My quest to re-create Street Fighter’s long-lost pneumatic controls | Hacker News Reader

My quest to re-create Street Fighter’s long-lost pneumatic controls

arstechnica.com

207 pointszdw23 comments

The much discussed "motion inputs" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WhbSNP_zF4 which came from SF1—the stick movements for special moves, like the fireball's quarter-circle-forward, the Dragon Punch's Z and so on—were surely meant to be of a piece with the pneumatic buttons, all part of an input scheme to make the player feel that (s)he's making or at least mimicking the physical efforts of his/her character. (Making the special moves so hard to get right in SF1 probably tended to defeat that purpose, but oh well.)

There's so much documentation about specific games thanks to the work of the MAME developers and manuals uploaded to KLOV. There's also tons of hackers making reproduction parts or even new products to help keep your home arcade in good shape. I wouldn't have any doubts that where there's a will to get some old arcade hardware working, there's most certainly a way.

What an awesome read. I’d like to do this when the time is right down the road with the time crisis series.

I think time crisis 2 or 3 had the pistol controller attached to a tube and there was a noise making mechanism (or the slide actually moved) that activated when you fired. I’d love to get each one of those cabinets for 1, 2, and 3.

I think all the Time Crisis games should have the moving slide. They might have been replaced as some turd wrecked it but they should have come with the moving slide.

Really want a Crisis Zone cabinet.

Talking of wacky peripherals see Ridge Race Full Scale

https://gamesyouloved.com/blog/2018/march/25/ridge-racer-ful...

The way I remember it, Time Crisis had a slide that moved. It emulated the kick of a real firearm - albeit poorly, but as a teenager I had no idea otherwise.

I swear the pistol did slide. Also the stepping plate was genius: by default the character would cover, and you hd to physically step down on the plate like a pedal to go out of cover and shoot.

You should add "kick" sensors to the bottom of the cabinet for full immersion.

Viz magazine had a fictitious game where kicking was the main input https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c9/4e/71/c94e71498c3a57569531...

There was a real soccer game with kicking in the arcade near where I grew up. We thought that the harder you kicked the harder the player shot the ball so we would really tire ourselves out but I think it ended up being some sort of off/on trigger.

And a sensor where you can shoot the cabinet with a gun to immediately win the match.

The game SNK vs. Capcom: The Match of the Millennium used a similar system because the Neo Geo Pocket only had two buttons.

the ngpc's stick was so good, its mad that it was never attempted on another controller

I remember playing this version in the arcade at Golf & Stuff aka Castles & Coasters in Phoenix AZ.

The arcade attendants would yell at you for 'hitting the game'.

I played the pneumatic version at an arcade on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. I had played the 6-button version before that a few times and was really intrigued by the giant buttons. Unfortunately, it was quickly apparent that the pneumatic controls were atrocious.

That said, I just loved the idea of all of the different types of fighters going head-to-head. I loved Enter the Dragon and Bloodsport.

I had been a huge fan of Karateka on the Apple II and Ye Are Kung Fu in the arcade. Street Fighter was like Ye Are Kung Fu on steroids, but even the 6-button controls weren’t very good. When SFII brought the concept and controls together, it was love at first sight. I’ve been a big SF2 fan ever since and prefer it and its variants over all of the sequels.

One of the few remaining arcades that’s still a lot of fun!

Very nice write up. Very lousy game and even worse with the pneumatic controls. The cabinets collected dust back in the day.

What a gem of a writeup, really enjoyed the read. Have many fond memories of playing SF2 as a kid.

A bit off-topic, but it reminds me of this ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgF2aSpyQDs

Great write-up.

It saddens me to think of modern online games, and how many of them will be lost once they become unprofitable.

Excellent. I have an original mortal kombat cabinet I'm restoring, I can't imagine delving into an esoteric project like this.

It sounds like the author is part of a wonderful community.

This was a fun read. I love projects like this!

Sounds like a source of problem for the arcade hall operators.

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