NES Power Pad?
-
Pi Model or other hardware: RPi3B
RetroPie Version Used: 4.2.2
Built From: (Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website)
USB Devices connected: Generic Dance Pad (works flawlessly with PSX Emu), USB thumb drive 64 GB
Guide used: (Mention if you followed a guide): Haven't seen any guides/threads on here, reddit, youtube
Emulator: Nestopia, FCEUMM, haven't tried quicknes)Has anyone been able to use a generic dance pad in order to emulate a power pad? Trying to go back and play World Class Track Meet and Short Order!, but I see that iti isn't as simple as configuring inputs like with PSX and DDR (which was very simple). I read that Nestopia standalone has all peripheral support, but didn't see anything in the NES wiki regarding the power pad.
Has anyone been successful in setting one up? Thanks.
-
As you say, this ability is possible in the standalone Nestopia and the standalone FCEUX will also work. Unfortunately, support has yet to be added to lr-nestopia and lr-fceux. I'd love to play some 'Short Order' myself.
-
@mediamogul Thanks. Heartbreaking. Haha. I'll have my dance pad ready for when the day comes.
-
Out of curiosity, did you have a hardware solution in mind for interfacing the pad itself? I've never see a USB adapter that's compatible, but if you know of one I'd love to go ahead and pick it up. Niche products like this have a bad habit of being discontinued by the time you can actually make use of them.
-
@mediamogul I guess I was just hoping a generic USB dance pad would end up working some how. Similar to how an air mouse works as a zapper gun.
-
Gotchya. I bet that would work. The only remaining problem to overcome would be the lack of a few buttons. Most dance mats I've seen have nine buttons whereas the Power Pad had twelve on the 'A' side. Why aren't these things ever easy?
-
@mediamogul i have a power pad and i can easily modify it to actually work on the pi. My issue is just the emulators dont recognize button presses when playing those games. So as soon as that happens i will mod my mat.
-
@mediamogul Yeah. I was looking and Short Order only uses 8 of those 12, so it would work, but would be imperfect. I think that generally, the 12 were used to accommodate 2 people being on the pad, so I don't see why 2 dance pads wouldn't make up for it for most games. Wouldn't be perfect, but better than nothing.
Not sure if this puppy would do the trick or not:
Amazon LINK -
i have a power pad and i can easily modify it to actually work on the pi.
Is there an article you favor that you can link for the conversion? I still have my old Power Pad and I wouldn't want to cut into that, but they're pretty cheap and I wouldn't mind picking up another one to mod.
-
@mediamogul it wouldnt work on the nes. I would remove all the circuitry in it and install a small board like raphnets 12 buttons to usb board making it a usb power pad. Or in my own personal case, i might just wire a 15 pin cable so i can just plug it into the connectors on my ipac.
-
- A single dance pad can't be used even to get half of the Power Pad because the center square on dance pads is not active.
- Assuming the Power Pad works inside like a Konami dance pad, the sensors are analog (pressure sensitive resistance), so you can't just hook up the guts to a PI, and you need a microcontroller with 12 analog pins. I don't know if the Power Pad's digital electronics can work with the PI's 3.3v GPIOs.
- A full solution for the Power Pad 12 button side is to overlap TWO dance pads and use bleeding edge fceumm libretro core: https://www.instructables.com/Playing-NES-Power-Pad-Games-in-Emulation/
Contributions to the project are always appreciated, so if you would like to support us with a donation you can do so here.
Hosting provided by Mythic-Beasts. See the Hosting Information page for more information.