Virtual Boy Virtual tap.and Nintendo classic mini port

Tech Talk
1

I know, except for an unfinished prototype of one of the Street Fighter 2 games, there’s not really any true fighting game on the Virtual Boy.

however I do want my joystick to work with the Virtual Boy when I eventually get enough money. I played with joysticks before fighting games and unless I specifically want an analog stick or thumb pad arrangement I usually go with the stick anyway. so I have a wider universe of stuff my stick helps me with.

Other than the obvious of pad hacking, I was wondering if anyone saw if the Virtual Boy Controller Port is electronically similar to a Super NES Port or an N64 port. There are adapters which converts ping free from SNES to NES. so if there is a similar similarity between Virtual Boy and one of the other systems maybe that could help.

Otherwise I doubt it’s been popular enough to get retro fight more treatment.

Two surprising systems also didn’t get the fight treatment are N64 and Wii. N64 had some Midway exclusives that weren’t Mortal Kombat, plus Killer Instinct. And it was a surprisingly big, (mostly fighter hungry) clientele who bought some SNK emulated game collections and Tatsunoko vs Capcom. Since some games only work with the Classic Controller, you think one of the Retro boards would have a Wii solution, though it’s probably too late unless someone actually wants to go back and do it.

However there might seem to be a market and it’s because the current relevance of the Wii nunchuk Port is that the NES mini and SNES mini use the same Wii nunchuck Port that the classic controller uses.

Also I wrote Brook asking about adding a single Joy con fight stick mode for Bomberman and other 5 + player games, so it just uses either one plus or one minus Joycon, and can allow for 8 players. But I severely doubt it unless it’s really easy. Brooke is fairly focused on fighting. I’m not sure if non fighting joystick games enter the radar.

2

I just going to quote only this part and STOP you right here.

Do not, I mean it Do not try to make your One Stick a “DO-EVERYTHING-STICK”.
You dilute and loose the whole purpose of your arcade stick and over complicate your modding process.

Sometimes Less is More

3

I just like Joysticks for more than just fight games.

Most people are comfortable with pads, but my performance was cut ON EVERYTHING with pads.

The only good thing about a pad is that it’s a cheap controller, and they work well with a wiimote.

4

What are you talking about?

You can use arcade stick with almost any game.
I play Tetris, RPGs, Sport titles, Shmups, Platformers, and so on with a Arcade stick.

5

DarkSakul, a word of friendly advice: If you’re going to say somebody is wrong, make sure you actually disagree with that person first.

With so many games now either allowing or even requiring analog sticks on pads, the number of games in the history that works perfectly fine on a joystick and maybe even our improved is over 50%.

Another funny thing is that you complain that I want to stick “that could do everything” saying I’m being too ambitious and asking too much, yet you say a lot of games work well with a joystick, especially older games. So which is it?

If it’s going to cost $500 to make the joystick perfectly according to one system, then spreading it out over ten-plus systems makes adding another 500 make the total cost for system a hundred dollars or less.

Other than computer language is used in the pcbs, what has fundamentally changed about a joystick? Nothing much except arguably quality improving. I’m going to literally have trouble only dealing with keypads on pre-crash systems and Jaguar and the intellivision converting 16 way into 8 way.

I thought it was fairly engenius just to hack (or in my case pay for someone to hack) an NES style PC pad and combine it with a Bohoki adapter and use that as a Atari 5200 fightstick. We’ll eventually find out if that works.

6

You know kind of how the Wii Classic Controller and the NES mini and SNES mini share the same controls and wiring scheme? Just wondering if the Virtual Boy lines up pretty well with any other existing format, either SNES or N64 most likely.

I would hate to have a virtual boy joypad chopped up just to get a stick.

I also understand the joystick delivers the power which kind of complicates things.

7

Of you, of all the bloody fucking people to talk.
No. You don’t get to say this shit to me with all the crap you have pulled.

Irrelevant

No one here trying to make a stick run on every console from the PD 10 Mainframe to the Ps5 and Xbox series X and everything in-between.

Unless you got b15 making it, it not be some $500 stick.

None, Controller PCBs dont use computer languages at all.

And that is already too much, you are going too big.

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

8

Well, I’ve researched it enough, when I was looking for answers with pre-crash systems, and there is some sort of “code language” to make 16 directions, 3 fire buttons and 12 keypads work .

Some simple systems, like the Atari 2600, Bally Astrocade, Sega Master System and Neo Geo use one wire for each simple on/off switch. However, since some systems have more buttons to press than there are pins, a language has to be used to compress information .

If you know how to “speak the language”, you can build your own controller. For example, Intellivision uses 9 pins. It uses a “direct wired labyrinth connection” so that one press activated multiple pins. Mattel suggested the only 2 simultaneously usable parts are the disc and the buttons. If you press a keypad key with anything else, or more than one together, the results will be unpredictable to the user.

I don’t pretend to know how OEM pad boards or multi console Fight boards work with less than 9 pins, but I know it’s not one-to-one. I imagine they CAN use multi-bit voltage states (1 but is on/off, 2 bits is 3 “letters” plus void, OR 2 buttons compressed into one)

The reason pad hacks work is because you’re tapping into the “one-to-one part” and leaving intact the translation dictionary.

By the way, a computer language, the way I meant it, is a way to convey intended information to the computer. 2 things can have the same bit pattern, but may mean different things depending on the language used. Like “da-mit” may mean “with it” in German when translating German concepts to English ones, or “damn it” in English, when translating written letters directly to English language.

Same sounds different meanings.

As for hacking my Joystick, I’ll worry about the CD-I, Fairchild Channel F, and the original machine that played Space War if a) I ever find one in the thrift/garage sale jungle. b) in the case of Space War hardware, bulld a second garage to house it in. Also the Arcadia 2001 (at least the US version) is worth mutilating to maximize my performance for poor, unbalanced, buggy imitations.

The INTV has enough good games where a joystick is worth it. The Arcadia is not.

9

Back to the original question:

Does the “joystick language” of the Virtual Boy Controller lineup pretty well with any other Nintendo controller? I know the NES and SNES line up well. I know the Wii Classic Controller the NES mini and Super NES mini are identical, if one doesn’t factor in less buttons for the last two.

Hopefully it lines up similarly well as USB an original Xbox does, so I’m not sure if it’s the Duke version or the S version.

I hate to have an actual Virtual Boy Controller hacked just play a game that would work well with fight stick.

10

If you want a Virtual Boy arcade stick, here you go:
http://www.bxfoundry.com/joysticks/28-bx-250-virtual-decimator-virtual-boy-joystick.html

1 Like
11

2 problems.

1: the link doesn’t work.
2: was kind of hoping to find a way to work with MY joystick. It’s an ambidexrtous “project box” joystick. Currently it plays all Paradise Cthulhu systems, Brook Universal USB systems, and genesis 6 and 3 button. If there was an easy way to work with a paradise Cthulhu, (or possibly a brook retro) I’d like to hear it.

12

Link works for me.

I don’t like the design, especially if you are using a headset instead a conosolized unit. Maybe two flight sticks done Virtual-On style would serve the Virtual boy better.

I think a Virtual boy stick really needs to be a stand alone stick as its requirements are way different that most sticks, as it also acts as the power supply for the console. Unless you go the project box route.

Also a do everything stick might be too much, especially when you are adding Virtual boy.
And tripple here wants to also have a keypad for those old consoles that used a keypad.

13

Well my second model will be a twin stick model.

main use of keypad

And I don’t to access EVERY keypad button, just ANY predetermined one to four, like keypad 1, 2, 3, and 5 for Mouse Trap.

If I need all 12 keypad buttons. I’ll use the keypad already existing y merged with my fight stick.

what DarkSakul says about me

DarkSakul is basically telling you that I am the “right makes might weirdo” whose only reason of being on Shoryuken Forums is getting help for me to get a right handed fight stick.

And that is pretty much true.

How I got DarkSakul's attention

And about DarkSakul, he didn’t do it to you, but he’s a defender of Fight Stick Orthodoxy. My main mistake to get on his radar was my *sales claim" on my website sinister sticks.com where.

Sales claim

On Genesis SF2NC,I went from always losing to always winning against my small sample of friends, and 4 others freinds always beat the top dog, all by using a right-stick left-button arrangement. And the fact that this top dog won a basic cable reality game show that involves Original Xbox makes it seem, in retrospect, like the highest mountain peak to summit in Ohio.

And when you have those kind of results, you make it a sales pitch for your joystick design. I said some things that were unorthodox, but all of them had enough of a truth where people say it is what it is.
what Beeshu should have dib"'t for joysticks once 6 buttons became a necessity.

why right-stick might be handy, and when

Mainly if playing SF2.x where joystick execution is tougher and button execution was simpler, and special moves were powerful, bit hard to pull off 100% of the time.

My joystick might not sell well now because Street Fighter changed between 2 and 5 radically.

But it’s an “inclusive” design, being ambidextrous. It might do well on a retro market and even a pre-crash retro market .

By the way, I reserved one of those 37 pins as a voltage pin. I reserved it before I realized mostmulticobsole PCBs and pad hacks need it. But Hey. Maybe the voltage pin will come in handy. Thank you odd number of connector pins.

This is probably about the most “mass market friendly” design for an ambi stick I can think of. If you read my history, I solved the problems of going against left-stick bias. But maybe the problem is not that big now.

By the way, JimmyU, I tend to blab on and on, so I went back and hid the extraneous stuff under collapsed comments. Read if you want. Don’t if you don’t

14

The main issue you’re going to face using a controller for the Virtual Boy is that the power runs through it so you’ll have to figure out a way to get the power to the system.

1 Like
15

other than the port of Street Fighter 2 for the Virtual boy, is there anything that would take advantage of there being an arcade stick for the system?

16

If it comes easy, yes.

If it’s too much either expense or labor to manually hack a virtual boy stick, unless I find one at a thrift store that doesn’t work at first but is hackable, then probably no.

And yes there are other good games to play with joysticks besides the Street Fighter game on Virtual Boy. there are literally no analog controls so the only question is arrangement.
But is it worth hacking a real virtual boy controller? Probably not.

Does the Brook retro have a voltage in its hookup? If so then maybe Brooke could add an RJ45 adapter for the brook retro board.

but it’s probably such a limited thing that unless an incredible Homebrew comes out for it or it’s real easy to make one based on an existing Nintendo plan then probably not.

17

Besides Street Fighter might be the only game that REQUIRES a special joystick. unless it’s slimmed down, you’re going to need the joystick for four separate buttons.