Any games that use two 4-ways ?

[spidermonkey]

Hi all, I seem to remember a couple months ago finding a pretty cool game but in order to play it correctly you needed two 4-way joysticks. I can't remember the name of the game. Perhaps there are a few games that use two 4-ways. Anyone know of any ?

[paigeoliver]

Dual 4-way games.

Karate Champ
Assault (needs a trigger too).
Assault Plus (trigger as well).

4-way simultaneous players games.

Wizard of Wor
Hyper Pac-Man

Almost every puzzle game EVER plays better with a 4-way stick as well. Technically an advanced player can take advantage of some 8-way moves (like moving a Tetris block over while pulling it down fast), but most people don't do that, and the precision of a 4-way can't be beat.

[Brad Lee]

Crazy Climber i think is 2x4way

[NoOne=NBA=]

Crazy Climber's were definitely 8's.
You need to be able to move your hand diagonally when a window is closed.

[TalkingOctopus]

How about Bomberman?  I think that only 4 directions are necessary.

[NoOne=NBA=]

The only game I know that really HAS to have two 4-ways to operate properly (as opposed to just using 8-ways) is Karate Champ.

It gets really messed up if you use 8-ways on it because the moves are based on 4-way only sticks.
When you do Left Stick Left and Right Stick Upper-Left, it doesn't know whether to use the Up or Left on the right stick.
I think it just kind of gives up at that point, and waits until you give it a valid command.

Most of the other games (like Wizard of Wor) do better with a 4-way, but are still easily playable with an 8-way.

[Brad Lee]

Crazy Climber's were definitely 8's.
You need to be able to move your hand diagonally when a window is closed.

Yup, 2 x 8ways on CC, my bad


Battlezone is 2 x 2ways(up-down) but that works fine with 8s cuz diaganols wont confuse it, being no L-R accepted

[paigeoliver]

You also NEED 4-ways for Assault. I have owned a real machine, and played it in Mame with 2x8s and believe me, you NEED 2x4 to play it properly.

[spidermonkey]

Dammit, No wonder I suck at Assault. Both in MAME AND on the Namco Museum compilation. . It never was an easy game to begin with but I don't remember it being that hard to control in the arcades. Now I know why. . Man, I just keep finding more reasons to replace my 8-ways with either the T-Stick plus or the Omni Sticks. Its just a pain in the --I'm attempting to get by the auto-censor and should be beaten after I re-read the rules-- to pop open my cp and switch actuators just for a couple games. I do have a Wico ded. 4-way on my cp but only one and its not in a spot where I would be able to put another one across from it. I really need a couple of 4-way Happ tulip sticks if I want to play Assault so I guess I'll be building three switchable panels for my 2nd cab. . So many controls and never enough space.

[StLouisRod]

To all of you Mamer's who think they need a 4-way joystick to play those games properly, just do the following:

Pull up the 4-way game in Mame.  Press TAB to bring up the INPUT menu.  Go to Input (this game) and select it.  Then scroll down to the P1 UP and press enter.  It will wait for your keypress.  Hit UP,RIGHT,RIGHT,UP in fairly quick succession.  Pause for 5 seconds. Then press enter again, and hit UP,LEFT,LEFT,UP in fairly quick succession.  This will make UP = UP not (RIGHT and UP) or UP not (LEFT and UP).  Then do the same thing for the other 3 directions.  All done!

With this setup, my Happ Competitions play Pacman, Donkey Kong, etc. even BETTER than in the arcade IMHO.  

So... no need for 4-way/8-way switchers.  Instead, just send me the $$$ you saved by not buying a new joystick!  I take money orders, cashier's checks, and PayPal  

Rod.
www.virtuacade.com

[paigeoliver]

Those tricks are common knowledge Rod, and do work "OK" with some sticks, but not with all (depending on how large the diagonal areas are). You see doing that creates a rather large "dead zone" on your controls.

While a real 4-way stick has no real dead zone and moves directly to up from right, and etc.

One trick that a programmer friend showed me (that I have never seen mentioned here) that can be done to get pretty decent 4-way action out of an 8-way Wico is this (works with any stick that has a perfectly circular 360 degree range of motion)

Mount the 8-way stick at angle so that UP isn't centered on any of the directions and instead is smack in the middle of UP and LEFT-UP. Then you can go through the rather complicated software control setup of setting up as UP or LEFT UP (and then NOT left, not up right) for each direction. This creates a controller that does do 4-ways with no dead zones. Although it is a whole lot of trouble and the results still aren't as good as a true 4-way stick, which will have a diamond shaped restrictor to guide you to the primary directions.

[StLouisRod]

Those tricks are common knowledge Rod, and do work "OK" with some sticks, but not with all (depending on how large the diagonal areas are). You see doing that creates a rather large "dead zone" on your controls.

While a real 4-way stick has no real dead zone and moves directly to up from right, and etc.

One trick that a programmer friend showed me (that I have never seen mentioned here) that can be done to get pretty decent 4-way action out of an 8-way Wico is this (works with any stick that has a perfectly circular 360 degree range of motion)

Mount the 8-way stick at angle so that UP isn't centered on any of the directions and instead is smack in the middle of UP and LEFT-UP. Then you can go through the rather complicated software control setup of setting up as UP or LEFT UP (and then NOT left, not up right) for each direction. This creates a controller that does do 4-ways with no dead zones. Although it is a whole lot of trouble and the results still aren't as good as a true 4-way stick, which will have a diamond shaped restrictor to guide you to the primary directions.

Hmmm... interesting concept, Paige.  In fact, I have my player 3 and 4 sticks mounted at 45 degree angles that would be a perfect test of your theory.  I'll try it tonight and report back soon.

But I must reiterate that I played the heck out of MsPacman, Donkey Kong, Kong Jr., etc. last night using the 4-way setup I described, and I NEVER detected a dead spot, missed move, or anything.  In fact, I was kicking major butt on the super-speed hack of MsPacman which requires even more precise movements than the standard slow version!

But you make a good point... results will vary with your brand of 8-way stick  .

[NoOne=NBA=]

I tried Rod's trick awhile back with my competitions.
I didn't notice ANY difference between the factory UP=UP setting, and UP=UP(not UP-RIGHT not UP-Left).
Once the stick left the TRUE UP position it went dead in both instances until it was returned to TRUE UP.
When the stick gets an UP-RIGHT signal, it sends NOTHING to the program because UP-RIGHT does not equal UP, and also does not equal RIGHT.

Paige,
If you are going to turn the stick anyway, why wouldn't you just turn the stick to a true 45, and use UP=UP-RIGHT, LEFT=UP-LEFT, DOWN=DOWN-LEFT and RIGHT=DOWN-RIGHT like a turned QBert controller?
That would give you a controller that would guide to the corners, creating a 4-way restricted controller.

I actually tried that with a competition, but didn't like the throw on it.
It does do a perfect guided 4-way though.
I think I may try it with the modified super I've got because I restricted the throw so that it stops as soon as the buttons depress.

[StLouisRod]

Well, Paige, you were right.  It turns out my results were so good because I recently installed and have been using a Happs TopFire 8-way joystick.  It has slightly different contact locations than my traditional Happ Competition joysticks, and just plain works better for 4-way games.  So assigning the directions as I detailed above didn't really improve it all that much.  The joystick does very well in pure 8-way assignment.  And when my input assignment is applied to my competition.... well, it's lipstick on a pig.  It didn't improve things much.  Sooooo.... I'll be buying a T-stick+ soon and trying out it's 4-way/8-way switching and see how that does.  

[NoOne=NBA=]

I'll be buying a T-stick+ soon and trying out it's 4-way/8-way switching and see how that does.  

I'm getting TWO--one for each hand.
Player 2 can deal with the Competitions.