Sinistar looks FUN! A friend recommended it and Sinistar is amusing to listen to. And I played it the other day but the little ship is not doing what I tell it to!

Example scenario! My ship is travelling up, and I want to go left. I press "left", then the ship points diagonally UP and LEFT. No matter how much I press "left", the ship does not point any more left! In order to travel left I must press "down" for a small amount of time. If I press "down" for too long I end up facing diagonally DOWN and LEFT! So it is a controlling catastrophe.

My question, I guess, is: Is my controller malfunctioning? Does MAME not fully support Sinistar? Or was the original controller, like, really complicated? Is there a way to fix it? I want to play this game, I really enjoy similar games, like Time Pilot, but I can't put up with the hideous control.

Also! If you have not read Bob The Angry Flower, there are two comics which feature Sinistar, and they are pretty funny, although a bit difficult to understand, much like Sinistar himself. http://www.angryflower.com/returno.gif http://www.angryflower.com/coffee.gif

-- Aaron Pieper (apieper@vt.edu), March 11, 2001

Answers

Aaron,

Sinistar had a 64 directional joystick in the arcades which makes it rather hard to play properly in Mame.

Cheers, BeeJay.

-- BeeJay (mamester@i4free.co.nz), March 11, 2001.

Sounds like MAME's method of emulating that 64-direction joystick is to make it more of a dial setup. Left/right just moves it within a 90-degree range from NW to NE, while up/down does a complete circuit.

Could be wrong, though. It's been known to happen.

-- Matt Denham (tathetriam@aol.com), March 11, 2001.