Dial C for Complete

So, that spinner I was complaining about earlier? Yeah, you can say I made some progress on that.

It turns out that the problem I was having with the background art is that the library's copier was very specific about which files and hardware it would accept. It wouldn't recognize the Verbatim flash drive I purchased from an estate sale for five bucks, and it wouldn't accept the PNG files on the Lexar SD card I used as a second option. The picky bastard was finally placated when I converted the file to JPG... it's an old graphics format and it's generally not as crisp and colorful as PNG, but yanno, any port in a storm.

With the artwork finally printed, I could move on to assembling the spinner. Here's a quick peek inside...

The GRS spinner on its own doesn't have support for all the buttons I wanted to use, so I took a USB controller, stripped it down to its printed circuit board, and soldered the L and R triggers to a couple arcade-style buttons I had tucked away in a junk drawer. The spinner and controller were then plugged into a USB hub, and its cable was led out of a hole in the back of the enclosure I used to house my homemade peripheral. Some hot glue and zip ties kept everything in place.

So far, I'm fairly satisfied with what I've built. I really should put some weights on the bottom half of the enclosure to give it a more solid feel, and the spinner dial is too large to comfortably play Arkanoid and other brick breakers, but this crazy controller works a treat for Victory, Omega Race, and Star Trek. Here are my latest scores in the latter two games...

Okay, I'm not breaking any world records here, but cracking six figures in Star Trek nevertheless felt like one hell of an accomplishment. Also, I beat a droid force in Omega Race! Do you know how hard it is to get that five thousand point bonus? Even the VIC-20 version makes you sweat for it, and the arcade game has more onscreen activity and smarter enemies.

By the way, just in case you were about to ask, I still suck at Major Havoc. Look, the spinner makes games more comfortable to play, but it's not a miracle worker.