The "iCade 8-Bitty" seems to be available (again?) on ThinkGeek for $30 (no, i'm not associated, and have nothing to gain). I'm assuming this controller has the same compatibility as the full iCade cabinet. Seems great-- cheaper, and more portable. Anyone have/tried one?
I'm not sure if anyone has tried this, besides at conferences and reviewers. I enjoy my iCade, but it's huge, clunky and loud (joystick movement and buttons). I went ahead and ordered one of these. I hope it's good. Price and size are good... I am excited.
Just ordered one as well, chose the cheap slow postage to England so it'll take a while (Otherwise was another 25 dollars). Looks great, looking forward to using it on MAME/Spectrum emulator mostly. Nice cheap device, hopefully should work well
I got the same email saying they're back in stock but I'm not sure if there was a first run. I've tried to look for any review or mention from a real user and it's impossible. @psj3809 I'm also ordering one to the UK, lets see how long this takes
Just ordered to the UK too. Looking forward to playing iMame, Minter, Mikey Shorts and Commander Pixman with it.
iFBA is going to get better! Just ordered as well. I already have 2 iCades...1 at work and 1 at home. I cant wait to use this for Street FIghter X Tekken vie Blutrol (best 6$ ever spent!). Along with the 50$ to buy new microleaf controllers to get rid of the horrible clickyness, on both, of the originals. I just want to know how this will mess us synking with my iCades?
Button layout Just got my 8-bitty and fired it up. The button layout is all crazy compared to the icade cabinet. I figured out the layout differences, which is EXTREMELY useful when using BluTrol. That actually took me a minute to figure out, but I figured I'd share it here with all of you wonderful people. Have fun! The 8-bitty is a very nice little controller, and is WAY better than using a wiimote with BluTrol.
Many thanks for that image, Squablo. Looks like they really want people to use those shoulder buttons! I'm very surprised 9 and Enter aren't on the "select" and "start" buttons.
Crossing fingers devs sort this out, but since its very grey zone to begin with on the App Store, I guess only time will tell. I'm at least having fun with iMame (non jailbroken i5), but at least its something...
WTF is with the mapping? I was so gonna buy one, but will pass given that information. Who wants to play games almost entirely with start, select and shoulder buttons. They must not have researched games compatible with their own friggin device at all.
There has got to be some reason behind their logic. All I know is that iCade and iCade mobile with iMame has some serious button issues, and it forced me to use iFBA as a result. In iMame you can't move right and press a button with the red keys, nothing happens on the iCade and iCade mobile. Oddly, the same issue does not exist on the Bitty with iMame at all, it works as intended.
I've tested out a couple of games, and yes, for most of them, I'm not using the red buttons at all. Almost everything uses the 'start' and 'select' buttons. It's crazy. I believe this is just lazy work by the developers. The 8-Bitty is only marketed by iCade and doesn't seem to have been developed with any participation by Ion. I'm just hoping we'll see more developers offer button configuration settings for iCade modes. I'd like that regardless of the 8-Bitty.
Well finally got my 8-bitty today, my fault as i went for the cheap slow postage from US-UK. Anyway so far really enjoying it. For iMAME which is the main app i want to use it with, its fine, it uses the 'red buttons' and its great. Used it with Spectaculator and it used the shoulder button which wasnt great but i might be able to change that in the Speccy app. Couldnt get it working with the Atari app but i'll try again later, played a bit of Meganoid on it which was fine (red buttons). So far so good, for the price i think its great. Love the retro nod towards the NES control pad and also the Atari VCS (fake wooden stickers round the side).
Has this thing been popular at all? The mapping is terrible, I was going to buy one for the purposes of playing games with but nothing's going to work with this mapping... I'm currently working on iCade support in MANOS and AWESOME Land, and I'm trying to lay the buttons out in a way that they work on both iCade and 8-bitty, but taking the 8-bitty layout into consideration then messes the mapping up for the people with iControlPads and the like...
I was going to buy this yesterday, went to Amazon, and its not there. Is there only one place on the web to buy one? I was kind of hoping to get it off of Amazon cause I have a lot of gc credit. Do you think it will ever go to amazon? There's no stores that sell it right like Target? Thanks, just want to buy one without using a credit card.
I saw it on Amazon UK... Can anybody tell me if this controller can be connected to Windows for PC gaming?
You can, just like the iCade it shows up as a keyboard. What makes it difficult to use though, is that instead of holding down a direction (say up) it sends an "up" then a "not up" when you release. Saves on transmission and power I think. Means you have to run an interface between the iCade and your game instead of just mapping keyboard controls (unless you want to tap away like mad, Frogger style! ) I'll have to poke around again, but the last time I looked there wasn't an easy plug-n-play PC solution for it, people were programming GlovePIE or something to translate things. EDIT: This page explains it well...