#lik-sang

[blazehedgehog]

Were you fond of ZTNET Store?

It took me a long time to jog my memory as to what this even was. I know I visited the site a couple of times, but I never had enough money for the kind of stuff they were selling. It was like, mod chips and stuff, right? Or stuff that was adjacent to that.

No, back in the day the only thing I ever bought from one of those places was a "SmartJoy" USB adapter for my Playstation controller, and I bought it from Lik-sang. It was the best $12 I ever spent, because it gave me a top-of-the-line controller for my PC.

Like, people probably don't remember (or don't know), but game controllers on the PC were kind of a crapshoot. The best in the industry was considered to be the Microsoft Sidewinder:

Look at that d-pad. It's like a half-melted jolly rancher. Just awful. And the Sidewinder originally retailed for $110. For 8 buttons and a hemorrhoids pillow for your thumb.

For the $12 I spent on my SmartJoy USB adapter, I got a real, actual, console controller, with twin analog sticks, 12 buttons, and force feedback vibration. It was comfortable, it was standardized, and it made playing emulators and fan games so, so, so much better.

And what were the other options?

The much-lauded Gravis Gamepad actually advertises a "video game-style controller" as if it was a side feature to... whatever else it was they were trying to accomplish with this thing? I had the successor to the Gravis Gamepad, the Gamepad Pro:

I can tell you from experience, that d-pad was very uncomfortable, and the obsession with converting it to the world's smallest Lunchables joystick was doubly awful. The tiny, in-set, spongy buttons also wore out after only a year or two.

Or maybe you'd like to see the next evolution of the Microsoft Sidewinder?

And you thought the Playstation Batarang was weird. Is that a thumbprint scanner on the left there? I'm getting blisters just looking at it.

The Xbox side of Microsoft standardizing controllers on PC was one of the best things they ever did, but it also meant that the SmartJoy USB adapter I had eventually fell out of favor as games began to support Xbox controllers and only Xbox controllers.

Lik-Sang was eventually shuttered by Sony for selling Playstation modchips and I'm still kind of sore about that. Sadly, I don't remember much about ZTNET.

[blazehedgehog]

Just curious, what adapter do you use to hook up your Dualshock 2 controller to your PC?

A SmartJoy USB.

They don’t make them anymore, because they were a product of an import site known as Lik-sang, and Sony eventually got Lik-sang shut down (ten years ago as of this month). Lik-sang was originally a site that sold modchips in the early 2000′s and Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo joined forces to get them to stop. So, Lik-sang moved on to selling obscure and imported goods.

That last part eventually bit them in the butt: When Sony launched the PSP, Lik-sang imported a bunch from Hong Kong and resold them in territories where the handheld hadn’t officially launched yet. Sony really, really did not like that. The case went to court, and Lik-sang was completely shut down.

I really love the DualShock. Thanks to my SmartJoy USB adapter, it’s been my go-to PC controller since, like, 2004? Back then, a SmartJoy was the cheapest way to get a good, high quality controller on the PC. If you wanted a comparable PC controller, with dual analog sticks, force feedback vibration and comfortable ergonomics, you were seriously looking to spend $80-$90 on something from Logitech. With tax and shipping, the SmartJoy was under $20.

The SmartJoy adapter has outlived three different controllers I’ve used it with (a DualShock 1 and two DualShock 2′s). While Microsoft has done really good standardizing PC controllers with the Xbox 360 “Xinput” drivers, it kind of sucks because a lot of games now just expect an Xbox 360 controller – meaning a growing number of games don’t work quite right with my Dualshock 2.

At best, a game won’t won’t let you remap your controller settings, and at worst, more and more games outright refuse to work on anything that isn’t official Xbox controller hardware. If you’re using a controller on PC, these days it’s assumed you’re either using an Xbox controller or nothing. Mafia 2, for example, specifically demands an Xbox 360 controller and won’t work with any type of alternative.

Even on games that claim to support other, non-Xbox controllers never work quite right. I think Sonic Generations and Street Fighter IV claim to support whatever, but neither work with my DualShock 2 and at one point I had to download an “Xbox 360 Controller Emulator” that made these games think I was using an Xinput device.

The best is playing an old game that detects my SmartJoy and automatically maps inputs. A lot of Rockstar’s older PC ports do this – Midnight Club 2 and GTA3 automatically give me the same controls used in the PS2 versions of those games with zero configuration on my end. Surprisingly, OlliOlli also does this, even going so far as to change all of the menu prompts to DualShock button icons.

The analog stick on my DualShock 2 is actually starting to get a little loose, so I need to re-up on a new one. Unfortunately, brand new DualShock 2′s are getting to be sort of rare (read: expensive), and “high-quality” clone controllers aren’t actually very high quality at all.

So either I spend the $60 and get a new DualShock 2 on Amazon (and pray it’s an official Sony product) or I spend $55 on a DualShock 4 and $5-10 on a Bluetooth adapter.

[samueljmitchell]

17/07/13

[ivkowalenko-blog]

Rember Lik-Sang?

(I miss them)