Saturn Controller For The Xbox 360

saturn xbox controller

With a slate of old-school 2D fighting games like Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 3 being released on the Xbox 360 [twistedsymphony] thought it would be nice to have a decent old-school gamepad to play them with. His final interface board lets you use an unmodified Saturn controller with the Xbox 360. He used a chopped up Saturn cable extender to attach the controller to a PIC16F690. The PIC decodes the Saturn pad’s button presses. It then triggers a corresponding analog switch that acts as a button press on the actual 360 controller. He did it this way instead of the much harder task of figuring out what the 360 controller protocol was actually doing. Future plans include support for other system’s controllers. Here’s a demo video.

21 thoughts on “Saturn Controller For The Xbox 360

  1. @Dave Part of the reason for not figuring out the protocol has to do with the peripheral security on the Xbox 360. Each controller, memory unit, wi-fi adapter etc. has a little SMD security chip, 3rd party vendors need to purchase this chip directly from MS. And while the controllers can be recognized on a Windows machine, when connected to a 360 console it wont work without that security. And besides, as g0d pointed out, using a straight forward parallel interface the saturn controller can be used to control pretty much ANYTHING.

  2. Most people who build converters for a console usually rewire the old console’s controller to have a binary output (usually a variation of the Neo-Geo pinout), then wire that to the encoder chip in the new console’s controller. This method is much cleaner, I like it a lot.

  3. I busted the guts out of a $4 Playstation controller and soldered in connections to an ATA cable, with an ATA socket soldered to the switches of a C&L Championship joystick that was made for SNES. Simple and reversible. I have yet to add the L2/R2 buttons.
    It’s a good method if your target controller has lots of room to work with.

  4. I’ve been pretty dormant in Xbox modding for a while now (well not really, I just don’t publicize my work).

    In any case I wanted to tackle an interesting project. Every 360 owner knows the D-Pad flat out sucks, and with fighting games like DOA out and SF2HF and UMK3 speculated to hit the XBLA soon a controller with a solid d-pad is important. While the Playstation pad is widely popular, most hardcore 2D fighter fans agree that the Japanese Saturn Pads are some of the best fighting games pads ever made. Not to mention picking up old Saturn pads and joysticks is relatively cheap. If you really want a PSX pad there is bound to be a converter eventually, whereas it’s highly doubtful you’ll ever see one for the Saturn.

    This of course involves gutting a perfectly good 360 controller… luckily I just picked up 2 wireless controllers for $20 a pop, both have analog stick problems, which make them perfect for this mod (considering we wont be needing analog sticks).

  5. I’ve been pretty dormant in Xbox modding for a while now (well not really, I just don’t publicize my work).In any case I wanted to tackle an interesting project. Every 360 owner knows the D-Pad flat out sucks, and with fighting games like DOA out and SF2HF and UMK3 speculated to hit the XBLA soon a controller with a solid d-pad is important. While the Playstation pad is widely popular, most hardcore 2D fighter fans agree that the Japanese Saturn Pads are some of the best fighting games pads ever made. Not to mention picking up old Saturn pads and joysticks is relatively cheap. If you really want a PSX pad there is bound to be a converter eventually, whereas it’s highly doubtful you’ll ever see one for the Saturn.This of course involves gutting a perfectly good 360 controller… luckily I just picked up 2 wireless controllers for $20 a pop, both have analog stick problems, which make them perfect for this mod (considering we wont be needing analog sticks).

  6. Hi,

    Cool! The company I work for is looking to get their controller to work for the 360. I know there are some ps2->360 converters but they are not working for us. Would you be interested in offering your services?

    Thanks,
    Jeff

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