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GP2X: DaveC's joystick cap, Or, How to play Black Tiger on the train
Tue, 28 Feb 2006

The seminal Turrican for the Commodore 64 was released in 1990. The venerable and future-altering Atari 2600 was still in production in 1989. These two facts are astonishing for the fact the Atari ST, Amiga, Megadrive/Genesis and SNES were all available by 1989 (with the Atari ST and Amiga being in 1986!), and the fact the GP2X puts them all in your pocket. Right now.

While the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS duke it out in the public eye, there still exists a quiet subculture of alternative devices; sure, they're harder to find and have their share of flaws, but this is where the real freedom lies - the non-mainstream is where you find the Henry Rollins of handhelds. Sony and Nintendo have a legal obligation to crush homebrew in their markets, so if you want Nethack in your pocket.. you need more. If you want SOCOM though, stick to your PSP for mobile gaming - Wipeout Pure and Nintendogs are true modern classics and a joy to behold. But if you want to fire up Gley Lancer or Bomberman 94 or Dungeon Master or Black Tiger, or you want to experiment with your own homebrew on a mobile mini-Linux platform.. the GP2X is for you.

OKay, enough with the sales pitch ;) I've not posted a tonne about the GP2X of late due to all my other assorted rants, so do let me know if you'd like some more information that direction. This post, instead, is more to talk about a little hardware mod than a fine lad has put together. (Disclosure: He sent me one for free; but thats because I'm lazy, and he sells them for $10. Not a free TV here. Not that I'm opposed to anyone sending me a TV.)

Now, with the preamble out of the way, let me delve right into the DaveC cap. The GP2x features a joystick-nub which works pretty well -- its low to the surface so doesn't get worn off from bouncing around a knapsack, and works pretty well. The one problem is the GP2X internal joystick gadget is slightly askew so it tends to favour diagonals more than it should, and it offers some 'dead zones' where the stick must travel fairly far in order to indicate a motion to the internal sensors. These design gotchas annoy some to no end, but I didn't find them particularly cumbersom, though in a tight Xenon 2 session the angling would aggravate me. Enter DaveC.

DaveC is a stickler to attention if nothing else; a perfectionist for retro - the human Occam's Razor for emulation. He also seems to know something about a lathe, so has crafted an alternative joystick 'cap' for the GP2X to help remedy these slight issues. At first I just avoided taking an interest, since I didn't quite get what it was -- let me explain.

The discussions surrounded the idea of 'pulling off' the cap, and pushing in or on a new one. The idea sounded like work, and risky, to me -- I steered clear since I've been so insanely busy of late, the idea of even a slight risk to crushing the joystick mechamism steered me away. However, once more information came out it became obvious what in fact goes on during the installation, so hopefully this article proves useful to someone. The joystick mechanism is really just a little metal shaft rising out from the GP2X casing (with a series of microswitches at its base, of course) with a plastic cap popped on its end - I had assumed the shaft and cap were all one, but this is not the case. DaveC's replacement cap is just another cap that you can pop in instead of the other, more or less. I'm fudging over the actual details, since I'm in a rush, but that explanation should illustrate the concept well enough -- its not hard, its not really risky, and it takes all of 2 minutes. No MacGyver needed.

The cap itself is wider and concave, so your thumb can rest more inside of it than atop it like with the original cap. Thus you get a better grip. DaveC's literature suggests the cap is a stronger plastic and yadda yadda performance, but I'm extremely anal about my gear so thats not important to me. Most important is the diamater of the cap surface, which is much larger than the original.. a very large 'spoon' as it were. The end result being that you can grip this sucker easier, and it tilts the given direction further and faster, so play is more accurate and much more responsive than ever before. Really, I would almost say the joystick is almost too sensitive for my big fudgy fingers. (I'm not much of a gamer.. I'm a wannabee gamer who can only handle a single firebutton :)

So if you need a homebrew fixin', fire it up on your NDS or PSP with appropriate hacks and mods (until such day Sony and N shut these down.) If you don't have one of those, and/or want to get a gadget that has a fiercely independant community thats 100% homebrew focused, dive in and get a GP2X or GP32. And if you're doubly a nerd and want to improve performance on your GP2X, get DaveC's cap -- at $10 its not a big drop, and it could just double your enjoyment. Take it from a guy with arcade cabinets in his basement -- UI is everything.

Hook up with DaveC on the GP32x website.

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