Jakks Ms. Pac Man Joystick Question

[bishmasterb]

I'm planning on building a Ms. Pac Man cabinet based on the Jakks TVGames unit. Has anyone found a suitable replacement for the twisting joystick that comes with the unit and enables Pole Position steering?

If there is no such joystick that will work, is there a separate wheel/spinner control that might be compatible with the method (twisting, instead of spinning) that the Jakks joystick uses?

I don't want to use the Jakks joystick as it obviously is of inferior quality, and wouldn't last long mounted to wood anyhow.

Thanks in advance.

[knave]

Somewhere I think I read that someone used a rotary joystick like the ones used on:

 Bermuda Triangle, Guerilla War, Ikari Warriors, Midnight Resistance, Time Soldier, T.N.K. III, etc...

The tricky part is fitting a 4-way restrictor.

Or you can do what Markvp did: and use a standard joystick and the modified pot from the jakks unit for stearing in Pole Position.

either way check out that thread it has lots of good jacks hacking info.

I'm working on a Jakks Arcade gold hack myself.

[mcfreak]

It's a standard POT based spinner with springs that re-center it if you let go.  I used a standard 4 way and then wired up the POT and used a hacksaw on the shaft to make it flush.  I still need to take a picture of that part of the control panel but it worked great.

[deadpool18]

For the hacksaw mod, what did you use for the top?  Is there a spinner top that will fit? I'm really interested to see what others did to address the pole position control.  If I made one, I'd like to reuse the joystick for pole position, but have a separate joystick for the other games.

[MinerAl]

I used dry ice and a hammer to remove the previous ball... left a nice cross hatched end on the shaft for my steering wheel.  I took a children's driving toy and used two part epoxy to make the wheel's center permanently mate to the shaft.  Took the kids two years to finally yank it off, and some super glue had it back on the same day...

I think MarkRVP used a regular spinner top with a set screw.  His thread in Project Announcements has the details.