Ben's Blog

Picture by Brian Turchyn

Last weekend was SkullSpace hackathon 6 and it was a great time. This hackathon was a less structured hackathon than we have had in the past and so myself and another fellow hacker decided ta get a full hack in, start to finish. The idea we had was to turn a Wii nun-chuck into a controller for the classic NES gaming system, thus dubbed the NES-chuck. While largely intended to be for our own amusement, the nun-chuck as NES controller does allow for one handed play meaning it could be a useful controller for people with disabilities (or for those who want to play two player co-op games by themselves).

By the end of the hackathon I had a working prototype system. It has a few timing related bugs that should be pretty easy to iron out. My intention is to make a much cleaner version to display at the Winnipeg Art Gallery on June 11 as part of the Re:Play event, an exhibit focused on gaming art and culture. I will try to post some pics and videos of the prototype and final versions shortly (the current, rough code can be found here). In the meantime, you should check out Re:Play here (scroll down on that page), here, and here. If you come down, you will be able to try the NES-chuck first hand (no pun intended)!

UPDATE: I was up late working on this thing and thought I’d share a quick picture I snapped of it. I still have some kinks to work out. The nun-chuck is a knock off from deal extreme and is a bit peculiar. I am likely talking to it wrong, but right now the z button inverts the response of the c button. Also, the accelerometer data is not very stable. None of these things were a problem with an authentic nun-chuck, so I’m sure I just need to change the config a bit.