Autofire adapters?

[RamrodHare]

So I've been thinking about getting an autofire adapter for the 2600. I've found 3 different ones, all in the same price range. I thought I'd see if anyone here has experience with any (or all) of them. The 3 I've found are-

 

PointMaster Fire Control

 

Gemini Rapid Fire

 

Lazer Quick Fire

 

The Gemini and the Lazer both have adjustable fire rates via a dial, the PointMaster does not. The Lazer also has a length of cable, so it doesn't stress the ports on the 2600.

Considering that, Those two already have the advantage over the PointMaster, but if anyone has a PointMaster Fire Control, and likes it, I'd still like to hear about it.

If there are any others, that are easily found for a reasonable price, I'm open to hearing about them too. I know there are homebrew adapters out there, but I don't figure I can get one of them any cheaper than I can get these for.

[CPUWIZ]

I have 3 or 4 without dials, one with a dial and one NIB Lazer (8ft cord) and I have never tried a single one of them.

[Arenafoot]

I own a PointMaster Fire Control, but its mint in the package so I'm no help to you.

[RamrodHare]

So, is the autofire adapter more of a novelty than a necessity? Somehow I was under the impression that a fair amount of people used them. So far, I haven't felt the need to have one, but the more I play, the more it seems like something that would be handy for some of the shooters. I know that some games dictate the speed at which you can shoot, but others allow you to shoot as fast as your thumb will allow. I'll give the thread a little time to get some more replies, but so far it's looking like these aren't really that important of an accessory.

[CRTGAMER]

I have the point master works just fine for asteroids.

[CPUWIZ]

I have the point master works just fine for asteroids.

 

Speaking of Asteroids, the Starplex controller has auto-fire too, a lot of people think it doesn't work, because you have to unscrew the bottom and insert AA batteries. Maybe it was just one, don't remember.

[Video]

I'd say for 2600 an autofire would be a novelty. Most games either let you only fire a certain number of times, and have to wait for the bullets to exit the screen before firing again. Other games let you hammer out shots as fast as you want, but will remove the oldest ones as you fire new ones. I'm sure there are some, but pretty much all games I recall limit you to two or so shots.

 

I understand the shot limit on horizontal games like defender (due to items on scanline limitations) but not so much on vertical games like galaxian (maybe simply lack of memory)

[AW127]

I have two "Sega Rapidfire Units" which are normally for the Sega Master-System, but also works on other retro-hardware with 9Pin (DB9) connector.

http://segaretro.org/Rapid_Fire_Unit

Bought both on Ebay.

 

And i also have two of these "Autofire Plugs" here:

http://csdb.dk/release/?id=147273

They are normally for the C64, but of course also works on other 9Pin-systems. Back in time some of them was sold fully-assembled also on Ebay.

 

 

All of them work without a problem and the produced autofire has a good fire-rate.

Edited July 3, 2017 by AW127

[RamrodHare]

I bought the Gemini Rapid Fire.

I had "eBay Bucks" to use, so I asked the seller to add a buy it now within my price range and he was nice enough to do so. I should have it by the middle of next week (or sooner). I wasn't going to waste my actual money, since I'm trying to save up for a UAV board and still manage to survive the rest of this month.. The ebay Bucks are only good on eBay and there weren't many things I needed that were cheap enough to get without adding actual cash. I played some "Joust type" games today and realized that the adjustable auto fire might be a way to get a decent advantage on games like that. If not, I got it VERY cheap and can probably trade or sell it later on if I don't need it.

[RamrodHare]

So, my Gemini Rapid Fire came today. It's really pretty nice. It works great for cheating at Joust and Flappy. All you have to do is hold down the fire button and adjust the knob to go up or down. There's also a Missile Command clone that doesn't limit your shots, this thing really works for that! You can just light up the sky, wave after wave.

I tried it on asteroids, but I suck at that game. I kept facing the wrong direction and getting hit. I can see how this thing could be amazing if it were built into a joystick, so that you could "tune" the fire rate on certain games while playing. As it is, it's not very easy to move the joystick, while holding down the fire button and turning the knob on the Rapid Fire.

For what I spent, I'm really happy with it. I may not use it very much, but I can see it being useful on at least a few games. The one thing that surprised me, was the size. Based on the photos, I thought it was rather tiny, but this is a hefty bit of kit to have stuck in the controller port. I'll be getting an extension cable for it ASAP. It's not that heavy, but still, it puts more strain on the port than just a cable would. I've worked on a couple of 2600s that needed the ports replaced and it's not something I want to do again.

 

If I were to run into someone else who was wondering about getting some type of auto-fire unit, I would tell them it's a fun item, that works on a few games, but isn't something to spend much on or to worry about buying. I'd also say that it needs to have a knob to adjust the fire rate or it will be almost useless. Do I think it's worth $5? YES. More than $5? No

 

One of these days, I may take it apart and see if I can copy the circuit and add an adjustable "fire knob" to a Joystick.

 

"Yes, Yes, Fire Knob and Joystick, in the same sentence"..

[AW127]

By the way - for the Amiga computer exist a tool, that can show the speed of the autofire in Hz-value. And it`s very reliably, because i tried it with some controller-adapters that offers an own autofire and whose autofire-Hz-values i knew before (from the manual). The tool then shows exactly the correct values.

 

But a higher Hz-value must not automatically mean that the autofire then is faster in a game. How fast an autofire shoots in a game depends mostly on the fact, how the game is programed and deals with very fast button-pressing and releasing. In some games when an autofire is to fast, the player-sprite don`t shoot at all. One example for that is the Amiga-version of "R-Type".

 

I tried around alot with the Raphnet "SNES-to-Atari/Commodore" adapter which has six switchable different autofire-speeds and i found out, that a very good autofire-speed-value is 25Hz for PAL-games and 30Hz for NTSC-games. This means, one shot in two frames. With exactly these two values the playersprite in the most games shoots faster than with higher Hz-values which are not divisible with 50FPS (PAL) or 60FPS (NTSC).

 

Also found out, that a 50Hz or 60Hz autofire-speed-value indeed gives an extremely fast shooting-rate in some games, for example in "Silkworm (Amiga)", because this means one shot in one frame. But here we have the mentioned problem, that in some games then the player-sprite don`t shoot at all. Seems like this values are to fast for some games.

 

The Autofire-measure-tool makes fun, because i tried it with all my different joysticks and controller-adapters (which have connectable autofire). Interesting fact also is, that i tested around 10 Competition Pro Sticks (also different models) with this tool and all of them had little different autofire-Hz-values. They differ from around 65Hz to 79Hz, but not one of them had a value which could be directly divided with the picture-frame-rate.

Edited August 6, 2017 by AW127