I’ve specifically saved cre-crash controllers to have someone de-gut them, and hook them up to my Multi-console ambidextrous fight stick
Luckily most thing up to pre crash will work find with a PS1/PS2. However, outside of a few experiments I saw on Atariage, no one is attempting to hok p fight sticks to re-crash consoles.
I even saw Edladdin’s Colecovision Super Action PCB and his Genesis to 7800 converter and am buying is once I get some money.
I’m trying to build for any contingency I see. And wit te Wii game Metal Slug Anthology, where the Gamecube control pad only recognizes the analog stick and not the digitial, I got a solution i can hire. Matthew Gummo can “digitize” an analog joystick input, and do something (I don’t know his secrets so I won’t comment) to make a digital joystick press on your fight stick come out as an analog joystick press. I don’t know if I’ll encounter any more games like that…
… Except on the 5200, about 90% of games the analog stick is wasted and is a sloppy, hard-to-center mess on games where you need to stop and change directions on a dime. This is where Matthew Gummo’s operation can help. But he doesn’t know enough about the specifics of a 5200 controller where if it’s similar in concept, or where it radically different. has someone made a digital 5200 fight stick? Either A) can i hire you for the 5200 digitization?, or B) can you share how to digitize the analog 5200 joystick in a way Matthew Gummo can understand? Basically the physical input is digtial fight stick, but the controller PCB sees it as 100% in an analog direction. By the way Matthew Gummo only specializes in analog digitizations because he doesn’t have enough free time to do the other portions of the joystick job. He’ll take a Pplaystation 1 dual shock one and digitize the analog directions. I don’t know if he’ll do it for other controller PCBs but if you want to be efficient, the PS2/PS1 is the way to go because many people make many different converters for both before and after the Playstation 1/2.
The other issue is I don’t know how easy/hard it is to do a pad hack solder on a 5200 flex circuit? Can any pad hack modder easily do it with no specific knowledge of the 5200?
I would prefer the keypad selectable with one wire to each indivdual button press. I assume if you just solder the wires to each individual keypad and don’t mess with the PCB, then you can activate an individual keypad button with one stick button? OF course most sticks won’t have enough buttons, but it may come in handy in Defender where any numeric keypad press equals hyperspace. You just need one. There may be a couple other titles where that’s handy.
If that’s the case then the keypad is easy, you just have to do some creative mapping on a DB25 to let one keypad button be one pin, and plug in the most important keypad buttons, and the rest could be activated on the side for menus.
The other controller that’s going to be an issue is the Intellivision. First the default controller sucks for everything except sports games, (but if you’re used to it, maybe it doesn’t. 
Same could be said for the Colecovision Standard controller, which I used when I was a kid. It was passable. Some found it horrible compared to the 2600 stick. When it came to the NES, I put the joystick on the floor and put my index and middle finger on the a and b and over the + to be flexible. I found the Genesis 3-button pad hard to do the Golden Axe alternate attack between 2 enemies where you can get them to 0 health. I seemed to have an upward drift. Finally the Super NES rendered that strategy moot with its shoulder buttons. I guess it’s based on what you grew up on.) and it’s natively a 16-way one-intensity (plus neutral) joypad.
I read about the Joystick code and it’s nuts. It’s not one pin equals one direction. 8 pins must combine for 3 buttons, 12 keypad buttons and 16 directions, plus neutral, and a specific keypad combination for pause. So you just can’t wire a joystick’s west to the west pin and be over. Add to that the fact that Northeast does not electronically equal North + East like literally every other system, whihc means you ned a separate wiring for North East, and a way to get the joystick not to actuate North + East separately, but NE, and you’;ve really got a project… Even analog controls have degrees of N/S and W/E combined in any combination (even though the N64 MIGHT have read it natively as direction and intensity, not X+Y. Not sure, supposition). The 7 pins read a 128 bit combination. Of the 3 types of controls. If you press all 3 types at once (a direction, a key, and a button) or any of the 2 types simultaneously except for a joystick and button you’l get unpredictable results.
Luckily the is a solution, but not for me. I have an Intellivision 1, and I actually did the “flashback modding”, (just buy converter wires, Flashback controls, and unscrew a part, pull out, push in, rescrew, and done. If I can do it, almost anyone can do it) in anticipation of getting fight sticks (really they were arcade joysticks, but fight stick is the primary purpose now, that people look at you funny if you’re playing a non-figting game, but it works for ANY game where subtlety in analog controls is not a requirement in playing and beating.) for the Intellivision for games like Lock N Chase and Burgertime, and maybe a few others. (maybe I can do a tap tap tap of alternating cardinals and diagonals for the tertiary directions. I have no idea how that works out.)
There is a solution on Atari Age for a Genesis to INTV adapter and a Jaguar to INTV adapter. But it only works natively for the Intellivision 2. If you have an Intellivision 1, you have to do a 1-to-2 mod, which is like a flashback mod, except uses intellivision 2 joysticks, and costs $10 DIY assembly or $20 with the labor of the adapter biilding, but not the joystick modding thrown in, per controller port.
If I want to use this product, where I have an INTV 1, Flashback sticks and a 1-FB mod, I have to either constantly take out my flashback mod, put in the 1-to-2 mod, plug this in, and find a Intellivision 2 Stick for keypad an switch back, or get 2 1-to-2 mods and sell my flashbacks and buy 2 INTV 2 controllers, or be a 32X-like Mess of 2 of each of 1-To-FB, FB-to-2, and 2-toFB mods. At least the last way once it’s in, It will stay in. I would pay an extra $10 a controller for a 2/FB switch built on both ends where INTV ports go. Saves on buying 4 $10 adapters and on looks.