Simple question regarding paddle controllers

[Merowech]

Hi everyone

 

I made my first experiences with Atari some weeks ago when I bought a Flashback 8 Gold HD. The games are great fun and I decided to buy a pair of used paddle controllers for games like Breakout and Kaboom. Now I noticed a strange behavior with these paddle and I would be very grateful if someone with more experience could tell me if these paddles are faulty or if everything is alright with them. This is what I am surprised about:

 

-When playing games for one player (like Kaboom! and Breakout), I can use only one of the controllers. While turning the rotating knob on this controller clockwise the paddle/bat on the screen is moving to the left (and to the right when turning counterclockwise).

-But when playing two player games with the second paddle everything feels much more natural because turning the rotating knob counterclockwise will move the paddle/bat on the screen left (and to the right when turning clockwise).

 

So now I am wondering why I have to rotate the first paddle counterclockwise to move right and the other one clockwise for the same direction in games like Pong (Video Olympics) ... perhaps I just don't understand the logic behind it (this was the first time I used a paddle controller). But I am afraid the paddle for the first player might be wired in a wrong way ...

 

I would be very glad if someone could help me out of my confusion :-)

 

(Sorry for linguistic errors, I am writing this to you from Germany and English isn't my mother tongue)

[fluxit]

It does sound like something is wired wrong.

[fiddlepaddle]

In both Kaboom and Breakout, moving the paddle clockwise moves your paddle to the right and counter-clockwise moves it to the left.

 

Paddles are easy to take apart and you can easily (maybe, depending on your confidence level) switch the polarity by swapping the wires connected to the pot. I would first test them on a real 2600 to make sure it's the paddles, though.

[Merowech]

Thank you fiddlepaddle and fluxit :-)

 

That's exactly the way I expected it to work for Kaboom and Breakout. I just opened the paddles, compared both and it seems that there's a wire soldered at the wrong contact for the P1 paddle (and soldering quality is awful). Should be easy to repair. Thank you very much for this hint!