pacman challenge edition came out on the xbox 360 this summer. it's actually a great game with good gameplay. the version is time & point based, rather than level & survival like the original.
however, playing the game with the stock xbox controller (analog thumb or d-pad) isn't much fun -you really need a standard 4-way arcade joystick for proper game action/response.
D. already had an x-arcade, and swapped the built-in stick with a switchable 4/8 way joystick (one that uses governor for true 4-way action!)... but there's no interface for to the xbox360 (not yet?).
xbox 360, pac man challenge edition with x-arcade hack.
so D. bought a generic xbox controller to hack, and we busted that apart to wire the xbox d-pad control directly to the 4-way joystick.
pretty straightforward operation. the joystick uses 8 simple switches (only need 4 way). so we wired the 4 switches directly to the new xbox d-pad (on the circuit board).
curiously enough it seemed so straight forward we just started wiring stuff up. but had a little trouble realizing the d-pad isn't wired the same way as the dedicated switch-per-direction on the 8-way stick.
after more testing and giving it some thought it made sense. the d-pad doesn't use a dedicated signal line for each direction plus ground. the controller uses combinations for signaling. this works since you can't simultaneously signal up and down, likewise left and right. there's no common ground. it's a trick, optimized really.
xbox d-pad controller worked like this
(arbitrary lines as we labeled them):
right = line 1,2
left = line 2,3
up = line 3,4
down = line 4,1
so... we wired individual switches to points on the d-pad; routing +5v on the d-pad to all the switches, four lines back to the d-pad, one from each switch to the corresponding d-pad point (then a line from there to the second point as noted above).
i don't have a diagram, so you'll have to find circuit points to wire up, just use a meter and test each action to double check where you need to wire (we just didn't check our work the first time).
once we got everything wired up, it worked like a champ, and we could play challenge edition properly! it rocks.
finished. awesome on the hi-def widescreen.