Driving Controls

This page should contain brief descriptions of various Steering Wheels/Yokes/Pedals/Shifters available, and details of their setup. If any one portion of the page starts getting a little too long, a seperate page may be started for that topic.

In the real world, you can't drive a car or steer a bike with a joystick and buttons, and the same holds true for some of the best games ever made. Games that put the player in the driver's seat of a racecar or spaceship, or riding a motorcycle or bicycle. These games need specialized controls, like steering wheels, pedals, shifters, and handlebars. If you feel the need for speed, you'll likely also need some of the following:

Steering Wheels

While steering wheels come in all shapes and sizes, there are two basic types once you get under the control panel: Optical and Analog.

Optical (360 degree wheels) Optical wheels spin freely, all the way around, as many turns as you like. (With one notable exception, that is- see "Roadblasters" below.) The electronics consist of an optical encoder wheel, that spins through two infrared emitter/receiver pairs. If that sounds like the description of a spinner, that's becausen optical wheel really is a spinner with a big steering wheel in place of the knob. These connect through the same hardware as a spinner, too- a Mouse Hack, Opti-Pac, Opti-Wiz, or similar.

Games that used Optical wheels include:

1. Pole Position
2. Championship Sprint
3. Ivan Stewart's Super Off-Road
4. Roadblasters
5. and many more..

Roadblasters is an interesting exception to the rule. Roadblasters used a unique optical controller, that was limited to 270 degrees of travel. The Roadblasters controller can be interfaced the same as any other optical wheel, but cannot be used to play any other optical wheel games, because of the limited travel. (The Roadblasters controller also pops up in discussion of Flight Yokes, see below.)

Analog (270 degree wheels) Analog wheels do not turn freely throughout the full 360 degrees of the circle. Analog wheels have a limited range of motion- typically described as 270 degrees, though in reality, the acutal number of degrees varies from controller to controller. The electronics are a simple potentiometer. Like other potentiometer-based devices (see Analog Joysticks), Analog wheels interface through a DualStrike hack, AKI, A-Pac, or other similar device.

Games that used Analog wheels include:

1. Spy Hunter
2. Power Drift
3. Road Riot 4wd
4. Hard Drivin'
5. and many more...

Flight Yokes

Controllers masqurerading as Yokes

Handlebars

Pedals

Analog

Digital

Shifters

Constant-press vs. Momentary-press How MAME handles shifter inputs