac-Man eat you.
