The Paddles

[Marc Fiorillo]

@Gabe, @MrChickenz:  Thank you. I appreciate it.

 

Today I was playing Circus Atari, Canyon Bomber, Black Jack, Video Olympics, Warlords and Demons to Diamonds on the plus.

I've had no issues with any of these games.  I still haven't encountered real jitters yet, but I might not have put in enough hours yet.  I'm trying to get one of my friends to come over this weekend so we can have a marathon session of 2-player paddle games and see what happens.

 

I still have more carts to run on the 2600+ tests.

 

I remember that my old school Atari paddles had developed a jitter several years ago.  I used some kind of aerosol can cleaner on the pots, and it really worked well.  Wish I could remember what kind I used, but it was at the suggestion of a friend who can remind me which kind to use.  Sucks getting old.

[RB5200]

41 minutes ago, Marc Fiorillo said:

Wish I could remember what kind I used,

It most likely was - deoxIT

[Marc Fiorillo]

3 minutes ago, RB5200 said:

It most likely was - deoxIT

I think that's it.  Thanks

[Marc Fiorillo]

It was a short session on the 2600+ today:

No problems with Casino, Night Driver, Backgammon, and all 4 games on the 4 Games in 1 Cartridge.

[MrChickenz]

I’m Baaaaack! I’m back in the game! 
 

I swapped out the potentiometers player 1 for player 2 in my test paddles! Testing with Super Breakout right now.

You can clip my wings but that won’t stop Chickenz from flying the coop! 😄

 

 

 

 

[Marc Fiorillo]

OK, today my friend Brian came over to visit, and we had a marathon test session with the prototype paddles...we broke out the OG and the ones currently for sale for some comparisons.  We also used a 2600, 7800, and the plus.

 

When you move the paddles quickly, they are somewhat ok, but they do stutter with small movements.  There are times when we move from right to left, slowly and continuously, there are times when it when it jumps, it will then jump right, then go left again.  This was really noticeable in Super Breakout and Kaboom!  It is less severe going left to right.

 

The protos seem to have the same range of movement as the originals.

We tried them in the Testcart, and they work ok there, with much less stutter.

 

As everyone else has been noticing, Super Breakout is the worst on the 2600+.  There is more lag on the protos than the OG Atari's, but there are still issues with all of them.  None of them are able to move slowly and smoothly.  Definitely looks like a software issue is at play keeping Super Breakout from being able to work smoothly.  There's something in the way the plus reads the paddles where it seems to take much larger "steps" with the paddle movement than we see on the original hardware.  That combined with the "floaty" behavior of the newer paddles makes the game almost unplayable.  On the 7800 there was some jittering with the prototypes as well, but not quite as pronounced (see video). 

 

We tried Crazy Brix and Super Circus Atari with the prototype paddles on the 7800, and they ran smoothly!  They worked well on the Starpath Supercharger (Fireball) on both the original 2600 and 7800.

 

Other games tested: Tac-Scan, Solar Storm, Encounter at L-5, Steeplechase, Astrosmash, and they worked fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 14 by Marc Fiorillo

[Razzie.P]

On 7/14/2024 at 12:14 AM, Marc Fiorillo said:

When you move the paddles quickly, they are somewhat ok, but they do stutter with small movements.  There are times when we move from right to left, slowly and continuously, there are times when it when it jumps, it will then jump right, then go left again.  This was really noticeable in Super Breakout and Kaboom!  It is less severe going left to right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This has been my experience from testing as well, but there seems to be noticeably more stutter with the new ones than my OG paddles as well as the  paddles that came with the 4 in 1 Cartridge and paddle pack.  I hadn't posted anything in here since my testing has been less than 100% positive (didn't wanna toss up a bunch of negativity and issues for the world to see) but from my PM reply from Ben, I got the impression he wanted it posted here to see if more than 1 tester was having the same results.

 

Here was my original feedback from my first 2+ hours --- 

 

I’m sad to say these don’t feel 100% as responsive or as smooth as my original paddles or the paddles that came with the 4 in 1 Cartridge and paddle pack.   There’s no “jitter,” that I can tell, but they feel slightly rougher, almost like there’s a slight bit of dead zone between the movements, and only registering and moving “every other bit,” if that makes sense.   Breakout for example – when I move it slowly, it’s as if the player sprite is stagger-stepping across the screen, whereas the OG paddles and 4 in 1 paddles have a very smooth movement. Imagine 360 degrees – it’s like it moves on 1, skips 2, moves on 3, skips 4, etc

Granted, it’s not bad.  And if someone wasn’t directly comparing, they’d likely not even notice. 

 

 

Since then, I've logged an additional 4+ hours of play time (more than 6 total now) across various games, and still no jitter.  But with the additional roughness, if I had purchased these new, the overall stutter feel would have led to a return.

 

On jitters though, I've played for about the same or more with the 4 in 1 paddles and haven't developed jitters/issues with them yet, either.  I guess I've been lucky, bc I've been perfectly happy with those and wouldn't have known there were issues if not for the reports on here 😁

[chad5200]

On 7/18/2024 at 1:56 PM, Razzie.P said:

I’m sad to say these don’t feel 100% as responsive or as smooth as my original paddles or the paddles that came with the 4 in 1 Cartridge and paddle pack.   There’s no “jitter,” that I can tell, but they feel slightly rougher, almost like there’s a slight bit of dead zone between the movements, and only registering and moving “every other bit,” if that makes sense.   Breakout for example – when I move it slowly, it’s as if the player sprite is stagger-stepping across the screen, whereas the OG paddles and 4 in 1 paddles have a very smooth movement. Imagine 360 degrees – it’s like it moves on 1, skips 2, moves on 3, skips 4, etc

Granted, it’s not bad.  And if someone wasn’t directly comparing, they’d likely not even notice. 

I am one of the testers too.  And my experience matches your exactly.  My original 2600+ paddles from a few months back are perfect and really shine (especially on the classic 2600... the 2600+ has resolution issues currently that still need to be addressed regardless of which paddles are used).  But the newer test 2600+ paddles have that slightly rough response you mentioned, they don't have that buttery smooth response.  Original 2600+ paddles I give a grade of A+.  The new ones I give a B.

 

 

 

[Maztr_0n]

On 12/24/2023 at 9:46 AM, Bill Loguidice said:

They don't have access to Activision games. 

i dont even wanna ask how much activision would've wanted for Kaboom of all things...

[Bill Loguidice]

On 7/20/2024 at 6:21 PM, Maztr_0n said:

i dont even wanna ask how much activision would've wanted for Kaboom of all things...

Until we see otherwise, it's likely that Atari will be sticking to first party stuff (which now includes M Network) until exhausted. In the past, Activision was decent about licensing stuff. When I was with AtGames, we had pretty good access to Activision/Imagic games. Now that they're part of Microsoft, I really don't know what the expectations would be. Microsoft is actually pretty good about licensing things, but again, I'm not sure Atari wants to, or needs to, go that route just yet. After all, they did buy out a lot of IP themselves over the past several years.

[MrChickenz]

5 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Until we see otherwise, it's likely that Atari will be sticking to first party stuff (which now includes M Network) until exhausted. In the past, Activision was decent about licensing stuff. When I was with AtGames, we had pretty good access to Activision/Imagic games. Now that they're part of Microsoft, I really don't know what the expectations would be. Microsoft is actually pretty good about licensing things, but again, I'm not sure Atari wants to, or needs to, go that route just yet. After all, they did buy out a lot of IP themselves over the past several years.

Licensing Digitally, I would guess is much different than licensing for physical merchandise.

Edited July 22 by MrChickenz