2 button hack - Defender2B

[RevEng]

I never liked how you needed to "drop below" the skyline to smartbomb in Defender, so I decided to do something about it. I hacked up a version that uses an unmodified genesis controller. B button is used to fire, and C button is used to smartbomb.

 

defender2b.bin

 

It works great on my 4-switch woody with my 6-button genesis controller, but confirmation of other combinations would be cool. Obviously this isn't going to work with the emulators.

 

I know select A8 games have used the genesis controllers, but I haven't seen any 2600 homebrews or hacks that use them. Is anybody aware of any others?

 

And more importantly, are there other 2600 games that could benefit from a similar treatment?

[tkarner]

Very cool. I just tried it with a Harmony Cart on a 2600 Jr. The Harmony menu doesn't like the Sega controller so you have to use a standard joystick to select and start the game, and then swap controllers.

 

Could something similar be done to employ 7800 controllers?

 

As for other games that might benefit from this treatment, all the games that use the joystick 2 button come to mind:

Spy Hunter (oil/smoke)

Stargate/Defender 2 (smartbomb)

Star Voyager (fires secondary lasers)

Solaris (switches to map)

Radar Lock (fires afterburner)

 

 

[RevEng]

Nice. Thanks for the confirmation.

 

Yeah, harmony is auto-detecting the controller as a paddle. I unplug the controller as it starts up, and once harmony displays the menu you can plug it back in and it works fine.

 

Unfortunately the second button on the 7800 controllers is totally incompatible with the 2600. Otherwise I would have preferred them too, as I bought these genesis controllers to mod into 7800 ones.

 

Thanks for the list. I'll take a look at those and see what's involved.

[xybot67]

Omega Race would be great (booster button)!

[nonner242]

Really cool!

[RevEng]

Thanks for the kind words and suggestions all! I've created a new thread here with multiple hacks along this line.