Two Stop Bits | 2600 was my earliest console experience. Obviously the original joysticks are pr...

qingcharles 69 days ago | parent

2600 was my earliest console experience. Obviously the original joysticks are pretty horrible. But the main thing wrong with them is that you have to hold the base in your hand and waggle the stick, which is what these replicate.

Joysticks work when they have rubber suction cups and you stick them to the desk.

Otherwise regular D-pad controllers are supremely more useable.

ddingus 68 days ago
Interesting! I hated the sucker cup ones. But, I grant you your point, because a good, leaf spring joystick well mounted is awesome! If it has the little clicky switches, I personally would rather hold it.
But, yeah fatigue did hit.
Agreed on the D-pad. First time I played an NES I was sold!
One of my favorite things about the VCS was all the controllers! Only Indy 500 used the driving ones, which is a shame. Another driving game or two seems like a great home brew project...
I took to that idea and made a button board for Asteroids. It was fun, but the game limits were too low. Then I found the STARPATH asteroids. The official version was changed enough to not be Asteroids. But, there was a great port that basically had the arcade feel and it had much better action and far higher limits. Was basically a sort of 160 ish x 192 ish bitmap game. The interleaved graphics were funky, and all part of the special charm in that machine. Jay Miner and team intended something far less great, and ended up with something far more!
And that has proven generally true of software driven video systems: C64, Atari 8 bit, Amiga, Coco 3 (to a lesser degree), PC CGA...
Where the CPU was coupled to graphics chips designed loosely, pure magic ended up the result. Literally almost every year, someone somewhere managed to squeeze a bit more out of those machines. The whole Demoscene essentially drove innovation in that way and still is!
Modern devices, like the Parallax Propeller being software driven ended up capable of more in the same way. It is really cool.
I also made analog sticks for my Atari 8 bit computer and created some simple projects that used it.
And the two button Apple style analog sticks always were great for me. Playing Robotron on the Apple, or PC for that matter as both were bitmap Atarisoft ports, was fun! One button rotated the firing, the other triggered it, basically creating a game variation on the usual two stick design the game shipped with.
bmonkey325 68 days ago
My first exposure to Atari was December 1978. My dad took me to a friends house who had just gotten an Atari. Played it in colour. I was just mesmerized by the games. I was so clumsy with the the joystick controller.
I remember it because the guy who owned the Atari was talking about the Newsweek article covering the Jonestown tragedy with my dad while we played.
- qingcharles 66 days ago
  My 2600 experience is the second oldest memory I can recall. That's how big an effect it had on me! I can remember literally every detail of my first time playing video games. My neighbor had the 2600 with Pac-Man and Missile Command. The fact he had Pac-Man means it must have been 1982, which means I was coming up on 5 years old.
  - ddingus 62 days ago
    Is that not a potent experience? For me, it was a single chip, analog circuit PONG game. But I was entranced. A few years later, I saw BREAKOUT on a VCS and it was amazing!
    The sound, colors, way the paddle moved... it was intense!
    Same for me. I can recall everything about that moment. Where I was, who, what the game looked and sounded like...
    - qingcharles 59 days ago
      There were so many of those little one-chip TV games around in the early 80s. Every "car boot sale" (as us Brits call them) you went to you could pick up a dozen of them for almost nothing. I bet a ton of them are super rare nowadays.
- ddingus 68 days ago
  My very first exposure was actually paddle games, then Combat and a few others with the joystick. Then Indy 500. I really loved paddle games on the VCS and thought they needed two buttons as well.
  Anyone ever create anything that could take advantage of 8 paddles on the 400 and 800 machines? Or 4 analog sticks? Sure seems like a home brew opportunity of some kind.