Last weekend my partner and I went to Portland Retro Gaming Expo! I picked up some Virtual On Saturn Twin Sticks there for $150, which is way overpriced compared to eBay listings which go from $80-120, but I wanted to test it out in person and get the one that felt the best to me. The owner actually let me try out two Saturn twin sticks and a Dreamcast twin stick, which was nice of him because he had to pull them out of their boxes and back in each time.
They worked great! I was able to beat Saturn Virtual On no problem, and they felt responsive and nice despite being nearly 30 years old??
I tried using them on PC with a Raphnet Saturn adapter I have, but I just could not get it to work for the life of me. The directions didn’t work and only pressing down on the right stick worked as an A press? I spent hours but it was a waste of time in the end, but that was alright because I had a plan.
Before getting the sticks, I researched them heavily and learned that they’re basically just two arcade stick levers but with flight stick grips on top hooked up to a pcb, so I knew I could mod them easily. So I bought a cheap PS4 Brook board and wire harnesses to convert them to PS4/PC/Switch compatible sticks.
I wanted to make this a non destructive mod so I could play it on Saturn again if I put the old pcb back in. I had to remove the start button though because it’s just a membrane that presses directly to a pcb, so I couldn’t use that on a new pcb. But I figured I could be clever and use that hole to wire out some small buttons that attach to the front to work as Home/Capture/Start/Select buttons.
Anyway, I spliced the wires, hooked them up to the wiring harness and bingo, it worked! This was my second stick build but it only took 3 hours and worked exactly as I expected on the first try, so I’m super proud of myself. EXCEPT I’m dumb and accidentally wired the sticks backwards so the left stick is the right and vice versa. I wasn’t thinking about it because I was looking at it upside down, oops.
A look at my awful mess inside. I didn’t bother making it look nice because I didn’t know if it would work right, so I was surprised it did on the first try.
Here’s how the twin sticks look with the small option buttons at the top.
For any future modders looking for info on how to do this yourself, I leave you my wisdom (that I learned from the oratan forums lol) aka my notes:
Here’s a list of materials I used.
If you just directly screw the cables to the board headers, you don’t need the wiring harnesses or spade connectors but I wanted to be lazy (though in exchange I had to crimp 16 wires but hey it makes it easier to fix later).
Anyway, this whole process is way cheaper than that Tanita PS4 stick (god I wish I had it), and I would recommend this mod if you too want to play VO Masterpiece collection with twin sticks and have even a little fight stick modding knowledge.