DIY PunchOut Controller For Those Who Like To Punch

By Andrew Liszewski

Over at Instructables, ‘kirton’ has a great tutorial on how to make your own punching bag like interface for the classic NES title, PunchOut. A foam filled bag provides a comfortable punching material, and inside that bag you’ll find a set of handmade impact sensors wired to a PC game pad which translates the impacts to the game running via an NES emulator. The system can even provide visual feedback whenever the player gets punched thanks to a combination of software that detects when your sprite turns pink (which is how the game indicates a hit) and an arduino which causes an LED indicator to flash. That part is just a proof of concept at this point, but eventually a strobe light will be used to provide some level of real world disorientation whenever your character gets hit.