Two Bards: The Forum!

Much as we all love the standard gamepad, there's tons more controller styles out there, and people continue to make new ones. This thread is for discussing non-standard game controllers. Inspired by this one, a new knob controller for the Genesis:

I'm really in the market for a good spinner for MiSTer. Arknoid isn't good without a spinner. Centipede and the like. Zaxxon. There are so many great games on there that just don't work well with a directional controller. Thanks for the share!

Here's the current gold standard in retro gaming:

https://www.icode.com/product/icode-arc ... ontroller/

They have been out of stock for ages, so seeing them doing preorder batches is awesome.

Gold standard indeed! That's arcade stick money! Have you used one of them? How's the tactility?

It's nice and 'heavy.' If that makes sense. Feels very 'cabinet' versus light and plasticy. A lot of them just feel like mid range volume knobs. The icode has that arcade heft to it. Which is totally just a tactile thing. But overall, they are very well made. I used one on a MAME machine a few...jesus...a DECADE ago?!! Almost.

Man, that's tempting. Thankfully I have other gadgets I want more, but it's going to stick in my brain until I cave or something cheaper comes out.

Or get a really wild hair and decide to make your own. Hehe.

Soldering is the most dangerous thing I could learn. Not because of the risk of fire or injury, but because of the risk to my project queue

Someone's made an adapter for using the Wii U Gamepad with PCs!

Here's a silly one:

Okay, so sometimes custom controllers go too far

https://www.tomshardware.com/peripheral ... -abilities

Leak suggests the Steam Controller is going to be $99. I'd been planning on picking one up to experiment with, but if that's what they cost, I'll try to get my hands on one for a bit before buying one myself.

https://www.tomshardware.com/peripheral ... o-joy-cons

A one-handed, ambidextrous game controller prototype: https://www.tomshardware.com/peripheral ... n-accident

It's explicitly for people who don't have (or can't use) one of their hands, but like so many accessibility devices, could be useful for everyone. We'll see if it gets the funding it needs to continue development.

RivalGuy wrote: Sat Apr 25, 2026 2:30 pm Leak suggests the Steam Controller is going to be $99. I'd been planning on picking one up to experiment with, but if that's what they cost, I'll try to get my hands on one for a bit before buying one myself.

https://www.tomshardware.com/peripheral ... o-joy-cons

Sure enough, Valve has confirmed it goes on sale for $99 on May 4th. One of the bizarre things is that there aren't Windows drivers for it; you need to launch games through Steam. So if you use it without Steam, Windows and Playstation will treat it as a mouse and keyboard combo input, although Linux recognizes it as a gamepad. Apparently Valve was able to write a kernel level driver for Linux, but wasn't willing to do so for Windows.

Which struck me as an odd excuse. Shouldn't they just be able to use the default Windows HID drivers?

Valve has released CAD files for the Steam Controller: https://www.tomshardware.com/peripheral ... the-device

Hoping this leads to the 3D printing community coming up with cool and useful accessories!

This is cute:
https://fxbsky.app/profile/wario64.bsky ... oyh34myc2w