Picked up these bundle of games for 50pence each from my local waste “tip” centers re-use shop where they sort items out of waste meant for landfill… £5.50 Total
The stock parts are definitely going for a Sanwa feel but the stick especially felt a little cheap.
I’m not into fighting games but as someone who wanted a basic stick for arcade games and beat ‘em ups on the MiSTer I really can’t recommend it enough. As soon as I put it together I loaded up Metal Slug 2 to test and before I knew it I’d been playing for an hour.
Anyway, whenever I’m ordering stuff from Japan I try to add a few cheap controllers into the order that I know I’ll be able to sell to claw back my shipping costs.
Yeah, it’s not a gaming controller obviously. I believe it was a pack in on some high end Vaio multimedia PCs for use with video editing software. It’s as tall as a pc keyboard.
I couldn’t resist it once I saw somebody had managed to get it working on modern Windows. I wrote my own driver for it yesterday and now it works on modern macOS.
I think my rotary controller obsession comes from the Playdate crank.
Ha the now infamous, from mister addons lag testing, iBuffalo controller. It went from random third party controller to cult status in a couple months, with accompanying price increase at the time. I haven’t looked at them recently.
Good stuff all around and a good idea to add controllers to international shipments!
I read about the iBuffalo ghosting. I’ll test these soon, but there was nothing in my initial tests.
The Namco Volume Controller is exactly how it sounds. Like on an old hifi. A simple potentiometer with a range of movement of around 270 degrees. Doesn’t rotate fully. If you don’t touch it, it stays exactly where it is. Friction not free moving. Meant for Arkanoid style games. It’s essentially a cutdown negcon in a box. Also came in green+blue and blue+green? Taito did a similar controller called “Vaus” for NES.
This unboxed one I got for a steal because people don’t know what to call it. The Sony part number SLPH-00015 is only on the retail box, whilst the device only has the Namco model number NPC-102 on it - which was mistakenly also used for the Namco PS1 arcade joystick.
Always search for every term involved! English and Japanese. Bargains to be had. I wouldn’t pay the going rate for one boxed, given the low number of games ~20 you can play with it.
The viral Pingu controller tweet was surprising as mine had already been bought and was sitting in the warehouse at the time!
What the viral thread and subsequent coverage missed, because it’s not obvious from the photo they used, is that the controller is meant to be placed on a table and used sparingly. Ideal for small children or anybody with accessibility needs.
It has a hold switch that can be used to lock certain buttons as being pressed, and the Pingu characters aren’t just for decoration: the position of their feet cause the button face of the controller to be perfectly horizontal/flat when it’s resting on a flat surface. That’s also the reason it has shorter handles.
To hold, it feels a bit bulbous. Not bad, but not how it’s meant to be used.
Good question! Much easier on the thumb because it’s one big piece. Again a change for accessibility sake. Thanks for mentioning it, I hadn’t given it much thought.