Looks Like The Pokkén Tournament Pro Pad Was Supposed To Have LEDs And Force Feedback

I might to try and fix those rumble features in, led's would be hard though.. :/

@Atlantidas please please update us when you do

Motors yes, but I can't see LEDs raising the price all that much. LEDs are cheap.

If the release version had included rumble and LEDs I would have bought it without a doubt!

Thanks for publishing my findings! It's pretty cool seeing your name on one of your favorite websites.

Like @Atlantidas, I plan see if I can get the rumble working again, but I admit defeat on the LED front since that's a bit beyond my abilities. I'll probably have to buy another controller since I don't really want to bork this one up

Man I played the arcade version and the controller was comfortable, I'm holding off on the pro pad until or if they add the missing features

I would have bought one if they'd kept the LEDs in! I'm not even being sarcastic, I genuinely would have!

Hmmm... we can rebuild it. We have the technology.

It would have been really neat if it had LEDs.

Ah, what a shame that they cheaped out on that pad.

They probably just used the mold from the arcade versions without changing too much. Not necessarily planned features for the home versions.

Certainly sounds like it's to cut costs.

@Blueberry As you can see in the photo in the article, the mold used for the arcade release is a lot longer, closer to the width of a Wii U gamepad. The home release is more like a Pro controller.

Cheap move and they probably hoped we wouldn't notice!

@Shikinouta @Atlantidas would love it if you guys can get it working with rumble and LED. I'd bet that the game still has the code in to drive those features?

hook it up to a couple of industrial power tools to REALLY feel what it's like to be hit by machamp.

wouldn't leds be easier than motors?

@gingerbeardman Ill absolutely see what I can do, and while you're correct, Pokken probably has some code left which'll enable vibration, realistically I cant do much to enable it without a homebrew enabled Wii U (one of these days, maybe). The rumble would realistically only work on PC/Mac/Linux and the like until such a day would arrive

LEDs on the other hand would be a much simplier matter in terms of software, since the powering of the would be drawn entirely from the USB port (basically no software involved). On the other hand, it would be a lot more complicated since then you have to factor in polarity/resistance/currect etc. That's beyond my abilities, to be frank. Im am IT major, not an electrician. I'd give a thousand hats off to anybody who can get it to work

@bngrybt Yes, the TLDR of it, LEDs would theoretocally be easier for a qualified small appliances electrician.

There are more things missing than just the LEDs and motors though- all those little shiny spaces with 'r12', 'd2', and 'c30' are for surface-mount resistors, capacitors and diodes.

I expect this will be mentioned on hackaday soon, and even if nobody does it, the comments section will no doubt be helpful. It's not the sort of thing a beginner should just solder things on and hope it works, but it looks like the sort of thing that a confident beginner could do by following a guide, even with just a cheap soldering iron and a few dollars worth of parts from ebay. It all depends on whether the software supports it or not...

I think that looks quite doable, certainly the LED's should work without too much issue, the rumble just depends on if the game has rumble code in it. Do normal controllers rumble when you play?

It doesn't even have rumble? This controller is a joke.

Or, maybe they deliberately cheaped-out by simply taking the boards from the arcade and cutting out a few features to save some bucks, giving consumers a slightly crappier controller in the process—because they knew a bunch of fanboys would lap them up anyway.

The fanatics who wanted this would pay more for rumble and lights....Missed opportunity, Nintendo >_<

Maybe they took it out because of the Wii U's infamously underpowered USB ports..?

Cheap ugly controller confirmed to be even uglier and cheaper. No surprise there.

The biggest positive I take from this controller is the further indication that SNES-coloured buttons are here to stay.

Would have made the pad much cooler but it's not really needed for a fighting game but this ashame anyway.

@AlexOlney I see. Nintendo must think people in the arcades have giant hands.

Still, I think it probably did cheap-out. The people making the controller were likely thinking about including those things and just thought "F**k it. They'll buy this thing even if we don't bother."

I mean, the fact they're even selling the controller when there's already a few first party "standard" controller options for Wii U (most of which are also gimped in one way or another), along with them not even bothering to make it work with anything beyond that one game, just tells me Nintendo ain't really trying.

It's all half measures.

One controller, or two controllers max, could have done all of this stuff. Microsoft and Sony can manage it perfectly well. It's just milkage to have the GamePad, the Pro Controller, the GameCube controller, and now this too, all basically serving exactly the same function of a standard gamepad—and it's worse when some of the choices are gimped in one way or another for no particularly good reason imo.

@AlexOlney Well said, I don't think a lot of people know the difference between the controllers, understandably so since it had a very limited release outside of Japan

@toxibunny My thoughts exactly. As i said in a previous statement, it's entirely likely that the code still exists, but it's not possible to actually modify said code until the homebrew scene for the Wii U takes off.

That said, I'd imagine somebody with a lot more patience and time than I could unpack an ISO and dig through Pokken's coding to see if such a thing would even exist. I'd imagine we might see such a thing pop up on The Cutting Room Floor (TCRF.net) in the future

@Kirk They were right! I bought this thing because I'm insane and like playing games with their intended controls! Now I'll probably go buy another to see if I can Frankenstein this back to it's original form!
I should mention, this wouldn't be the first time HORI has decked out their controllers with unnecessary but awesome LEDs. Check out the HORI Fighting Edge, it's my favorite arcade stick ever produced and just generally feels really damn ace.

@Shikinouta
I'm studying to be an electrical engineer, and honestly these two problems shouldn't be any difficulty at all to overcome!
Well at least with placing the components, that is.
There are much bigger issues afoot
The LEDs though slightly complicated shouldn't be too much of a problem, just add them to their respective holes (correct polarity of course) and that's that.
Although if the missing surface mount components belong to the LEDs and the circuit is broken then you're not gonna have a great time trying to repair that.
It would be easier to take a 100 ohm resistor and wire the LEDs straight to the power coming from the Wii U.
The motors only have to be ripped out of an older controller from
Any other system.
Just use a ps2 controller, gives you two motors and you're golden!😉

The big problem however is that the game naturally has rumble disabled for the special controller.
It says so in the controller options menu.
Though this would suggest that the code is still in the game, considering how much of a last minute decision this all seemed to be, there wouldn't be any way to enable the rumble.

@Shikinouta I ordered one of these pads from Amazon UK, let's see if they get more stock. Looking forward to modding it!

I think that if you add rumble motors and the game supports rumble in other controllers it may just start to work. LEDs, i'd have to see.

@peppercollector Cheers! I sincerely appreciate any help I can get! Ive got a few broken original Xbox controllers lying around so I might use the parts from one of those, same difference as the PS2 as you might expect 😀

LED wirins sounds like a project, but a fun one at that! I havent studied the board too much (midterms coming up), so I cannot confirm whether the circuit is complete or not, but when my schedule starts freeing up, I'll take your advice! Seriously, thanks a million for your help!

@gingerbeardman It's always a shot! Soldering in the rumble shouldn't be too much of a chore are you might expect. It's a really nice controller, albeit a bit light. I actually was opening it up to put in some weights I bought down at the hardware store, opened it up and noticed the molding was off and you know the rest! Happy gaming, Pokkén is a seriously fun fighting game!

@Shikinouta Will you take some high-resolution images of both sides of the board, please? or even put it on a scanner..? I'd like a better look at it..

@toxibunny Sure, I wouldn't mind at all. I'm leaving for a class at 12 EST, so expect them later today

BTW Amazon.co.uk have this controller back in stock at only £16.99 - mine just shipped https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B019QB4SL0/