First,I notice on @Toddles ’s Cthulhu page from long ago that there were “hidden modes”. I notice there is no space on the PCB to wire a LSB, RSB, and a DP/LS/RS switch to added manually. Toodles’ post on the Xbox Prime refers to “Home + QP” equalling either LSB or RSB and “Home+ QK” equalling the other. And theres some reference to “home+stick” allowing you to switch from D-pad to LS to RS. So that sounds like an original feeature.
I don’t see specific “operating instrucitons” All Paradise Arcade Shop has are the “installation instructions”. I learned there are some programmable cues on the Original MC Cthulhu before Paradise make small-run “mass-produced” compared to Toodles’ one-at-a-time model (licensed by @Toodles I assume) versions. Like I saw Toodles’ NES section which has a Punch Out mode, and a turbo mode. And Turbo Grafx 16 having a six-button mode and a Neo Geo mode.
If Paradise ArcadeSop is actively making new firmware, maybe a couple other suggestions:
For Dreamcast, the home button switching between Fight Stick mode, D-Pad regular mode and LS regular mode, both for stuff that don’t specificaly say arcade stick, where there’s an L and R instead of C and Z.
For SNES, there is a llttle controversy, because the Capcom and Japanese Nintendo Fight sticks had this arrangement:
L X R
Y B A
But Toodles, thinking most people will mostly use it for Street Fighter, decided to default to this arrangement:
Y X L
B A R
At first I did not know the NES and TG-16 had 3 different modes. Now that I know that, maybe the SNES can have 2 modes, the street fighter 2 Toodles default, (BAR) and the original, more versatile standard the Capcom had to work around that worked well for many non fighting games (YBA), switchable with the home button.
Finally, I’ like to say, I was wrong in assuming JasenCustoms would follow Toodles’ standard for the original Xbox. I am proud to say that the default Toodles arrangement make sense if you play a Capcom fighting game in using a Duke. (There also seems to be an “alternate” mode where holding down select gives you something, because that mode says “don’t hold down select”. on Toodles’ SRK page)
So if Paradise Arcade Shop can produce an “operating instruction” manual as a downloadable PDF, and maybe it they are actively developing for it, add the DC and SNES alternate modes, that would be cool.
I will agree that updated/consolidated documentation would definitely be nice.
On the flipside, Toodles is not making any new firmware for it, and he’s been inactive in the community for many years now, and he’s the only one who has his code. Don’t get your hopes up.
I bought mine from Paradise Arcade Shop. I assume Toodles just licenses the work for others to mass produce. He MAY (not saying definitely) have given the code to Paradise Arcade shop for them to continue working on it and Toodles makes $5-10 bucks off ones mass produced (at least relative to Toodles’ original run) off each unit Paradise Arcade Shop sells, while PAS markets and pays to produce copies. I know Toodles is retried from this, but he may have passed on the information to PAS to continue support and sales, and for Toodles to make a risk-free (from this point forward), passive, continual income.
I don’t know what ShoRyuKen Username @Toodles is up to, all I know is you can buy a new MC Cthulhu from Paradise.
I am trying to call Paradise arcade shop. I left a message earlier today, and got no call. I’l try again tomorrow.
@electricgrave You trying to interfere with a customer/business transaction that doesn’t affect you?
Who do you think you are? Paradise’s corporate bosses?
What are you, a nanny state policeman?
By the way, I did purchase from them before, so I do put my money where my mouth is… it just takes a little more time to complete the transaction.
May I ask what you bought from them? I don’t go warning businesses of specific people who I don’t like just to ruin them for the Klingon reason of “Because you wish it.”
What have I done to you @electricgrave where you’ll sabotage my, and only my, business transaction where you’re not affected?
For all effective purposes Toodles has retired from the scene.
He went quiet, and wanted to be left alone.
We also dont know what sort of agreement PAS made with Toodles.
For all I know, that PAS has an agreement where to keep the MC Cthulhu they sell with in a certain specification.
As for you default argument, it is what ever you want your final layout to be
You choose where B, A, Y, X, L, and R gets placed.
There no reason for re assignable buttons for the MC Cthulhu
Toodles went for the Default Capcom Street Fighter layout of
Y X L
B A R
This layout is early SNES 3rd party sticks, and isn’t a product of Capcom.
L X R
Y B A
It is not unprecidented for Toodles to have alternate modes. He already has turbo mode and “Punch Out Mode” on NES and 2-button turbo mode, 6-button mode, and “NeoGeo mode” for the Turbo Grafx 16. And the Xbox Prime has 2 different modes where holding down slect when plugging the stick in puts it in an alternate mode. As soon as I see it, I’ll link to it.
By the way, I did talk to Paradise Arcade Shop’s Tim, and he said Toodle’s firmware is set in stone. Paradise asked Toodles to update for dual modding. Toodles said no. I asked
Add to this that a lot of Toodles work was on Godlikecontrols.com which is now either owned by someone else or is defunct, has not been successfully transferred to PAS. So off to search SRK’s MC Cthulhu forums.
They do have a licensing agreement where PAS mass produces them and Toodles makes passive income off his tech.
So the only question is did Toodles think that enough people want to play with a YBA. (and if you look outside fight games, Capcom’s fight stick has YBA, and the Japanese Super Advantage has YBA, and a lot of other, non-fighting games, like Mega Man X series, Ghouls N Ghosts, Super Mario World, and Castlevania 4 would for more people be better with a YBA). It was popular enough that, if Toodles thought of it then, he could have easily added an alternate “Tap Home to switch between YBA mode and BAR mode.” With the Initial mode being BAR mode. He did that for NES and TG16 and Maybe Xbox Prime. I know 90% of his clientele would buy it for street fighter, it might have been a requested-enough feature where it could have been added as a first-choice of a second mode, and/or a second choice of a first mode.
By the way, how does one point to a particular post link, like post number 27 of a certain thread? I’d like to post to have a cross-thread link. and instead of scanning through hundreds of posts, get right to the meat of it.
ust search the word “Spoiler” and open the spoiler. You’ll see for Xbox Prime (what else do you call it when Microsoft calls their third system the “Xbox One”?) “Select not held down”, which suggests an alternate mode for select held down. And NES and TG16 are explicit.
By the way, Paradise’s Tim told me most sticks were 6 button and custom 6es were more deisred when Toodles made the MC Cthulhu, therefore the weird Neo Geo hookup by an 8 button user’s standards. Maybe an 8-button Neo Geo Mode with A B C D (AKA Select Run II I) equals QK MK HK 3K if there’s enough room and demand.
Again not a big deal. I could manually adjust it with my telephone operator box. It’s not common enough in the universe, and not in my collection at all, to make it worth buying an EZ Swap adapter.
First clear picture when I searched “Capcom fight stick SNES picture”:
Notice this is the Capcom fight stick, and if you look at the buttons in the photo, it has:
L X R
Y B A
And the NES adapter for it makes SNES YB = NES BA, just like Raphnet’s SNES-> NES zero-ping adapter.
So there is enough precedent to have a YBA arrangement in addition to BAR.
And yes I undrstand if Toodles didn’t think of it then, it wil be a quarter till never before he adds YBA mode on SNES. Pardaises request was adding a swithc betwee suing 2 synched boards, whihc Toodles balked on.
I know it’s up to Toodles and he has done alternate arrangements before, so maybe Paradise might ask him in the next note with Toodles’ licensing paycheck.
If it’s going to cost me $20 in parts and labor to make a EZ-adapter for YBA, and it’s the same for Toodles to add YBA as a permanent firmware feature, I’ll pay for it for the community. If $20 won’t do it by itself, (which is a safe bet) maybe others would like to pool to get Toodles to add a YBA SNES mode. Maybe Paradise can give a quote from Toodles about how much money is needed for him to make an Alternate SNES mode.
But if it doesn’t pan out, I can just as easily have made a pin-swap adapter while the controls are discrete. So no big loss if he says no.
Just to clear up any speculation posted in this thread:
We do not own or have the firmware for Cthulhu, Toodles is the sole owner of the code. We do not have the ability to change or alter the code in any form.
The documentation we have on our site is the official documentation that was released by Toodles. Any other documentation is via forum threads so until all that stuff is dug through and gets consolidated there won’t be any new documents other than what’s already there.
The Cthulhu is what it is, which is one of the best performance controller PCBs you can get and it’s good at what it does. We have no control over features so we can’t add/remove any no matter how requested a feature is/isn’t.
For Street FIghter, the only difference is either being able to start Street Fighter right away with the Toodles arrangement, or hitting one option in the option menu to use a Capcom fight stick.
For other games that came before it, it’s much more fundamental. Super Mario doesn’t play right with the Toodles arrangement.
As @PAS.Timothy said, he doesn’t have the code to the firmware, and he tells me Toodles says it’s pretty much static.
I’m not saying it’s already a feature. I shown where there is a actually 3 TG-16 Modes, 3 NES Modes, and a suggestion that there is an alternate Xbox Prime mode. Unless @Toodles speaks from his own experience, there is no way to know if there is a hidden YBA/ BAR switch, or to know how hard it would be to add it.
The NES has no fighting games, but it can use the MC Cthulhu with the right adapter. So there is precedence for stuff made for non-fighting games in mind. A lot of pre N64 games work fine wiht a joystick, usually bettter. It’s not just fighting games.
I don’t want to put a burden on @Toodles ’s time or sense of perfection, but all the other systems seem to fall in line well with the standard. There’s 2 Playstation Standards, but he went with the one used by Capcom in PS2 games.
( Depending on how easy and how much room is left on the chip, the Ascii arrangement can be used with other games better. I think It’s not as dire a need because the 2 main buttons are on the same horizontal plane, the X and O, and most games work well with the XO setup for 2 mains. That’s mainly for games where the concept of left and right are important in the shoulder buttons.)
Xbox Prime makes sense from a Duke point of view. I assume the Game Cube works in the way it does in Capcom Vs SNK 2 by default.
Going forward, and this is a Brook Universal adapter problem, Xbox 360 apes the PS2 view. So does Xbox One. So does PS3 and PS4.
The only problem I see is the Genesis collection. But that’s another forum.
In the meantime I guess I could use the button adjustments on my telephone operator board for remapping buttons. It’s no hassle. I planed for this well enough in advance, because I have to because of my ambidextrous design, and a problem with main to aux vs left to right mapping. I have o be as flexable as possible.
If @toodles is retired making passive income and is not working on it again, I’d be perfectly happy dealing with it myself. it might be a little annoying, but not worth the money to pull @toodles out of retirement.
TMNT: Tournament Fighters
Urban Champion
World Champ
Yie Ar Kung-Fu
Joy Mech Fight
Ring King
Best of the Best: Championship Karate
Karate Champ
Nekketsu Kakuto Densetsu
I can’t speak for Toodles but I think if he wanted to make changes to the Cthulhu he’d have done it by now. There could be other reasons why there aren’t Cthulhu features such as memory limitations of the chips used, and perhaps he picked what he thought were priorities over others on the board. Until it’s specified from his own words, we can only speculate. All we know is what’s on the table. If he isn’t active in the community anymore, then it’s probably best to move on when it comes to new features or feature requests and if the board doesn’t satisfy 100% of a project’s solutions then additions or alternatives will need to be used. That’s just the facts of the matter, and it most likely won’t change.
And regardless of the capability of the board being used for non-fighting games, the board was designed entirely with the FGC in mind and prioritized fighting games over all. Anything else is just secondary, if it works with other games in the layouts used then you’re lucky. That’s just how it is. Again, it is what it is and there is likely not going to be changes to the board. If there ever is, you will hear from either Toodles or us in an update, but of course this comes with absolutely no promises and a highly unlikely chance of happening.
@PAS.Timothy I got your point loud and clear WELL before you made it here. It either it already existsand has to be redsicovered, or I’m going to have to find my own way to deal with it.
Luckily the Xbox Prime in the “no select mode” defaults like a Duke controller, so that saves me money making a default pin adapter for that. (It makes me wonder what the “select mode” is.)
Also luckily i can adjust the buttons in 2 different ways, either individually for a specific game with a Telephone operator box, or if there are enough games that use a common thread, like YBA games, then it’d be easier to make that specific BAR->YBA adapter and put that on and take that off.
@Darksakul Yes the NES has fighting games, but nothing to what would be recognizable as a Street Fighter-style fighter. World champ, Best of the Best and Karate Champ are derived from a certain style of arcade games and play to a rule of one obvious hit wins the point, then you reset. Some of these had twin sticks, and combinations of 2 joysticks executed moves. Lots of moves, and no easy way to classify them, like quarter circle, Z-motion etc… at least none I see plainly.
Urban Champion I never played, but I heard is an NES classic.
TMNT:TF is the TMNT response to Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat and came out for the NES, SNES, and Genesis after those games.
RIng King is boxing.
Yie Ar Kung-Fu, if I remember righ,t is a combo Platformer/One-on-many fighter. I only saw it on Xbox 360 Game Room, and don’t rememebr it that well.
The other 2 I have never heard of.
But my point is just because there are no “Street Fighter-style games” doesn’t make it worthless to have a joystick for.
Before the N64 and PS1 Dual Shock, the only 2 systems were a traditional adjustable 4/8-way joystick and a row of buttons would be anywhere from less-than-efficient to worthless for is 16-way games on Intellivision, and the “analog required” games and certain 4-way games on the Atari 5200.
There were fight sticks for the NES, SMS, Genesis, TG-16, and SNES. Heck a big maker at the time, Beeshu had Ambidextrous Supersticks with nice arcade quality sticks, and all 3 comapnies sold Beeshu licenses, (but it took a while for the NES verison to get licensed)
Extra long tangent about ambidextrous sticks most people probably don’t want to read
And why were the old style joysticks considered bad, because n the 80s, ambidexterity was big, and usually that meant sacrificing optimal button layouts. And joysticks were trying to be cheaper. Atari third party joystick makers wre offering lefty switches, and joysticks with a button on both sides. The Intellivision, Colecovision, Arcadia 2001, and 5200 were all designed to be ambidextrous and symmetric. (and have numeric keypads, but that’s another issue)
Probably the most comfortable of those joystick is the one I currently use, a Colecovision Super Action controller.
There are arguably 4 games these joysticks don’t work for, Activision Decathlon and Q BErt’s Qubes are 2, because both games have glitches. Qubes crashes, and Decathlon has a performance detriment of always jumping/throwing at the earliest possible time, for the longest held button time, when in most games, you want to do it just before the foul line and hold the jump/throw button for the right length of time for the right angle, depending on your speed.
The third is Mouse Trap which relies on frequent keypad presses for 3 doors and dog. Assuming you right-stick the controller, and hold the device with your left hand. If your left thumb can reach 1, 2, 3, and 5, you’re good, otherwise you got to hold the SAC in a position that feels different. Luckily, no action buttons are needed. Left-stickers use the right thumb.
FInally, there’s Tutankham, which with the default controller makes sense, left button to fire left, right button to fire right, no matter which way you hold the standard stick. The problem is Super Aciton buttons are vertical, so unless you can dsicipline yourself to thing top is left and the next one under is right, go with the more intuitive layout.
Why do bring up Tutankham? Because that is one of 4 games I can see causing ambidextrous sticks problems. Most games would follow keep the buttons the same relative to your index finger, so fire 1 is aways on the Index finger. Otherwise oyou’ll hav the Sega MAster System Stick problem of rapid firing with your middle finger. (don’t think that’s tiring try playing R-Type with the fight stick if you constantly need your other button on the aux button. (Yes I know one way around it is to move your finger so your index pumps the fire button, but how easy vs how important is it to hit the aux button at the right time?)
But in Tutankham, TG16 Side Arms, and TG16 Pac-Land, you have fire left and right for the first 2, and run left and right for the last one. If you map index-to-index the runs and fires, though accurate in an index to index mapping, will be geographically reversed, which ruins any good play you get with your joystick on those specific games, as you keep double-guessing yourself. You do a lot better if games are second nature than if you have to double guess.
There was nothing wrong with the controller which made people “require” a joystick for the NES SNES and Genesis. I found performance issue, even back in the Genesis day where in Golden Axe, when you alternate between swinging left and right and have an enemy on each side, you could get them stuck in a “trapped until dead” loop. When I did that with a pad, my character drifted up enough where I moved myself out of the range. So I’ve had performance issues with Pads, and probably enough people did where the fight sticks were good options for the NES. SNES, TG16, and Genesis. Never happened with the joystick and got by best Golden Axe performance.
I was a pioneer, I knew there were no such things as right handed joysticks on the market for the Genesis 6 button and SNES, so I did something rare in the New Challengers era, get a custom fight stick. And it paid off well, where I beat all my local buddies all the time, who used to beat me all the time, and the even more amazing details which sell my idea even more are at 56ok.org/Ambidextrous/.
My main point is that before analog sticks became standard, any game that used a digital D-Pad could have worked electronically just as easy as a stick. And I find joysticks more intuitive and accurate. So there are LOTS of games that can be improved with a joystick.
The D-Pad was just a cheap default controller. And I found D-Pads to be inexact. So a joystick would have made sense in the Genesis/SNES era, and if Toodles intended to include SNES, and because the YBA set up is the default of both the Capcom fight stick, adn the Super Advantage in Japan, both Nntendo of Japan and Capcom thought for most games YBA is better than BAR. BAR is the “pad compromise default.” If they would have used the YBA standard for Street Fighter with the pad, it would have been awkward . They defualted it for pad and made an in-game option to switch to fight stick, so you don’t have to manually set the stick. But they used the YBA arrangemetn on the stick becuase on most games YBA is a better arrangement for most games in joystick mode than BAR
And even though today in this analog stick world, digital stick mainly appeal to fighting game players, in the Pre N64 old days, any game may potentially give you a joystick advantage. Most didn’t even call it a fight stick, they called it an Arcade Stick, and was meant for any game where you need quick and precise movements, like an Arcade game.
I’ll address other stuff specificaly. Darksakul individual gripes are hidden in Spoilers
I’m not saying they’re not, I jsut don’t know about 2 specific game
I’m not disqualifying them. I’m just saying I don’t know enough about these 2 titles t comment either way. So until I have evidence to the contrary, I believe.
Why a Karate Sim is different than a FIghting games:
No it’s not. There is a VERY big difference between a Karate Sim and a fighting game.
You missed my point. Most karate sims at the time were about scoring a SINGLE hit to win the round (kind of like Divekick is on Xbox One) It was all about simulating real karate technique. That’s how Karate Tournamnets are run in real life, if you’ve only seen the movie The Karate Kid, or the first few seasons of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. WIn lots of movies and T shows, when karate was portrayed as a sport and not a real self-defense situation, that’s how everyone always did it, play to first hit legal scoring .
Street Fighter had a life bar, so people of varying strengths, speeds, sizes, and ranges trying to knock their opponents unconsicious through multiple punches and kicks wearing out their opponent. Capcom invented this kind of sport, and all Ultimate FIghting Championship was made a real life version of the contest where the object was to either make the opponent quit or defenseless where there were like only 5 rules other than the objective (No face cavity attacks [eyes, ears, nose, and mouth] . Crotch shots are legal, but knowing that, a cup can be used as armor for that region. The only foreign objects allowed are a cup for crotch armor, gloves for grip, and anti-nuduity-law clothing.) The organizer of UFC and also its first big star, Ken Shamorck, said it was like a fighting video game except real.
Street Fighter is beat them up until they stay down, as indicated by the power bar. In the Karate sim games, one hit counts as a point, and you reset. Zangief and other high powered and/or high damage-taking characters would be worthless in Karate Sims. Speed, attack speed and attack reach would be rewarded more in Karate SIms so Dahlsim and Chun Li would be overpowered in a Karate Sim
True, the NES didn’t use twin sticks, but the arcade versions of some of these Karate Sims did, and the controls in the arcade were wacky enough, but at home, an arcade pro would have to relearn them. It seemed like all you did was move one joystick in 1 of 8 directions, move the other simultaneously, and you pull off a move. You just had to memorize contorller combinations and techniques and strateiges.
The main difference is that most fighting games you can understand enough where your first credit against the computer will give you a victory just by mashing buttons and VERY basic strategy, but karate games you have a very good chance of losing in battle 1, and may take many credits before you beat battle 1 the first time. Street Fighter is more intuitive than Karate Sims.
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I’m making bold statements about the ones I know. Like those Karate Games are fundamentally different enough were a Street Fighter Master can lose his first battle on a Karate im game and not feel ashamed. Almost like a Pac-man player losing his first contest of a First Person Shooter. (they both take place in mazes, their common thread)
I thought one title was only SNES/Genesis, not for NES
I forgot about NES TMNT:TF. Slipped my mind. Not a contradiciton.
That is probably the only true “Street Fighter Style” fighting game for the NES of the ones I’m familiar with. And yes, it’s obvious that TMNT:TF is Konami’s response to Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Eternal Champions, and SNK games at home.
Why Ring King Might not be considered a Street Fghter-style game
The question is does it play more like Mike Tyson’s Punchout (meaning you’re facing a powerful computer enemy with obvious exploitable weaknesses), a boxing sim (like a fighter expect your 2 dimensions are forward-back and left-right, not jumping/ducking, kind of like Ready to Rumble or Activision 2600 Boxing), or something else? Those examples are for video game gameplay genres where Street fighter skills don’t instantly translate.
You think just because 2 people are trying to punch or kick each other, you think it would be what SRK website would recognize as a fighting game. The only one that may qualify is TMNT:TF. There may be ones I’m unsure of, but you get the benefit of the doubt. But the ones I know I’m speaking out on.
I can name lots of games AFTER Street fighter 2 that would be defined as a fighter by the SRK website. Would Double Dragon be considered a Fighter, or the original Beat-Em-Up? I think Street Fighter 1 is the original Fighting game. Arkanoid for example may be a definitive game, but was originally described as a late 80’s take on Breakout. What was Street Fighter 1 compared to?
We should get along better. You’re dealing the finer points, You shoot a fingernail off an argument and think you shot in the heart.
I’m trying to make a bigger point, that’s not de-fused by the nitpicks you bring up, that a lot of Pre-PS2 games are better with a Fight Stick as opposed to a general control pad, because, except if it reqired the analog stick, any game that’s playable on a D-pad can just as easily be a joystick game.
The other point is that many games like Super Mario World, Mega Man X, X2, X3 and 7, and Super Ghouls N Ghosts, make way more sense with a YBA joystick vs a BAR joystick, but Toodles hampered that idea by making it BAR Only.
And when I’m looking for a game that’s ruined by a BAR standard, I’m not digging through the bargain bin, or quoting a game that’s “Red Sea Crossing”-rare. Those 3 are very popular, well known, low-hanging fruit that show my case. There are probably quite a bit more
Finally, if Toodles thought of a special Punch Out Mode which was made for LITERALLY one single game on an NES and thought to use memory on this one case, and was it was a mode worth the memory, and that’s not even a multi-player fighting game, then surely a better case can be made for YBA, which would have fit quite a few titles on the SNES that should have been accommodated.
Who is hung up on tangents?
I know it’s impractical to complain about this now. First of all that point was hidden so anyone who says TLDR would be less likely to be frustrated. Second, I’m saying that if you want a job done right, pay for it yourself. I’ve designed my joystick based on many years of frustration had with the lefty stick, with Beeshu for the no-flip, With Sega for both no-flip AND being the wrong way in most games, with games that don’t allow custom button remappings.
My design will accommodate enough games where literally the only “digital stick” games that wouldn’t work with this are Smash TV (due to button geography) and Mortal Kombat (if I were a purist for it’s unusual arrangement, but I can make the 2 center buttons block, so even THAT is solved) and if there are any more, I have’t encountered them.
The 2 rows of 4 is versatile enough for most games, and I am not at the mercy of default button assignments.
