Atari 2600 Joysticks? Can someone explain it to me?

Denicio

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As a kid growing up our house had the Intellivision. So i grew up loving the disc controller.

All my pals had the Atari 2600. They always complained about the Intelly disc when they'd come over. I always complained that the 2600 joysticks were impossible to play when i went to their house..

So what was the deal with those joysticks? In an age where leaf joysticks were the norm in arcades and easy to play the 2600 seemed like it was unusually cruel and was designed to make you hate playing games!

Is there a backstory on the design of that joystick and why it was so hard to play?
 
Not knowing any better, I thought it was great.

Protip: take the spring out from the fire button and your shooting speed will improve…
 
I grew up using the Colecovision controllers on Atari games using the expasion adapter for the Atari 2600.

Later, I ended up getting the Gemini II (also by Coleco) which was an Atari clone. Those joysticks were perfect IMHO. They even had a built in paddle.

Controller.jpg

Del
 
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Wico made some awesome 2600 controllers. I always used those.
 
2600 joystick was great. Loved it. Used it with the Colecovision, though you had to do the hot swap from the OG Coleco controller to it after you hit game select as not every game would let you just select on player 2's controller. It's the preferred joystick for Jumpman Junior. I could fly around those screans so fluidly with that thing. Console bliss.
 
I never liked the Intellivision controllers. Video games were supposed to be played with a joystick you could put your whole body into yanking in every direction, not by moving your thumb like a half inch either way. And who has time for a keyboard in a video game? Nerds, that's who. Direction + fire is all you should need.

I do remember getting blisters on my hands from having to push the damn joystick hard enough to get it to make a connection. Atari's crappy joysticks were a natural handicapper... if you were playing a 2-player game and your friend got the good joystick, you were screwed.
 
I never liked the Intellivision controllers. Video games were supposed to be played with a joystick you could put your whole body into yanking in every direction, not by moving your thumb like a half inch either way. And who has time for a keyboard in a video game? Nerds, that's who. Direction + fire is all you should need.

I do remember getting blisters on my hands from having to push the damn joystick hard enough to get it to make a connection. Atari's crappy joysticks were a natural handicapper... if you were playing a 2-player game and your friend got the good joystick, you were screwed.

As a lifer on Intelly you had to ADAPT to those controllers. Easy to do if all you had was an Intelly. If you had other systems then it was easy to hate. I grew to really love the disc. Damn sure a better experience than the inflexible joystick of the 2600.

The intelly controller allowed deeper game play. I rocked the shit out of games like Bomb Squad (voice) that used the entire key pad.

Now, i do recall santa putting those Intelly aftermarket joystick adapters in my stocking one year. Yeah, that was a quick failure. Those ONLY worked if you played your games gingerly. That aint me!

For games like Astrosmash, and the entire Imagic collection, the Intelly controller with disc was perfect for me. ALL my Atari pals bitched and moaned about them yet they always came over to play....while they left ole Yar at home unplayed!

Space Battle is another one of those games you had to have the key pad to enjoy the game play. I played so much intellivison that the controllers were a non event for me. I did, however, have envy for my pals with the colecovision that blended the best of all the worlds.

Now, the Intellivision II controllers stunk to high heaven. Hated those. They made the gameplay worse.
 
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