If you’ve been keeping up to date with the Retrospect Podcast or our Let’s Talk Retro series, then you’ll know that we’re big fans of Dr. Tom Tilley. His list of incredible achievements and inventions just keeps on growing; from building the world’s largest Game & Watch handheld to creating a rollable Super Monkey Controller with AiAi inside and a Guitar Hero controller out of a bug zapper, Tom’s mind really is a thing of wonder, and Brandon and I thoroughly enjoyed stepping into his world for an hour during our recent interview.
Tom has a history of creating peripherals from repurposed items, creating controllers from household objects to help his children enjoy games when they were younger when the official peripherals simply weren’t available in his local town. This time he’s upcycled a Paw Patrol motorbike handle controller into a fully functional arcade controller for playing Super Hang-On. It even has a little mirror to make you feel like you’re actually watching your opponents while hurtling around the track!
Dubbed the ‘Super Paw Patrol Hang-On’, Tom has used a Raspberry Pi Pico to bring the controller to life with a working start, throttle, and brake buttons as well as steering controls that work perfectly when twinned with an old joystick from a previously bought controller. Having spoken to Tom at length, I know he will have visioned all of this in the blink of an eye after seeing the store controller in the store and brought the project to life in his mind on the way home. The best bit is that Tom has managed to keep the original toy functions intact with the gubbins slotting back together after removing the Raspberry Pi Pico if needed – this guy really thinks of everything.
While I could talk about Dr. Tom Tilley and his arcade controller all day, Tom’s work is best viewed in video form. Check out the clips on his Twitter page above and listen back to our podcast episode with the Retro Gaming wizard himself to hear him talk about his previous projects, including a hoverboard!
