New Controllers for Intellivision/emulators

[1980gamer]

I have been toying with the idea of designing new controllers for the Intellivision.

 

I was hoping IntellivisionLives would have put out a flashback machine or some re-release with replacement controllers by now but.....

 

So, I have a few thoughts in mind to make a good arcade type fully Intellivision controller!

The only sticking point I am thinking of is 8 or 16 position joystick?

 

Only 8 direction sticks exist at present. ( at least I have not found anything better )

But a 49 position stick does exist. That is 48 directions.

 

I am thinking position 48,1,2 would be North, 3,4,5 would be NNE 6,7,8 would be NE etc.

This requires a D to A converter thus a little more logic and money.

 

Rev. 1 will most likely be an 8 direction stick just to get it built and test button layout etc.

 

My plan is to let it connect to both controller ports for Player 1 and player 2.

Also to let buttons tie to left controller and stick connect to right controller

for games like Tron and Night Stalker. ( need to find a MULTI-pole MULTI-throw switch for this part. Or think of a logic method! )

 

 

Has anyone already done this?

 

Would anyone be interested in buying one? ( bulk part orders are cheaper )

 

I think it will be a fun project.

Gene

[Rev]

Would this be compatible with the original intellivision,right? ...if i read it correctly

 

As far as the directional pad goes,im not sure.Maybe someone else will chime in.

 

Do you have any preliminary designs in mind? Would it resemble a more modern controller(dreamcast,xbox)?

 

What about the overlays being compatible? or would you just have 12 buttons to replace them? Plus the 4 on either side.

 

 

 

 

Either way,put me down for 20.seriously.

[Rev]

here is something i actually thought up a year ago.would something like this even be feasible?

 

 

 

[1980gamer]

I didn't want to give out to much of my idea before completing the first one...

 

Yes, compatible with Intellivision I ( tandy, sylvania, super pro system, Intellivision III etc.) as well as Intellivision II / Sears.

 

This would be more like an X-arcade controller.

 

I do have overlay's in mind In fact, this is a big part of it.

 

 

On a side note, I am also considering a Wico type controller down the road. That should be much easier and cheaper to build in quantity.

 

Gene

[Rev]

i had to google X-Arcade.

 

that would be pretty cool as well...and probably expensive i imagine.I look forward to hearing about any progress you make.

 

did you like my mock up?

 

 

 

[1980gamer]

here is something i actually thought up a year ago.would something like this even be feasible?

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, I like it!

 

It might be hard to play number pad intensive games though? Baseball, Tron etc.

But, Burger time, Bump N Jump etc. would be awesome!

 

 

I am not at all an artist. My mock ups are embarrassing. But I did work in the electronics field for 5 years,

I want to get back into that as a hobby and Intellivision owns my childhood so I think this is a good way to get back into it.

 

I have been working in the database field for about 15 years and before I forget everything I learned in electronics.....

 

I just order a few parts catalogs tonight. My local radio shack doesn't seem to carry 7400 series etc. anymore.

 

I'll let you know how things progress.

Gene

[Rev]

radio shacks are more like cell phone stores nowadays

 

 

 

As far as game compatibility goes.There may be a few games that will not be comfortable to play.

 

take baseball for example,on this game you use pretty much every button at one point.but you dont use multiple buttone at once.in this mock up pick i could reach all the buttons comfortably and quickly.try this with one of your games as well.but i do know it would work great with most of the arcade style games and the ones that use very few buttons.

[+cmart604]

I'll pretty much buy anything you make for the INTV, count me in.

[jaybird3rd]

Unfortunately, having new plastic cases tooled and manufactured is prohibitively expensive. This makes it more economical to retrofit an existing controller design to the Intellivision, especially given the limited quantities involved. As an alternative to making a whole new controller, would you consider an adapter or conversion kit for the Jaguar controller instead?

 

 

If you think about it, the standard Jaguar gamepad (pictured) gives you just about everything you would need for a new Intellivision controller: a numeric keypad, three distinct action buttons, and even a "Pause" button that you could map to the "1"+"9" keys on the Intellivision keypad. It's not nearly as uncomfortable as its reputation would lead you to believe, it's a relatively common controller, and if you need to make more of them, the original plastic injection tooling still exists (it was up for sale recently on eBay). An external adapter circuit has already been designed, and might make a useful starting point if you choose to go that route; the only disadvantage to this idea is the need to modify the console to provide external power.

 

Alternatively, you could design a new circuit board for this controller that is native to the Intellivision. This would avoid the power issue, and (perhaps with some changes to the plastic hardware) would even allow you to upgrade the design to a 16-direction D-pad: notice that the D-pad footprint is an even circle, not a "plus" shape. Again, it would certainly be easier than designing a whole new controller from scratch.

[bacteria]

No reason this project won't work, and be much better than the original. In the next months i'm going to start building a fully integrated Multi-console system which uses one external controller for all systems; cart and CD based - will be a massive project. Part of that will be to integrate the keypad for Intellivision and Colecovision (using same keypad).

 

In your project, you can make your own overlays to fit your controller, and to keep the keypad smaller and also easier to use, butcher a calculator and wire its board connections to the controller itself. (All) you are doing with the d-pad, keypad and shoulder buttons is to wire the terminals from each button connection to their places on the board.

[ledzep]

The only problem I ever had with the original controller was that that stupid disc could rotate. The result would be trying to move in a specific direction but if I made a panic move usually I pressed too hard and it was possible to have my thumb and the disc slide over to another position. Also pressing hard and having the thumb start pulling away from the thumbnail after hours of playing. So as long as your controller doesn't do that annoying thing it will be an improvement. I remember my friend bought some aftermarket joystick handles that replaced the discs but they rotated, too, so it didn't really fix that issue though our thumbs loved them.

 

A short (non-rotating) joystick is the only thing, I think, that those original controllers should have had, the keypads were fine. I mean, it's kind of odd that those discs could spin but weren't really paddles. But you can't lose the use of the overlays because of a keypad that has different dimensions. That's probably the hardest part, right? So would these be original style controllers with new joysticks grafted into them? Sort of the reverse of the Atari 5200 joysticks that were converted into paddles?

 

As for 8-position joysticks, I take it it's not possible to make the joystick press position 1 and 2 or 2 and 3 at the same time to make a new position? I've never tried to wire up a joystick so I don't know if that's possible in order to double the number or directions.

[Atari2600Lives]

I think an Intellevision controller that would work for the PC would be amazing. here is how you get a Jaguar controller to work with a PC (which might be the ticket as mentioned before):

 

http://www.ehow.com/how_6003753_connect-atari-jaguar-controller-pc.html