NES Power Pad / Family Fun Fitness / Family Trainer support?

ChaosEffect

Pi Model or other hardware: Pi 3B
Power Supply used: CanaKit 2.5A
RetroPie Version Used: 4.7.1
Built From: Pre-made SD Image on RetroPie website

All of the topics I have seen about this seem to be from 2017 or before. I am looking to be able to assign Power Pad buttons to a USB device such as a controller or a generic "dance pad." I had thought that the Power Pad was just a controller turned into a mat you put on the floor, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It has a few more buttons than a typical NES controller.

On my Pi 3B, I have the following emulators available for NES:

lr-fbneo-nes
lr-fceumm
lr-mesen
lr-mess2016
lr-nestopia
lr-quicknes

Of these, mesen seems to be the only one that actually allows the user to assign buttons to the Power Pad functions and assign the Power Pad to a controller port. Unfortunately, it doesn't run very well on my Pi 3B. I was hoping that fceumm or nestopia would have this function, but it doesn't look like it.

Does anyone know of a way to get the Power Pad functions to work in fceumm or nestopia (if these functions exist)? Are there standalone (non-libretro) versions of these emulators available for the Pi 3B? I didn't see them in the various package lists in the RetroPie setup menu.

mitu

@chaoseffect said in NES Power Pad / Family Fun Fitness / Family Trainer support?:

Does anyone know of a way to get the Power Pad functions to work in fceumm or nestopia (if these functions exist)? Are there standalone (non-libretro) versions of these emulators available for the Pi 3B? I didn't see them in the various package lists in the RetroPie setup menu.

The standalone versions of fceumm or nestopia are not included in RetroPie. They seem to support the PowerPad input type, but that type of input is not explicitly exposed in the libretro port.

ChaosEffect

I just want to follow up on this because it is still the first result for me on Google when I search for "RetroPie Power Pad."

lr-mesen and lr-fceumm both support all of these games now. lr-mesen assigns the 12 buttons to joypad buttons, while lr-fceumm assigns them to keyboard keys from RetroArch's RETRO_DEVICE_KEYBOARD type.

I am using two generic USB dance pads side by side. They are recognized as controllers, and I find it easier to map the buttons in lr-fceumm for my specific setup.

lr-fceumm allows the Power Pad to be assigned to ports 2 and 3 natively, and the user can use the Quick Menu -> Options -> Controls menu to set the appropriate RETROK keys to each physical button (you go to the physical button in the list for the port that you want to map, and you scroll left/right until you find the right keyboard key).

The Family Trainer is a Famicom Expansion Port device and is therefore available for port 5. RetroArch's "map to port" feature allows the user to duplicate port 5's functionality on another port, so two dance pads can be combined this way.

I know that all of the North American Power Pad games work fine with lr-fceumm. Just make sure you have the correct Power Pad side mapped! The buttons will be mirrored if you use the wrong side (it's the equivalent of flipping the mat upside down).

I know for sure that Family Trainer 5 (Meiro Daisakusen) and 8 (Takeshi's Castle) work fine (even the English-patched version of 8). The other eight Family Trainer games should also work fine. Here's hoping someone is interested in tackling an English translation for 9 (Takeshi's Castle 2)!