SRK contest produces a 26-button Starcraft II arcade controller, probably won’t stop Zerg rushes (video)

SRK contest produces a 26button Starcraft II arcade controller, probably won't stop Zerg rushes video

Almost as a dare, Shoryuken (SRK) challenged its fans to produce a fighting game-style controller for Starcraft II. Mauricio Romano took them up on that contest and won with a surprisingly polished arcade stick of his own. Its cornerstone is a heavily modified Ultrastik joystick that’s turned into an on-controller, two-button mouse. You didn’t think a PC gamer would cling to a plain joystick, did you? In the process, the usual 101 keys of a typical keyboard have been pared down to a set of 26 buttons most relevant for Blizzard’s real-time strategy epic. Packaged up in a single, polished USB peripheral, the one-off prototype’s design is good enough to imagine a Major League Gaming pro taking it out on the road. We’d put that idea on ice for now, though: as Mauricio shows in the video below, the learning curve is steep enough that most players won’t be fending off diamond-league marine and zergling blitzes anytime soon.

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Gamer builds the ultimate Starcraft II arcade joystick for contest

Creative individual and Master League Starcraft II player Mauricio Romana somehow managed to build the ultimate Starcraft II arcade joystick. Romana entered a contest put on by gamesite Shoryuken with the quest to find who could actually design a working arcade joystick for playing Starcraft II. He won the contest, by the way.

Romana’s winning entry was built out of an Ultrastick joystick with a network of Sanwa buttons. In total it has 29 buttons with two control buttons on either side with a space and shift button. It looks like there’s a trackball mouse on the left, but it’s actually a joystick that has a large cap. A PC recognizes the controller as a USB keyboard, so there’s no real configuration needed. The only real problem is that it doesn’t have an enter button, so you can’t exactly type with it.

You can watch the video below to see Romana demo the controller.

Of course, gamers who want to get their hands on one of these things will pretty much be completely out of luck, unless someone decides to go ahead and start production on an idea like this. But if you’re feeling determined, you can try following the instructions Romana used to build the controller, which he uploaded online here.

[via Ubergizmo]


Gamer builds the ultimate Starcraft II arcade joystick for contest is written by Elise Moreau & originally posted on SlashGear.
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