NFGcontrols

Insert credit, have posted about a site that The Joypad mentioned earlier last month, which is a joypad/stick review and modding site.

Lawrence/NFG has a new site, to (as he says) "get this festering love of controllers out of my system." It's called NFGcontrols, and has reviews, how-to guides for hacking and modification, and features about controller theory. It's all pretty nifty stuff - like this mod that allows use of a Neo Geo, Atari, or FM Towns sticks on a wireless 360 pad (not in the cleanest way, but still). This post is also interesting, regarding the two manufacturers of PS1 pads - one of whom was excellent, and the other, not so.

Capcom Fighting pads, a look back....and towards Street Figter IV

With the recent news of Madcatz announcing that they will be making the controller to this years sequel to the classic Street fighter series, Street Fighter IV, I thought its time to look back at all the official capcom fighting pads and sticks that have come out through the ages, with most quite rare and have become collectors items in their own right....

With the lauch of Street fighter 2 on the Super Ninendo, Capcom decided to create dedicated controllers for it, and were probably the first of the many fighting pads to come out.

The Soldier Pad from Capcom, though quite an odd shape, was designed specifically for fighting games, this particualar one also came out on the 3DO with the release of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo several years later!

Although not that popular, this was a japan only release (like most of the branded controllers) and currently the last time capcom released a controller they designed themselves!

A few years had passed and with the range of pads and sticks increasing capcom started to licence out its brand names to top pad makers,

with nubytech bringing out a range for the street fighters 15Th anniversary
.
But capcom didn't just licence it out for Street Fighter, with capcom vs snk and darkstalkers both having fighting pads made for them. With darkstalkers licenced pad being probably the best fighting pads, the Sega Saturn pad for Playstation 2! This highly limited addition again was only released in japan (as usual and plays just like the saturn original, which of course was home to many 2d fighters).Finally the Dreamcast had its own licenced pad from Ascii, for the game Capcom vs Snk, with two versions, plus the standard, black, blue and grey, these pads again trying to match the classic saturn pad feel, and where pretty decent pads for fighting games, and had the advantage over the bulky Dreamcast pad.

So what can Madcatz do for Street Fighter IV? Well theres a bigger market for fighting pads then there use to be, with soul calibur sticks and other fighting pads, they need something that a hardcore fighting fan can use for long periods without it failing on them, or causing nasty aches and pains like some pads and sticks do!

Madcatz themselves know this, and are aiming to supprise, "You have never, ever seen accessories like these from Mad Catz. They will BLOW YOU AWAY and certain to make any and every Street Fighter fan very happy indeed. trust me, you'll be impressed..."

We'll see more news in a couple of months!

Old videogame patents

Insert credit posted this on videogame patents on the net:
Frank was browsing around the google patent archives, and happened upon a few game patents. Then I started poking around, and found a few more. It's really worth browsing through in full...poking at 'related patents' is particularly rewarding. You can find tons of stuff that didn't come out, or didn't come out as initially devised. They've all got illustrations, which helps flesh things out. I'll highlight a few of the interesting things I found for you here.

Nintendo:
early NES cartridge
unreleased official Nintendo adaptor for Famicom games(!!)
another NES cart revision
ROB patent with early robot designs. Submitted by Gunpey Yokoi himself.
unreleased keyboard housing patent from Nintendo of America!
early Powerglove patent, with rudimentary Powerglove design...quite different! You have to view the whole document to see the glove or anything interesting.
This isn't Nintendo officially, but is related to the NES. It's a button presser that you roll on the ground, and then it presses A and B for you, alternately. Extremely lame.

Sega:
crazy toy in which you drive a real toy car, mounted on the front of television, on a video track.
Sega VR Helmet from 1992
VMU. Hooray!

Fairchild:
Channel F cart

Konami:
portable arcade looking thing
handheld console - both of the above seem to be LCD systems though, sadly.

Game.com
Game.com patent from Tiger. There are a few more, if you're interested.

Tomy:
Tomy handheld console - seems to be LCD again. 1991.

Supervision:
If you don't know what Supervision is, it's a Chinese GB clone...very odd one at that. See here.
Supervision patent one
Supervision patent two
That Supervision ultimately looked like this.

Sony:
The Pocketstation changed a lot from its initial design:
Pocketstation rev 1
rev 2
rev 3
rev 4
rev 5

As you can see, I was mostly looking at older handhelds and related stuff. There's plenty more to see if you look at the console side, peripherals...there's tons of wacky game lore for you to find.
Source insertcredit

GamesX update

The Joypad hacking site GamesX has updated after nearly a year:
I've added the X68000 duel D-pad controller shematic to the wiki.
This unique pad uses a 74157 chip to provide two d-pads for Crazy Climber and Libble Rabble.

I've also put together an xbox 360 pad mod so I could use my old Atari joysticks to play Pac Man championship edition. It works perectly and makes a lot of 360 2D games WAY more fun. (Hey Microsoft, your D-pad sucks!)

Also updated or added the following:
PC Engine controller Schermatic
Megadrive/Genesis 3 button schermatic
sourceGamesX