I got an early birthday present today: a Deluxe Mini Monster Retro Gaming Joystick. This is essentially an arcade stick made from Sanwa parts (which are good) which hooks up to retro systems that use the old-school 9-pin "Atari" joystick ports. That means pretty much any '80s home computer, be it Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Atari 2600, C64, Spectrum (with Kempston interface), Amiga, Sega Master System and probably plenty of others.
In other words, it's a modern joystick for old computers and consoles, allowing you to enjoy the latter without wondering whether or not your 30+ year old joysticks are going to remember how a fire button works this time you plug them in. Well, after you've put it together, anyway. (Or got your more technically minded wife to put it together for you!)
I spent about 10-15 minutes with it earlier just to make sure it worked and, aside from the 9-pin extension cable they provided being rubbish (it kept popping out from the stick's interface port on the back — thankfully I had another cable that remains secure) it is a glorious piece of kit for retro gaming.
As those in the know might expect, the Sanwa parts for the stick make for an incredibly responsive control device with a lovely "click" to it, and the small size of the unit makes it suitable for either having on the desk in traditional arcade stick style, or held in your lap like an old-school joystick — though you will need both hands owing to the buttons and stick being separate, arcade-style.
One of the most interesting things about it — besides its very existence! — is that it has two buttons. Those of you who know your retro systems will be aware that your standard Atari-style joystick only has a single fire button, so what's with that second one? Well, it works in conjunction with a little switch on the back of the unit — turn this on and "up" on the stick gets mapped to that second button, allowing you to use it as a jump button in old-school platform games that require you to push up to jump, perhaps because they have something like "shoot" or "use item" mapped to the fire button.
Pushing up to jump isn't a massive problem on a stick that is already nicely responsive, but having the option to use a button instead is absolutely marvellous, and I'm looking forward to trying it out with some games that, historically, I've found a bit awkward due to their "up to jump" controls.
I'll post some more thoughts and perhaps a video in the near future, but suffice to say for now that if you're into your retro home computers (and some consoles), this is a very worthwhile investment.
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