Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah, owned 7 of them, and can think of a fair few more that I owned that weren't in that video.

Joysticks used to be unreliable shite, didn't they?

I had quite a few of those sticks too, although more for use on the Amiga rather than Spectrum when I preferred using the keyboard. Since then I've picked up a few other sticks mentioned in that round-up, including the Batman and Alien Characteristicks and the grenade one at the end. All rubbish.



If it's anything like the Sinclair joysticks, I assumed it was because it mapped to 12345 and 67890 and the keyboard didn't like have too many keys pressed at once.

Actually, while I've got them to hand... proof that the NES had it share of bad controllers too...

Nope. The CPC used standard Atari 2600 sticks. Even supported a 2nd fire button with the right controller (although why no sticks took advantage of this is beyond me).

My brother had one of those dayglo Cruisers for his CPC6128, whereas I used the clearly superior Zipstik with my +2A (and later, Amiga)

I ended up breaking the autofire switch on every Zipstik I owned. Fortunately, the aforementioned brother was a dab hand with a soldering iron, and used to attach new switches for me every time they broke.

Was it the Bug that Amiga Power used to say was great for playing Sensi with?

Both Amstrad Action and Amiga Power loved the Bug. It was a great stick and had the Speccy grey lead as well so it was happy on all my machines. Was a sad day when mine broke.

I was never much for the Zipstik. Much preferred the Cruiser. I should have a nose in box of Amiga tat and see what I've actually got though as I can't remember.

I have one of those dual Quickshot arcade sticks here, but I only just noticed its missing the second joystick cable!

No idea why. It came in with a bundle of other kit years ago.

I had one too.

Second cable did come in handy when the first one broke.

(Thinking about it, it was probably a decade of having to fix joysticks such as those which lead to me being somewhat handy with fixing electronics in general.)

Sorry, Chinny. I had a dig through my old stuff and no bug. This is the extent of my old joystick collection.

Angers me that I can't get a USB zip stick in this day and age. I do t play emulators because the games would play worse without one. They did have a USB competition pro in Maplin ages ago, but it had no suckers and we all know how much you need those.

Might be more reliable now, but the actual choice of joysticks is pathetic. Also, try going into Britain's leading computer game shop to buy a joystick for your computer....

I managed to wire a Speccy grey lead onto a GX4000 pad. Took 2 joypads to get it right though.

The new USB Competition Pro is shit. The main fire buttons jam really easily which I'm pretty sure the originals didn't.

Ah well. never mind. Thanks for looking.

[also thanks to to the kind mod who split all this out]

Best bet, I'd say, is to get an old-school joystick and a USB->Atari adaptor. I have a Stelladaptor, but there are other, similar things knocking around the web.

At my peak I got through a joystick a year. Always knackering micro-switches me.

Started out with a Quickshot that came with my CPC. Nasty thing with leaf switches. That lasted a couple of years.

Then had a couple of Cheetah Mach 1's purchased from the local Amstrad dealer. Each lasted about a year.



Then had one of the Powerplay Cruisers, then a Cheetah Bug, then another Powerplay Cruiser.

Today for my 8 bits I either use a Zipstick or a brand new Quickshot Megadrive pad. It was still shrink wrapped when I opened it and I threw away the box. Its really nice!

Also have Competition Pro USB (its shit) and various Sega and Atari controllers.

And I had a Amstrad JY-2 given to me by a mate. Horrid thing but at least it enabled CPC 2 player joystick action.

[edit] + I had an Amstrad JY-3 which was truly shit. It was the same as the nasty cheapest Cheetah leaf switched shit. This was only ever used as a 'spare'.

Originally I tried some of the quickshots or similar but ended up always going back to use the original atari joysticks (cx40's)



And while they were still working the joysticks from my colecovision



Even better was the steering wheel controller for it which we used to plug into the 'other' joystick port on the C64 and the pedal would work as the firebutton for player 2 (so much easier to push your foot down than reach for the space bar or another keyboard control)



For the Amiga my main memory is using a Zipstick the same as the one in Ashens video



Right now for gaming I either use an X-arcade , a PS2 dual-shock (with a USB adapter) , or the wireless adapter and an Xbox360 controller.

I had a succession of those for the ST. Does anyone remember a controller shaped like a turtle? You pressed the shell in the direction you wanted to go. Can't find an image of it. I think I've still got one in the attic.

It was the sister joystick of The Bug. However it was shit and was forgotten about while everyone raved about The Bug.

I think zipsticks were my joystick of choice, although there was one with loads of switches on it that might have been called an afterburner or soemthing.

Its nentioned in the ashens video near the end. With picture.

It was that one on the vid. Yes it was shit.

I had one of those. It is the worst thing I've ever handled, including my daughter's morning nappies.

Trying to play Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge with it was about as gratifying as jamming my own fingers into the joystick port and murmuring "left, right, left" at the tv.

I had a few of the joysticks on show in ashens video.

I had the amstrad one, the one with 2 cables (I'd completely forgotten about it, until I saw it in the video - One of things I used to do with it was to play racing games in 2 player mode, and try and finish the map for both players in the time limit available - I'm pretty sure it had a mode where you could send the same movement to both players at the same time, you could line them up seperatly, and then join them together as one)

Then I had quickstick and a competition pro (I'm sure I took one of the microswitches from the competition pro and put it in the quickstick as I'd broken it from overuse, sorry to any lefties that want to use it now, as your fire button does not work). I still have both of these in a drawer somewhere.

Malc

As always when this comes up, a picture of the great The Arcade...
(by Suzo)

One button? That's stingy.

+ when it breaks you don't have a spare microswitch. The oldest trick in the book was to take a microswitch from the base fire button that you never used.

my '84 exemplayry stil works, so not needed.. (there's a 2 button variant btw, but not needed for miggy and c64 games)

I think I had one of those Quick shots...

I think I had one of those joypads.. or very similar anyway. I think it had 4 face buttons though.

I think it was brilliant and definitely helped when playing Shadow Fighter.

I don't know why so many joysticks support only 1 fire button. The Amiga and CPC happily support 2.

If you don't believe me, plug a Megadrive pad into an Amiga and play Turrican 2. No more up to jump! Which can only be a good thing.

On the CPC you can simply redefine the keys to joystick, including the second fire button. About 75% of games will let you do this.

Indeed, Mortal Kombat was a completely different game on the Amiga when played with a two button joystick.

What game was it?

Shadow Fighter. It was brilliant!

I had and adored many a Zipstick.

I also had one I loved even more. It was like the one he showed before the Zipstick, but about half the size (if that). Mine was a kind of turquoise green with a silver stick. It was absolutely tiny, but it was fantastic.

Ooh, Sega Mega Drive Arcade Power Stick for me, loved that thing. I think it helped with my lefty handed ness, just felt natural to have the stick on the left.

http://www.syntaxerror.nu/joy023.jpg

Zipstick for me, though I always had a soft spot for Atari 2600 joysticks.

Had a bit more of a rummage...

I think I had that red one at some point.

Did the Alien one not hurt your hand?

That Speedking that Ashens reviewed must have been an early one as the ones in the Amstrad mags of the time had a different design of "stick" with none of that adapted analogue controller look and feel. That ties in with my memories more actually as I knew people with Speedkings and don't recall the analogue style controller he shows.

Also there was a joystick called "the stick" that had no base but used mercury tilt switches instead. It was literally a stick mounted on a single sucker.

I've still got a couple of Zipsticks in the loft.
One got converted to have separate fire buttons for use with my MAME cab when I needed a third player.

A joystick roundup from the May 1986 issue of Amstrad Computer User. Note "The Stick" which has no base and gets a rotten review. + oddly they now realise the Amstrad JY-2 is shit whereas the previous year they'd been fawning over it. Presumably Amstrads vice like grip over their official publication had eased off:

I had that Python for my Master System. I seem to recall using it on an Amiga too. Did they have the same sockets?


That was the poshest thing ever, when I was a kid. The stuff of tech fantasies.

Yes, I often used a Master System joypad on the amiga, but not many games recognised the second button.

I have a Micomsoft XE-1 HE Pro which I like enormously. (Photo = not mine, incidentally). It's arcade-y feeling, with a micro-switched joystick and light-touch action buttons, yet not heavy and bulky like those modern 'fighting sticks' aimed at Street Fighter IV nerds. The most unexpected feature is that the XE-1 HE Pro actually has a built-in multitap, very handy as the PC Engine only had one controller port.

Zipsticks are SHIT. I don't see why everyone likes them. (My friends had them; maybe they had grimy busted ones or something?) The "competition pro" was better and was the go to stick for sensi. I didn't like the powerplay cruiser as it was to long and flat in the base. My favourite joystick, however, was the quickjoy topstar, which was the dad-only joystick until he got a PC:



I'm fairly certain that both of those buttons were independent, and I could use them both in Gunship 2000 to fire missiles or guns. Or maybe I'm imagining it.

[quote="Pod"
I'm fairly certain that both of those buttons were independent, and I could use them both in Gunship 2000 to fire missiles or guns. Or maybe I'm imagining it.[/quote]

Gets bonus points for a CPC mention on the box. Bet the fucking autofire didn't work with a CPC though.

Apparently autofire makes use of one of the pins that has 5v on it. The CPC doesn't has this. Not sure why. Looks like it possibly may be to do with how the CPC can split the single port into two.

I had a Speedking for my Speccy. It was the only Speccy joystick I didn't break, because whilst it felt ace for the first five minutes it quickly progressed to crippling your hands with searing nerve pain and, inside of fifteen minutes I believe, permanent damage. Hence it remained pristine while I wore out a Quickshot or two and some substantial number of Cheetahs.

I had one of these:



A Konix Speedking. It was robust as fuck and had pleasantly clicky microswitches on the buttons and the stick itself. It was also pretty ergonomic for the times with the way the whole thing sat in the palm of your hand and your finger wrapped around to sit on the fire button. I remember playing Combat School with it which differs from most such games in that you had to perform a full circle with the stick to make your character move rather than the usual left-right alteration that Daley Thomson's Decathlon popularised. My method was to sit the palm of my hand right on top of the ball of the joystick and make furious circle motions which, predictably, resulted in a perfectly round friction burn right in the centre of my hand within about ten minutes.

Coincidence?

Heh, when I initially read the Doc's post the name Speedking didn't register at all in my brain and I instead went off Google image searching for the Cheetah stick he mentioned as that rang a bell. The Speedking appeared in those image results and I've then come back to post about it without realising he'd already mentioned it right there in the text that had me doing the search in the first place.

I'm a tit is what I'm trying to say there.