5200 controller praise

[Skatepunk60]

Yes thats right i acctually like the 5200 controller , i keep mine soooooo clean and nice they work beautifully. But for those they disagree , if you look past the controls , the controller layout itself is the most comfortable out of the three systems , anyone agree disagee , think i should be locked up at the funny farm?

[Gunstar]

I agree with you. i modified my 5200 controllers with bits of aluminium foil on the contacts and they've been quite reliable so far...it's been about six months. I also love the analog controls, it makes it sooo much more fun to play games like Joust, StarRaiders and pole position over my 130XE and a standard joystick (the only difference is the controls; digital vs. analog. As for games like pacman, i don't play it much on either system anyway, so it's a moot point for me, although i only got stuck a couple of times when I did play the 5200 version. i do think the 5200 has the best controllers of any atari system except the Jaguar...it just needed a self-centering joystick and reliable buttons. I sure wish my 7800 had the start, option and reset controls on the joystick, it sucks having to get up and pause a game, ti takes too long and you end up dead before you can reach the console to pause/unpause it. A keypad on the 7800 would have been nice too, i love keypads on controllers!!! it allows for so much more, like a computer keyboard, when it comes to gaming options and easy access.

[Skatepunk60]

hell yeah , having pause start and reset on the controller alows me to be REALLY lazy

[NE146]

My problem was never with the controllers themselves. I thought they were great!...when they were working. I could control any game (Pacman, Montezuma's, Joust, Countermeasure, you name it) like a pro with a 5200 joystick. No problems whatsoever.

 

My problem was that they broke down so much and the buttons would stop working. The WORST thing was eventually I couldn't even start a game which totally totally SUCKED. My mom bought me pairs and pairs of replacements and then a wico. But at that point even having a wico controller with a Y cord was a moot point because what could you do if you can't even start a friggin game?

 

Of course years later (and much more wisdom acquired) I learned how to fix it, but I was already an adult by then. Course the good news is now I got pretty much an army of working 5200 controllers

 

So yeah I agree with you. I never understood people who wrote about problems with the 5200 sticks and then you'd find that it was the analog controls they didn't like. The 5200 sticks did rock. They just broke a lot.

[PECOS BILL]

I loved the 5200 joysticks back in 1982, and I love them now. The "feel" is better than any other joystick I've used. And of course, having "start", "reset" and "PAUSE" on the joystick.....is just the best.

 

I remember going to different friends houses back in 1982, and playing Intellivision or Colecovision and having loads of fun. But it was when I got an ATARI 5200, that I realized how awkward the joysticks for those other systems really were. Most of my friends with the other systems also preferred my 5200 joysticks.

 

In regards to the Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man joystick curse.......I have no problem controlling my Pac-man or Pac-woman. Maybe I did the first couple times playing them, but I can't remember it. It's just automatic that I start a turn about a half second early. It's really not a problem.

[Skatepunk60]

I got no problem in pacman either .. ohh well guess were just talented

[Jetboot Jack]

I would not dislike the 5200 sticks half as much if Atari had released games that were designed around them, rather than take games designed for digital input and fudge them for the 5200 sticks...

 

Star Raiders, Pole Position, Centipede, Missile Command etc all play really well with the analog sticks - but Pengo, Kangaroo, Popeye, Moon Patrol etc play awfully!

 

Atari needed to both provide self centring mechanisms and/or a digital mopde for the sticks too (like PSX sticks - Dpad and Analog stick)!!!

 

The fact the buggers break too quickly is a sad fact of Atari's lack of QA!!!

 

sTeVE, new 5200 owner!

[TunnelRunner]

quote:

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Originally posted by skatepunk60:

Yes thats right i acctually like the 5200 controller

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Skatepunk, I like the cut of your gib! I love the CX52, and have a half dozen apart at any given time. I've found a few good ways to eliminate the button problem without actually altering the controller. But I'm glad to hear a word of praise in favor of the 5200 stick. So it's no good for Asteroids! It's got LOTS of buttons!

TunnelRunner

[dcden]

I never understood the whole argument as to how the non-self-centering (NSC) made games like Pacman difficult. NSC was irrelevant to Pacman because if you needed to stop, you just moved Pacman up against a wall and you... stopped. When I play(ed) Pacman in the arcades, I never needed to let go of the joystick, so why should I have cared if the joystick didn't self center?

 

Where it *did* make a difference was in games like Popeye, Galaxian, Kangaroo, etc. where you were moving from side to side and occasionally had to come to a stop. But even then in my early teens I figured out that you just had to move the joystick down and center to stop your lateral movement.

 

Now on games like Dig Dug (which I didn't own) where you move in 4 directions, I can see how stopping your character can become a problem with a NSC controller. But I was able to enjoy QBert despite its unconventional control scheme... in fact it was one of my fav 5200 games!

[+Cafeman]

I must have missed this thread earlier! Kudos to SkatePunk for speaking his mind. I have rarely had a problem with using the 5200 controller. Pac-Man seems to be an often used example, but I've NEVER had a problem getting used to 5200 control in that game.

 

Q*bert was cited above -- this game, and Frogger, makes you point the stick and squeeze the buttons to jump, and I quickly got used to that and have a lot of fun with both games. In fact, Q*bert is a really great playing 5200 game -- ever get past level 5, when the speed doubles? WOW! It can get frantic.

 

If you recall, in other diagonally-moving games on systems with digital sticks, you often had to twist the joystick 45 degrees so that UP was really Up/Right. I HATED that, far worse than using the 5200 stick and actually being able to point Up/Right diagonally to move in that direction.

 

Now, for Kangaroo, I think the 5200 stick hurts that game. I have a hard time on level two jumping accurately, and its the stick's fault -- or, the programming interpretation of the stick.

 

Also, Zaxxon is no fun on 5200 because you must continually squeeze those mushy buttons. If your hand doesn't cramp before you beat your first Zaxxon robot, you have Schwartzenegger paws. But if the game had only allowed an auto-fire option, it would have solved this problem.

 

For many games, the 5200 stick is just as good as the digital 8bit/2600 stick in practice, and with the 5200's many buttons it proves its worth. Sure, auto-centering would have made it much easier to use for many gamers, but a little practice and I find that I get used to it quickly, with no problems. UNLIKE the CV stick, that little knob controller kills my hands, I feel like I'm going to break it!

[MrRetroGamer]

I have a set of Entertainment Systems "Control Guides" for the 5200 stick. They are basically a guide that limits the movement of the joystick to only the 4 directions - left, right, up & down. Makes a difference in games like Pac Man for sure. Too bad you don't see these too often, I think you could only get them mail order back then.

[dcden]

Cafeman, Q*bert rocks! Yes, I've gotten to the point where the speed doubles and it is indeed challenging. Also, with the way the colors on the cubes change on levels 5+, sometimes it is necessary to purposely jump off the pyramid (whether on a flying disc or not) in order to complete the board. Also IIRC you stop getting bonuses around 600k points.

 

Frogger was more difficult to control with the joystick + fire button, because the movements had to be made more rapidly. In this case I resorted to using the keypad.

 

With Kangaroo, I think the real problem was in the way the original controls were set up for the arcade version. Why didn't they just have two buttons, one for punch and one for jump? The Atari5200 version merely duplicated this feature.

 

But all in all, I didn't have many problems with the controllers other than the usual wear and tear, which happens eventually with all controllers on all systems IMO.

[+Cafeman]

"Also, with the way the colors on the cubes change on levels 5+, sometimes it is necessary to purposely jump off the pyramid (whether on a flying disc or not) in order to complete the board"

 

Yes! You have to have a large enough supply of Q*bert lives after that level because you're going to have to comming Q*bertcide at some point to finish the level! I used to instantly be able to tell how to use the last disc in order to prevent a suicide attempt, but that was a long time ago.

 

BTW, being a nouveua 5200 coder myself, I'm pretty sure I could give Q*bert eyes instead of those holes. If only I had the source code!

[dcden]

Hehe, the monsters in Pacman need eyes too!

[Room 34]

In the late '80s I had a Tandy computer with what I felt was the ideal joystick -- it was analog, like the 5200 joystick, but it had little switches on the bottom that allowed the joystick to either self-center or move freely (like the 5200 joystick), whatever suited a particular application or game best.

 

I loved that joystick! I spent countless hours on the 3-color CGA PC version of "Winter Games" with it.

 

Was there ever a replacement joystick for the 5200 that could switch between self-centering and... (whatever you call a non-self-centering joystick)?

[NE146]

quote:

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Was there ever a replacement joystick for the 5200 that could switch between self-centering and... (whatever you call a non-self-centering joystick)?

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Why yes, the oft-mentioned Wico 5200 stick was analog and could be released from it's self centering mode on both x and y axis individually. But when you did this however, the stick would just basically flop around so I almost never used it in this mode.

 

However, I haven't touched or looked at mine in about 4 years so someone with a more recent memory would probably have a better description of it.