Rock, Paper, Shotgun

By Alec Meer on October 19th, 2007 at 1:10 pm.

This:

is not a working game controller. That’s because it turns into… Well, you’ll just have to click below to find out, won’t you?

…

It turns into this:

Aw, bless, etc. Yes, it’s an official Transformer, and it’s in toyshops right now. However, I wish for it to be a working game controller, as clearly playing a videogame with a robot is geek nirvana. However, any attempts I’ve ever made at modifying plastic or attempting wiring has resulted in a lot of small, sharp pieces all over the place and an even greater quantity of massive, horrific soldering iron burns on my ravaged hands.

So, can you, O Mighty Reader of Rock, Paper, Shotgun help? If there’s anyone out there who thinks they can mod this into a functioning (and still transformable) USB game controller, web-fame awaits. Hopefully.

The trouble is, High Score 100 (for that is this robot’s name) is incredibly tiny. How tiny? This tiny:

There really isn’t an awful lot of space in there to hold switches and cables, and frankly my hands would permanently clench into small balls of blood and agony if I tried to play Psychonauts or something with it. It may not be possible, and I’ll quite understand if this never gets off the ground. I’m thinking, though, that if it could just manage up, down, left and right and a single action button, then we’d have something that could play Peggle or Speedball II, and that would be a thousand kinds of awesome. If the only way to do that is to add an extra box or something, that’s fine.

Here’s a picture of the back, to give you a better sense of what manner of minute plastic thing we’re dealing with here:

Reckon it’s possible? Reckon you can do it? Drop us a line and, if we’re sufficiently convinced as to your plastic mangling ability, we’ll post you the robot and a USB controller to hack apart. UK-based folk are preferable for cost/time reasons, but we’ll consider everyone equally. This is, after all, about creating the best thing ever, so clearly absolutely no expense should be spared. Unless it’s more than about £30.