Any reason you were too lazy to put a link in your post? Especially after you added an 'e' at the end of custom? :P


Can't say I'm personally interested in gutting a 360 controller for the sake of painting it (or using the controller at all, really), but my favorite place to go when gutting controllers is lizardlick. Even that... ahem... craftsmanship can be made into an excellent arcade-quality controller with a case, a little soldering, a few other simple tools (multimeter isn't required, but it helps!), and some nice Sanwa parts.

Oh, and then you can paint that, too. ;)

Actually, guess it was fatigue, sorry:)

What I really want is to find a place that shoved a PS3 controller into an XBox 360 Controller casing and is selling it. The 360 controller fits my hands so much better than the PS3 one.

Thanks for the suggestion. I was wondering if you've noticed anywhere if they have a way to improve the D-pad? I've seen some instructions before where someone put some plastic under the pad. They said it helped a lot, but was quite clicky. Maybe too clicky for some people.

I've never actually taken one apart though. They try to make it so hard to do.

Nice and handy. With the original Xbox, I did this sort of thing. Pulled apart the console, cleaned the paint off of the green jewel / circle on top to make it transparent, and put LED lights inside. Also did the same with some of the buttons on the controller. That was fun.

Oh, turning it into an arcade stick will make it awfully clicky, which you may or may not appreciate, but if you want to fix the d-pad... well, perhaps you might consider "arcade-quality" to be overkill. XD

The less extreme option, I suppose, would be one of those fight pads they make for the 360 and PS3. It has a clicky thumb-stick, very much like the stick used for the Neo Geo Pocket Color (which was one of the best things about the NGPC).

I think the instructions I saw cut a Pringles lid to match the pad and stuck that under the pad. The reason why I would like a better D-pad is for using JoyToKey with a 360 controller to play indie games and emulated retro games. I would still want the analog sticks for other reasons.

I haven't ever tried an arcade stick. I might love it. How do you like using them for general gaming?

I've always wanted to try MAME. I'm just not very knowledgeable about this kind of stuff so I just don't try it. I feel like I'll get overwhelmed. I've got so much other shit to do already that I just don't know if I want to take the time.

You know all those gameshops that people seem to love to hate because they sell used games? I wish they would do some of these custom jobs. There must be some legal reasons why they don't.

Gamestop does sell Gamestop branded controllers and such, they're just generally of poor quality. I don't think Gamestop wants to build a supply chain that can distribute custom, higher quality stuff, a large portion of their customer base can't (or won't) afford them (over an extra game, anyway), kids mostly, and the other half are too tired, fathers that want their kids to shut up mostly:)

As for fixing the D-pad I haven't run across anything special on that, I've heard of various "fixes", but nothing will ever satisfy some people. However, the D-pad is removable so if you somehow managed to pick up one of the new XBox 360 controllers with the improved D-pad you might be able to simply put it in an old controller (like if you snaked a broken one from someone who thought it was worthless, MS only warranties controllers for 3 months so it's very easy to get a broken one out of warranty). I don't know for sure if the new-style controllers have a different breadboard in them to support the new D-pad, I'd have to google around for that.

However, if you want to try that Pringles can fix, you're only out a couple of bucks for a Torx 8 driver and a few minutes to try it out, you can pull it right back out if it doesn't work (well, you might need a decent razor blade to get the sticker off the top of the battery compartment screw, if want it in any kind of shape to get it back on, I have one of these anyway so it was no biggie - but you could always shred the thing).

As for MAME, I think there's pre-configured distros that are set up with MAME as the primary function, I wouldn't be too scared to try that out. Wait a couple weeks and someone will probably have MAME running on the 25 USD Raspberry Pi machines.

That sounds a lot like the popular d-pad mod for the PSP. God, I would play my PSP so much more if the d-pad wasn't terrible. I only managed to make my d-pad worse when I tried, so expect your mileage to vary.

As for "general gaming" with an arcade stick? Well, I suppose if you're not used to using an arcade stick, there's a lot of people who never grow to like using them, but at the very least they make 2D fighting games... well... playable, I'd have to say. They're useless for 3D gaming and most PC gaming. Platformers, shmups, fighting games, pretty much anything you'd want to play in an emulator, really, it's brilliant.

Sometimes I prefer to just have a controller in my hand more than anything. It depends on what I'm playing, really. It's the only way to play fighting games and run MAME, though. ;) I'd say it's simple, but really, I guess it's not. MAME roms come zipped up with several files (don't bother unzipping or renaming them), and oftentimes these roms have dependencies, missing files, or are just outright broken in some way. MAME's interface isn't the most user-friendly thing in the world. It's not complicated at all, really. Just more cumbersome than it really needs to be. Thankfully, you can use a version with a GUI like this (click the download at the top, it's in bold above the source code) to make things a good deal easier on yourself.

My advice? Just fuck around with it. It won't explode if you do something wrong, so experiment. Make sure to press F5 when you add new roms to populate the list, keep roms in the roms folder where it's installed, and make sure to have the neogeo bios (neogeo.zip) with your roms if you intend to play anything SNK like Metal Slug and King of Fighters.

Oh, and some companies, like Capcom, SNK, Taito, Data East, Tecmo, IREM, and Atari, for instance, have released arcade compilations (mostly on consoles, but IREM has one on DotEmu), in case you'd like to legally own some of the games you download/support the rights-holders. You don't wish this. I'm one of those people who hate them for a myriad of reasons, but their sale of used games doesn't exactly help the industry. Some game stores have professional machinery for buffing scratches out of discs. The stoned teenagers working there usually don't know the specifics on operating them, however, and I ended up with a number of games that were even less playable than when I brought them in. Of course, these days I have my own PC and do a lot more PC gaming, so that's really a non-issue now.

You might get lucky and find an employee who has a hobby in this sort of thing, but you probably won't. You're much more likely to find a desperate man in his early 30's named Alex, blatantly concerned with some sort of unmet quota, who follows you around the store and spends ten minutes trying to convince you to pre-order some Ghostbusters game you clearly have no interest in. Even if it does come with a shirt. And should you politely say "Eh, I'll think about it", they'll respond with "Don't think about it! Pre-order it!".

They could be held liable for things. Given that they steal pre-orders and sell broken XBoxes while claiming that you already showed up earlier and picked up your pre-order (and that they have it on video footage that they refuse to share and have sent to corporate), and that the used XBox your friend bought for your birthday had, apparently, been opened and tampered with since it left the store, therefore voiding your right to a refund of any kind, there's all sorts of nightmares that could emerge from services like custom work.

You don't want those clowns messing with anything they can potentially steal or destroy. You especially don't want them shipping things off to who knows where, or you're even more likely to never see it again. This is all far more than they're willing to bother with, too. Most of their clientele is kids and their parents. Maybe a niche game store with a more mature customer-base would be good, if those still existed. There's so much room for fuck-ups, I laugh just imagining the potential stories and scenarios people would have to tell. I can't wait to get my Raspberry Pi. It's gonna be so much fun. Is there anybody (technically inclined) who DOESN'T want one? :P

Thanks for the advice. I'm not afraid of taking apart the controller so what the heck, I'll give it a go sometime. MAME on the other hand, I don't know. I might as well just try it sometime too. Usually I can adapt pretty well. If not, I find that trying something to know what to expect and then putting it down and thinking about it for a few months while doing banal things like showering usually gets me prepared.

No, I think we pretty much all want one... or five:)

I'm getting some great advice here. Thanks! You guys have convinced me to try it. I'm usually pretty patient and steadfast with these kind of things once I commit to them.

You may be right about this. I do know of a game store that recently opened up near me though. A local guy opened it up with a couple of his friends. It's not a chain store. I've only bought games from there recently. These guys will talk about any game I can think of. I'll ask them if they do any custom work the next time I'm there.

I know where the owner lives if he wants to pull anything.



Okay, I'm joking. Kind of.