I got a theory that muscle cars used a ball top on their four on the floor gearshifters, which in the late 70s to mid 80s meant that the ball top for a lever was a cheap and mostly standardized after market part that could easily be repurposed for arcade controls, but as the 80s went on most cars manufacturers had their own toppers for gearshift levers. And a lot of arcade operators would continue to use their existinng controls and just replace the guts instead of buying entire new cabinets for their games since JAMMA standards made that fairly easy.
But from around 86 Happ would be making arcade parts using the same gear that was being used in industry for forklifts and other industrial contols. And these had bat shaped tops. Neoi Geo in particular was all about their new cabinets instead of putting them in a refurbed Bump and Jump from half a decade ago so they would ship with new controls. Bat type controls.
NBA Jam would have bats or balls since the Midway/Williams merger meant that they’d have surplus optical sticks from different manufacturers, but bats were the new thing in the 90s unless you were in Japan where the ball never went away.
It’s just a theory though. I’d like to hear more from someone who was closer to the history if anyone can convince someone like that to post here.
Maze games like pack man (in the USA at least) originally used a 4 way stick with a really short shaft and a ball top that has the diagonals gated out. Its like 0 throw and I think the originals used leaf switches.
There are also things like 2 way sticks that act the same way.
I got a lot of this education from my younger brother who is a 80s maze game fiend. He basically lives at the galloping ghost in Chicago and recently built a stick with like 3 different kinds of sticks on it.
center stick is a “pac man” stick like I described above, I think its setup not to register diagonals and they might be gated out… its been awhile. But look at that like 0 dead zone design in the second pic.
Those big weighted shifter balls are are nearly the size of pool balls where modern ball tops are ping pong sized and the old school 70s-80s ball tops are even smaller.
I’ve played on a Simpsons cab recently (past two years) where one of the characters had a 4-way installed instead of an 8-way; it “feels” the same but the diagonals simply don’t register
you’d probably be able to tell pretty quickly two, the clicking on a modern stick is pretty audibly “you’re hitting two switches at once”
It’s hardware for a Chinese cloud-based platform (Tencent Xianyou) intended to sell a home-console type experience using mobile games and mobile-like controls. The faceplates are for different genres, specifically MOBAs/ARPGs, FPS games and sports (traditional dual stick).
I’d be into this idea if only the analog stick wasn’t a slide pad. Still appreciate this evolution of the controller adapted from mobile game design; like looking at a divergent evolutionary line.
That console controllers evolved to Dualshock and stayed there kind of sucks. I really wish Motion Controls turned into… something… but they didn’t and that’s really unfortunate.
I’m hoping there might be some kind of a Kinect revival. Maybe for arcade games (such as they are) since now everyone doesn’t want to touch icky things in public places anymore anyway?
in the future the arcade will just be row after row of that one game that’s like a ring of led lights that you have to jump ‘over’ when it reaches the bottom
Damn, direct drive is no joke - the lack of elasticity in the connection to the motor is immediately apparent, and the feedback feels solid
Beware of games which attempt to recenter the wheel instantaneously (looking at you Dirt 4) - this thing will put all 5Nm (and presumably with the boost kit, all 8) of torque directly into your unprepared arms when it does that lmao
The wheel sticks a little further out than on the CSL wheel base I borrowed, which in my case is an advantage because it means I can run the wheel stand more upright and still have the wheel reach me on the couch, so I’m seeing fewer bruised knees in my future
The DD isn’t recognised natively by many games yet, so it’s just as well it has a compatibility mode where it pretends to be an older wheel
CSL Pedals seem fine, there’s a little less weight to them being made of much less material, and the fact that mounting them on the wheel stand has required some creative thinking is a bit of a shame - maybe I should’ve bought the slightly more expensive older model, but I simply couldn’t have known at the time. I haven’t noticed any flex or other issues with them so far, and they feel nice and responsive. I’m excited for the load cell brake kit to go up for preorder on Friday though!
had the galaxy brain realisation that while nobody seems to sell indicator stalks for sim steering wheels the actual real automotive parts are just electrical switches (and the mechanism for releasing them when the wheel is clocked) so you could adapt them with a basic USB controller board fairly simply, and now I’m trying to find a local wrecking yard
