Hello all
I was wondering if there are any analog joysticks for MSX. I found a few threads but not conclusive. Are there are such joysticks out there? How about game support? Would games like Arkanoid support these joysticks?
... with little electronic skills it would be quite trivial to adapt ie. old PC analog joystick to MSX and read it on BASIC with PAD-commands, but still... No existing software support or even de facto standard way to connect it.
I'd deviate slightly from that assessment: there's no existing standard and no widespread software support, but there are existing analogue joysticks. The wiki lists fingerprints for both "Dual-axis analog controller" and "IBM-PC DA15 joystick adapter" so both of those things definitely exist and could in principle be detected reliably had any software every tried; you'll also notice "Micomsoft XE1-AP analog mode", which is not automatically distinguishable from a lightgun but is an analogue joystick that exists and could be read as an analogue joystick by properly-written MSX software if any existed.
So, yes, the physical things are out there, somewhere.
Arkanoid seems to support its own analogue paddle — somebody more au fait with that would need to offer an opinion on whether you could extend its protocol to two dimensions.
