Just had a theory why atari designed the 5200 joysticks the way they did

[carmel_andrews]

I guess the reason why the joystick is not self/auto centreing is because is causes less wear and tear on the joystick(s) compared to say a cx40 or cx40 type of joystick (mainly those that don't have microswitches to control joystick movement internally)

 

i.e if you pull a cx 40 in any direction, you are applying pressure on the internal component (the placcy thing that makes up the joystick handle) and over a period of time the placcy joystick handle will just get weaker and weaker till it breaks

 

Something you don't get with the 5200 stick because of the freedom of movement it has and that you don't need to apply much force to the 5200 joystick like you would do for a cx40 or similar to getting it to move in a given direction

 

Perhaps that aspect of the 5200 joystick design was overlooked by the 5200 user base

 

speaking as someone that's never owned, seen (physically) or used a 5200

Edited May 26, 2009 by carmel_andrews

[NE146]

Ironic then that that's the biggest problem/complaint with the 5200 sticks.. is how easily they break

[Kripto]

During that period there were many joysticks which didn't self-center (Mostly on computers), and it was viewed as having a value in its own right. The reasoning being that they could be used for plotting/graphics applications, or games like Missle Command and Qix.

 

I personally hate non-self-centering sticks and had the misfortune of getting one with my first Apple II system in the early 80's. They especially suck with games like Pac Man as that it can be difficult to know when one has passed the center dead zone of the stick, making it more difficult to exactly time the wholesale direction changes demanded by such games.

[CPUWIZ]

I think they designed them like that because they were high as kites.

[bohoki]

ive never had a 5200 stick fail me it is only the buttons that have ever let me down

 

but i am postitive their motive was not joystick snapping but was for absolute positioning for missile command and paddle type games for the 2600 it woudl have been cool to have a 4 player warlords for the 5200 but it was not given the chance

 

they wanted the 5200 to be all in one joystick paddles and video touchpad start and reset was revolutionary to be on board the controller and pause wow who ever thought of having a pause that was revolutionary of course some games don't pause

[Crazy Climber]

I thought they were designed by people that did not actually play video games?

[+Psionic]

I thought they were designed by people that did not actually play video games?

That's been repeated ad infinitum, but is there actually a (reliable) source behind that claim?

[Bryan]

IMO they are like they are because:

 

1. What CPU said.

 

2. Everything about the 5200 was done to excess. Big! Lots of buttons! Buttons on top! Buttons on the side! How about analog sticks?! Futuristic-featuritis! It was an ambitious idea that didn't play out so well in real life.

 

3. Making the sticks analog eliminated the need for a 6520 PIA and saved a few bucks (which must have been more than lost manufacturing those complicated controllers).

[Crazy Climber]

I thought they were designed by people that did not actually play video games?

That's been repeated ad infinitum, but is there actually a (reliable) source behind that claim?

Not sure, I just remember reading it somewhere, probably here. I'm not much of a 5200 guy, actually that is most likely due to the controllers sucking

[Curt Vendel]

The sticks were designed by Craig Asher who developed numerous controllers for Atari and also did the followup for the 5200 controller for the ProSystem - the Proline controller.

 

The 5200 stick with a direct respond to Intellivisions 16 direction controller - Atari came back with a 360 speed sensitive controller - a precursor to what is used on all game consoles today. It only lacked self centering, not due to wearing down of components - that makes no sense whatsoever, it is due to a overly complicated design from the get-go that would've been further complicated by implementing some form of spring into it. Atari tried some early ideas to self center the sticks such as thicker boots, but that just constricted movement and still didn't center the stick enough. I have an internal self centering joystick design that took a much different approach and is very similar the current self centering designed used today.

 

Atari was way ahead of its time with the controllers and despite all of the complaints, it was the Colecovision controllers that were truly annoying and painful to use due to the placement of the firebuttons and the short stalk on the controller - those were failures.

 

Curt

 

 

I thought they were designed by people that did not actually play video games?

[Ransom]

The sticks were designed by Craig Asher who developed numerous controllers for Atari and also did the followup for the 5200 controller for the ProSystem - the Proline controller.

 

The 5200 stick with a direct respond to Intellivisions 16 direction controller - Atari came back with a 360 speed sensitive controller - a precursor to what is used on all game consoles today. It only lacked self centering, not due to wearing down of components - that makes no sense whatsoever, it is due to a overly complicated design from the get-go that would've been further complicated by implementing some form of spring into it. Atari tried some early ideas to self center the sticks such as thicker boots, but that just constricted movement and still didn't center the stick enough. I have an internal self centering joystick design that took a much different approach and is very similar the current self centering designed used today.

 

Atari was way ahead of its time with the controllers and despite all of the complaints, it was the Colecovision controllers that were truly annoying and painful to use due to the placement of the firebuttons and the short stalk on the controller - those were failures.

 

Curt

 

Thank you for clearing that up, Curt!

 

I had a controller for the Apple ][ that could do either centering or not. As I recall, you had to move the stick to the upper left, flip a switch on the bottom, then move it to the lower right, and flip another switch, and then you had centering. I suppose the switches locked some sort of spring mechanism into place. That made it possible to use the two-pot input design of the Apple ][ game controller port for a pseudo-digital joystick.

 

If Atari had used a similar design, they would have had the best of both worlds. But I'm not sure that design existed at the point when the 5200 was being developed. I had it in '86 or so for the Apple, and for all I know, it was a new thing at that time.

[NE146]

Well whatever the case.. one of my most vivid video game memories as a child was sitting there looking forlornly at my 5200 Joust attract screen, pressing my start button with all my might (putting the 5200 controller on the ground and shoving all my weight onto my finger pressing the start button, digging my fingernail in wherever) in a vain effort to start a game, while 5 other similarly "broken" 5200 sticks bought by my mom one by one, lay in a container on the side. Gaming had never seemed so close, yet so far.

 

Yeah I could fix it years later when I got older.. but again, that was years later. So yeah that friggin Joust game took literally years to start.

Edited May 26, 2009 by NE146

[Kripto]

Thanks Curt. It's great to have an accurate historical account of how the design came about. It seems that it was more of a spec battle then actually giving gamers what they wanted. God knows that I had no idea how many directions the INTV pad could read at the time, but did know that the 5200 stick was super-akward for Pac Man and most other tradtional arcade games.

[bohoki]

Thanks Curt. It's great to have an accurate historical account of how the design came about. It seems that it was more of a spec battle then actually giving gamers what they wanted. God knows that I had no idea how many directions the INTV pad could read at the time, but did know that the 5200 stick was super-akward for Pac Man and most other tradtional arcade games.

 

 

yea wico even made a joystick for the apple that had the same mold as the one for the 5200 but was white

[Bryan]

It was a fallacy to think the Intellivision's controller needed to be "out-done" as if it was some sort of arms race. In reality, consumers were interested in software, not a Swiss-army joystick. Nintendo would later conquer the market with great games and a simple and effective controller.

[Greg2600]

I actually like Atari's 5200 stick a lot! The buttons are what is horrible. Mushy junk. Curt is right, Colecovision's sticks are horrendous, like trying to shift gears in an old VW Bug.

[stirrell]

The sticks were designed by Craig Asher who developed numerous controllers for Atari and also did the followup for the 5200 controller for the ProSystem - the Proline controller.

 

The 5200 controllers AND the 7800 ProLines? Yikes. Not the most enviable of track records. I am not going to debate the 5200 sticks since I have never used them (although their tendency to easily break seems well documented here) but I will say that the 7800 controllers are terrible in my opinion. In my experience they are about unusable. Anyway it seems like he designed the most-reviled Atari controllers. Then again, a lot of folks seem to dislike the Jaguar pads, too, but I personally love them.

 

Thanks for the info. I love hearing about the history of Atari.

[Koopa64]

I read that the reason why the 5200 ended up being such an oddity is because Atari was trying to one-up Mattel in the innovations department. Even going so far as to give engineers the incentive to try and get patents on new ideas and giving them bonuses accordingly. "Mattel has a 16-way directional disc? We're gonna do them one better! We're gonna have a fully analog joystick in our controller!"

 

And yes, like everyone says, what looks good on paper doesn't always end up being just as good in real life...

Edited May 27, 2009 by Koopa64

[kool kitty89]

From what I understand the 7800 controller was designed in response from user suggestions, a controller that was simple to use and could easily "fit in the palm of your hand."

 

I think the comfort issue tends to come from how you use the controller, if you use the Coloco stick as a thumbstick it's OK, though th ebuttons are still a bit of a pain (the 7800, Intellivision, and 5200 have this problem to some extent too), many do the same thing with the 5200 controller, use the analog stick as a thumb stick rather than a finger held joystick. A lot of people even do this with the 2600 joystick, and of course you have to use the Intellivision controllers this way (though there more awkward in some ways as the directional disc is recessed and located at the base)

 

Some would claim that using the yoysticks as thumbsticks comes from modern users used to D-pads and analog sticks, but (while I'm far too young to speak personally) my mom, and her brothers and father ended up using the 2600 controllers this way back in 1979, and more recently when we got it out again a few years ago. (my uncles nver played much of anything else, except for a Genesis and Master System they had for a short time)

I was only 12 or so when I started playing the 2600 (arround 2001) and my hands were too small to comfortably use it as a thumbstick, though I tried after seeing my Uncle and Mom using it that way. (it was more intuitive to controll that way even while straining my fingers; of course with the 2600 stick you've got to use your right thumb rather than your left on most common D-Pads)

 

 

While I do agree the 2-axis analog joystick was pretty revolutionary for the time (I think they were pretty new to home computers too), there were obvious problems with the transition, particularly with lack of an alternate digital controller. (and analog joysticks and thumbsticks would become popular with homw computers, particularly for flight sims long before they re-emerged full force into the console world in the wake of 3D games)

 

It should also be noted that the contemporary Vectrex also used an analog joy/thumbstick and even had a "gamepad" layout with the 4 buttons, note this was prior to the release of the Famicom in japan.

 

 

I'd also heard that the 5200 joystick had originally been inspired by the controls of a model airplane transmitter (dual thumbsticks), and the prototype more closely resembled a thumbstick from such a transmitter (which the Vectrex stick strongly does) and had fairly stiff centering like a transmitter's controlls too. The final product having heavy revisions; however this may be a refrence to the 3200's controller prototypes, which do resemble the 5200's a bit though without the keypad (and a little like the 2700 controllers too).

 

 

A comment on the actual use of analog sticks for games like breakout, centipede, and missile command: I feel a self centering controller would be superior, and I also think that the control mechanics should be modified to behave more like a trackball or mouse (or the way analog sticks are most often used now) that is to have similar controll as the 2600 versions (and other digital controllers) but utilizing the more precise controll of an analog stick to allow you to move the crosshairs (etc) fast or slow and in full 360 degrees, but have the cursor constantly moving at the same speed when the stick is held in one direction, and motionaless only when centered.

 

THere are other games that could use the aim where stick is positioned kind of thing, like some space shooters where you controll the crosshairs, like arcade Star Wars, where you'd want the self-centering to pull the cursor/crosshairs back to the center. (it's also useful for space shooter/sims where you controll the ship rather than the crosshairs, still a first person view, but with fixed crosshairs, like Star Voyager, and Star Raiders too iirc)

[carmel_andrews]

Please note that I said 'theory', not fact, just in-case anyone got the wrong idea

[kool kitty89]

Another note, is that the analog stick has nothing to do with the change in connection interface (using the DA-15 plug rather than DE-9), as I discovered here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=144620 Which isn't too surprising since the 5200 stick does use the paddle registers.

 

Indeed one could have been made for the 2600 (and A8-bit, 7800, etc) as well. (and easily featuring 5 action buttons as well)

The snag come in with the keypad: There are several likely reasons for including it, the main one probably being to easily provide compatibility with Atari 400/800 software that required button imputs, with the 2600 controller interface not supporting that, except when used as a dedicated keypad, also there were some games that really required it to be played properly (like Star Raiders, though the 2600 version used a keypad in controller port 2), I suppose you could have set it up with 4x DE-9 controller ports to allow for a seperate keypad for each player (and limit it to 2 players for such games).

 

The other major reason though, would probably be to compete with the Intellivision and Colecovision controllers, though I think most will agree (generally speaking) having the keypad is really of limited utility most of the time. (a few more action buttons would be useful though, as would a pause button -though having that on the console isn't terrible bad, defenitly inconvienent though)

Edited May 27, 2009 by kool kitty89

[+Allan]

Hmmmm. So would it be possible to wire the stick part of a 5200 controller to a DB-9 interface and program a 2600/7800 game to work with it. I'm assuming you could only have one fire button but that would be pretty neat to try.

 

In addition to that you could wire the second joystick port to the same controller and use some of the keyboard buttons and the second fire button (maybe).

 

Allan

Edited May 27, 2009 by Allan

[bohoki]

Hmmmm. So would it be possible to wire the stick part of a 5200 controller to a DB-9 interface and program a 2600/7800 game to work with it. I'm assuming you could only have one fire button but that would be pretty neat to try.

 

In addition to that you could wire the second joystick port to the same controller and use some of the keyboard buttons and the second fire button (maybe).

 

Allan

 

you dont have to be limited to one button

 

the stick is 2 paddles and paddles have 1 fire button each

 

i look at the 5200 stick as 2 in one a matrix array on the top pins and a set of paddles on the bottom pins

 

which is how wico looked at the system too

Edited May 27, 2009 by bohoki

[kool kitty89]

More buttons than that too, if a game supported them. Normal paddle controllers use pins 3 and 4 for the action buttons, which are right and left on the joystick; pins 1,2,6 are unused by the paddles which are up, down, and fire on the joystick, thus you could have up to 5 butons using this configuration with the analog joystick, provided a game was programmed to support it. (as it is you can use the 5200 controller as a normal pair of paddles with the 2600)

 

From the above thread I mentioned:

Yes it is possible. I created an adaptor so I could play Marble Craze using an Atari 5200 analog joystick controller instead of two paddles.

[shadow460]

I had a controller for the Apple ][ that could do either centering or not. As I recall, you had to move the stick to the upper left, flip a switch on the bottom, then move it to the lower right, and flip another switch, and then you had centering. I suppose the switches locked some sort of spring mechanism into place. That made it possible to use the two-pot input design of the Apple ][ game controller port for a pseudo-digital joystick.

 

If Atari had used a similar design, they would have had the best of both worlds. But I'm not sure that design existed at the point when the 5200 was being developed. I had it in '86 or so for the Apple, and for all I know, it was a new thing at that time.

 

It wasn't new at the time. We got a Apple ][ compatible Kraft stick in 1982 that could be switched in and out of self centering mode. I wish I still had it, as I could have put it to great use given a suitable adapter for any given computer or console.