Games (besides upcoming Tempest Elite) that use a 2600 driving controller?

[Gunstar]

I recently bought a driving rotary controller in anticipation of Tempest Elite. In the mean time i'm looking for anything to test it with. Atarimania has no reference list for driving controller compatible games.

[Bill Lange]

On the A8, I use my driving controller with Tempest Elite and it works great. Other than that, I only use it for Indy 500 on the VCS.

[+Nezgar]

Funny that right on the Driving Controllers' box, it touts "use with Atari® Video Computer System™ and Atari 400™ or Atari 800™ Personal Computer System" - when even Atari never produced any software for the 400/800 that used them.

 

[peteym5]

I know I modified Megaoids to use the driving controller and keyboard. It is labels Driving/Trackball option. This would be that ST modified trackball. I needed to modify the option so it can read the CX-80 trackball. I need to contact Video61 to see what version he is selling. The Driving Controller should work with it. I made a modified Delta Space Arena that supports different controllers also.

[Level42]

Just picked one of these Driving controllers up. I'd prefer to call it a spinner since that is what they are called in the arcade collection scene and that is really what they are: a single axis trackball.....

 

It's appalling to say the least that exactly the creator of loads of arcade games totally ignored this controller for their own 2600 and A8 machines....but this once more shows how little interaction there was between the divisions, which IMHO was part of their downfall.

 

Imagine Pole Position with the PROPER controller on the A8, or Elektroglide....but also of course Breakout, Arkanoid etc. etc.

 

So....we can say a lot about Petey but at least he sees the potential of the spinner controller and I only wished other games would support it where appropriate.

Edited September 13, 2018 by Level42

[_The Doctor__]

yeah I wish there were a ton more spinner games and controllers out there, as the kids say - way more funner!

[+Nezgar]

It's appalling to say the least that exactly the creator of loads of arcade games totally ignored this controller for their own 2600 and A8 machines....but this once more shows how little interaction there was between the divisions, which IMHO was part of their downfall.

 

Never having owned a 2600 BITD, so I had no knowledge the driving controllers existed. There were few paddle games for the A8, and I thoroughly enjoyed most that did. I find it amazing now if there was NOT ONE GAME EVER for A8 that supported the driving controllers. Even by 3rd party developers, Until Tempest Elite.

 

Honestly, reading a paddle in BASIC would have was much easier than implementing an ML routine to read gray code.... I guess Atari could have included a handler disk, like they did with the CX-85 keypad. The box above featuring 'for use with 400/800" still kills me though!

[_The Doctor__]

there are a number of mouse/tball/spinner routines that have been written that us very little cpu these day, More than enough of them were real hogs back in the day... glad it was figured out.

[Level42]

Ah yeah that’s what I wanted to ask if it would use up too much CPU time....but a trackball is actually two spinners and games like Missile Command and Centipede work just fine with trackball in native mode.

 

I tried Norbert’s Sprint 1 yesterday and IMHO it is impossible to play with a joystick like it is now. In Sprint like games, you HAVE to have a controller that is proportional.

 

I’d love to hack some arcade steering wheel set-up to use with the A8, but .....it needs software....

[_The Doctor__]

hmm us steering and drivers are around for the usb cartridge, not sure if it's on the list but you could look...