Help choosing 2 player arcade button and joystick kit please!

[fairoak1978]

Hi there, I'm trying to choose a good 2 player kit that will work with my raspberry pi (which I'm due to buy) would be grateful for some advice...

Seen many on amazon, can anyone recommend a kit, do I need two encoders and two USB connections for a two player set up?

What pi do people recommend I buy, I don't aim to emulate more than 16 bit and I want one that will be simple to connect to arcade button kit...

Thank you kindly!!!!!

[caver01]

@fairoak1978 Get a Pi 3 for sure. Add a heat sink to get a little more performance vs. heat-induced throttling.

As for kits, are you looking for something with gamepads, or are you talking about arcade buttons and joysticks?

If arcade, depending on how many buttons you want, you might be able to get away with wiring them directly to GPIO pins and using software to translate buttons into keyboard keypresses. This way you can avoid using a keyboard controller, freeing up another USB port.

Not a specific answer, but you might get more replies if you add further details about your intentions.

[rkoster]

You should be aware that many of the Xin-Mo and clone controllers require some kernel modifications and a recompile. These include the ones sold by Paradise Arcade. If you are comfortable with that (the instructions are on this forum) they do sell one that has two players using one USB connection and is seen as two gamepads.

[TMNTturtlguy]

@fairoak1978 I highly recommend a pi 3 and for arcade joystick and buttons I highly recommend zero delay USB encoders. Easygit has great ones and you can get them as 2 player kits for standard or LED buttons. They are very easy to use and do not take any special modifications to kernels or software. They are recognizes as dragonrise USB controllers. You need one USB encoder for each player. eBay and amazon have a lot of these for a good price. I use these for a 4 player arcade cabinet and for a 2 player cabinet.

[simonster]

If you require 2 players with joystick and up to 8 buttons on each control (equivalent to SNES controller) you could hook up directly to the gpio using mkarcadejoystick module that is in the drivers in Retropie.

I have 2 cabinets using this system.