I sold it a few days ago and the  time arrived where I had to prepare to move my Cinematronics Space Ace ready for removal by a courier.  As it happened it was Sunday, 3rd January and I had the motivation to move it. I wasn’t expecting the courier for another week or so.

Time to wiggle it out of its orifice.

For a man of my stature, that was knackering!

Well, being as I’ve finished mifligating it, I have to test it obviously. You know… just one go…

So that was that, until Monday morning… when the phone rang… and the courier was on the other end… “You have until 3.00pm to pack the machine, we’re coming for it”, they said. “But I only get an hour  at most for my dinner”, I said. “Tough”, they said. “Gulp”, I said

12.00! Time to panic! Time to Pack! More haste, less speed!

It’s ready! Ciao!

So to recap, it’s just after Christmas 2004 and there I was with a piece of smashed up wood in my front room and all I could do was play the Space Ace laserdisc on a separate player.

A couple of days went by and I started to rebuild the thing, my intention was simply to get it working. So the first thing I did was take everything out of the cabinet, lay the cabinet on its side and jump up and down on it. I managed to sqeeze it back together by about half a centimetre, but that’s all. It seemed more solid than before I jumped up and down on it though. I stood the cabinet back up again.

I then connected the laserdisc player to my normal TV to check if it worked. There was a problem, for some reason it wouldn’t spin up. I had it connected to the step down transformer that runs my other laserdisc player, so opened up the ld player and checked the fuse, I couldn’t tell if it was blown or not so I got another one I had lying around, it was slightly bigger ampage but what the hey it’d be ok. Except it wasn’t, still nothing happened. So I had another idea, which with hind-site I realise was possibly not the best idea I have ever had, I got a piece of 30 amp fuse wire and wrapped it between the fuse points because, I thought, there’s no way that will blow. And to be fair I was right, it didn’t blow, but it did blow my step down transformer! So now I had no way to test it. I thought about it a while and then realised I could plug it into the cabinet and power it up from there.

I had checked with a few people about the PSU in the cabinet and it was indeed switchable from 110v to 220v. So with a flick of a switch the cab was ready for the UK. I switched on the cab and it made a “ding” noise which signified that there was a problem but at least power was flowing.

I then made a second decision, which, again with hind-site, was possibly not the best I have ever made. I had been told that the laserdisc player had to run off the power supply that ran to the light bulb inside the cab. A quick inspection revealed the light socket to be near the power input of the cabinet. A quick bit of “wire cutting and twisting later” and the laserdisc power lead was attached. So I was all set to go, the laserdisc was now powered off the light socket which was powered off the 110v PSU.

Now I’m not a laserdisc expert, but when I heard the crackle, smelt the melting and witnessed the mini nuclear bomb style plume of smoke, I figured that something wasn’t quite right. As fast as I could I switched off the cabinet and examined the damage. I couldn’t see anything wrong but I new in my heart that the laserdisc player was dead.

It turned out that the light socket I had used shouldn’t have been there, it was simply a light added by someone at some time to illuminate the inside of the cabinet when working inside it the light that people were referring to was the marquee light (the bit at the top of the cabinet that has the Space Ace logo). Basically I realised that the light I had used was not driven from the cabinet PSU, it was driven from a direct input off the mains supply, i.e. I rammed 240 volts into it. In short, that is a bad thing to do and I highly recommend you don’t do it yourself! I switched on the cabinet to see if it was ok, nada, nowt, zero.

So now I had blown everything including my step down, the LD and the cabinet PSU! After resigning myself to the fact that I might never get it to work I spoke with a few people on the DLP discussion board and after a few posts of encouragement I set to it again. Taking some advice I went to Maplin and bought myself some new fuses of the correct ampage for the step down, cabinet and laserdisc. I also bought an extremely useful device called a multimeter, I should probably have invested the £4.99 far earlier. The multimeter is a simple device that allows you to stick two pieces of metal against electrical wiring and it tells you what voltage is there. You can test anything with them including the mains plug sockets.

I replaced the fuse in the step down and checked the output voltage, 110v. Bingo!, I replaced the fuse in the cabinet, crossed my fingers, switched it on and bingo, 110v, I plugged a fuse into the laserdisc player, plugged it into the step down and … nothing. bugger. I decided the laserdisc was dead and put it in the loft.
After making some enquiries I found out that a chap in London had imported a load of LD players that I could use, but they weren’t the original ones that came with the cabinet. Because of that I had to buy a converter that interfaced between the laserdisc communications input and the space ace electronics. I might as well mention that industrial laserdisc players have communications inputs into them (using rs232) that allow them to be controlled by external sources, such as arcade games.

As it happened I was going to London to work so I arranged to buy one of the laserdisc players off this very helpful chap. I went to his house, which actually was Heaven… It wasn’t a house, it was a Mission Control beyond anything comparable on Earth and in it was everything Space Ace or Dragon’s Lair that you could imagine. I won’t go any further but believe me this is the best games room anywhere in the universe.

You don’t believe me do you? well, have a look here and marvel at Finny’s room, that’s where I was and can you see those LD players racked up? It was one of those that I bought.

Are you back yet? Told you it was the best room ever! I simply refer to it as Heaven. Anyway Finny also lent me a converter while mine came and I could continue.

A little soldering and the converter was installed, I didn’t have to but I soldered the power for it up to the cabinet PSU because the power adapter that came with it didn’t work. I then removed the wires from the marquee light and connected them to the laserdisc power cable, needless to say I checked the voltage this time, 110v bingo. I plugged the power into the laserdisc, the laserdisc into the converter and the laserdisc AV and sound output to a normal tv, it looked a bit like a spiders web of wires around the room. I crossed my fingers fired up the cabinet, I hadn’t actually tested it with the innards connected up properly, I heard three “dings” which signified that the electronics were working, wahoo! and the laserdisc started to spin. At last!! And then Space Ace appeared on the TV, which I watched again.

Taking hold of the joystick I pressed the credit button, and then start, but nothing happened, the game just played the intro over and over. After yet more investigation and conversations with really helpful people I sussed out that it was probably a duff cable between the laserdisc player and the converter I installed earlier. So I wired up a second cable myself with the specified pin-outs, plugged it in, pressed the relevant buttons again… and BINGO!! the game started.

Picture the scene; the LD player is sat on the floor with cables trailing into the cabinet and my TV. I had positioned the cabinet at 90 degrees to the TV and the cabinet’s cables were running across the floor via a four gang to the wall sockets. Basically my whole room had turned into the Space Ace machine! Anyway, hours of playing later I had a pain in my neck through looking sideways at my TV while playing so I turned it off and went to bed with a great big smile on my face.
So despite all the success I still had two more main problems, a smashed up monitor, no marquee light power and no sound through the cabinet yet. I started on the sound first which just worked when it was all plugged in, so no problems there.

Then the monitor; This was a whole different proposition. After searching eBay and asking a gazillion people it turned out that getting an original monitor in the UK any time soon was a non-option. I had to replace the monitor with something else. I could have bought a newer version of the monitor (a Wells Gardner) but it didn’t have the AV phono input board needed to convert the AV picture from the laserdisc player to the monitor RGB (these boards come with the monitor and are in effect part of the monitor), and to get the right one was going to cost a fair wodge, basically the best part of £400 for a newer monitor.

So I hatched a plan… could I not use a normal PC monitor? I pulled my 19″ monitor off my PC and opened it up. Basically it would have fitted the a cabinet but for the fact that the screws that held it together were in a different place to the holes in the cabinet that the monitor is mounted into. I noticed that the original monitor actually had the same problem but two brackets had been created (one for each side), each brackets had two sets of holes, one that matched the cabinet and one that matched the monitor.

There was another more immediate problem and that was one of picture conversion, as I mentioned the laserdisc player outputs an AV signal (most U.K. TVs have a yellow phono socket on them, that is the AV input) but the monitor obviously takes a D style connector for a VGA signal. I found a product for about £50 that would convert AV (amongst other signals) to a standard monitor output. It sounded like just the thing I needed.

I had a friend who worked in an engineering plant and a quick conversation confirmed that he could have brackets built for me in no time if I could draw what I needed! Wahoo, some luck at last. So I spent hours designing the brackets, making sure I had the measurements checked and triple checked.

So, encouraged by what I had dreamed up I bought the AV converter, plugged it between the monitor and the laserdisc player and it worked a treat. I sat the monitor on the floor behind the Space Ace cabinet so that I could see it when I looked through the front of the cabinet. I plugged the monitor into a normal UK wall socket because it was a UK monitor. Everything was going swimmingly, I could now play for hours and not get a pain in the neck!

After designing the brackets, but before my mate showed up (see next paragraph) I had a go at re-wiring the marquee light, basically I had to run two other wires to it, which I did. I left the wires loose so I could check the voltage. I bent down and reached around the back of the machine to power it up and it was at that point that I realised that something was amiss. You see, when doing projects like this, you don’t want to hear a crackling noise, ever, especially not one accompanied by little fiery particles leaping through the air. Now as beautiful as they are, you don’t want to see them raining down on your head, it isn’t good, trust me. I gave up on the whole idea after that and simply bought a UK strip light that I could plug into the wall, that’s a far safer route!

I then spent hours drawing up the bracket design to scale, I couldn’t put the monitor in the cabinet so I had to do my best to make sure the holes were measured properly and that the metal was cut so that it fit around the monitor properly. I double and triple checked everything and sent them off to my mate. A week or so later he visited my house to play Space Ace in any state he could, he’s as much as a Space Ace fan as I am, and brought the brackets with him. The brackets fitted to the monitor perfectly but I had got the measurements wrong for the cabinet holes, depite hours of checking and re-checking. The holes in the bracket were not lined up with the holes in the cabinet, so the monitor just slid down the cabinet. However we managed to slide a single nail through one of the bracket holes (and the respective cabinet hole) and it stayed up.

Hours we played for!! My Space Ace was finally running. I couldn’t believe it.

All that was left was to put a four gang into the cabinet and plug the cabinet, the monitor, the AV converter and the strip light into it. I re-sited the cabinet and plugged the four gang into another four gang that had individually switched sockets. So now all I have to do is flick one switch and the whole thing powers up.

That’s the end of the Space Ace saga, I guess the question is, “Was it worth it?”. Well, financially it was because (after I got a refund for the packing) it ended up costing me £900 less than the cheapest quote I had had in the U.K, I learned a shit load of stuff about monitors, laserdisc players and multimeters which means that I won’t make the same mistakes next time, I got to visit heaven and meet and talk with some of the friendliest people you could ever know and ultimately I have achieved a dream that I have had since I first dropped 10p into Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace, that dream being “I want one of these in my house one day”. So the answer is, “yes, absolutely!”.

Before I sign off I really would like to point out that getting the Space Ace working really was a country wide effort and so I want to thank:-
- Les for being the person that suffered the agony of unpacking it with me
- My mate, who shall remain named as “my mate” in case I get him into trouble at work, for getting the brackets made
- The bloke that actually made the brackets who I have never met
- Silveruk and Finny from the DLP discussion without whom I would not have been able to get started with fixing it
- and finally the rest of the people a the DLP site for their encouraging words and support

Epilogue: Did you spot the remaining problem? I had no monitor to run on my PC! Luckily Les had one he was throwing out that he gave me!

November, 2004… eBay should be switched off. Well that’s my opinion anyway because it’s solely responsible for a new disease sweeping the world; the “press the button, go on, BIN it, you know you want it, it’s there, just press the button” disease. It’s the ultimate car boot sale. There I was one day, minding my own business, when all of a sudden the urge hit me, but eBay, for once, couldn’t help me. So off to the rest of the interweb I went and posted a couple of messages on a couple of discussion boards thus, “Space Ace wanted”.

I should advise you at this point to go and get yourself a cup of tea or something, and make sure you are sat comfortably, this might take a while to read…
A very helpful chap from the Dragon’s Lair Project discussion board got in touch with me and after a brief exchange of emails said he would keep an eye out for one for me. Two days later an email appeared in my inbox telling me about a Space Ace (SA) that just became available. I went and had a look at the link and noticed it was in the USA.

Now I know about importing games but this was a whole different proposition, importing a whole arcade machine over. The simple fact is though that it costs about £2000 to buy a SA in the UK and this was going for a whole lot less than that. So after viewing a few pictures I made my mind up and bought the game. I agreed to buy the game providing that the seller could keep hold of it for me until I arranged carriage, I would pay straight away though. He agreed and to pay I used Western Union money transfer, that was the last thing that went smoothly…

Maybe it was naive but I expected that door-to-door international freight carriers would know how to ship things, internationally, from one door to another. I had a list of requirements that must be adhered to, the main points being that the machine had to be packed for international travel, that it is delivered to my door from the door in the USA and that once picked up it travels to the U.K., i.e. it must not be stored in a warehouse and finally that it must not, under any circumstances be laid down.

The reasons for my list are simple. Packing it properly will prevent it falling over and getting damaged, I want one company to arrange everything for me as they should know what they are doing better than I, storing it in a warehouse will expose it to cold and damp and if you lie it down the laserdisc player falls out of position and gets damaged.
A week and 6 shipping companies later I still hadn’t managed to find one that could actually ship the machine. None of the door-to-door international freight carriers I approached could ship it! Well, I tell a lie, there was one but I thought it was too expensive and it was going to take over a month to ship. Note that I was arranging this in November 2004.

I had, in my initial batch of enquiries, approached DHL and despite being told I would get a quote and after chasing it loads of times nothing was forthcoming from them. I was pulling my hair out, failing to understand why it was so damned difficult to get any responses from all the companies I approached, this was their business! Weeks later though DHL suddenly responded with a reasonable quote for door-to-door shipping using sea freight with a 9 day turn around. I was a bit worried about my lovely Space Ace spending 9 days at sea, but after a bit of deliberation I started to write an email to DHL accepting the quote.

Uncannily, at that exact same time, an email quote appeared from another shipping company for about the same price but using 3 day Air Freight. This seemed far better to me because the machine would spend less time traveling even though the machine would get cold in the hold. The problem was though that the company were waiting for a final packing quote from America which they should be able to get me in a few hours. So I accepted this quote, as long as the packing quote wasn’t out of whack.
Perhaps I should explain at this point that by now I had learned so much about shipping because of the billion conversations I had had about it with freight companies that I needn’t have bothered getting a door to door service. The freight companies just couldn’t understand that I had a arcade machine and needed it shipping, they wanted me to know the in’s and out’s of everything to do with shipping it. I don’t know, just ship my machine please!!

Anyway, it turns out that there is full container, partial container, air freight, sea freight, non international packing and international packing. On top of that you have to know the meters cubed measurement and the weight of the machine (how the hell am I supposed to weigh an arcade machine!). International packing is very important because it means that the packing company put the machine on a pallet, strap the two together so the machine becomes a part of the pallet, then a box is built around the whole thing by tradesmen so that it can’t be damaged. This method of packing is very expensive but very necessary. This was the type of packing I was waiting for the quote for.

The few hours turned into over a week (by which time, DHL could have almost got the machine to me!). And eventually the packing quote came through. All of this had taken so long that it was getting near to Christmas. The week before Christmas to be exact. The trouble is that as soon as Christmas kicks in it’s difficult to arrange shipping because of holidays etc. I agreed with the company that the machine should be shipped and was assured it would be with me on Christmas Eve. Wahoo, progress at last after 6 weeks of pure hassle.

Except that because of the time delay between the USA and the U.K. the courier couldn’t get the message to the USA end of the arrangement. I tried to intervene but what happened stunned me, the USA packing company said the quote was too dear and were trying to ge a new quote for the packing!! Aggghhhhh!! they came back with a new quote which was actually dearer!!! Time was rolling on and I asked them to just sort it out. The people at the U.K. company were on holiday and things were just getting stupid. The upshot was that it couldn’t be picked up before Christmas after all. I was assured though that it would be picked up on the Monday after Christmas and shipped to the UK before the end of that week! OK, great, at last it’s all sorted!

Christmas came and went and on Monday I got an email from the seller telling me that the machine had been picked up. Remember that the packing quote had been increased? It had been increased because it included the pick up from the customer and for that they would need a tail lift van and a couple of people. Do you think they showed up with a tail-lift van and a couple of drivers? of course they didn’t. Did they take any precautions to prevent it getting damaged when it was in the van? Of course not, they didn’t even bother to strap it in!!

There was nothing I could do though except cross my fingers. I called the USA company to find out which flight the cabinet would be on so I could make sure that someone was in my house to pick it up. This is an important point. The thing is very heavy and there’s no way I could carry it myself. So for all Christmas week I was at home as were my friends and family, any later than that and we were all back at work. In fact I knew that I was away for a full week… The lady in the USA didn’t know which flight it would be on… Excweeze me? You don’t know which flight it’s on? So why have you picked it up from the seller then? Surely you have a flight arranged and you are picking up the machine just in time to take it to the airoplane? Errrr…. no.

The lady told me she’d get back to me with a flight time. Imagine my surprise when the director of the English side of the company called me a short while later. He explained that there weren’t any flights between Christmas and New Year… none… unless I wanted to pay three times the cost! My blood boiled, it turned out that the machine was going to have to spend all of Christmas week in a warehouse, the exact thing I didn’t want to happen. Reluctantly I agreed as long as the machine was packed immediately before it was stored in the warehouse. I now expect my machine to arrive a full week later, AFTER I get back from my week away for work.
Are you still reading this? Have you finished the cup of tea yet? If you have, go and make another one because we are only half way there!

It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day and I should have been playing Space Ace, I decided that sulking was the best answer and started to sulk straight away because I wasn’t going to get the machine for at least another week. But on Thursday that week I received a surprise email from the courier explaining that the machine was in the U.K. and was on a wagon from London to Manchester. I would have the machine by Friday. Wahoo! result. I called on Thursday to check what time it would arrive on Friday…

The customs computer had crashed at the courier, so they couldn’t put it through customs. Which meant that I couldn’t have it delivered until the following week (when I wouldn’t be at home!). So I had a choice. I could either have the machine taken out of the “airport warehouse” and placed in the “courier warehouse” for a week (lord knows the difference) or I could go and get it myself. If I put it in the courier’s warehouse then I definitely wouldn’t get the machine for another week. If I want to get it myself I HAVE to leave it in warehouse storage, and I have 2 days to get it before daily storage charges kick in. So I made the decision to go and pick it up. I agreed with the courier that I would pick it up sometime over the weekend, probably on Saturday (bear in mind it was now 3.00pm on Friday) after hiring a van on Saturday. Ok, everything’s sorted, van booked for Saturday, pick up Saturday morning.

An hour later I got a call off the courier telling me that, actually, the warehouse is only open on Friday night and shuts at 2.00am!! It’s now too late to pull it out of “Airport Warehouse” so unless I can hire a van right away and drive down that evening I would be charged extra storage. So panicking I called just about every van hire company in the area and found only one van. I confirmed specifically that it was 6 foot tall and would hold an arcade machine 6 foot high that can’t be laid down. I finished work and dashed to the van company. I got there just in time, and before I took the van I thought I’d hire a sack barrow to help with moving the cabinet around.
I drove home in the van, waited until the kids went to bed and started, at 7.00pm, my drive to Manchester airport, which in a car doing 70mph non stop takes 2 hours. It was a bit windy as I started off but ended up unbelievable. The van was nearly on two wheels because of the force of the wind on the M62 and the rain made visibility nonexistent. At some points I was doing 20mph on the motorway literally fighting the van to keep it under control. Nothing was getting in the way of my Space Ace though, not now after all this hassle.

I got to the Warehouse at about 10.30pm. The lights were out… oh god no I thought… After banging on the door a chap answered and explained that he had been waiting for me but assumed I wouldn’t make it because of the weather, he was locking up! They didn’t shut at 2.00am they shut at 10.30pm! Anyway he took me through to the warehouse, and there I saw my Space Ace in the corner of the room. I mean I could actually see the Space Ace… ringing any bells yet? There should be a crate around it shouldn’t there? I should only be able to see wood….

I got close to the machine. Where are the straps I asked? There are none said the bloke. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I paid £400 for packing and the machine had been wrapped in one layer of cellophane and rested, unfastened, on an “egg box” type pallet, so it rocked slightly from left to right. Now I don’t know much about airoplanes but I do know they tilt backwards to take off.

I looked at the cellophane and there were puncture marks in it, and they went straight into the wood! The plexi-glass had fell off somehow and the receipt that had been taped to the outside of it was now on the inside! that means the plexi had been removed and put back the wrong way around.. I was fuming, the unit had been damaged considerably.

I was tired though and just wanted to get home. The chap fork lifted the cabinet to the van. It was at that point that we realised that the inside of the van was over 6ft high, but the door was a pull down type that rolled up, and so the hole to get into the van was about 5 feet high. It meant I couldn’t fit the machine in… ARGGHHHHHGGRGRHRHRGRGRHRHRGHGRRRAAAAA. After some hair raising “it’s ok mate just tilt your very heavy, super sensitive, arcade machine backwards and I’ll lift the forklift as you do it” moments the machine was in the van, mine at last.

The chap said he might be able to make the pub if he could go straight away so he asked me to finish tying up the machine outside. So I carefully drove out of the warehouse. Stopped just outside and proceeded to tie up the machine inside the van. Outside the weather was horrendous. I went back to the warehouse to try to get in to retrieve the sack barrow that I had left in there after mifligating the machine, but it was locked up and the chap had gone. The sack barrow that I hired for two pounds per day was comfy and snug inside the warehouse that was shut for two days and was 2 hours from home.

Anyway I called a mate of mine who had offered to help if I needed it to let him know I was sorted and didn’t need him. As I did so the wind blew a container off a rack that was next to the van. It hit the floor and smashed to bits. Time to leave I thought! I called my wife to let her know that I was on my way home. No she said, you can’t, it’s a hurricane. There are 100mph winds back at home and loads of trucks had overturned. She forced me to promise that I would stay with family in Manchester and come home the next day.

The next day I got up and checked the weather, still 70mph winds. That meant I couldn’t yet travel and would have to wait until the afternoon at the earliest. Which meant I couldn’t get the van back by 12 on Saturday. Which meant I had to pay for a whole day’s extra hire.
Never mind, Friday night turned into Saturday and at least I could go and look at my Space Ace. I opened the van and looked at the machine in the cold light of day. It was horrible. The sides of the machine were pulled away from the marquee and monitor area so you could see straight through machine, through the nails that were just managing to hold the thing together.

Dismayed I re-tied up the machine, waited till the wind died down and set off home. I got home ok, summoned some family to help, and got the machine into my house fairly easily. Family disappeared and I called a mate who was gagging to see the machine. He came over to mine straight away and I waited for him before opening it. When he arrived I unwrapped the “packaging” and tried to find the key to open the back door. I had agreed with the seller that the key would be on the inside right of the machine, on a hook (nearly circular hook, very important) which could be accessed through the coin door which wasn’t locked. I found the hook but not the key. I noticed the insides.

The laserdisc payer was on its end banged up against the back door, resting against the laserdisc that had been taken out of the laserdisc player for safety.
I lost my temper and forced the lock to the back door and took it off. Me and my mate nearly cried. Everything was everywhere, nothing seemed in its proper place. We very carefully started to slot things back where we thought they went, I removed the laserdisc player and laserdisc and noticed one component hanging down. We couldn’t for the life of us work out where it went. We examined the bit closer and noticed some broken glass on it, then we noticed the broken glass on the back of the monitor. Then I realised the monitor tube had smashed. the monitor was dead, gone, it was an ex monitor…

So basically the outside was smashed up and everything inside had been smashed up. I could not fire up the machine because I had to convert it to take a U.K. power supply. I was really pissed off at this point, I had spent a small fortune on a smashed up piece of wood.

I decided that the only other thing that could go wrong was for the laserdisc and player to be broken, that would really polish it off. So I put the LD into another laserdisc player I have, hooked it up to my normal television, and the Space Ace logo blazed away. Me and my mate sat silently watching the video all the way through, drinking John Smith’s in total awe at seeing it all again for the frst time in 20 years. At least the Laserdisc worked..

So that was that, was that, 1 month and a hurricane after I first got the urge, my smashed up piece of would stood proudly in the middle of my room…
That’s the end of this particular chapter, but it’s not the end of the story. We are only half way through the whole saga!! I had to fix the thing and that’s where the fun really started. Grab another cup of tea and have a read of the second part of this article, “The Space Ace Saga Part 2: Can We Keep Him?”. It’s really good, it has fireworks in it!

Ikaruga, a hard game by anyone’s standard, and one that requires an accurate input device, which unfortunately the Dreamcast (DC) pad isn’t. I spent about nine months playing Ikky and in that time learned the characteristics of the DC pad and got used to it. I was getting near a one credit clear completion of Ikky so I decided to branch out a little and play a few games to see which would be my next major conquest.

I decided it would be a horizontal shoot ‘em up, possibly Gradius III or Pulstar, both of which were Supergun games and meant that I had to use a DC joystick because they were the only kinds of joystick I had that worked with the Supergun. Then along came Gradius V for PS2 and I started to play that, which required a joypad again. Every time I went back to Ikaruga I lost a little bit of control over the gamepad because my hands had got the feel for the DC sticks or the PS2 pad. I decided that I needed just one controller for all my games machines and thus began my quest for the elusive “Stick of Everything”.

Joystick or Pad?
The first decision was possibly the most important; do I go for a joystick or a joypad. The simple fact is that I love using a joystick because it feels more like the arcades, but unfortunately playing games with a pad for the last twenty years has made me almost useless with them. After a bit of thought I eventually plumped for a joystick, I will just have to learn how to use one again!

Which stick to use?
I have three DC joysticks: one native DC stick and two converted for use with my Supergun. All three of them stick in the up/left direction on occasion when I am playing games. So the DC stick is out. I wanted a high quality accurate stick no matter what the cost. I asked for some advice on the shmups.com discussion boards and quickly found out that there wasn’t an ultimate “Stick of Everything” available. So I worked out what features my stick must have:

- It should be compatible with all my systems if possible, but at least the GC, DC, Saturn, XBox, SNES, PS2, PS1 and anything coming up in the future.

- Analogue controls wouldn’t matter because I would only be using the stick for shoot ‘em ups, beat ‘em ups and platformers.

- I wouldn’t mind doing a bit of modding to get what I want, but I wouldn’t want to build a whole new stick.

- It must be heavy duty. I have children that will be hammering this thing to death, for one. I wanted a sturdy joystick that would rest on a desk, I wouldn’t be resting it on my lap.

So I looked around and I eventually came across a joystick called an X-Arcade (www.x-arcade.com). The marketing for this thing is quite extensive and is solely aimed at playing emulated games through MAME. Essentially the stick looked quite solid and the parts looked like they were built to a reasonably high standard. More importantly though I could buy adapters for it that would make it work with my PS1, PS2, DC, GC, XBox and PC; that would save me the trouble of having to build adapters for them. The problem was that the joystick was a bit expensive, over £100, from the UK distributor, but a quick look on eBay and I found a brand new two-player stick for £45 which came without the PC adapter. I actually only wanted a single player stick but this was so cheap I didn’t see the point in not buying it!

So I had a stick that was compatible with my GC, DC, XBox and PC, but not my Supergun or other systems. Then came a bit of a shock. The instructions state that the joystick is not actually a joystick (I couldn’t find this anywhere on the X-Arcade web site, funny that isn’t it; they go on about how wonderful this arcade stick is, then the instructions say it isn’t a stick at all!) it is a PC keyboard. Basically when you press left, for instance, the signal from the joystick goes into a microchip thing that converts it to the same signal as a letter on your PC keyboard. When you plug the X-Arcade into your PC, the PC just thinks that the X-Arcade is a keyboard and the left arrow has been pressed. The adapters you buy simply convert the keyboard signal (i.e. the left arrow) into the appropriate input signal for the left direction for the console being used. This might sound fine, but what it meant was that I couldn’t convert the signal that is output by the X-Arcade to work with my Supergun because the supergun needs a simple, raw electrical signal from the stick, not a PC keyboard signal!

So I hatched a plan to go into the X-Arcade and solder all the joystick points and buttons to a 25 pin d-type socket (the same kind as my Supergun) and then build a cable to connect my new output to the Supergun. Would it work? Who knows! I know absolutely nothing about soldering, about electronics, about joysticks or Superguns!

Here’s what I did!

This is a picture of the inside of the X-Arcade (click on it to make it bigger), I just guessed that connecting the various connectors to the relevant pins on the Supergun joystick interface would work. I had the pin-out details of the joystick port for my Supergun (pin 2 is stick left, etc) so I connected loosely the left connector in the X-Arcade to pin 2 on my 25 pin connector. I then used a PC joypad extension cable to connect my 25 pin connector to the Supergun…. Nothing happened!!
I noticed that there was a wire that was connected to all the micro-switches on the X-Arcade joystick, so I reckoned that must be the “ground” thing that I’d read about. To me the ground is something you walk on, what the hell it’s doing in a joystick I have no idea. Anyway, I noticed that pin 1 on my Supergun was also labeled ground, so I loosely wired one of the ground connectors to pin 1 on my 25 pin connector, gave it another test with Metal Slug and wahoo! it worked!! Pushing left on the X-Arcade joystick made the character in Metal Slug move left. I was quite pleased!

I thought at that point that I only needed one ground connection because all the ground points in the Supergun were connected to each other, so conneting one ground point connects them all.

So now I knew that the principle of what I was doing was OK (or so I thought!). The next step was to make a hole in the X-Arcade so that I could permanently install the 25 pin connector. I had to do this first so that I could pass the wires through it before soldering. It’s not very neat but that’s what happens when you get a drill and “wiggle it around a bit”.

Once the hole was installed I started to solder each micro-switch on the X-Arcade to the 25 pin connector in the same order as was written in the Supergun pin-out details I had, making sure the wires were through the hole I made first. Well, I say simply, what I really mean is “difficultly” because my soldering skills are non existent. If there’s one thing I learned though it’s that you can’t grab the end of the soldering iron to swap out the head of it immediately after turning off the iron. If you try this you will burn your fingers, trust me on this one.

I also learned that putting a little bit of solder onto the wire before soldering it to the piece of metal made the soldering work easier, it’s as if the little bit of solder attracts the main solder onto it.

After I had soldered up the first fire button I decided to test it before carrying on with the others because I had only tested a stick movement (directional left) up to that point. What I found was that if I held the fire button down (like in Pulstar or R-Ttype to charge the laser) and then move the stick at the same time it didn’t work; the fire button released itself. A single press was ok, but not a hold down press.

I sussed out that it was because when I moved the joystick the signal from it over-rode the fire button signal. I thought it was game over at this point but I sat and mused on it for a while, then noticed that the fire button had a different coloured ground wire, so I thought I’d try to solder up the ground wire for the fire button to the ground on pin 1 of my 25 pin adapter, as well as the stick’s ground. That worked fine! Then I realised that the X-Arcade had 4 different ground wires, and therefore I would have to connect all those wires individually to the ground pin in my 25 pin connector. No problem! You can see in this picture the big blob of solder where they are all joined up.

Instead of soldering the individual grounds to the 25 pin connector, I simply connected one wire to the ground pin in the 25 pin connector and then connected all the other ground wires to that single wire by twisting the metal ends of the wires together. I then put a blob of solder over it all when I had finished.

It was at this point that I realised that that I hadn’t tested that the X-Arcade still worked with my consoles through the normal X-Arcade 9 pin adapter. So I connected up the DC adapter I had bought and fired up my DC. Nothing… Nada… Nowt. A little bit of testing told me that if I connected any two of the ground points inside the X-Arcade together, then it would not work with the DC adapter (and therefore, I assumed, with any other adapter or my PC). However I HAD to connect all the grounds together in order for the Supergun to work with my adapter. So when using the X-Arcade natively I needed the grounds to be not connected… when using teh X-Arcade with my Supergun I needed them to be connected… not connected… then connected.. aha! I needed a switch that can take all the ground wires and connect them all together when it was pressed. Wonderful I thought and trotted off to Maplin (a British electronic component retailer).

Ladies and Gentlemen let me introduce to the mother of all switches… The bloke in the shop didn’t know how this bad-boy worked and had to get something called a multi-meter to fathom it out! I reckoned it was by magic, although he assured me it wasn’t.

Basically when the switch is pressed in, everything is not connected. When it is not pressed, pin 1 connects to pin 2, pin 3 does nothing; pin 4 connects to pin 5, pin 6 does nothing, etc. One more hole later, and one soldered up switch and the whole thing worked; except I couldn’t work out how to mount the switch into the X-Arcade. I went for Super Glue, which has the advantage that once used the switch would never move ever again and I could press it to my heart’s content. Super Glue also has the disadvantage that once used, the switch would never move ever again, which meant that if I needed to solder more things up to it in future it would be more difficult because I wouldn’t be able to mifligate the switch around.

So that’s it, now it works with my DC, GC, XBOX, PS1, PS2, PC and Supergun! The next part of my plan was to get it to work with my other machines. A quick search on the net and I found some adapters that convert a PS1 joypad for use on a Saturn, PC Engine, SNES and Mega Drive at lik-sang.com. A quick credit card transaction and a couple of weeks later the adapters arrived and work fine.

There’s a picture of of the PS2 adapter on the below. The grey cable is just a straight through 9 pin extension cable that I plug into rather than wearing out the connector on the X-Arcade by constantly plugging in and removing adaptors.

What I have to do (if you hadn’t guessed) is press in the newly installed switch to turn off all the connections I had soldered up so the X-Arcade will work as it originally did before I started pratting about with it. Then connect the “X-Arcade/PS2 adapter” to the X-Arcade and the adapter I bought from Lik Sang, then plug that adapter into whatever console I want to use. A picture paints a thousand words so there’s a picture of what I mean on the right.

So there it is, my x-arcade is now compatible with my Supergun, Game Cube, PS1, PS2, XBox, Dreamcast, Saturn, Mega Drive, SNES, PC Engine AND my PC. Everything’s going swimmingly! But it isn’t quite the end of the story because I have some old 8-bit computers.
Fortunately the 8-bit computers all use the same one button joystick, all with the same Atari standard plug. So I got myself a Kempston style joystick, opened it up and wired up all the points inside it to another little 25 pin adapter, being very careful to use exactly the same pin-out as the one I installed into my X-Arcade.

Once it was all soldered up I gave it a test and voila! it worked. To paint the picture below in words:

The X-Arcade connects, via the 25 pin connector I installed and straight through cable, to the adapter on the Kempston joystick. I then connect the Kempston joystick to whatever machine I want to use. In effect the X-Arcade is simply controlling the Kempston as if someone was pushing the stick on the Kempston itself.

So at this moment I am well chuffed with myself. My X-Arcade joystick is now compatible with my Supergun, Game Cube, PS1, PS2, XBox, Dreamcast, Saturn, Mega Drive, SNES, PC Engine, PC, ZX Spectrum, Atari 2600, C64, Atari 8-bit, and Atari ST. The only consoles I have still to sort out are my NES, Master System, N64 and Atari Jaguar. I am not bothered about using the stick with the Jaguar or N64 because I have no joystick-suitable games for them, so really I only have the NES and Master system left, I’ll complete this article just as soon as I get them to work.

Update: 24th March 2009: Well it’s been aabout 3 years since I wrote this article and I have not had any need at all to use a joystick on my NES or Master System, so it looks like I never will.
I have managed to get it to work with my PS3 by using the Playstation adapter for the X-Arcade and connecting it to a PS2 to PS3 converter, which cost a couple of quid on eBay. It works a treat for Street Fighter 4, which, when you butter your bread, is the only reason I bought the PS3 in the first place!.
Xbox 360 is proving a problem because M$ won’t give X-Gaming a licence to make an adapter for the X-Arcade joysticks. So I started on the trail of hacking a 360 pad, but doing so without destroying the pad, which everyone else on the tinternet seems to do . X-Gaming have recently announced though that they will be providing a solution of some kind this year, so I’m hanging on to see what they pull out of the hat.