I only had one joystick for my Amiga 500 and I wanted to get up and gaming again sooner rather than later, and it's always more fun with friends. I needed to find a way to make my own joystick, since anything I bought online wasn't going to show up for a couple of weeks. Thankfully, old systems like the Amiga and many others use a super basic standard for joysticks.

I didn't really feel like going to all the effort of buying a whole bunch of discrete switches and finding some sort of enclosure and putting it all together. It's a hassle, pricy, and wasn't really the quick and easy result I wanted. Instead, I wanted to use one of these - a simple 12-digit keypad you can find just about anywhere.

There's a caveat, though. The buttons on this keypad aren't wired as twelve individual switches - they're in a 4 by 3 matrix. This complicates things somewhat, but with some tricky wiring we can get a decent button layout for gaming to work.

In the above image, you can see the button layout and pinouts for the keypad and connector. For the cable, you can either go and buy some 6-conductor cable, or twist several lengths of wire together into a single cable, which is what I chose. Simply cut six pieces of wire to equal length, tape the ends together, put in the chuck of your drill, and have your friend slowly run the drill while you hold the wires taught. Finish things off with a zip
tie at either end and you're good to go.



It's actually fairly comfortable to use - your left hand holds the keypad and your left thumb rests on fire, while your right fingers control up, down, left and right. It's good fun to use and a lot less frustrating than some of the poorer quality joysticks left over from yesteryear. Just below is the build video. I hope you enjoyed this project - happy gaming!