THECXSTICK ultimate fix

[chad5200]

5 minutes ago, JetmanUK said:

This.

All of them need to be returned.

I agree.  These all need to be returned.

 

I just checked and I still have 7 days left to return mine (from Amazon).

 

Unless I hear something official from Atari/Retro Games/Plaion in the next few days, I will be initiating a return on mine.  I recommended you all do the same.

 

@TrogdarRobusto from Atari has officially acknowledged the problem, now they need to do something about it.  Words are cheap.

 

 

 

[Spanner]

I found a way now of using my Atari Joystick using the Atari2600 Plus as a DB92USB Adapter and it plugged into THE400 Mini so now just use the CXSTICK for its buttons only....

 

Might made a video tomorrow to show how.

Edited April 20 by Spanner

[masseo1]

The stick isn't great. I would really have hoped that they just mirrored most of the original design and not leaned on cheap, NES, SMS style rubber pads for contacts.

I was so excited for the new buttons around the ring of the joystick, but I didn't realize how much I actually lean on those positions.

I might just get an original CX-40 and Frankenstein the electronics of this thing into it. , but @Spanner seems to have a fair workaround with the DB92USB.

 

I doubt we will ever get a physical fix from anyone, officially. The cost to rectify will most likely create a load of debt worth more than bad press.

 

 

[Fred_M]

Many days ago I already commented that this "ultimate fix" is not a definitive fix.... The design of the joystick is cheap and faulty. This all could have been prevented if Retro Games Ltd would have asked some die hard Atari 8-bit users (there are so many of them on AtariAge) to test their product....

 

A few days ago I decided to place a warning on my Facebook page (1380 followers). This is so sad, I really hoped the 400 mini would have been a fantastic product and a great tribute to the Atari 8-bit home computer series 😞

 

Edited April 20 by Fred_M

[chad5200]

On 4/20/2024 at 12:25 PM, chad5200 said:

Unless I hear something official from Atari/Retro Games/Plaion in the next few days, I will be initiating a return on mine.  I recommended you all do the same.

My ability to return via Amazon expires in 3 days so I initiated a return of this joystick.  The fact that the joystick itself is poorly designed and registers diagonals when it should not is a shame.  As a lifetime Atari fan, I was very excited about this joystick when it was announced and look forward to a real fix happening... at that point I will consider repurchasing.

 

If you are considering returning yours for a full refund and you were on the Amazon pre-order, better act quick as the ability to return expires very soon.

 

Edited April 25 by chad5200

[tabytha]

On 4/19/2024 at 9:36 PM, tabitha said:

i used a small square piece of electrical tape in the center, it's still working fine after a week of use UPDATE: after playing more extensively, it has failed too, with registering down as down right fairly often... sigh i wil probably open it back up and see what more can be done, but not tonight

ok, put another square of tape on it, and it fixed it... for another week lol.... i'm done with this and just hooked a less authentic and more confusing (since it doesn't match the on screen button indicators) usb gamepad, but hey, at least it works.

to make this right they need to figure out what the problem is, and offer to send a new joystick to everyone with a bad joystick. this is so sad, because otherwise the product is pretty solid and very well done

Edited April 28 by tabitha

[Rodney Hester]

1 hour ago, tabitha said:

to make this right they need to figure out what the problem is, and offer to send a new joystick to everyone with a bad joystick. this is so sad, because otherwise the product is pretty solid and very well done

That's pretty unlikely, given past history.

 

Joysticks on the C64 mini were an absolute shitshow of broken shafts and nothing was ever done to remedy consumers (but there were a bunch of interesting customer 'solutions' involving screws!).

 

Joysticks on the C64 maxi were better, in the sense that the shafts no longer snapped if you looked at them sideways but instead you got the joys of an overstiff joystick, buttons that 'hung' in a downward position and a USB cable connected by the bare minimum of plastic and some prayers.  Again, nothing was done to remedy customer complaints.

 

Ultimately, they released yet another revision in a transparent housing, and _that_ appeared to mercifully finally be solid...but was released in very limited quantities and of course required the customer to pay (quite a high price) for a remedy.

 

I get it.  RGL's small...but not so small they couldn't playtest for 10 minutes with 5 people and see that something was clearly wrong.  Maybe the prototype didn't do this because it was more solidly engineered and this was down to Chinese cost-cutting?  It's happened before...witness the Atari Flashback 2 from back when.  *shrugs*

 

It's a shame either way.  I was all in for buying this and _three_ extra joysticks *just for the nostalgia kick* of playing MULE "properly"...but I'll be damned if both the software itself _and_ the controllers are janked beyond use.  I truly don't get it (or why Atari allowed this!).

[Spanner]

If you look at this video where they are demonstrating THEC64 Mini, in Spain I think, users never tested THEC64 Joystick, it was there but was a model, it used a Snes Controller so tell you straight away there was something wrong with THEC64 Joystick from the beginning.

More info on them is here, I wrote a threat about them, here.. https://thec64community.online/thread/426/rgl-thec64 I need to add THE400 Mini yet.

 

[Spanner]

And at the time THEC64 Mini had no USB File Loader Menu so you only could load one .d64 image from a USB Stick, that was added in a update on 9th October 2018 v1.0.10 firmware when the NTSC version came out, I remember waiting for the update to land...  THEC64 Mini had bad reviews because it had no USB File loader menu, thats why now with each model RGL now make it has a USB Media Access menu so you can load your own games.

[Pac-Man Senior]

Despite my bad experience with the bundled joystick I bought the seperate cx. It arrived today and this time I was lucky to get a good one. Complete sessions Fort Apocalypse and Bruce Lee - no problems. Some levels Jumpman Jr. - no problems. Yippee! 🥳

[+LS650]

2 hours ago, Pac-Man Senior said:

Despite my bad experience with the bundled joystick I bought the seperate cx. It arrived today and this time I was lucky to get a good one. Complete sessions Fort Apocalypse and Bruce Lee - no problems. Some levels Jumpman Jr. - no problems. Yippee! 🥳

That's interesting - so you can see a major difference between the two different CX sticks?  I wonder what the difference is...

I have both a bundled stick and a second I bought separately.  I've never seen any issues with false diagonal inputs, etc.  Maybe I just got lucky.

[Pac-Man Senior]

10 hours ago, LS650 said:

That's interesting - so you can see a major difference between the two different CX sticks?  I wonder what the difference is...

I have both a bundled stick and a second I bought separately.  I've never seen any issues with false diagonal inputs, etc.  Maybe I just got lucky.

I cannot see it because I don't open the new cx. But I can feel it. The first one was frustration just after some minutes of gaming. The second one simply does what I expect from a new joystick. I have no idea what causes this difference. Nice to hear that you were lucky twice. At least I have got two working new usb cx - one with an unconventional fix and one working out of the box.