Tech Problem with fight stick on non-fighting game

Tech Talk
1

First of all, there should be a category for other games besides fight games that work well with fight sticks. This issues deals with Mega Man 11 for the Switch, a game some would prefer a fight stick for, if they already had one lying around for Street Fighter, but not one one goes out and buys a fight stick for specifically.

I’ve been having Issues with Mega Man 11for the Switch using the fight stick. Sometimes the right direction wouldn’t work. You hold it down, and no movement.

I tried emailing Capcom but they conveniently took a company-wide vacation the day after MM11’s release.

First my joystick is a right hand modded Street Fighter 15th PS2 Joystick, plugged into a PS2-> Xbox 360 adapter, plugged into a USB extension cord, plugged into a Coov N100 adapter for Nintendo Switch (which is funny because the PS2-> 360 adapter works in this chain, but a PS2-> Xbox One adapter from the same company does not in that sequence.). FOr an hour it was working fine.

Then on the Blastman level, when you hit a bomb-cat, te joystick would stop moving right for a while, but WOULD move left.

First I tested the joystick by doing something by using my standby of USF2FC fr the Switch. I played Ken on Level 4 vs the CPU. I won every mathc without losing a round, and got 2 or 3 perfects, and I even did something I never did before, Face Akuma on level 4… and beat him in 2 rounds… and Ken is not my number one guy. I can safely rule out mechanical issues wit the joystick. By the way, I assume no one has a 100% special actuation rate, so I mis-fired a few times, but it wasn’t even close to deadly.

Then I tried the Standard Joycons in the Joycon holder in Mega Man 11. I played Blastman, and THAT worked fine. No stuck joystick issues.

Any ideas on what went wrong?

2

Daisy-chaining converters/adapters can have very mixed results, and is usually not recommended because all sorts of weird things can happen, and makes it virtually impossible to troubleshoot.

It’s unlikely to be the mechanical aspect of your joystick. The issue lies somewhere in the daisy-chaining of your adapters and cables.

I’d be VERY surprised if Capcom does anything but tell you “Sorry, we don’t support that sort of layout”.

My recommendation? Eliminate daisy-chaining your adapters. Get a Switch-compatible stick, or padhack something so that it’s compatible.

1 Like
3

Do they make a PS2-> Switch adapter?

It might be possible considering the PS2->Xbox one converter didn’t work in the chain, but the Xbox 360-> Switch adapter did work.

Also I heard going backwards is easier with daisy chaining than going forward because the standards you’re converting to are already fixed in stone, whereas the Switch standard was undreamt of when the PS2 came out. Make sense.

So should a PS2-> SNES then an SNES-> NES or a PS2-> Genesis then a Genesis -> 7800 be a LOT more likely to work than daisy chaining forward?

Now what do I do with my right handed Street Fighter 15th anniversary PS2 stick?

4

Either way, it’s still never recommended to daisy-chain any sort of sequence of converters, whether your’e going forwards or backwards.

Look at it this way as a very high-level analogy:
Let’s say that all converters replicate their target behavior at 98% accuracy, and at 98% accurate, the target console is perfectly fine with it. So a PS2–>360 converter would convert a PS2 controller to 98% of a 360 controller, and the 360 believes that everything is just fine.
Take a 360 to Switch adapter at 98% accuracy. The Switch might just be fine with what it it sees as a 98% accurate “controller”.
But if you daisy-chain them together, 98% x 98% = 96%. You’ve now just decreased your accuracy, and the target console (the Switch in this case), might no longer accept a 96% accurate imitation, because it might not satisfy one or more of its protocols.

And the more converters you daisy-chain up, the worse it gets.
Stick to using a single converter, or padhack and replace the PCB.

5

I understand it’s a game of “telephone” where you whisper a secret form one person to the other, and sometimes something gets mistranslated. Or translating English-> Spanish->French->German. Something will probably get lost.

Oh by the way I found videos of PS2-> Gamecube and then using the GameCube prot converter for Wii U on the Switch. I tried that too. That might work better. becuase the Wii U and Switch is designed to work with Game Cube controllers, so you have only one “foreign translation” instead of 2, since Nintendo incorporated Game Cube controllers, it’s a more native translation.

My original idea was to use a pad hack with my custom controller. I assume using a DB25 where one wire equals one function is a better sitch because there’s no coding, then you hack THAT into a controller. This Street Fighter Stick is a temporary thing until I get a pad hack system for other consoles and get my custom stick working.

But going backward is probably easier than going forward, because I know older systems have less complicated coding, and more is known about them.

If I remember right, a 7800 stick is a one pin=one function standard. So is the Genesis controller in Master System mode. The only question is does the Tototek Playstation->Genesis adapter recognize 3-button, 2-button SMS, and 1 button Atari 2600 mode right?

Also the SNES->NES adapters from Raphnet are considered lag free because there is no chip in them, it’s a straight wiring reroute hookup, so that should be an easy hookup.

It’s the chips and the codes that cause problems, not necessarily the adapters, because straight pin swaps should pass through right if there’s no translator chip. Is that theory correct?

6

If all you’re doing is re-wiring, then obviously there’s no lag or risk of problems.

It sounds like you just need to make modular project-box padhacks for you controller. A MUCH better solution than daisy-chaining a gazillion adapters.

7

Tried the “less language translation” theroy by plugging in a left-handed off0the-shelf 360 stick STRAIGT into the Coov N100. It didn’t recognize at all.

Then I tried one more thing. Hoping that the translation between a Game Cube, and then to switch being like German -> English-> Pig Latin (where the English to Pig Latin translation, representing GameCube to Switch, being easier because highly related and formulaic.) and hoping for the purposes of translation, it counts as one translation and not 2, I plugged my PS2 SF15A stick (right hand modded) into a PS2-> GameCube adapter, and then plugging the GameCube adapter into a Wii U Smash Bros adapter, and plugging THAT into a switch.

The 360 fight stick (It’s the Mad Catz WWE All-Stars Stick) straight into the Coov N100 didn’t work, but the PS2->GC->NS DID work.

I also thought it would lose one button because a GameCube natively has 7 buttons and Start, and that’s it, but it mapped it as a pro controller with all 8 main buttons, and start and select active, Maybe it makes te L and R 2-bit buttons where light L is one button, medium L is another button, and hard L is both buttons. Same with R. I guess that’s how you get 11 buttons out of 7.

I foresee one problem with playing Street Fighter (either 30th or Ultra 2/FinalChallengers) on the Switch in an organized setting. If 2 people use a custom joysticks and one uses a Game Cube Controller, or a PS2-> GC adapter and plugging that in with the Wii U Smash adapter, which requires 2 USB ports to plug in, and the other person uses a Switch USB controller witha single USB port… where do you plug in all 3 USB plugs? The Smash adapter doesn’t work without both USBs plugged in.

I see a possible solution. If one cable is data and the other cable is extra power, maybe the end that is power only can be plugged into a USB extension cord, and then a USB->AC adapter, and plug that in the wall outlet. Or plug it into a AA/AAA battery pack that has USB voltage.

Also if 2 people have either GameCuee controllers or PS2->GC controllers or one of each), then maybe they can only use one Wii U Smash adapter. The Smash Adapter has 4 Gamecube ports.