Cats and Dogs, Living Together: The Mayflash Universal Adapter

I know, I know... peripherals are all I ever talk about these days. But I swear, this is important! That Mayflash Universal Adapter I bought last week is finally functional. It took a lot of soldering and even more swearing, but I installed a USB cable to replace the one that had shorted out. It was a Mickey Mouse job, and I don't know how long it'll last even with hot glue keeping the wires secure, but at least it works. For now. (Why yes, the death of my spinner has taken a wrecking ball to my confidence as a craftsman! Thanks for noticing!)

Frustratingly elusive, but practically
necessary for Playstation TV owners
running HENkaku.

Anyway, let's talk about this adapter's performance. As was reported on Reddit, it does indeed work with the Playstation TV. However, it requires a bit of effort to get going, especially if you've got your system hacked. There's only one USB port on that system, so you'll have to plug in a hub to use both the adapter and a flash drive (not technically necessary, but a lot more cost-effective than Sony's Vita memory cards). After that, you'll need to enter the home menu and assign the adapter to port one. It's more work (and wires) than I'd prefer, but it's hard to argue with the results. Emulators like PFBA and official games like the PSP port of Street Fighter Alpha 3 work marvelously with the Mayflash adapter. If you've got a compatible arcade stick, or the Saturn controller Sega released for the Playstation 2 twelve years ago, you'll be quite happy.

Beats buying the Xbox 360 version
of the game and starting from
the beginning, I guess.
(image from YouTube)

As handy as that feature may be, it's just a fortunate coincidence that the Mayflash Universal Adapter works with the Playstation TV. It was actually designed to let you use Xbox 360 controllers on a Playstation 3 and vice versa, and it works quite well for that purpose. It's extremely handy for racing games on the PS3, because I've never found the slippery right shoulder button on the Dual Shock 3 to work all that well as a gas pedal. The Xbox 360 pad's curved triggers keep your finger on the accelerator, letting you concentrate on drifting around corners and nailing opponents with shunts in Blur. The game is perfectly playable with the PS3's stock pad, but why not use a better controller if you've got that option?

Just in way of warning, the Mayflash Universal Adapter won't work with every controller in your collection. The Hori Fighting Stick 3 is a prime example... the adapter makes a valiant effort to recognize input from this notoriously picky stick, but it's slow to respond to button presses, if it notices them at all. This was the case on every console I tested it with, including the PSTV, Xbox 360, and PC. The two ports on the Mayflash- one for USB and the other for the Playstation 2- give you some room to experiment with unusual controllers, but don't expect everything you throw at the adapter to work.

There are better controller converters than the Mayflash Universal Adapter, and certainly cheaper ones. However, there aren't many that are this versatile, and almost none that function with the Playstation TV in particular. If you're still using yours and need a better controller for its wealth of fighting games, you may not have any other options.