WaverBoy

Why won’t the paddle dial work? So bloody maddening. The powers-that-be just can’t get it right.

Here’s the guy’s original in-depth video review of the Bliss-Box:

Still wondering about controller input lag, especially where the paddle function is concerned, would love to see more thoughts on that. Also, has anyone here tried different OG controllers using the Bliss-Box, like perhaps the Atari 2600 or 5200 trakball controllers, or the 2600 paddle controllers?

So, do the controllers suffer from input lag, or not? Gen X Grownup shows himself playing a round of Kaboom with the firmware update, with paddle sensitivity set to low, and he gobbles up all the bombs with ease and says it works really well.

This should be a good version. It ain’t. They’ve had plenty of chances. And it’s no Retron 77, as you can’t put superior custom firmware on it and load ROMs from an SD card.

If Analogue would release a nostalgically designed woodgrainy FPGA console that covered the VCS, 5200, 7800, and 400/800, I’d be a happy man. They could call it the Analogue Av. And then, of course we’d need swanky new 2.4G wireless joysticks and paddles from 8BitDo. The ultimate Atari setup. I bet they’d sell out in no time flat.

Being better than a Flashback console still doesn’t make it good. 7800 support or no, it’s still a low-end emulation-based romdumper that’s non-upgradeable to custom firmware.

It’s really not though. It’s another low-end romdumper. And unlike the R77, you can’t upgrade the firmware to a far superior community build and you can’t run ROMs from an SD card as a convenience and/or game compatibility workaround.

This hunkajunk? It’ll only make the original console more valuable I would think.

I’ll go one better and make it a 2600/5200/7800 console with two cartridge slots, and if SD cards are accepted then we can have it play 400/800 games too.

This would be fine IF all bloody games worked (they don’t) AND if the emulation is perfect (is it?) AND if paddle controller performance is at least up to the OG console (is it?) AND if multicarts would work (they won’t). It’s just another low-end piece of junk romdumper. There have been many attempts at an Atari 2600 HDMI-friendly console, and all of them have come up short. How bloody difficult can it be? Very bloody difficult, apparently. What we want, “Atari”, is an FPGA console that looks like (or is sufficiently nostalgically reminiscent of) the original woodgrain console that doesn’t rely on software emulation/rom dumping. SD card compatibility would be nice, but as long as multicarts work I’m good. And if “Atari” won’t give us that, I wish to hell that Analogue would.

It’s not junk at all if you put the community build firmware on it.

I have a Ranger joystick plugged into the front left controller port. I have a set of rebuilt Atari paddles plugged into the 2600-daptor at the rear. Everything was working perfectly fine with this setup. Now it’s not. After I select a game with the Ranger and hit Reset, twisting the Player 1 paddle knob opens the settings menu and hitting the button moves the cursor between sections of it. And, I reflashed the SD card with completely different updated firmware and it still does that. I’m a bit stymied.

Ok, something weird happened—everything was working perfectly with a joystick in the left controller port and my paddles hooked up in the back via the 2600-adaptor. I could select my paddle game with the joystick, hit reset, and then twist the dial and press the button and presto, great paddle gameplay. Last night I went to play Kaboom and I selected the game, hit Reset, then twisted the paddle dial and a settings menu came up. Clicking the paddle button moved the cursor between the settings. Same result for all paddle games. I deleted all the files from the SD card, reflashed it with the latest Stella update and added my games folder back, and same result. Anyone know what might have happened and/or how I might be able to fix?

Ok, I now have the Retron 77 Stella analog paddle sensitivity set to 83%, which is perfect, and seems to match the feel of the original VCS + paddle. I can now play KABOOM! again without feeling like a complete loser. The default setting is too sensitive. I now have a pretty effin’ sweet HD Atari VCS setup, with the best and most accurate joystick and paddle controls EVAH! Many thanks to all in the community who helped make it possible, from you here at Atari Age to Bradley Koda of Best Electronics!