iBuffalo USB SNES style gamepad issue!

[Meneer Jansen]

@Water-White said in iBuffalo USB SNES style gamepad issue!:

I just bought 2 of those iBuffalo SNES gamepads and one of them has the same issue. In emulation station it gives me ghost inputs on the directional d-pad buttons (left and right) every 2 minutes. so is there any new solution for this problem?

and do you know if this issue also affects gameplay? I made a test with zelda 1 on the nes and waited for 20 minutes without touching the controller... nothing happened. maybe its only a problem in emulation station?

This is very unfortunate. A lot of people buy these iBuffalo gamepads. Would be a pity if they don't function. The "Zelda 1 test" on the NES emulator might speak volumes though.

[dankcushions]

@Water-White said in iBuffalo USB SNES style gamepad issue!:

I just bought 2 of those iBuffalo SNES gamepads and one of them has the same issue. In emulation station it gives me ghost inputs on the directional d-pad buttons (left and right) every 2 minutes. so is there any new solution for this problem?

read the second post in this thread

and do you know if this issue also affects gameplay? I made a test with zelda 1 on the nes and waited for 20 minutes without touching the controller... nothing happened. maybe its only a problem in emulation station?

i believe it shouldn't be an issue in games because (some? all?) games are clever enough to have input tolerances and will ignore single frame signals like this, but who knows. it could be fixed in emulationstation but the project is dead, so...

[Water White]

Today I tested if the ghost inputs also appear during gameplay. And the answer is YES.

1. Test: Tekken 3 on Retropie PSX Emulator (lr-pcsx-rearmed) - 2 ibuffalo snes style gamepads (A and B)

Tested in versus mode character selection screen. I didnt touched the controllers and just waited. After 2-3 minutes I recorgnized the first ghost input on gamepad B - it automaticly switched the selected character (from King to Heihachi). During the next 15 minutes the ghost inputs repeated several times. I even recornized some ghost inputs on the down and up d-pad button (e.g. character switch from King to GunJack). Gamepad A didnt gave me any ghost inputs during the test time.

2. Test: Street Fighter Alpha 2 on Retropie SNES Emulator (lr-snes9x-next)

Also tested it in the character selection screen of the versus mode. Same issue as before. Gamepad B did some automatic character switches (e.g. from Ken to Guy / from Ken to Zangief...). Gamepad A didnt gave me any ghost inputs.

3. Test: Tekken 3 on OpenEmu PSX Emulator (MacOSX)

Finally I tested gamepad b on my macbook with OpenEmu. Same issues as before, gamepad b is still giving me ghost inputs.

Conclusion: Its an hardware error.

I also tried the suggestions mentioned here in the forum and those on github but they didnt solved the problem. On the Raspberry Pi I also tried different USB ports, but the problems still remained on gamepad b.

My big question is now, if those ghost inputs really affect gameplay so much. Maybe those issues only appear when the gamepad isnt touched for some minutes. Did anybody recorgnized those ghost inputs while playing a game (e.g. jumping to a wrong direction in Super Mario World)?

I will do some more longplay tests in the next days to check this out.

[Meneer Jansen]

@Water-White said in iBuffalo USB SNES style gamepad issue!:

Today I tested if the ghost inputs also appear during gameplay. And the answer is YES.

1. Test: Tekken 3 on Retropie PSX Emulator (lr-pcsx-rearmed) - 2 ibuffalo snes style gamepads (A and B)

Tested in versus mode character selection screen. I didnt touched the controllers and just waited. After 2-3 minutes I recorgnized the first ghost input on gamepad B - it automaticly switched the selected character (from King to Heihachi). During the next 15 minutes the ghost inputs repeated several times. I even recornized some ghost inputs on the down and up d-pad button (e.g. character switch from King to GunJack). Gamepad A didnt gave me any ghost inputs during the test time.

2. Test: Street Fighter Alpha 2 on Retropie SNES Emulator (lr-snes9x-next)

Also tested it in the character selection screen of the versus mode. Same issue as before. Gamepad B did some automatic character switches (e.g. from Ken to Guy / from Ken to Zangief...). Gamepad A didnt gave me any ghost inputs.

3. Test: Tekken 3 on OpenEmu PSX Emulator (MacOSX)

Finally I tested gamepad b on my macbook with OpenEmu. Same issues as before, gamepad b is still giving me ghost inputs.

Conclusion: Its an hardware error.

I also tried the suggestions mentioned here in the forum and those on github but they didnt solved the problem. On the Raspberry Pi I also tried different USB ports, but the problems still remained on gamepad b.

My big question is now, if those ghost inputs really affect gameplay so much. Maybe those issues only appear when the gamepad isnt touched for some minutes. Did anybody recorgnized those ghost inputs while playing assh game (e.g. jumping to a wrong direction in Super Mario World)?

I will do some more longplay tests in the next days to check this out.

Thank you very much for testing these gamepads. Another way to test is from the (Linux) command line in RetroPie:

jstest /dev/input/js0

Change the js0 into js1 for the other one.

[theroamer]

I have the same problem with mine. Pretty much stopped using it because it was so annoying.

[Water White]

Soo after some more tests I found a strong evidence for my theory that the ghost inputs only appear when no conroller button is touched. I played several games like Street Fighter, Tekken and some Tetris and puzzle games with that controller for some hours and never recorgnized any ghost inputs during active gameplay.

Then I made another test in the emulation station menu. At first I didn't touch any buttons and after 2-3 minutes the first ghost input appeared and changed the selected emulator. After that I pushed the L, R, Y, X buttons randomly like I'm playing a game (they don't trigger any commands in the ES menu) for around 10 minutes. No ghost inputs appeared. I let the controller untouched again and the ghost inputs came back after 2-3 minutes.

Conclusion: If my theory is right, that issue shouldn't be a big thing and doesn't have a big effect on gameplay.

[Meneer Jansen]

@Water-White said in iBuffalo USB SNES style gamepad issue!:

Soo after some more tests I found a strong evidence for my theory that the ghost inputs only appear when no conroller button is touched. I played several games like Street Fighter, Tekken and some Tetris and puzzle games with that controller for some hours and never recorgnized any ghost inputs during active gameplay.

Then I made another test in the emulation station menu. At first I didn't touch any buttons and after 2-3 minutes the first ghost input appeared and changed the selected emulator. After that I pushed the L, R, Y, X buttons randomly like I'm playing a game (they don't trigger any commands in the ES menu) for around 10 minutes. No ghost inputs appeared. I let the controller untouched again and the ghost inputs came back after 2-3 minutes.

Conclusion: If my theory is right, that issue shouldn't be a big thing and doesn't have a big effect on gameplay.

Thank you very much for this experiment! :-)

Like I said: a lot of people use this controller. I can't play my favotite Mame games w/ regular (expensive) controllers because they register a diagonal input (even on the D-pad) to easily. They are 8-way, but you need a 4-way controller for classic games. Why? because Mario takes the ladder when I try to walk past it in Donkey Kong. This is because the "Up" button appears to be held down too when I press "Left" (i.e. it registers diagonally up to the left). Same thing goes for PAc Man making the wrong turns and getting eaten by the Ghosts.

[JFamily]

I just bought two of these myself. One of them is flawless. The other one, has ghost inputs which hasn't been noticeable in game and only slightly annoying in menus.

However, I knew I was terrible at Super Mario but I didn't think I was that bad. When my wife and I traded controllers, she started doing poorly as well (still better than me however). The main issue we have (because it affects gameplay) is jumping. He can jump but not high enough to clear some of the taller obstacles, rendering the owner of that controller entirely useless for most levels Imitates game over sound

Also, in games like Super Mario Cart, the accelerate key (same as jump key) is a complete dud and the race cart just sits there.

My gut wants to say it's hardware and a defective controller but the symptoms are highly inconsistent. I've used the jstest on this controller and all of the buttons register (I can confirm some ghosting in this also).

Edit: I must have enabled turbo somehow on that controller. I can't remember ever pushing the button or even knowing what the trick was to enable turbo. But, sure enough, I held Clear + Any button that was giving me issues and it worked. We rocked some Super Mario World last night!

[Water White]

@JFamily Do you still have ghost inputs in menus with disabled turbo function?

[JFamily]

@Water-White
Not that I've noticed. But, shortly after fixing the issue, my Logitech F710's arrived and I've barely looked back.

[gaavoid]

I was getting this issue with the iBuffalo controllers but I somehow seem to have fixed it.
I went into the emulationstation config (/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_input.cfg) and removed the controller config for the controller entirely.
I went back to onto my actual Pi after rebooting and set it up as a new contoller. Now it doesn't skip though the menus at all.
The only difference made to the config file really, is that the iBuffalo input config is now at the very bottom of the input list instead of being the first on the list.
I don't know or understand why this has made a difference but I'm not getting any ghost inputs at all. I've currently left it for over 2 hours and there's been no movement.

[Archonis]

@gaavoid You are the man! This fixed controller input ghosting for me as well. This is the 4th RetroPie I have setup, and the first time this issue has appeared, so I was afraid that the iBuffalo controller was bad, but this fixed the issue. Thanks!

[Ponny]

I tried removing the es_input.cfg and re-setting them. The controller still went up from time to time in menus so I mashed up then clear, clear then up, hold up then clear, hold clear then up a few times (I don't actually know how the clear function works). All good now :-)