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Joystick joy

Finally, after more than 20 years, I own an original Atari joystick. $5 (plus postage) on eBay was all it took in the end. I always believed that the Atari CX40 joysticks were among the best I ever used back in the day - a reasonably solid construction and the shaft felt good in your hand.

It would have been back in 1979 that I first got my hands on an Atari joystick. A neighbour had an Atari VCS and I got to play Combat and I think Star Raiders. When the time I got my first computer (Vic-20) a joystick and paddles were top of my list for peripherals wanted. The joystick I got was a Commodore model (the one with the triangular shaft) which was good, but just didn’t feel as good as the Atari one. I always envied my brother’s step-kids who had an Atari by this stage and I tried everything I could to swipe their joysticks.

By far the best joystick I ever owned was the Atari which was incredibly solid, but there’s something to be said for the feel of the original Atari joysticks.

I might dig out one of my Vic-20s and play some Radar Rat Race… ;-)

This entry was posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 3:55 am and is filed under OldSkoolComputing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Joystick joy”

  1. Tet Says:
    June 21st, 2006 at 2:40 am

    You are, of course, wrong. The Atari joystick is indeed a fine device, and one that brings back many memories of the VCS days.

    However, the best joystick of the 8-bit era (and indeed, arguably of all time) was the Kempston Competition Pro. The original leaf switch version, mind you, not the newer microswitched ones, or the Euromax clones, neither of which had the feel of the original.

  2. arb Says:
    June 21st, 2006 at 1:40 pm

    I never had the pleasure of using a Kempston. Or seeing one. Or even knowing they existed.

    I take it this was a Spectrum peripheral? Sinclair was noit an overly popular brand here - Atari and Commodore ruled the roost…

  3. Tet Says:
    June 21st, 2006 at 8:16 pm

    Kempston started out making joystick interfaces for the Spectrum, which allowed it to support any Atari compatible joystick. To go with it, they also made their own joystick, and it happened to be utterly awesome. Because it was Atari compatible, it worked fine with Ataris, VIC-20s and C64s etc.

    http://www.clive.nl/images/23185.jpg

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