MY ARCADE joystick player

The Micro Player has been very successful amongst the My Arcade lineup. To create a more interactive experience to the Micro Player, we added a joystick.
This joystick cabinet will work with various games. The first game utilizing the new joystick cabinet design is Galaga.

Galaga was released in 1981, and is a shooter type game where you control a starship fighting Galaga forces, avoiding enemies and projectiles.
It is considered one of the most successful arcade games of all times, which is why its the best choice for the joystick cabinet.

Seeing how My Arcade is a retro gaming brand using 8 bit games, we looked at joystick designs from that era for inspiration.
The joysticks are fairly simple in shape, with technical details. Mock vents and grooves were often used.

I sketched joystick shapes that would be proportional to the Micro Player, yet keeping some of the aesthetics of joysticks from the 80s.

From the ideation, the most favorable sketch was selected and then applied onto a vector drawing of the Micro Player.

Two directions were modeled within Solidworks and then rendered in Keyshot.

The initial concept was based of the chosen sketch. We didn’t pursue this direction, due to the bulkiness of the joystick shape.

The second direction looked at a more sculpted, skinnier shape with a flared cap and bottom.
We also explored trigger placement. The higher mounted trigger was a more comfortable placement.

The finalized version features a refined joystick shape with a higher trigger placement and the edges were softened to be more comfortable.
The top cap can be swapped for a different color or feature buttons, depending on the game configuration.

The Galaga cabinet features artwork provided from the graphics team.
The graphics and bright color scheme is eye catching, yet true to the Galaga arcade cabinets from the 80s.