As Twitter starts to slowly collapse I'm realizing I have a lot of projects I've documented there, and well, nowhere else. That seems dumb. This is a project from 2021, my friend Kyle helped me figure out all the wiring for this one.
Background: SNK Neo Geo games use (up to) 4 buttons for games, but depending on the game—especially different fighting games—people have different preferred button layouts. Japanese game centers will often put their Neo Geo games in cabs with Street Fighter style 6 button layouts and then give players selectors for picking different layouts.
This was our attempt at copying that idea.
It started with a repro control panel for my Neo Candy 29, which—being a native Neo Geo cab—normally has a single arced 4 button layout. I had the reproduction made with 6 buttons per player. Then I can use it for Street Fighter etc if I want, but for this case I'm only using 5 buttons and putting a plug in the extra hole.
Then I drilled out holes for the rotary switches and 3D printed some knobs and added a decal:
Each player can independently use their own knob to change the layout they prefer.
The key is printed on the cab, looks like this:
How does it work you ask? Lots of wires!
No digital trickery, good old fashioned rotary contact switches in stacks and lots of wiring. Old school but effective!
These are the switches we used:
Background: SNK Neo Geo games use (up to) 4 buttons for games, but depending on the game—especially different fighting games—people have different preferred button layouts. Japanese game centers will often put their Neo Geo games in cabs with Street Fighter style 6 button layouts and then give players selectors for picking different layouts.
This was our attempt at copying that idea.
It started with a repro control panel for my Neo Candy 29, which—being a native Neo Geo cab—normally has a single arced 4 button layout. I had the reproduction made with 6 buttons per player. Then I can use it for Street Fighter etc if I want, but for this case I'm only using 5 buttons and putting a plug in the extra hole.
Then I drilled out holes for the rotary switches and 3D printed some knobs and added a decal:
Each player can independently use their own knob to change the layout they prefer.
The key is printed on the cab, looks like this:
How does it work you ask? Lots of wires!
No digital trickery, good old fashioned rotary contact switches in stacks and lots of wiring. Old school but effective!
These are the switches we used:
