New to Arcade

[kassj0peja]

Hey,

I am quite new to Shmups. As a child I played Apydia and 8 years ago Ikaruga and Borderdown for the best console ever.

I don't play much at the moment and I wanted to try more japanese style games to have the console feeling again.

Anyway, I saw that the newest DDP is going to be released in Austria and I did some research about this series. And what should I say, afer reading, watching, more reading I want to have play to have a few Arcade PCB's (not only DDP) and a Supergun.

But I have never played Shmups except for Ikaruga, Borderdown and Apydia. And because there are Superguns that support only 3 buttons and a few up to 6 I wonder which one I should buy? Are 3 buttons sufficient?

What controllers can you recommend for Superguns (to be honest I prefer Pads) or which console controllers can be modified to be usable for Superguns?

Thanks

[Sumez]

Any controller should be relatively easy to modify for supergun, though usually the older it is, the easier. Most people prefer to play with an arcade stick, and those should all be quite simple if you know your way around a soldering iron (and if you don't, that's easy to learn).

Much in the same way, if a supergun only supports 3 buttons, it is probably easy to modify into supporting more.
The thing is, the JAMMA standard which nearly all arcade PCBs follow, only supports 3 buttons, so various games might have different ways to support the 4th button. As for 6 buttons, that's usually done through an additional connector on the PCB itself, and different from manufacturer to manufacturer.

So if you go for 6 buttons, you can't even be certain it will work with all games. That said, there are only very few games using that many buttons, and most of them are made by Capcom. 4 buttons is a must if you want to at least play Neo Geo fighters, but if you're sticking to shoot'em ups, 3 buttons will be fine in nearly every case. Most only use 2.

[kassj0peja]

Thank you Sumez. Actually only Shmups and maybe some classic puzzle games are interesting for. I found a Supergun that supports Megadrive controllers with 3 buttons 'only'. I think that is the best solution for me.
Thanks again.

[Sumez]

The MegaDrive controller port is good, because it's a standard format that you can pick up a huge variety of controllers for, or your own plugs in any electronics store.