Pole Position II - Has anyone ever fixed the backwards shifting?

[Atariboy]

I went looking around tonight and came up empty handed, so I thought I'd ask. Is there a hack floating around that remaps shifting so that upshifts are activated by down on the joystick and downshifts by up on the joystick?

 

While 7800 PPII isn't the only offender out there, something like Atari's own Pole Position port on the 2600 (not to mention Atari's cabinets for PP and PPII) is how it generally would've been mapped. That reflects how a real racecar with an inline shifter usually would operate, such as IndyCar for many years after they left H pattern shifters behind before the switch to paddle shifters a few years ago. While I know why Atari set it up backwards (down is mapped to downshifts and so on), that of course still isn't the conventional layout and for a racing game fan it's a minor annoyance to have to shift backwards whenever I revisit this one.

 

At least it's not as bad as a flight game that maps the plane's elevator so that you have to press up to climb and down to descend. I personally would find such a game unplayable.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Atariboy

[NIKON]

I do not believe that a fix was ever made into a physical cart (altho one can be made but highly doubt it)

 

the only way that I have found to do this is in emulation where you can map your controller any way you want...for example I always may the thrust in Asteroids from up on the joystick to an actual button...(a four button controller)  to match the original arcade cabinet which was all buttons  no joystick

[Zonie]

The dual gate shifter in my Camry is forward for up and back for down. Seems fine. Not exactly slapshifting a fourbanger company car though...

[tkarner]

Had an '02 BMW 540 back in the day that had it right. Back to upshift, forward to downshift. A couple years later BMW reversed it. Dealer told me too many people were confused. Next car was a stick shift. Problem solved.

 

But to the original question, it might be easier to just rewire a joystick than hack the game code.

[Zonie]

On 7/20/2023 at 7:41 PM, tkarner said:

Had an '02 BMW 540 back in the day that had it right. Back to upshift, forward to downshift. A couple years later BMW reversed it. Dealer told me too many people were confused. Next car was a stick shift. Problem solved.

 

But to the original question, it might be easier to just rewire a joystick than hack the game code.

Yeah, better to have the third pedal. When you have the choice.