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Hack Midnight Magic to use paddle controllers?


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  • 1 year later...

I used a custom joystick with built in paddles for Midnight Magic. I need to rotate the joystick backwards as the paddles are mounted on the sides and per vcs spec, right paddle controls joyleft and leff paddle controls joyright. You still need to flick the joystick or press fire to throttle the ball though. Bumper Bash needs paddles so the controls are backwards if using a stick. Bumper Bash runs fine with my custom joystick in the correct orientation. Sadly Video Pinball won't operate when both L+R are pressed simultaneously, resulting in frequent drains, as only pressing down actuates both flippers.

 

So there's 3 pinball games available, and of those, only Video Pinball disallows L+R. So I normally just hit down on the joystick to operate both in tandem. Video Pinball has sucky physics anyway. Midnight Magic and Bumper Bash are both amazing though. I picked up Bumper Bash on ebay in 2012 for like $50. Good luck finding one at that price now.

 

Video Pinball,

Midnight Magic,

And Bumper Bash.

 

Another solution for Midnight Magic is to use a Starplex style or all button controller.

  • Like 3

I thought I'd mention that this is my Favorite Hack EVER!!

 

But Not for the reasons you might imagine. I wired my X-Arcade to control the flippers in Midnight Magic, as in Left and Right, using the side mounted "Flipper" buttons, but was severely disappointed when I found out that it would only control ONE flipper! You could push Right and the right flipper would work or you could push Left and the left flipper would work, but if you pushed BOTH buttons at the same time, then Neither flipper would work. I tried rewiring it several different ways, but never managed to get it to recognize BOTH Buttons as DOWN (which is what it needs from the joystick)... Anyway this hack works with my X-Arcade! And Left and Right flippers can now be controlled independently and Both can be pressed at the same time!

 

I use a Y-Cable hooked to a joystick and my X-Arcade controller so I can scroll through the Harmony Cart ROMs to get to this hack...

 

As we speak I have a 7800 set up in the basement and hooked up to an older flat screen computer monitor (S-video mod to VGA through a converter), and it along with the X-Arcade stick are set up on milk crates resembling a ghetto fabulous arcade cabinet (but without really being in a cabinet)...Sound is provided by Monster cables from the modded (Stereo, Errr probably Dual Mono) 7800 to an Aiwa Boombox...

 

I Love it!

 

 

P.S. Thanks so much Nukey!!! I owe ya a beer!!

Edited by GoldLeader
  • Like 2

Cool responses guys!

 

I went looking for this MM hack because I wanted a version where pushing the fire button would work one side of the flippers and pushing the stick would work the other. I specifically wanted to be able to flip both R&L at the same time - similar to later era pinball games like NES Pinball. While this hack seems to achieve that, I still think that would be a cool hack for a regular joystick user who doesn't want to be bothered to plug in paddles or find a starplex/special controller.

 

I've never played Bumper Bash, but I have a soft spot for Video Pinball because it was one of my family's original games BITD. I still like to play it every once in a while.

  • 5 years later...

Six years later

 

I love this hack!  What a fun way to play MM!  A belated "Thank you!" to the late Nukey Shay for making this!  

 

@ComputerSpaceFan  Are you still around?  I just watched your video on Youtube.  Great demo and explanation about this hack!  Thanks!  

Edited by Living Room Arcade
On 2/20/2024 at 8:46 PM, Living Room Arcade said:

Six years later

 

I love this hack!  What a fun way to play MM!  A belated "Thank you!" to the late Nukey Shay for making this!  

 

@ComputerSpaceFan  Are you still around?  I just watched your video on Youtube.  Great demo and explanation about this hack!  Thanks!  

Yup still here and still loving Nukey's work, he was a great guy.

  • Like 1
On 9/11/2010 at 10:51 AM, ComputerSpaceFan said:

Having played Video Pinball back in the day and not enjoying it, I never paid any attention to Midnight Magic nor Bumper Bash. I just tried Midnight Magic and I am in love! This is awesome pinball, especially for the 2600!

 

My only complaint is using a joystick. I read here someone considered hacking Midnight Magic to allow using the paddle controllers. I know you can control the flippers if you hook up a paddle controller but there is no way to launch the ball (at least not that I can find).

Actually they mention using "the footpedal controller" (whatever that is) and it allowed using paddles and made the game much better. There's even a pic!

 

Does a hack exist to allow paddle control of Midnight Magic that enables you to launch the ball? Or is there a way to do it that I can't find? I even tried hooking up a joystick to Player 2 but that didn't work.

 

http://www.atariage.com/2600/boxes/b_MidnightMagic_Red_front.jpg

To launch the ball, you push the joystick in the downwards direction which pulls the plunger out on the screen, then press the fire button to let go of the plunger. You can control how fast the ball starts out on the table by how long you hold down the joystick. You can also control the flippers either together or separately by how you move the joystick. Pressing left will move only the left flipper, right for right flipper, down for both. It's a clever way to simulate the pinball table. 

I agree that Midnight Magic is a bit better than Video Pinball. More colorful and it has two different songs that it plays: one at the start of the game and another when you run out of balls. 

I am not sure how using a paddle controller would be better. How would you control the plunger with a paddle controller? 

Edited by DarthDuke
  • 2 weeks later...

There are Atari compatible joysticks such as the Hyperkin Trooper 2 that have 2 fire buttons. With the Stella emulator you can set the left button to the left paddle paddle button and ditto for the right. Works great for Bumper Bash. The Hyperkin Trooper 2 also has 4 more buttons. 2 on the front and 2 on the back. Set the left and right top buttons for stick left/right and one of the front buttons to fire and you're set to go with Video Pinball and Midnight Magic.

Or, with a utility such as Joy2Key you can leave the Stella settings mostly default and set up profiles for each of the pinball games. For bumper you will need to assign 2 keyboard keys to the paddle buttons for Joy2Key to trigger. ( I used O & P ) and map the front left button to Fire. This works for Midnight but for Video Pinball you will need to disable the default fire button.

Edited by Strava

When I'm emulating Midnight Magic on my PC with Stella and using the QWERTY keyboard, I like to use left control (under the left shift key) for the left flipper and right control (under the right shift key) for the right flipper.  Since these two keys are a little far apart on the keyboard, it reminds me just a little of placing my hands on either side of a pinball table.  

Edited by Living Room Arcade

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