Monkey Ball Repro Part 1

It all started on a thread on Arcade-Projects regarding a way of playing Monkey Ball on the Naomi – which I will admit, I never played outside of console with analog controllers, but the Banana stick was something I could definitely see having novelty with the kids and of course a number of inappropriate innuendo with the adults 😀

Enter the journey of Monkey Ball! 😀

First decided to jump on board with this solution back in December.

Things required to make this work:

1. Banana Stick
2. Gundam stick
3. Repro Panel
4. Op Amp pcb
5. Relevant harnesses depending on which cab
6. Add 2k resistors to the Gundam stick pots

I received the Gundam stick back in January

Just got delivery of the sticks!

I noticed these appear to have JST VL 9 way, but I can’t seem to find a part number for the connector. The spec sheet on Rs components doesn’t have a 9 way in a 3×3. I’ve been advised it’s a JST YL connector.

As an interim, I’ve chopped off the ends of a 15 way which will work.

Based on the notes in the linked page, I quickly rigged up a harness to test and ended up with something like this..

After some calibration, my input values ended up like this (need to refer back to the previous thread to see how this compares)

A quick test of the game and to my surprise, she works! 😀

 – please excuse the game play, i was mainly testing to ensure it went where I moved the stick and the monkey went faster if I pushed the stick harder, oh and apologies for smashing that start button, it definitely comes out way louder on video