The Super Playchoice, or: How To Shove An Intel NUC Into A SNES Controller

[ChanceKJ]

Way back in spring of 2014 I decided to see if it was possible to shove an Intel NUC inside a Super Nintendo Advance fight stick controller. Back then I documented my progress on a now defunct online form and since its demise I've decided that this content might be entertaining and maybe even borderline helpful for someone else who might want to attempt this themselves.  At the very least you'll get a bit of a chuckle at decades old tech being turduckin'd into even older piece of decades old tech. I also recently got stuck reading some old NES case builds here on the LTT forums and decided it might be time to repost/update this project.   Regardless, I'm bored and waiting for my EK parts order to arrive so I can start documenting my first liquid cooling build...  

 

Part of my background is Arcade collecting/restoration and this idea stemmed from wanting something to tinker with as I was building my first MAME cabinet "Flynns Arcade" back in the mid 2010's. (I'm also a bit of a content creator on YouTube as one half of The Canadian Arcade) I'm a HUGE Nintendo collector, some of my arcade cabinets are some of the rarest Nintendo ever made: Sky Skipper, Sheriff, a red 5-slot Donkey Kong to name a few. I had always thought it would be nice to have everything from the late 70's to mid 90's all in one place so I could check out arcade/console titles I may be looking at buying in the future, or at the very least have something cool to collect dust in a display cabinet in my home (spoiler alert). I know I could do this with an rPie, but back then the idea was more about putting an actual on Windows PC into the controller then it was to build something like a RetroPi. Plus RetroPi was in its infancy and we were still all using old laptops and PC towers for our MAME builds.  

 

As with any project I embark on, I like to document the images for it on my Flickr gallery found here. There'll be a few more images there if you want more content than whats found here or you want to see some of the other things I've build/restored, (bluetooth speaker in a .50 cal box, my desk project, dozens of arcade cabs, etc). Anyways, on the with project...

 

The idea here is simple: Install an Intel NUC into a Super Nintendo controller, Install windows 7, shell it with Maximus Arcade, and install all of the available and compatible Nintendo Arcade/console/handheld systems into it that the buttons of the controller will support. Basically everything sans light gun games that would work with an 8-way stick and 8 buttons. This includes all titles on Arcade hardware prior to the mid 90's, (DK era and older, Nintendo Vs. Unisystem, Playchoice, SuperSystem), Gameboy, Gameboy colour, Gameboy Advance, VirtualBoy, NES, SNES, Famicom, and Super Famicom, etc.

 

If you're not into any of the world of Arcade history, (or younger than 40), in 1986 Nintendo released a line of arcade cabinets (and cabinet upgrade "PAKs") under the "Playchoice" name brand. These cabinets were an evolution of the Nintendo Vs. System, an arcade platform that mirrored the recently released NES consoles at the time. Basically the idea was Nintendo wanted to bridge the gap between the classic Arcade and your living room, slowly moving gamers from dropping coins into cabinets to being able to sit on your couch and have unlimited access to the games you and your friends wanted to play. Unlike other arcade console ports at the time the Vs. system was a revolution in that the games on its NES console counterpart were 1 to 1 to the gameplay and graphics found in the arcade cabinets. (Actually, thats not 100% accurate, Vs. Super Mario Bros is quite a bit more difficult than NES SMB...). Nintendo sold the benefit to Arcade operators that once you bought into the Vs hardware you could easily swap the titles on your cabinets to a new games in order to maintain player interest and profitability with very little modification/conversion.

 

However A couple years later with Arcade operators frustrated that Nintendo was moving their clientele out of their establishments and into the living room with the NES, Nintendo decided to release one more blow to the industry status quo with the Playchoice. Unlike most other arcade games (Vs system included) that relied on the player to die or loose the game only to need to insert another coin, the Playchoice operated on a game timer where the player could keep playing regardless of skill. This also served as a place where players could visit to test out some of the latest games on the NES before buying the cartridge for home use. The Playchoice was a massive success for Nintendo at the time. As an operator you could load up to 5 or 10 NES/Playchoice titles into your cabinet and players would be able to chose and re-chose at any point what game on the list they wanted to play as long as they had more time on the clock or more coins in their pocket.  This was a win for Arcade operators as they could still get the foot traffic and coins into their arcades, A win for players who wanted to try out the latest NES titles without having to buy the cartridge, and a win for Nintendo because they kept players interests/money and kept the arcade operators happy even if they were slowly killing the industry by moving the players to their own living rooms.  If you haven't figured it out yet, this is where the name of my project comes from.  As a side note, Nintendo would later release a 3 game SNES arcade cabinet in arcades dubbed the Nintendo Super System. 

 

I set out with a few design goals:

• Minimize any kind of external modification to the Advantage controller, aside from power button, I/O.
• Build using an Intel NUC DCCP847DYE, 4Gb RAM, 120GB SSD, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.
• Teensy USB Dev Board to interface the controller to USB.
• Windows 7, shelled with Maximus Arcade
• Custom Nintendo Maximus Arcade theme GUI
   

 

 

Starting with the controller/PC case,  Those of you who are in your late 30's might remember these as one of the two more common fight stick style controllers for the SNES on the market.  Made by Asciiware the Super Advantage was designed with the same design language of the SNES, and a followup to the first party fight stick controller the NES Advantage that Nintendo released back in the mid 80's. One of the coolest parts of the Advantage is that it includes a series of button modifiers that allows the user to either "Turbo" or "Auto" each of the L,R, A, B, X, Y buttons, and set a sensitivity setting for each button individually. All of those settings are processed on the gamepad, and will transfer into the PC input.  

 

 

It took me a couple weeks, but I was able to secure a good condition specimen from an eBay seller. I think I paid like $60 for it at the time, which was good because the vast majority available then in the Calgary area were beat to hell.  I quickly discovered that it also takes standard M6 threaded arcade ball tops, so I tried a couple different colours that I had laying around, a red one and a bubbled smoke coloured one. I then started the task of tearing it all apart for cleaning...

 

 

 

 

 

To my surprise and luck, the casting for the controller wasn't at all oxidized like so many of the SNES consoles have become over the years, however the PCB was absolutely filthy. 

 

 

 

 

Once I had everything cleaned up it was time to check fitment of the NUC. At that time there were a couple differnt choices of NUC on the market but I decided to go with the DCCP847DYE. This was for two main reasons, it was readily available, and there were a number of fan-less third party cases for it on the market so I could get my hands on a matching thermocouple for the CPU, more on that later....

 

 

 

Next It was time to start modifications of the controller. In order to adapt the Advantage to the NUC, I'll need to cut the console cable (*Gasp!*) and solder in a Teensy 2.0 dev board. The Teensy is a USB-based microcontroller that will allow me to adapt the signals from the controller wires to a usable USB signal. Using an online tutorial (that I can't seem to find now for the life of me) I loaded the Teensy with the appropriate .Hex file and soldered it to the controller cables. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For this build I'm going to be using a Crucial 120gb mSATA SSD, a pair of 4gig ram sticks out of an old 2011 MacMini, and an Intel WiFi/Bluetooth card. For the OS I've gone with Windows 7.  This PC's main purpose is older emulators so we don't need much horsepower or disk space considering the entirety of the pre-1990's Nintendo library can fit on a single USB drive then (and now). I also briefly tried using a pair of antennas from an old Linksys wifi router, however I didnt want to buy smaller ones and I definitely didnt want to mount them on the outside of the controller. 

 

 

 

Looking at an older picture in the build album I just realized that the original NUC case had a pair of antennas! So I just went downstairs and dug out the box, (which still makes the intel chime when you open it. Not bad for almost a decade sitting in storage!).  At any rate, I might as well update this as we go   I pulled the antennas out of the old case and reinstalled them into the build with a bit of kapton tape.

 

 

 

 

Ok, going back to April 2014, I needed to have some sort of power button on the outside. Looking back, I probably should have done some sort of magnetic reed switch or something, but I decided on a simple momentary switch. I wired it up with a couple connectors and some molex micro fit, drilled a small hole in the back of the controllers shell and then wired it all up.

 

 

 

 

Now to the fun part. Unfortunately with the size of the cooling fan installed on the CPU it's not going to fit. However as mentioned before, back in the day there were a series of aftermarket case makers that had a small range of fan-less cases for the NUC and one of them was even nice enough to sell me just the thermocouple. I can't remember who it was, but without this piece (or access to a CnC) it would have been impossible for 2014 me to finish this build. 

 

A thermocouple is useless without a heatsink of sorts so without wanting to build my own heatpipe and with Noctua at least a year away from being founded, the best option I had in front of me was the massively thick steel base of the controller. Yes, its steel, not copper or aluminium, so it definitely doesn't have the thermal conductivity of the original case, but then again this is an Intel Celeron 847 so its not like I need to strap an AIO or some elaborate outdoor pool cooling system to it.  However I did need to make sure that the NUC was tight and secure to the base, which meant drilling and tapping some mounting holes.

 

 

After removing the stock cooler, I mounted the thermocouple to the cpu and chipset with some included thermal pads and then mounted the whole board to the controller  base plate with some screws I cut down to be the perfect length. Yes, a little janky, but it works, (and has for almost a decade...)

 

 

 

 

At this point I needed to make a decision on I/O. As much as I didnt want to drill a bunch of holes, it was 2014, Airplay was a brand new technology, Wireless charging wasn't really a thing so I was going to at least need power and display out. I started by marking out some holes for the power plug and HDMI ports. In retrospect I should have gone all the way and cut out connectors for the USB on the back, but I still might do that later. For now a wireless mouse and keyboard is only needed when you need to make adjustments in windows as the emulator front end will load on boot and its all controlled by the buttons and stick.

 

 

 

After (poorly) carving out the back it was time to wire up the NUC and make sure everything would fit. I did quickly realize I could do with just a bit more clearance, so I added a few thin washers to the baseplate for an extra mm of clearance. I also added a set of new rubber feet to the bottom to get a little bit of airflow and elevate it up off of any play surface. 

 

 

 

 

Now that the internals are done it was time to switch over to my other desktop and design the GUI for the front end. For the main logo/splash screen I decided on mixing the SNES and Playchoice logos. I also found a sprite pack from the Super Mario All-Stars release of SMB3 and used it to make the GUI and elements for the Maximus skin. I really like having game video snippet previews for each selection so I integrated those for each game in the library. On top of that each of the emulators got their own treatment in the selection menu.

 

 

 

 

 

At that point I was pretty much done. All in all the project was a success, and I decided to celebrate by taking it to work and playing it in our boardroom with a couple of my co-workers. I used to work for the Sportchek/Atmosphere FGL Sports marketing team back in the day, so obviously the first thing we did was load up NES Ice Hockey, before I got a few rounds of Donkey Kong in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking back over the last decade this thing has mostly sat in an IKEA display case in my office in one home or another.  It was a crazy fun project and it taught me a few things about programming dev boards, tapping metal, and designing a good looking user interface. Even though it doesn't get much play these days I still see it every time I walk into my office and the fact that I was able to shove a Windows PC into a SNES controller with a couple thousand games in it still makes me laugh a bit. Besides, it has some good company in there too...