Review
raspberrypi.org/magpi The Official Raspberry Pi Projects Book 197
JOY BONNET
of the board – so not that easy to
reach in the heat of battle. The
four main buttons (X, Y, A, and B)
worked well, although they’re far
smaller than the ones on original
joypads, so not that comfortable.
While not quite so critical, the
Select and Start buttons are the
same small size.
Next, we thought we’d have
a blast with classic vertically
scrolling shmup, 1942. Here we
came across a bugbear that spoilt
our enjoyment until we figured out
a fix. As mentioned previously,
the mini joystick is analogue but
emulates digital presses, and we
found it extremely difficult to
obtain diagonal directions for ourplane in the game. Fortunately,
we managed to sort this out by
editing the Joy Bonnet’s Python
library and reducing the positive
and negative thresholds for the
analogue stick. Setting these at
-300 and 300, rather than the
original -600 and 600, we found
the stick considerably moresensitive and were therefore able
to obtain the diagonal directions.
It’s also possible to edit the key
presses produced by the buttons
in this file, which might come in
useful when playing a Spectrum
or C64 game with unorthodox
keyboard controls.
Note that the Pi Zero is not
capable of emulating more
powerful consoles such as the
N64 and PlayStation. You could
always use the Joy Bonnet with a
Raspberry Pi 3 / 3B+, although it
wouldn’t exactly be handheld.Last word
Not as comfortable to hold or
responsive as a regular game
console joypad, the Joy Bonnet
is unlikely to net you many
high scores. Still, it is a cute
concept that makes it easy to
quickly get retro gaming on a Pi
Zero: a neat portable solution
that you can carry around with
you to plug into any TV. You
might want to invest in a longer
HDMI cable so you don’t have
to stand quite so close to the
screen, though.magpi.cc/2qaSfIT
£13 / $15
Joy Bonnet offers a much
simpler, quicker route to
pocket-sized retro gaming