Did joysticks actually use MIDI or they just use the same port? You can program so many buttons with MIDI. You could set up an entire cockpit on one device.
They were separate hardware protocols. Thanks to the pinout, the port would get used in different ways depending on what’s plugged in. In theory you could have both midi in/out devices and a joystick plugged in at the same time.
More here: https://www.mikesflightdeck.com/interfacing/gameport.html
That’s nifty. If I understand this, the advantage of a joystick using game port instead of MIDI is much simpler hardware. The game port seems like a sort of ADC which means the joystick needs only very simple analog components. A midi joystick would need those same analog components, plus its own ADCs and some digital logic for midi comms. Without the need in most games for dozens of axes and buttons, the extra cost and complexity wouldn’t be worth it.
I did find this though, if someone has midi stuff and wanted to go wild. https://github.com/c0redumb/midi2vjoy
A midi joystick would need those same analog components, plus its own ADCs and some digital logic for midi comms.
That’s the gist of it, yes. Consider that the most silicon peripherals of the time had were things like shift registers in NES controllers. The rest was all switches and pots (joystick), the latter of which had to be calibrated every time you fired up a game.
In another timeline, embracing MIDI in the 80’s and 90’s for game controllers would have been amazing. I feel like Japan would have really run wild with something like that.
