Arcade Trackball w/ vintage or new Atari/Happ style equipment in MAME

[cab-dustycloset]

Always want to play Centipede, Marble Madness, Missile Command and other Arcade legacy games in the 80's like equipment?

 

I started building an Arcade Spinner from ideas from YouTube, and was able to play Atari Tempest like in the Arcade.

I always wondered about a Trackball, if it was possible without going top dollar from Ultimarc or SuzoHapp.

I was able to source a 3" Trackball from RetroArcade.us (non P/S 2 model $20-30 cheaper) through Amazon,

and revised my code to work with an Android micro-controller. It was a fun little project.

 

 

 

If there are any other Adventurous Gamers out there and a little handy with their hands, I have a Github page walking you through the process.

 https://craigb-spinner.github.io/Arcade-Trackball/

I have various code configurations with 10 Buttons, or stripped down to NO Buttons.

Yes, just the Trackball acting like a USB mouse in MAME. (RetroPie or PC)

I sourced box parts from a local surplus store and century old wood from my parents basement. Electrical/Electronics from local surplus store, and remaining Electronics store and finally Amazon.

 

The Trackball works great in RetroPie!!!

Game On!

 

Craig

[MrMaddog]

Yeah you can use the trackball for more than just trackball games.  Not only you can map the mouse(trackball) to use as a spinner, but you can also map the joystick in four directions so it's like using the 2600 TrakBall controller.

 

 

[cab-dustycloset]

2600/800 Trackball had two modes Joystick and Trackball. If the game was coded to use trackball movement then it would have variable speed, otherwise it worked like a joystick with fixed speed movement. It was just a little more intuitive to use. I think only Missile Command for 400/800 had the trackball option coded.

When playing Arcade games, Trackball games work best using original input devices and not always joystick or buttons as substitute. You need to train the Hand-Eye link to the brain. I've heard that at some competition fight event that a competitor used a steering wheel as his Fight Stick; weird.