Posted by Nick Chambers on 29, 2000 at 6:55 PM:
Most people seem to think that a keyboard hack is the way to go for a standalone controller. After much thought, I have decided to hack a couple of sidewinders for my standalone arcade joysticks. Here is my reasoning. Bash away if something doesn't sound right. A lot of people say that it isn't compatible enough with the different emu's. I have found this holds no water. With the enclosed software, you can program any keystroke to any button on the gamepad. So, any game that uses a keyboard can also use a configured sidewinder. There are 11 buttons on the controller. A,B,C,X,Y,Z,LFT TRG,RT TRG, START, M, and mode. The M button is like a shift key, so with the software, you can program 18 different keystrokes for each gamepad. So, without the M key pressed, I get normal sidewinder functionality, but with the M button pressed, I have alt, ctrl, enter and the like. Let me give an example of some of the gaming I do and my setup. My computer is in my bedroom with a video cable running from my all-in-wonder card to the tv in my living room. My gamepads are also extended into the living room. Let's say I want to play street fighter. No Mouse or keyboard necessary with the assigned keystrokes, just select the game and I'm off playin'. The software allows you to program eacg gamepad in the daisy chain differently as well and you can save configurations for different games. I plan to make 2 standalones and hook the two together and also build a port onto the second one so I can plug another gamepad into that one (Super Sprint is one of our favs).
Does this sound like a good idea? I use mame 32 almost all of the time. Are there ghosting problems and stuff with sidewinders? I haven't tested them a whole lot. Anybody make a sidewinder standalone around here? How did it go?
P.S. It's just plain cool to be able to use the start button on a gamepad to pause the game