Where have you been all my life, Dual Shock 2?

I finished Ocarina of Time on Monday. After all that work I decided to give up on finding the last four Pieces of Heart and the last six Gold Skulltulas. Wikipedia tells me that I also missed out on the biggest quiver that can hold 50 arrows, but that particular minigame was just dastardly and I have no particular wish to do it again.

So what to do with my unused time? Well, I got started on some work... like, actual work. Today I got back on track with my research reading, too. Before I resorted to that, though, I decided to try my hand at the original Legend of Zelda (yes I own the game, so having the ROM is legal, fascist). Those of you who remember my original retro-gaming period of second year will recall that my drive to be good at Metroid was entirely fuelled by the fact that I have owned the game since I was 7 or so and yet sucked it very, very hard at Metroid. I am still very proud to say that twelve years after getting it, about eleven of which were spent honing my dexterity with musical instruments, I beat Metroid.

(Oh my God, Samus is a girl!)

So it goes with Zelda. I've owned Zelda probably even longer than Metroid, yet even four years ago after my Metroid kick I decided to try Zelda and could barely survive past the first three screens. I had better things to be doing, so I forgot about it. But now it's time to conquer that mountain too. I fired up FCEultra, set it up to work with my trusty Gravis Eliminator Aftershock, named my character "Dickolas", and we were off to the races.

In an up-left diagonal direction.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that for all of its charms, the Gravis Eliminator Aftershock suffers from a really, really shitty D-pad. It's very difficult to just press up -- no, you'll usually get up-left or up-right. But not up. I had previously just lived with it, as I was conscious of the fact that I paid $50 for it and at the time it was clearly the best gamepad on the market (or at least of the ones that I tried). So, I beat Super Metroid despite aiming diagonally up-right most of the time, and I suffered -- suffered -- through Tony Hawk 3. Later I discovered that people make console controller-to-USB adaptors. B'oh.

Today, figuring that the warranty must be long-past by now anyway, I opened it up to see if I could hack it or make a new D-pad for it. Instead, I came away very impressed at the internal construction and saddened because there's no way in hell I could possibly make a new D-pad for it. To add injury to insult, I broke a wire so only one of the rumble motors works now. Do any of you have a soldering iron? Do any of you know how to solder?

Look at this thing. The D-pad is not a cross. It's a... fucking... I don't know what it is. It's a regular D-pad, in a funhouse mirror. What were the folks at Gravis thinking? D-pads should always be Euclidean.

Fuck this! I said. I decided to right my previous wrong and pony up for a Dual Shock 2 and USB adaptor. I almost bought a nice $10 adaptor (Mac-compatible! w00t) and $17 Dual Shock 2 online but shipping was $10, so I thought I'd go Chinatown and/or Japantown to look for a cheapo adaptor. But then I realized:

• it costs $6 to get to Chinatown, another $2 to get to Japantown;


• I might find a $5 adaptor in Chinatown, but I also might only find a $15 adaptor, and regardless, it probably won't support rumble or the Mac, and it came from Chinatown and as such possibly contains lead in its construction;


• Japantown has a website and none of their stores sell gaming equipment;


• Dual Shock 2's start at $19 used at EB, as opposed to $17 new on that website; and


• there's no tax if I buy it online.

So, I did.

I really can't wait to get my Dual Shock 2. Now maybe I can WALK IN A STRAIGHT DAMN LINE through Hyrule. I could even execute a fastplant in THPS3 again! Hell, I could even finally play THPS4 on my Mac without constantly spinning in circles!

I think I'll name it Excalibur.

Current Music: XTC - Neon Shuffle