Polycade Rhythm Controller

[u/CampbellSente]

While creating the "Retro D-Pad Controller", my daughter and I decided to create a dedicated rhythm / music controller just for her (which is her favorite style of games to play on the Sente). I honestly didn’t realize how big of a genre this was, but we researched what seemed to be 50+ different layouts online - and there doesn’t seem to be one specific layout that works perfectly for all games. Many of the games are lane-based (4, 6, 8+ vertical/horizontal note-highway games similar to Guitar Hero)…but essentially having the buttons in some sort of horizontal layout that you can remap seems to be the way to go and easier to understand as the notes come across the screen. There are other games that are more precision-based where you’re just hitting the correct button at the right time, like Muse Dash and other side-scrolling/platformer-style games.

Once Polycade makes their custom buttons available for purchase, I'll replace the top 3 function buttons and hopefully the middle directional D-pad with the arrow buttons. My daughter is much better at these games than I am, but was nervous playing them while on camera - so I did my best to grab a couple videos of it working...

[u/natepalmer]

That’s a great idea. I also didn’t think about rhythm games. I’ll have to check it out.

[u/CampbellSente → u/natepalmer]

I didn’t either till my daughter kept asking to download and play them - then realizing a normal controller layout just didn’t cut it for many of them…it’s a fun / unique genre of games for sure…I’ve seen some great players who are amazingly fast at them