In the NES era Nintendo made a hands-free controller as a hospital gaming device for people who have limited arm and hand motions, either temporarily or permanently. That led to the handicap control industry which I got involved in when I was looking for a cure for a very minor handicap that afflicts quite a few people: left handedness or more accurately the game industry switching right handedness and people sticking to the old standard.
in the NES turbografx-16 and Genesis days that was a company that made joysticks called Beeshu. Their most famous model was the Super stick which was a stick in the center and two mirror buttons on both sides for the NES and turbo graphics and the Master System. At first Nintendo authorized no joy sticks other than their own advantage but because the Federal Court ruled in certain third parties and sega's favor Nintendo had to allow more licenses instead of arbitrarily saying no to all third-party devices that compete. There were obvious rip-off like controllers that looked almost exactly like an NES advantage. Nintendo wouldn't license those and they have a right noy to but Breshu was always looking for a license, arguing an ambidextrous stick is different enough from an NES advantage to condider it not directly competing.
Then came a Genesis model with 3 mirror buttons. Then Street Fighter happened which made mirroring 6 buttons a very expensive proposition.
Since then no one dared bring out an ambidextrous fightstick because they don't want to put 16 buttons on an 8 button joystick. Set some fighters use a 9th button as an auxiliary button, I could do a complete 18 button set using 9 buttons and ambidextrous.. if given time to think, I could probably come up with an ambidextrous version of a joy con both the plus version minus version handheld or attached to switch an ambidextrous in both vertical mode and SNESstyle pad mode.
I suggested this for Xbox because they have a system a button reprogramming built into the operating system. I know a way to do it externally,. And because no ambidextrous joysticks were made before Street Fighter 2, may I suggest a joystick shell that accepts electronics that act like real pcbs for these Nintendo consoles: NES, SNES Nintendo 64 GameCube Wii Classic Wii U classic Wii U pro Switch Joy con.
the only one that had a right-handed joystick made before was the NES and that might be shoe none of the other systems had a right-handed stick and the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube never had any licensed fights sticks for those systems. The N64 had mortal Kombat trilogy and killer instinct gold and GameCube had a couple capcom fighters and Soul Calibur 2 with Nintendo guest character Link. Also with a joystick shell in theory competitors and unaffiliated systems could be added without compromising the Nintendo license. It's kind of like the Skylanders model of joysticks the parts that have to go with the system are licensed by the system acre that is the PCB that fits with this joystick system, but the shells could come in all different ergonomics designs: left-handed, right-handed. 6 button, 8 button contoured, American rectangular, mortal Kombat arrangement, SNK single row of 4, quite a few things.
By tomorrow noon Eastern I'll get on my computer and send by a post for pictures showing an arrangement that is brilliant in its ambidexterity, as well as its relative economic efficiency,, and even comfort diversity.
@RedderRugfish. Luckily for you, American Foptball is a double header and too late to start Wresting taped form 8 PM EST, so I came down early anyway so...
Nintendo's licensing is stricter than the other 2 home consoles. The other 2 allow you to make your own fight stick like that assuming a) it's electronically equal gameplay-wise to a first party or authorized third party controller, so no rapid fire, no slo-mo, no macros, nothing not in a baseline first party controller gameplay-wise and b) once you open a controller to harvest the PCB, the warrantee for the controller itself, even if rebuilt, is void, so test it and make sure it works before the surgery table, but they will have the same free warantee repair/ reduced price repair for using official stuff, if the system gets ruined by your doctored PCB, the system it ruined will be considered on the green warrantee list, either free fixing, or out-of-warrrantee, all-official pricing. The joystick corpse cannot be reassmembles and returned.
Nintendo sometimes talks of a policy of using any doctored PCB, even Nintendo Brand ones that are whole, packaged, controllers, when stripped, automatically voids your warrantee. For most systems other than the Switch, does it even, at this point, matter? Your NES is in Crygenic sleep. You have to find an outside repairman to fix it. Nintendo will no longer touch it.
When Nintendo invokes the fear of Bowser when using custom made fight sticks, you watch where you step. Ironically Nintendo's Lock out chip did nohting but damage the unauthorixed Tengen game, and that occasionally caused fires. Burn that home in the name of corporate monopolies.
Now the jjystick desgin. Most poeolpe think its suicide to make 16 btton joysticks wen only 8 are used at a time. Here's a home dsolutoin that will retroactively weork for all old consoles, because, except for the Atari 5200, joystick electronics for fight sticks have stayed the same.
Want your opinion, do you think this will attract an "Ambi-curious" person, someone who might have use for a switchable stick, bit may not want to pay for a mirroed buttons setup, might like the desing shown in the above four links.
A lot of joysticks add an ninth button anyqway. Let's put it where it's most useful, to make it symmetric for ambidextrous play.
Of course, you'll need to change buttons, but I got 2 manual Pre-PCB-encoding ways to do it. One is cable swapping. The other is a "standard" DB37. (why DB37? ... For Colecovision, which has 2 grounds.) on the back end of both arrangements, So it swithces when it swaps.
By the way, I am getting a guy to make a personal model for me. And when I needed one in the Street Fihgter 2 days, nntendo said I should learn it the correct way, while Sega gave me the mname of a joystick builder to hire in the Genesis days. Since there was no shoryuken.co,m at the time, I had no where else to do. Unfortunately it brke in 2 weks ad their idea of customer sercice was gguiding me through a re-soldering class while I hwas paying long distance by the minute.
Thankfully shoryuken.com has many joystick makers for hire. i used a guy named Stan in California to build my 360 SF4 stick, and recently, I rehired him to diversify it for all (? hopefully... but Intellivision, Atari 5200, and Jaguar are going to be tough.) my consoles and redesign for user friendliness and easy telphone-operator-style button remapping.
We almost got a Cthulhu multiconsole PCB working. Just Dreamcast works wiht that PCB. People suspect mis-corresponding RJ45 hookup.
So yes, I'm aware of custom solutions. I think this would be a good mass market solution.
Well it took many months for me to get here arguably a year plus, but my joystick works with a Pardise Cthulhu for old systems, a brook USB Universal board, because I heard that because you USB is a standard not owned by Nintendo they cannot enforce warrantee restrictions on non authorized users from Nintendo's perspective, as well as a Sega Genesis 6 button and Sega Genesis 3. My theory on how to build an ambidextrous joystick ditch or not to be correct. Just plug in the cord on one side or the other, not both.
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Topic: Ambidextrous fightsticks Joy cons and retro controllers
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