I'm pretty proud of this part.  I desoldered an alalog joystick off of a PS2 controller and built a analog to digital converter for it.  Put it inside a project box from Radio Shack and then added an RJ 45 connector to it as I felt the wore from the mini controller to the main controller was the most likely item to be damaged over time.  This way just put in a new network cable and you are ready to go if the current one were damaged.  The way I built the circuit if you don't plug in the controller at all it just assume is sitting nicely in the middle so you can remove it if a game doesn't require it.  Then I put the whole thing in a harmonica holder which does a great job of positioning it.  Oh yea and almost forgot.. the little joystick end on the controller... that's the end of a swizzle stick :-)

I ended up rotating the analog joystick 45 degrees in the controller so the should buttons were more intuitive to use... up left (L1) up right (R1), etc.  and I also made use of the push button feature of this controller and made that a secondary start buttom.  This way you wouldn't need to move your hands off the controller so hit the start buttom.  (all my testing was done one ESPN football, I figured if the controller worked for that.. should work for most things.  Made calling timeouts easy :-))

All the electronics were in the main controller for space and functionality reason.