Why? Who needs a desk and chair! Does anyone do a retro machine to a couch on large screen? Kind of like a console environment.
list what you did to accomplish it serial extension cords, vga to hdmi adapters, wireless etc.
Joysticks seem difficult to do on couch unless you use a gamepad type.
| WIN98SE non OEM | PII MMX | 350Mhz | 384RAM | Voodoo3 2000 PCI | DX7 | 126GB+ | Yamaha DS-XG Sound |
moknok wrote on 2022-05-19, 23:06:Joysticks seem difficult to do on couch unless you use a gamepad type.
And until you attempt to do the keyboard!
Depends on how deep retro you want. On Windows XP? Sure, not a big problem to setup mouse/keyboard remapper.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
I'm almost certain there was a DOS menu program with joystick support somewhere, but I can't remember the name. In any case, that would probably be the way to go: configure all games in that menu app, add it to autoexec and use joystick to navigate from couch either using a menu program or some TSR that converts joystick action into keypresses (unless that would conflict with actual games).
For video I had nice results with Gefen VGA2HDMI scalers, it does video as well as sound (up to 1080p60, if I remember it well).
The biggest question would be just how playable the games would be with a joystick. I mean, shooters would definitely be a no-go (IMHO not even some of the modern "boomer" shooters work well without a mouse). Flight/Space sims often require a lot more buttons than a regular DOS joystick/gamepad can provide (unless we're talking about HOTAS, but even then a keyboard might still be required). That would probably leave platformers (think Jazz Jackrabbit, Duke Nukem 1/2, Jill of the Jungle, Commander Keen) and maybe most driving games.
Then, of course, there is a problem that there are no good wireless joysticks for DOS machines. I think there are dongles that allow connecting modern gamepads to Gameport, but I don't think those work with bluetooth or 2.4g joysticks.
All in all, it would be a very complicated setup with ultimately not a great experience. IMHO a better option would be getting something like Raspberry Pi or a cheap x86 box, installing some kind of launcher (EmulationStation, Pegasus, etc) and getting source ports. There are great open source ports for a whole lot of DOS games, from Doom/Duke Nukem/Quake to Tomb Raider, Jazz Jackrabbit, Descent and even XCOM. Most of them have modern gamepad support and extra features like better rendering options, MIDI soundfont support, etc.
Maybe you want to try some retro gaming consoles for this purpose. Otherwise I'd recommend a laptop with a good adventure game if that's your thing. 😀
Oh and maybe the commodore cd32 if you're into that. PC wise it sounds frustrating. 🙁
