Back home. Tired and have a headache, but I can probably think of something to write about for this evening before collapsing into bed. Oh, here we go, I have something.
One of the things I rediscovered during my trip to the Retro Computer Festival at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge yesterday is how much fun it is to play old computer games with a joystick! I've been using a gamepad for so many years at this point that it just feels natural to play everything with one, but many of the old machines set up at the museum had period-appropriate joysticks attached, just as we would have used back in the day. Most of the joysticks appeared to be the Quickshot I, which is not a joystick I had ever used before, but I found it very comfortable and pleasant to use on a variety of games, with it proving particularly enjoyable for Paul Woakes' classic Encounter! on Atari 8-bit.
We had a mix of different joysticks for the Atari 8-bit and ST when I was growing up. Some of them were better than others; some of them were much more reliable than others, but I have fond memories of pretty much all of them. Here's a selection from what I can remember:
This is the Wico Command Control. This was probably one of the first joysticks I used, and it's nice. It stands out for its use of leaf switches rather than the more commonly used (and cheaper?) microswitches found in many other joysticks — in simple terms, this means that there's a bit more of a smoother movement to the stick and no distinctive "click", but it's still precise and sturdy. Unfortunately, the unit I have has suffered various issues over the years, including one or both of its fire buttons failing to work properly — they probably just need a decent clean, as this stick is renowned for being reliable.
There are a couple of other variants available, including a bat top version and an ergonomic grip, but we had (well, I still have, somewhere) the ball top version depicted here. When it works, it's very nice to have the option of the stick-top fire button as well as the one on the base.
Spectravideo made a few joysticks in their "Quickshot" range that looked like this, and I think this one — the Quickshot II, or the SV-102 to its friends — is the one we had. This was the first clicky microswitch joystick we had, and it felt good in the hand thanks to it being designed to resemble a flightstick. Although it has both the trigger and stick-top buttons, because home computers only supported a single fire button, they both did the same thing, so it was simply a matter of comfort as to which one you used.
I was convinced for years that this joystick also had two buttons on its base, but from looking around a bit, I might have been imagining that. Either that or another joystick company ripped off the Quickshot II and added two more buttons so it was legally distinct. Entirely possible. I would go and check, but it is in the loft and thus inaccessible without a joint effort between me and my wife, and we're both very tired.
This is the Atari Game Stick 2, which I believe was the pack-in controller for the Atari 7800 in some territories. It has a nice visual design and is reasonably pleasant to hold in the hand, but it turned out to be quite unreliable, particularly in the fire button department. Apparently this is quite a widely known issue; the contacts for the fire buttons wear out quite quickly, leading to them either being non-responsive or "sticking", both of which are symptoms I have experienced with this stick. This was never my favourite to use, even when it was working, but I do have a lot of time for the brushed metal Atari logo with rainbow stripe.
This ridiculous looking thing, often referred to in magazines of the time as "the Coathook", is the Konix Navigator, and contrary to what you might expect from such a strange design, it was actually very comfortable to use — though the fact it lacked a base meant that you needed two hands to use it, making it less practical for anything which also required keyboard buttons for, say, smart bombs or something. It felt really nice in the hand, though; the curved grip was ergonomic, the stick had a nice click to it, and the trigger-type fire button was enjoyable to press. Plus the fact it looked like a Star Trek phaser was pretty cool.
This one, I think, lasted a lot longer than many of our other joysticks, though I believe it eventually broke. It's probably fixable, but again, I've never looked into how to go about doing that. One day, perhaps.
This is the Zipstik, which is extremely well regarded as one of the best and most reliable joysticks from the 8-bit and 16-bit home computer eras. It had a solid, clicky, arcade-style joystick and two study fire buttons, and could stand up to a lot of punishment. It is, so far as I am aware, unrelated to another joystick named the Zipstik Competition Joystick, which I don't know anything about but rather like the design of. Out of all the joysticks I owned for classic systems, this is the one that lasted the longest. I'm pretty sure if I were to get it out of the loft right now, it would still work just fine.
Finally, a "dream" joystick — not one I actually owned. This is the Quickshot Superboard, which just looks amazing. Look at all those completely unnecessary fire buttons that all do the same thing due to the aforementioned limitation! Look at the little LCD screen with the stopwatch and countdown timer! Look at all the switches! This thing is cool, and I always lusted after it when I saw it in magazines, but I never owned one. And it probably isn't actually very good. But I still kind of want one. Maybe I'll have to have a look on eBay…
Anyway, my pleasant experiences at the museum this weekend have encouraged me to get some sort of joystick setup up and running for my MiSTer. Whether this takes the form of getting a SNAC cartridge/control dock/USB adapter to use classic hardware, or a modern USB-based recreation? That, I haven't decided yet, but I feel oddly excited about, to borrow the name of a thoroughly nice chap and fellow Atari enthusiast's YouTube channel and newsletter, the joy of sticks.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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