[allenu]

Controllers are surprisingly super easy to work with and a good gateway to some basic electronics hacking.

I've actually gone the opposite direction from this post. I have a Neo Geo arcade board (JAMMA) and it has plugs for Neo Geo controllers (as in the controllers for the console version of the Neo Geo). I wanted to use the Neo Geo without plugging it into an arcade cabinet, so I got a "Supergun" board to play it on an RGB monitor. However, I didn't have a controller for it.

I noticed that there was an emulator-based "Neo Geo X" system out in the wild and you could purchase a controller accessory on its own, so I got one, not realizing it was purely a USB controller in the shape of the original Neo Geo ones, but no problem. I bought a Neo Geo controller cable and just desoldered the button to USB connections inside the controller and connected them directly to the Neo Geo controller cable. Worked like a charm!

[vikingerik]

And I'll add my controller hacking as well:

https://imgur.com/a/Mu43dqg

As a poor college student, I home-built a dance pad for Dance Dance Revolution, out of wood and foil and by soldering the connections into a controller. Worked perfectly!

[rahimnathwani]

I love this.

It probably worked better than a cheap 'soft' pad.

[RockRobotRock]

Yes! Soft pads are the worst.

[allenu]

Well done and good job using what looks like a cheap controller and aluminum foil to keep costs down. :)

[qiqitori]

A while ago I was a little into controller hardware hacking and did almost the same thing but for an MSX! Even wrote a blog entry, but unfortunately in Japanese (with pictures though): https://blog.qiqitori.com/2022/09/%E6%9D%90%E6%96%99%E8%B2%B...

And one year later I also used a Raspberry Pi Pico to convert a USB controller's signals to MSX: https://blog.qiqitori.com/2023/09/using-a-usb-hid-game-contr...

(And later, USB controller to Nintendo Switch, https://blog.qiqitori.com/2023/09/playing-on-the-nintendo-sw...)

[ansible]

Yes. I got my start, back in the day, following along a magazine article on modifying an Atari 2600 joystick for use with the Tandy Color computer. Worked fairly well too, though I ended up modifying my Galaxian arcade game clone to work with it.