MAME Joystick Stand "Superion"
2006 Update
My game room has seen a lot of changes since I originall put this
website up, so I thought I would upload some updated pictures.
You should probably max out your browser since these pictures are
supposed to be three to a row.
Introduction
Welcome to the MAME joystick display page. This is my third generation solution for a general purpose
MAME controller for a PC. My first solution involved a two player side by side arcade style joystick
for the Playstation made by Blaze with a trackball carved in to the panel, and an Ultra Impact Playstation
controller adaptor. This worked nicely for a while, but I was limited by the design.
Shortly after, I found out about the
Devastator II joystick sold by Treyonics. This was a fantastic joystick, made with amazing quality.
And I would still be using it to this day if I hadn't happen to run across another guy's project that I found
on Arcade Controls. The guys's page is gone now, but something
about that guy's joystick design inspired me.
I had only made one thing with my bare hands before, and never attempted anything electronic, but after seeing
that design, I had to try. I started with the base of the Devastator II, the controller parts it had. I ordered
an extra joystick and a few more buttons from Happ Controls, and the
I-Pac and Opti-Pac from Ultimarc, I was ready to go.
Construction and Design
Since I only needed to replace the top panel of the Devastator, I bought a piece of wood from Home Depot, along with
a few extra bits for the electric drill I had. With some encouragement and assistance from my girlfriend Dana, I laid
out the design in pencil, and began cutting the holes out for the buttons, joysticks, and trackballs. Once I had all
of the holes cut, and the edges smoothed out, I painted the surface black.
Once the paint was dry, I began screwing in all the buttons, and bolting down the joysticks, paddle,
and the trackball. Originally, I just used regular nuts to keep the bolts connected to the wood, but over time after
a lot of use, the nuts began to slip, so I used those uneven washers (I can't remember the proper name) between the wood
and the nuts, and things have improved. From there, I began wiring everything to the I-Pac and the Opti-Pac using the
soderless connections to attach to the leaves of the electronic parts inside the joystick.
Once I was ready to mount the wood back on to the Joystick base, I began decorating. For decals, I used a few of the old
Fleer Pac-Man stickers, and some Pac-Man rub off transfers. Additionally, I made some guide stickers and printed them out
on sticker paper, which you can see beneath the trackball.
The layout for the joystick is my favorite part. Many of the joysticks that I have seen have a button layout that works
fine for a majority of games, but if you'd like to play a Capcom fighter with the two by three button layout, or a Neo Geo
game with the one by four button layout, you need to make changes to MAME's default button layout in order to play them
properly. I thought a lot about this, so on my controller, the buttons for player one and player two
are laid out in such as way that you never have to remap the button order for Capcom or Neo Geo games. The
last button on the top row (button 4) is mapped to the same key press as the first button on the bottom row, so it serves
as the D button for Neo-Geo games, and the Light Kick button for Capcom Street Fighter type games. Since the
I-Pac allows for up to eight buttons per player, and I was only using six, that left two buttons per player to
assign as utility buttons up toward the top right of the controller (Enter, Esc, P, and Tab.)
The joystick at the top of the controller is mapped to player one just like the lower one on the left, but it
is a dedicated four way joystick meant for older games like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong where diagonal presses have
no meaning, and two extra buttons are provided to use with that joystick. The paddle is used obviously for
paddle games such as Super Breakout and Arkanoid while the trackball
is used for games like Centipede or Marble Madness. The lower player one joystick has a button on top which, when
used in conjunction with the paddle, serves as a fire button for games like Tron and Ikari Warriors. Naturally,
both joysticks can be used together for games like Robotron and Smash TV. And lastly, I wired a bright LED
underneath the trackball to give it the glow you see in the picture.
I mentioned the only thing I had attempted to make before this controller, and it happens to be the stand that
the controller is mounted on. When Dana and I completed the controller, we printed out various MAME sprites, and
the blown up MAME logo to decorate the stand with to complete the look. The computer sits inside the stand itself,
which you can see from the side shot which also shows the vintage Pac-Man rug that the stand rests on. The computer
itself is an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ with a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro video card. It is attached to a 34 inch widescreen HDTV
through the ATI HDTV component adaptor. With the help of the amazing video application
Powerstrip I am able to get a centered picture with no overscan. The resulting picture is crystal clear. Some
MAME enthusiasts prefer a more arcade monitor look to their picture, but I enjoy the quality of this setup.
Controllers
Since this system is not just designed to play arcade games, other console and computer emulators are installed. As a
result, I use a Super Joybox 5 Playstation USB adaptor. For console games like the NES, SNES, and Genesis, I use the
red and black ASCII control pads pictured. However, for older games such as the Atari 2600, Atari 800, and Commodore 64,
I hacked two old Playstation control pads apart, and soldered connections between the pad and two male DB9 ports which
the Atari joysticks can plug in to. The result is the old nostalgic feeling that you get everytime you play with the
Atari controllers long enough to get hand cramps. ^_^
Pac-Man plushes
To add to the decor of the room, I placed the Pac-Man plushes on top of the TV. They were imported from Japan. Actually,
the orange one is not exactly authentic. I searched up and down for the orange one, but as far as I can tell, Namco never
made an orange ghost plush. So I bought a second pink one and used fabric paint to turn it orange. If anyone can find
any evidence of an orange plush, please contact me!
The ferrets
And lastly, the controller has the dubios distinction of being in the same room as my two pet ferrest, Samus and Sparky.
As a result, the game room has a tendancy to smell a little funky from time to time... The ferrets live in what would be
the third construction project that I have ever undertaken, a three story 4'x4'x2' cage. Samus is the white female, and
Sparky is the larger male. They're not exactly good game players, but the room wouldn't be complete without them.
