Xbox 360 Controller Stuffed in Pac-Man Plug and Play

Some early/classic arcade games, such as Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and more used a 4-way joystick instead of an 8-way one like most modern and fighting games. Why not just use an 8-way joystick with Pac-Man?  I ask because when you are playing a game and hit a certain angle on a joystick, it ignores the move instead of going to the closest of 4 directions; thus causing you to freeze and miss turns etc. during the game. It's  almost impossible to play. This is NOT cool. This is why you might not be able to climb the ladder right away while playing Donkey Kong.

I needed a dedicated, 4-way joystick for these great classics. So I made this: An XBox 360 Controller, stuffed in a Pac-Man Plug and Play because it is a 4-way joystick and compact. I used a Guitar hero controller instead of a traditional wireless controller because the circuit board is smaller and can be used for more compact applications. It sounds like a weird genetic experiment, but believe me, this project is worth it.

What you'll need:

• Guitar Hero XBox 360 Controller (eBay)
• Jakks Pacific Plug and Play (eBay)
• Soldering Iron
• Solder
• Flux
• Torx T-10 Screw Driver
• Hot Glue and Glue Gun
• Wire
• Switches
• Battery holder (Amazon) - 2 AA battery holder. Instead I used 2 single AA battery holders wired in series.
• 150 Ohm Resistor (Amazon or Electronics Store)
• Fiberglass Pen - (Amazon)
• PC Adapter for XBox 360

First Step - Take the guitar controller apart

I found a Guitar off eBay for this without a guitar neck, so I could skip this first part. If you have a neck on yours, you will need to flip the this release lever shown. If you have a broken one with no neck, you can skip this step, too!



Next, remove the batteries and battery cover on the back and front face plate. The release for the face plate is on the back, as shown in the images below.


Next, remove all 11 Torx T-10 screws from the back. 1 is under the warranty void sticker.

Once you have the guitar dismantled, the only part you will need is the board in the upper corner as shown below.

You will not need everything that's connected to the board. Disconnect the cable going to the mic from the board all together, and cut off anything connected to the remaining cables. Before you cut the cables, locate the wires to start, back and sync buttons.


I needed to do some detective work on the cable that went to the neck of the guitar to figure out what wires went to the other buttons. It's similar to hacking a keyboard for arcade controls. Shorting out the wires to figure out what 2 wires crossed will cause a button press while you have "Setup USB Controller" properties open on your computer. Lucky for you, I've done the dirty work and here's the key to that mystery:

Wire 1+8 wire is the A button, wire 1+7 is button B, wire 6+7 is X, wire 3+7 is Y wire 3+5=Left Bumper (LB), Wire 6+8 is Right Bumper (RB).

I ended up not using the LB and RB buttons, due to space limitations and they weren't really needed. Also you will need to solder wires to the directionals and guide buttons on the board. I use a fiberglass pen from Amazon to clean the contacts before soldering wires to board. Tin the wires and use a little flux on the board to make sure it all sticks. Then hot glue the wires down, so they don't break loose either. Hot glue is a hacker's best friend!

  Clear space inside the board by removing the battery area etc., so it will fit on the lower left bottom, like in the picture.

I used a battery holder for the battery and wired it to the capacitor that the original battery holder was connected to.


Using some wax paper as a template, I drilled holes in the battery cover so you can see the "Ring of Lights" on the board showing through the bottom. Then I permanently affixed the battery cover to the bottom of the plug-and-play since, there are no batteries on the inside. I had to relocate the battery holder to the back.


I then wired the built-in switch and LED to the switchboard on the plug-and-play. Make sure to cut around the switch to break any trace to the rest of the board. Cut traces to the GROUND wire and power from the LED to the board too.

Next, wire the switch on the GROUND wire side to the battery (wiring switch to power wire does not work right and causes the chip on the board to get hot when turned off for some reason). I then ran wires from the LEDs power and ground on the board and wired them to the battery connector. Make sure to wire a 150 ohm resistor on the LED's power side. I also located the connection points for the coin button and soldered wires to them for later.


All that's left to do is drill some holes for your extra switches and wires,  as well as for the plug-and-play A and B switches, the Coin Menu Button, and the joystick. I prefer mapping the coin button to the coin button in MAME. There is a potentiometer switch that can be used when the joystick is twisted left or right ,but I didn't need that, so I didn't hook it up.


Final Thoughts 

This works well as a dedicated controller overall. There is one problem though: the board had a built-in tilt sensor chip that you have to work around when not in a game. However, it works great in a MAME game, but interferes with the MAME menu selection in the UI. I found laying the controller on its side while in the menu corrects this until you are in the game. There is supposed to be a way to disable this, but it would require me to remove the glued-down board from the plug-and-play and solder a small jumper wire to some really small contacts. I'll do a whole new build instead, using a real Ms. Pac Man 4-way, only-style arcade joystick I got from eBay. I'll  wire it to an actual wireless XBox 360 controller since there will be more room for it to fit and it doesn't have a tilt sensor. Stay tuned...