GOSHtastic - Game shows, Options, Software, & Hardware!

I've had a Sparkfun ESP32 Thing laying around on my desk since back in May when I met the fellow from Iron Transfer at a pinball convention, and we got to talking about IoT and his devices to remotely administrate pinball machines.  However, I spent tons of time this year planning for exhibitions, and didn't really get to do anything with it -- until now. Before You Begin There are a few choices you need to make up-front about which IDE you wish to use for development, plus which development framework.  I have chosen Microsoft's Visual Studio Code since it is cross-platform, feature-rich without hogging resources, free to download, and based on an open-source product similar to how Google Chrome is derived from Chromium.  It comes with extensions for language support and IntelliSense, which are must-haves when authoring code.  You are free to use an IDE of your choice; it won't really hamper your ability to enjoy the rest of this article. The other decision ...

At long last, I debuted my custom turbo Vectrex controller at the Houston Arcade Expo on October 19 & 20.  This will be a milestone for Vectrex fans and collectors, as it brings about more ergonomic controls and a rate-adjustable Turbo (auto-fire) mode that can toggle per button. Vectrex Controller Prototype, as seen in Houston last month Why, you ask? I acquired a Vectrex in late 2015 from a very generous individual who had several to spare.  However, it did not come with a controller, so it laid dormant until I got around to building the giant 100x NES controller .  As the guts of a cheap knock-off NES controller from Amazon went into my behemoth NES controller, I used its shell and buttons to enclose a crude perf-board controller, and cut up a cheap Sega Genesis extension cable from Amazon in order to make all the connections from my hand-soldered board into the Vectrex.  It is well-documented on how to fashion a Sega Genesis controller into a Ve...