Play JAMMA Cabinet with Playstation Controllers

[MonMotha]

For those who have played Tekken 5 on a machine with a playstation controller using the port on the back side of the CP, you know what I'm talking about.  Somebody asked me a while back to design a little device that lets you play JAMMA games in a cabinet using playstation controllers.  The cabinet controls are still functional, and the two inputs can be used however the player pleases.

The idea is that the board plugs inline with the cabinet's JAMMA harness (easy installation).  You can then arbitrarily map playstation buttons to cabinet buttons/joystick inputs (any psx button can map to any number of cp buttons, and vice versa - the D-Pad and Joysticks are just the same as buttons and can be mapped any way you like), so you can taylor the playstation controller to the game.  4 or 8 (current hardware/firmware rev is 4, next rev will be button maps can be stored, and reprogrammed at any time.

I'm trying to gauge interest in this.  If a sufficient number of people are interested, I'd be happy to sell the adapter.  I've got the kinks worked out at this point, and I've tested the board with a number of games (TMNT, Blitz, MK2, NBA Jam TE), and the person who originally was interested has also had great success.  Price of the board is currently uncertain due to potentially low volume.  I'll have more info as far as price if and when there is sufficient interest.

I guess post here for commentary or PM me if you have any personal questions.  I'm pretty flexible in terms of development.  If a few people need it to do something that's reasonable, I'll see if I can incorporate that feature.  I'm between hardware revs right now, so adding features is doable.

I do apologize if this isn't in the right place.  It doesn't seem appropriate for BST since it's not actually for sale yet, and this isn't a hardware review, either.

[AlanS17]

What would be the advantage over using the regular control panel?

[deadkenndys1105]

I play better on the normal controls anyways.  I could see why someone would want a usb port in there mame cabinet to transfer new games but playing arcade game with a controler seems to much like playing at best buy.

[MonMotha]

I agree - give me hard lever microswitch based joysticks and clicky buttons any day, but I know some people like to play on console controllers.  I guess they get used to them from home versions and want to take that with them to the arcade.  I can also think of possibly people using specialized controllers (not just dualshocks) that happen to have a playstation interface.  This clearly is not intended for a MAME setup as there are already plenty of options for hooking playstation (and other) controls up to a PC for such a thing, but rather cabinets running the real deal hardware for some of the recent fighters especially.

Obviously some people use it if it's on Teken 5, and I've had a request to make it for other games.  I figured there probably wouldn't be much general interest, but since I've already got it developed, I figured why not.