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Time Crisis is my absolutely favourite lightgun game ever. People familiar with the PSX port know that there's a button on the Guncon controller which has to be pressed (or released) to get into cover and reload your gun. The arcade version of Time Crisis featured a pedal for cover/reloading which you could operate with your foot.

However, there was never a pedal offically released by Sony or Namco. But fortunately Namco allowed any PSX Controller to be plugged into the 2nd controller port which then could be used as some kind of pedal. It really doesn't matter which buttons you pressed, any button would work.

So a few days ago I finally built myself a decent pedal for Time Crisis:



Required parts:
* "industrial" pedal/foot switch (http://www.ebay.com/itm/271322236259)
* PSX controller PCB & controller cable

The pedal is made out of aluminium so it's quite sturdy but also light. On the bottom there two large rubber pads so the pedal won't slip around when placed on the floor.

To open the pedal you just need to remove one screw from the bottom plate and then you can pull out the rod and the top comes off.


I've received my pedal without the black cable outlet/stress relief installed. When I tried to screw in the cable outlet into the pedal it just broke off - great quality! Luckily I had a spare cable outlet which fitted perfectly. (The pedal has a M12 thread for the cable outlet.)

I've cut off large sections of the PSX controller PCB on the left and right sides. Because of that I had to reconstruct two traces. I also moved the blue resonator from the bottom to the top side so the bottom side of the PCB turned out to be absolutely flat:


I just glued the PCB to the pedal base plate with some super glue.


Here you can see the white wire which connects the pedal switch with pin 1 and 2 of the main IC U1. Pin 1 and 2 are the X and O buttons. The black wire is just ground.


I also glued in a small piece of plastic to reduce the the pedal/switch travel to a minimum:


And here's another picture showing "my" cable outlet:


I have to say I really like the completed pedal. It's really sturdy and the yellow paint gives it that arcade style touch. The original cable outlet was pretty crappy as explained. And it also seems they've installed a no-name switch inside the pedal. Luckily these two parts can be replaced by higher quality parts.

Hello micro !
Really good idea.
I 'll order a pedal newt month and try to do this mod.
Thank you for the seocnd controller tip !

I love reading about this mod and I congratulate your ingenuity. With that said, wasn't this function of the original home port of Time Crisis intended to be used with the pedals in one of the racing controllers for one of Namco's other games? That's by way of saying that there must have been an intentional use of existing hardware, rather than the vague hope for a homebrew hardware solution

I highly doubt that!

There's not a word of that feature to be found in the Time Crisis manual. I've first read of that possibility in a video games magazone back in the 90's. They said you could plug a big joystick into the 2nd port and place it on the floor to press the buttons with your foot.

Also, as far as I remember there was no official Playstation steering wheel available, the NegCon by Namco was the de-facto standard in analog racing control....

You just have to admire Namco back in the 90's for their cool easter eggs. Remember that you could play Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast with the fishing rod controller? You could execute vertical and horizontal slashes years before the Wii was released. ^^

Hi here
I finally bought that pedal.
Damn micro, you force me to spend money !
Anyway, waiting for the pedal, i was looking to your mod more closely.
Could you explain a bit more the wiring diagram ? As i could understand, the switch has a pin connected to the pins 1 and 2 of the IC (to simulate buttons

• or [X], and the other pin connected to ground.
  But what is the use of all the others cables ? And their pinouts ?
  Thank you for those crazy ideas you bring to us !

Okay, do you already know which PSX pad you're going to use for the pad hack? Make sure you make some good photos of the top and bottom side. (before you start desoldering/cutting! ^^)

The first thing I did was to desolder the PSX controller cable's 7 colored wires.

After cutting off large portions of the PCB on the left (directional buttons) and the right side (X O /\ []) I had to relocate the 200 Ohm resistor (201 marking) and rebuilt the trace (the thin wire). I also relocated the blue resonator from the bottom side to the top side. I had to rebuilt the ground trace, too. (middle pin of the blue resonator).

The pedal switch got 3 pins: Common (=ground), NC (normally closed) and NO (normally open).
So I've soldered a black wire from common to ground on the PCB (=resonator's middle pin) and a white wire from NO to pin 1+2 of the PSX controller IC. That means pushing the pedal equals pressing X+O on the PSX controller. As I said, any button will do.

All the other wires are just the 7 wires of the PSX controller cable which have to soldered to their original solder pads.

Hi
I'm at my job right now, so i''ll check for a PSX paddle later, but this is the noobish question :
is it possible to use a PS2 paddle ? (there could be the same IC in it, may be ?)
Else, i'll send you a pic of the PSX paddle guinea pig.

i understood the wiring, anyway another question :
As any of the buttons will work, why did you use 2 buttons in the same time ?

once again, thank you for your patience :]

Because it's easier and more stable to solder the wire to two pins of the IC.
And for the purpose of the Time Crisis pedal it doesn't matter if you use X, O or X+O.

Ok, so that was that simple
now waiting for the pedal, i'll check for my spare gamepad hopefully this late.
See you later !

Back here !
So i opened a first PS1 gamepad (Dual Shock) and it didn't look like yours at all.
So i opened a simple gamepad (without sticks) and it didn't look like yours too.
Anyway, i tihnk i'll use this last one as it's more simple.
So this is a link to the pics :
http://imgur.com/a/5Lk7S
WHat do i have to know before cutting/desoldering please ?

Thank  you !

Yeah i got my pedal today
I really like it.
micro, i'm waiting for you !

This is how I would cut the PCB: http://imgur.com/IA0hKxC

But first measure if the PCB you're gonna end up fits inside the pedal before making any cuts.

Keep in mind that you also need to cut off the controller cable at the PSX controller end, otherwise you can't fit the cable through the cable outlet. Of course you have to solder the wires back to the controller PCB.

And here are some more PSX controller PCB diagrams: http://slagcoin.com/joystick/pcb_wiring.html#PCB_DIAGRAMS

Thanks micro !
What do you think about this cut :

http://i.imgur.com/aavhasa.jpg

Really impatient to start this mod !

Finally done !
Really cool mod, the pedal is beautiful.
Just one thing : the PS1 cable is f*ck*ng crap ! Only 3 copper wire per cable, and pretty fragile (in my opinion).
For those who would do this mod, don't cut the wires, try to cut the plastic plug and desolder the wires with their pins.
Thank you micro !
Waiting for your next wonder !

MockyLock: How about some pictures of your mod? Where you cut the board, where you relocated wires etc?

Actually, i've cut the board almoast like micro said, there was place enought. On the right, i cut even a bit larger including J2.
As for wiring, i've done exactly like micro told me.

EDIT : i'll try to find time to take a pic of the mod this afternoon.

Still - having detailed instructions and pictures would let the less technically savvy of us perform the mod.

Better late than never :


Nothing special to add, i followed the tips from micro.
One advice though : better desolder the PS1 câble wires off the board, than cut them because they're really crappy, very thin and fragile when you have to remove plastic and solder them back.

Old thread I know, but I found it useful and thought I'd update with current (September 2020) info.

Firstly, thanks to @micro for making a post on this in the first place. I had started replaying Time Crisis 1/2/3 again recently, having bought some official Gun-Cons, and felt the need for a pedal. Knowing that Namco put the option in to use a controller as a pedal, I suspected someone may have tried putting the guts of a PSX controller into an industrial foot switch, and lo and behold, here it is. Whilst I could have experimented myself, it was great to have a proven example that worked (and wouldn't blow up my PlayStation!).

Aside from the thanks, I thought I'd leave a few tips here:

1. If you want to follow along with micro's tutorial above, you'll need a PSX digital controller that says "Made in the Philippines" on the back. This will have the exact same PCB, making things simpler.

2. You can pick up these original PSX controllers for £2.50 from CEX in the UK. You'll need to go to a store, though, if you want to check where the controller was made (I actually got mine off eBay for £10, as the listing showed the back).

3. The cheapest place I found for the foot switch in the UK is Amazon (£15): https://www.amazon.co.uk/QLOUNI-Industrial-Foot-switch-Momentary-Switch/dp/B0773K9SK7/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

4. The foot switch design, whilst superficially the same, seems to have been updated internally in the past few years, in ways that impact the tutorial. By default, the microswitch is now in the centre, making it impossible to fit the cut-down PSX PCB.  There are alternative mounts for the switch, however. By re-orientating the switch and its bracket as in the image below, it can be mounted out of the way:



Note: although stand-offs (cast into the aluminium base) are present in the alternative position, they don't have threads. To make them suitable for the mounting screws, you'll need to drill out the existing holes to 2.5mm, then tap the threads with an M3 die. I used this one from Amazon (£1.50): https://www.amazon.co.uk/HSS-Machine-Tap-M3/dp/B07FTMYWNJ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8.

5. Contrary to the posts above, I found it best to cut off the 'pin things' that are on the end of the wires of the original PSX cable. I originally popped them out of the plastic PCB connector and soldered them directly to the top side, but felt this looked a messy. In addition, whilst the completed switch worked fine on a PC USB adapter, and the connections all measured fine with a meter, the switch just wouldn't work properly with a PS1/2 - when plugged in, the gun wouldn't respond.

I desoldered the pins, cut them off, then just stripped the cable ends with a wire stripper. This was easy - I'm not sure what MockyLock found awkward about this. As the PCB is sitting on cast stand-offs, there was no need for it to be flush to the base. I therefore just inserted the wires through from the rear side and soldered them to the pads. This was much neater / more secure and the switch worked perfectly afterwards. 

Thanks once again to micro for the original tutorial.

What an awesome post to come across! I just ordered 2x of these pedals for $15 on ebay and saw this post after.  Excited to do this mod

Just wanted to thank micro for this tutorial and to modell3000 for the tips on how to deal with the new model. Interestingly enough the holes on my pedal were already 2.5mm wide so I didn't have to widen them further, I just used the M3 tap to create the threads at the alternative mount positions. I also observed moving the switch to this new position that there's no 'dead zone' whereas in the original position there is a bit of travel before you hit the switch. I think I'll make another for 2P!