Any reason why 'multi button' joysticks weren't supported on home computers

[carmel_andrews]

By 'multi button' i mean joyticks that had more then one fire button, classic example being the competition pro (best of the lot in my opinion)

 

The only one i recall atari doing is the proline (though apparently the 7800 'euro pad' also had more then one fire button but you couldn't buy is seperately from the 7800 (like you could the proline)

 

it's a shame that software houses didn't do any (or many) games that supported multiple fire buttons, if there was support i think it would have given serious competition to the games systems (i.e sega and nintendo)

[+slx]

That's an interesting question. Maybe it has to do with Atari "setting the standard" with the single-button CX-40 on the VCS which created such a huge installed base for single-button-Joysticks that it didn't make sense for companies to produce multi-button software (as it would limit appeal to people having two-button joysticks).

 

Maybe it also has to do with generally simpler games that had less requirement for more buttons (although many Arcade conversions could have needed two).

 

Having two buttons in an easy to reach location also wasn't that easy with real hold-in-your-hand joysticks. You can't simply add another button at the other edge of the joystick base if you hold the base with one hand (using the thumb for the button) and move the stick with the other. To have more buttons you'd need a joypad type controller (as far as I recall the INTV had a setup like that) allowing the thumb to move between buttons or a "top of stick" or "trigger type" button that is not that comfortable to use or at least reduces the ability to move the joystick as quickly and sensitively as it can be moved by thumb and forefinger. (I could never get the hang of Quickshots although some people loved them.)

 

The 5200/7800 left/right setups were not very popular/comfortable either, at least that's what I get from the Forum.

 

 

Odyssey 2 also used single-button, BTW.

 

All this is highly subjective of course

[high voltage]

The VCS game Omega Race uses 2 extra buttons on an Atari joystick, so it would have been possible.

 

 

 

 

Joypads are nasty, even for multiple button playing.

Nintendo got it right doing a joystick with 2 buttons

 

There are joysticks with plenty of buttons for FSs

Edited July 8, 2013 by high voltage

[TMR]

Most of the problem is a lack of standard for a second button; the DB9 was laid out with six pins handling four directions, one fire button and a ground line so there's no "official" way to do it, at least not according to Atari because the remaining lines are down as two potentiometers and a 5V line.

 

If we pretend to be a hardware manufacturer in the 1980s for a bit, by the time people were saying it'd be nice to have a second fire button we as a company are already supporting multiple 8-bit machines and some of them didn't assign pins the same way as the Atari hardware does. That means our new Decimator™ joystick is either going to be a single button stick that supports pretty much anything with a DB9 connection or it'll have two independent buttons but we're limited, only owners of one or two platforms can use it. And even if we take this financial risk ourselves, we don't make games so will need to sweet talk the software companies to persuade them that putting the extra effort into supporting our scheme is worth doing despite it not paying any dividends back to them.

[RickR]

It had to do with "thinking outside the box". It seems like Atari was incapable of this at that time. 5200 controllers were just a copy/improvement (in their mind) of Colecovision and Intellivision designs. It took an outsider to come up with the gamepad. I think about this every time I play Intellivision. Turn the controller 90 degrees and notice what it looks like and how much more comfortable it becomes...and no one at the time thought of this even though it seems so obvious today. Even the 520ST uses the same-ol' 2600 joystick even though gamepads had become the gaming standard by that time. Heck, the Sega Master System controller was right there for them...same connector and everything.

 

Also, most of the companies wanted their computers to be thought of as "serious" computing machines -- not game consoles. Game controllers were an after-thought. I think they were slow to realize who their customers were and what they were using their machines for. Or maybe they knew, but still wanted to pull for business use.

[Bryan]

It's a chicken/egg problem.

 

The Atari joystick port was developed for the 2600 where games were simple and one button was enough. The computers used the same port to take advantage of the availability of 2600 sticks. Since there weren't really any multi-button games, no one was going to manufacture a multi-button stick. And, since there weren't any multi-button sticks, there weren't any multi-button games. It was certainly possible since the joystick port is connected to a PIA which can turn any pin into a bit-banged IO line.

[Fres]

Karateka, Lode Runner, and Spy Hunter were better with the keyboard and no joystick because of the one button limitation, in my opinion.

Edited July 8, 2013 by Fres

[Synthpopalooza]

It wasn't until 1998 that we had a 2-button game on the Atari ... Bill Kendrick's "Gem Drop" allowed for use of the Sega Genesis controller ... the B and C buttons were both usable, button B being read from the PADDLE(0) register.

 

My Tetricize game from 1991 also used this setup as well. It would have been nice to see more games done in this fashion.

[Bryan]

Yeah, the paddle inputs should have also been defined as additional button inputs from the start.

[high voltage]

You could even connect whole keyboards to the A8 (and C64), I used to own this which plugged into the joystick port:

Edited July 8, 2013 by high voltage

[Synthpopalooza]

Don't forget there is also the numeric keypad used in the Star Raiders 2600 game, and older 2600 titles like Basic Programming. This is also readable from the Atari XL as well.

[The Usotsuki]

Apple ][ joysticks were 2-button.

[morelenmir]

I had a two button, large 'kempston' style joystick with - oddly - square acid yellow buttons inside the more usual round mounts. It physically attached to your table with big rubber-suckers and was a gorgeous thing to look at I thought as a child. However both buttons were connected to the same line and therefore only there for decoration or perhaps left/right hand use. After being impressed with spy hunter one Sunday morning, I cut off a spare cx-40 lead and then reconnected the right-hand 'kempston' button to this cable, cut a VERY rough hole in the 'kempston' case and then plugged it in to joystick port 2. It worked very well, but I swiftly got fed up of spy hunter and then felt a bit sorry for crudely mauling my new joystick and ruining a cx-40!

[krupkaj]

The only one i recall atari doing is the proline (though apparently the 7800 'euro pad' also had more then one fire button but you couldn't buy is seperately from the 7800 (like you could the proline)

7800 joysticks use paddle inputs for recognizing the A and B buttons. Unfortunately the 7800 is little bit different inside and A800 cannot read the independent buttons from these controllers properly.

Edited July 8, 2013 by krupkaj

[Mathy]

Hello Jan

 

The reason why the independent buttons can not be read is that the value of the resistors uses in there joysticks are such, that the difference between "button pressed" and "button released" can not be measured by the Atari 8 bit computer.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

Edit: I talked about this earlier in more detail. Please read this thread.

Edited July 8, 2013 by Mathy

[+slx]

I remember "shorting" a WICO bat to have the base and top buttons wired in parallel rather than having to select between them with a switch. Never understood why one would want to "deselect" a joystick button on purpose.

 

While a suction mounted joystick would have allowed easier use of multiple buttons even the best of cups would make that stick's base less than rock solid and a bit "wobbly". Besides, those not pretending to use the computer for serious purposes would just set it up on the living room floor in front of the biggest TV without any solid "suckable" support.

[Rybags]

At slight additional cost they could have made the 2600 controller analog with resistors to provide known range values on the X/Y axes.

 

That would free up 4 I/O lines which gives a number of possibilities. e.g. 4 buttons directly read, or a latch select using 2 lines which allows 4 sets of 2 buttons to be read on the other 2.

 

But realistically, using the POTs for directions means 2600 games need the time-consuming extra program code to monitor them.

Also, the configuration of joysticks mean that using more than 2 buttons makes the whole thing cumbersome.

 

Sony got it right with the PSX - so much so that the controller layout has barely changed in nearly 20 years. But even despite that, you simply can't beat the traditional joystick for pixel perfect precision which is required for many of the older games where the player is killed by single pixel collisions.

[TMR]

I had a two button, large 'kempston' style joystick with - oddly - square acid yellow buttons inside the more usual round mounts. It physically attached to your table with big rubber-suckers and was a gorgeous thing to look at I thought as a child.

 

That'll be a Zipstik that will... i've got a dozen of 'em, one with purple buttons.

[morelenmir]

I think you are right TMR!!! That rings a bell!!! I got it at Christmas 1989/New Year 1990 from I think the shop was called redundantly enough 'The Computer Shop'. I notice you're a fellow northerner - there was one just on Trinity Street in Leeds across from Smiths where that posh knicker-shop is now!

 

I loved the look of the thing and really, really wanted a new joystick. But that Zipstick was just the first of MANY disappointments right up to dualshock 3 (and doubtless 4). No joystick has ever felt as precise as that old one-button leaf-switch cx-40!

Edited July 9, 2013 by morelenmir

[Bryan]

The simplest expansion would be to have a 74LSwhatever shift register. You latch 8 switches and clock them out on a single data pin. It can be done with 2 wires (+power) if you're clever about it.

[Thorsten Günther]

As already mentioned before: a two-axis analog (thumb)stick with up to five buttons (Vectrex style, or flight stick style, e.g.) is a no-brainer on the A8, and more buttons are entirely possible, so even a Sega Saturn Analog Controller lookalike would have been possible.

 

They just didn't have the proper ideas back then.

[Tenorman]

I can understand why the Atari 8-bit series used the standard one-button joysticks and paddles. They were just using what they had available from the 2600.

 

What gets me though is the ST. They had a design for a two button joystick from the 7800 controllers, and yet they stuck with the 2600 controllers. Heck, they even shipped the 7800 Prolines with the 2600 Jr. Why not make the ST use these controllers and just use the same thing across the entire product line.

 

A separate mouse port would have been great on the ST as well, but that's a different matter.

[Bryan]

I can understand why the Atari 8-bit series used the standard one-button joysticks and paddles. They were just using what they had available from the 2600.

 

What gets me though is the ST. They had a design for a two button joystick from the 7800 controllers, and yet they stuck with the 2600 controllers. Heck, they even shipped the 7800 Prolines with the 2600 Jr. Why not make the ST use these controllers and just use the same thing across the entire product line.

 

A separate mouse port would have been great on the ST as well, but that's a different matter.

The ST stick/mouse ports were a pretty lame implementation. It was a minimal interface which couldn't even track the mouse if you moved it quickly. Anyway, I stick by my assessment that Tramiel=Cheap.

[TMR]

I notice you're a fellow northerner

 

Nah, i'm not a native; originally i'm from Kent and, during the 1980s, i used to work in a computer shop selling, amongst many others, the Zipstik. =-)

 

I loved the look of the thing and really, really wanted a new joystick. But that Zipstick was just the first of MANY disappointments right up to dualshock 3 (and doubtless 4). No joystick has ever felt as precise as that old one-button leaf-switch cx-40!

 

i've always found the Zipstik to be the most accurate stick going, that's one of the reasons why i have so many of 'em with another being that they're reliable. That and the yellow fire buttons stand out when i take my kit along to events. =-)

[morelenmir]

For some reason the square yellow Zipstick buttons always used to remind me of 'Foxes Glacier Fruits'!!!

 

Do you recall another stick of the same era TMR - it was a bit like the infamous Nintendo 'Power Glove' in that I THINK it clipped on to you wrist somehow and the joystick part was held directly in your hand.without having to rest it against everything. I mention it because the only time I ever saw it was the day I bought the zipstick. The design looked so futuristic it stuck with me but I never saw the thing again! I wonder if it was any good?

Edited July 9, 2013 by morelenmir