{"id":1217,"date":"2016-12-06T16:32:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T21:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2017-01-03T16:54:20","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T21:54:20","slug":"a-jedi-makes-his-own-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1217\/a-jedi-makes-his-own-weapon","title":{"rendered":"A Jedi Builds His Own Weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/benj_homemade_joystick_large.jpg\"><img src='\/wp-content\/benj_homemade_joystick_large.jpg' class=\"centered shadow\" width=\"420\" alt='Benj's Homemade Atari Joystick with Arcade Parts' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been playing around with making my own custom joysticks recently.  Just yesterday, I built this Atari VCS-compatible unit you see above using a Sanwa arcade joystick assembly and two Sanwa arcade buttons, both of which are available on Amazon.<\/p>\n<p>I also used an old Bud project box from my late father&#8217;s things for the housing, some screw-in rubber feet on the base, a cord from a non-working Atari CX40 joystick, and some scrap steel inside to give the stick more weight and heft.<\/p>\n<p>I built it mostly so I could have a 4-way only joystick for maze games on the Atari 800.  (The Sanwa joystick is switchable between 4-way and 8-way upon installation.) The result is absolutely incredible either handheld or set on a table, and my high score in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atarimania.com\/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-nibbler_3694.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Nibbler<\/em><\/a> has gone through the roof.<\/p>\n<p>On this joystick, both buttons do the same thing, although my next Atari model will probably have three buttons &#8212; one for fire, one for up, and one for down so I can play <em>Asteroids<\/em> on the 800 like a pro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,9],"tags":[1437,869,1434,170,500,168,1431,1435,595,1430,1433,1432,1436],"class_list":["post-1217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-video-game-projects","category-retrogaming","tag-amazon","tag-arcade","tag-asteroids","tag-atari","tag-atari-2600","tag-atari-800","tag-custom-joystick","tag-cx40","tag-dad","tag-joystick","tag-nibbler","tag-projects","tag-sanwa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}