What sort of joysticks are you using? I've never used a Quickshot 2-port joystick card, but the standard PC joystick interface supports exactly two buttons. Any standard joystick that uses four buttons only works by using the button inputs normally reserved for the second joystick.

(Also, you're not running DOSBox on your 486, are you..?)

We are using standard gravis 3 button joysticks, we have also tried gravis 4 gamepads.

No we are not running dosbox on the 486, we simply tried running the game on dosbox to see if the results were the same. They were very similar results too.

Player 1 works properly, and player 2 moves randomly. The buttons however work just fine.

twood1130 wrote:

No we are not running dosbox on the 486, we simply tried running the game on dosbox to see if the results were the same. They were very similar results too.

Did you try changing the joystick type in DOSBox.conf? In this case you would need to select "2axis".

Yes, dosbox was set to 2-axis.
Try Golden Axe yourself, maybe you can figure out how to make player 2 behave.
I am wondering what is going on, is it the game itself, or is it something to do with modern hardware. Double Dragon 1 also exhibits the same behavior.

Always ask old hardware problems in Marvin. Marvin, the Paranoid Android

Moved to Marvin -> Software (I guess?)

twood1130 wrote:

Yes, dosbox was set to 2-axis.
Try Golden Axe yourself, maybe you can figure out how to make player 2 behave.
I am wondering what is going on, is it the game itself, or is it something to do with modern hardware. Double Dragon 1 also exhibits the same behavior.

Game port joysticks were hit or miss back then. I usually just hoped the game had keyboard support or customizable keyboard controls. Some joysticks required you to tweak it or go through a joystick diagnostic DOS program to configure it properly. This could be your situation. Unfortunately I don't have your joystick to help further. Keyboard was always the best option for accuracy during those early days... 😀 If you need a joystick I'd only get one that supported 98 or higher as most of those should function normally or be configured easier in Windows and there were some USB ones.

I happen to own Golden Axe on the original 5.25" disks. I can confirm that 100% movement to either side of the horizontal axis counts as dashing (which is just a double-tap of left or right on any other port). It was sort of a dumb gameplay change for DOS. Moreso given the game is little more than a conversion of the MegaDrive port

twood1130 wrote on 2017-05-08, 19:20:

I have been trying like mad to get two joysticks working properly with these games. […]
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I have been trying like mad to get two joysticks working properly with these games.

Hardware:
IBM 486SLC2 66mhz (386sx)
16mb ram
Quickshot 2-port joystick card

Whatever joystick is plugged into Port 1 works fine, and there are no issues. However whatever joystick is plugged into port 2 is unusable. The calibration screen in Golden Axe (press F5 at any time to access) just shows the cursor jumping around the screen.

Results in DosBox are almost identical surprisingly, so I am not sure how to go about the problem.

If anyone knows anything that could help, I would love to hear from you.

I Have the exact same problem with Golden Axe on my 386DX-33Mhz.

The dual gameport card that i'm using has 4 goldstar chips on it, and not much else..
I've tried a few combinations of joysticks/gamepads, and whatever i try, the 2nd controller CANNOT be calibrated properly in the game (for player 2)... It just jumps around during calibration,
Even pulled out the sound card to make sure it's not conflicting in any way, but it makes no difference.

Wacky Wheels works fine.

And "jCenter"also works fine for the most part.