by AArdvark » Sat Jun 19, 2010 9:30 am
Well, An acquaintance of mine was leaving for the Army and he offloaded a bunch of Commodore stuff, including six or seven carts. One of the titles being Defender. Now I had played Defender in the local pizza joint and the best thing about the game was the unlimited fire amount. In Galaxian and Space Invaders player one could only fire one shot at a time. Galaga was slightly better with the ability to fire two shots at a time. But with defender, a player could fire as many times as they could hammer on the button! And the shots in question travel faster. Now we're talking some video game! My problem was that I couldn't hardly mash on the fire button as much as I wanted. Remember, this is before anyone sold autofire options on their joysticks.
Being of a mechanical turn of mind and with the help of an Erector set that I had kicking around since I was twelve or so, I proceded to construct my own custom joystick. The best one I had was the Slicstick pictured above so I set out to improve it.
Taking the joystick apart revealed that the bottom end of the handle was a metal ball with a wire clipped to it. The ball was then set into a molded plastic square (in the bottom half of the unit) with metal tabs clipped on all four sides. moving the stick brought the metal ball in contact with one of the square sides, thusly moving Jumpman away from any dangers.
The first thing I did was to rip out all the wires. Then I cut away the molded plastic square with my hot knife (and elbow grease) so the ball could move freely. I procured five micro switches from my store of random electrical parts conveniently stored in a shoebox. I arranged the switches so the triggers would just touch the metal ball in the center position and secured them with hot glue. The fire button was mounted on the outside of the housing; not the best looking thing but it was more comfortable, really. I then screwed all the switches down to protect against any aggressive gaming which I have been known to do. A simple rewiring job and the project was complete (somewhat) Now the joystick played like a dream, with instant on/off, you could turn Pac-man on a dime or kick serious ass in Raid On Bungling Bay. ( I rocked on Wizball!) Now there was no more hitting the button but not making contact and losing a life because of it anymore.
One of drawbacks was the inability to fire as fast as I wanted to while playing Defender. To remedy this I took the motor and battery case from my erector set. I made an interesting looking motor harness and screwed that down to the joystick on the left side about halfway down. The batteries went on the bottom. It made it difficult to hold the stick now, but I wanted function over form! I attached four plastic pieces of erector set rails to the motor so that when the motor was on, the plastic ends would slap down on the fire button as they went by. I put the motor button on the front of the stick, just under the regular fire button, sort of like a trigger pull.
Now the stick acted like a machine gun when I pulled the button! It wasn't balanced very well and would shake quite a bit when held on full-auto so I learned to give it short bursts, just like they tell you to in Halo. You had to be careful playing because the flying plastic flaps had a tendency to hit you on the arm or leg, especially when I was trying to hold it steady.
Turns out that rapid fire is not the best way to get really high scores on Defender, it's all about ship control, something that I really never learned, But did I have fun building my own custom frankenstick!
THE
NOW I WISH I HAD
TAKEN PIX
AARDVRK
Well, An acquaintance of mine was leaving for the Army and he offloaded a bunch of Commodore stuff, including six or seven carts. One of the titles being Defender. Now I had played Defender in the local pizza joint and the best thing about the game was the unlimited fire amount. In Galaxian and Space Invaders player one could only fire one shot at a time. Galaga was slightly better with the ability to fire two shots at a time. But with defender, a player could fire as many times as they could hammer on the button! And the shots in question travel faster. Now we're talking some video game! My problem was that I couldn't hardly mash on the fire button as much as I wanted. Remember, this is before anyone sold autofire options on their joysticks.
Being of a mechanical turn of mind and with the help of an Erector set that I had kicking around since I was twelve or so, I proceded to construct my own custom joystick. The best one I had was the Slicstick pictured above so I set out to improve it.
Taking the joystick apart revealed that the bottom end of the handle was a metal ball with a wire clipped to it. The ball was then set into a molded plastic square (in the bottom half of the unit) with metal tabs clipped on all four sides. moving the stick brought the metal ball in contact with one of the square sides, thusly moving Jumpman away from any dangers.
The first thing I did was to rip out all the wires. Then I cut away the molded plastic square with my hot knife (and elbow grease) so the ball could move freely. I procured five micro switches from my store of random electrical parts conveniently stored in a shoebox. I arranged the switches so the triggers would just touch the metal ball in the center position and secured them with hot glue. The fire button was mounted on the outside of the housing; not the best looking thing but it was more comfortable, really. I then screwed all the switches down to protect against any aggressive gaming which I have been known to do. A simple rewiring job and the project was complete (somewhat) Now the joystick played like a dream, with instant on/off, you could turn Pac-man on a dime or kick serious ass in Raid On Bungling Bay. ( I rocked on Wizball!) Now there was no more hitting the button but not making contact and losing a life because of it anymore.
One of drawbacks was the inability to fire as fast as I wanted to while playing Defender. To remedy this I took the motor and battery case from my erector set. I made an interesting looking motor harness and screwed that down to the joystick on the left side about halfway down. The batteries went on the bottom. It made it difficult to hold the stick now, but I wanted function over form! I attached four plastic pieces of erector set rails to the motor so that when the motor was on, the plastic ends would slap down on the fire button as they went by. I put the motor button on the front of the stick, just under the regular fire button, sort of like a trigger pull.
Now the stick acted like a machine gun when I pulled the button! It wasn't balanced very well and would shake quite a bit when held on full-auto so I learned to give it short bursts, just like they tell you to in Halo. You had to be careful playing because the flying plastic flaps had a tendency to hit you on the arm or leg, especially when I was trying to hold it steady.
Turns out that rapid fire is not the best way to get really high scores on Defender, it's all about ship control, something that I really never learned, But did I have fun building my own custom frankenstick!
THE
NOW I WISH I HAD
TAKEN PIX
AARDVRK