Trackball Joystick Emulation

[BigO]

Does anybody actually play joystick games with joystick emulating trackballs?

 

 

 

[7800fan]

I play a few 2600 games like Missile Command and Reactor with Sega Sportspad in joystick mode. Soooo much easier to play that way.

[BigO]

Anyone else?

It seems like it's not a popular thing to do.

[7800fan]

Well, trackball feels different and probably takes a bit of getting used to. Plus it just won't work for games like Pitfall and Adventure so they'd have to swap controllers.

[BigO]

Well, trackball feels different and probably takes a bit of getting used to. Plus it just won't work for games like Pitfall and Adventure so they'd have to swap controllers.

Excellent point. To even come close to being playable in that sort of game, the trackball would have to "lock" in full active state for a direction with the slightest movement. That would require a relatively long time constant on the monostable which could in turn cause a little bit of overshoot when the motion stops. I may breadboard up a JS emulator one of these days and play around with varying the time constant just to see what happens.