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Flashback X - menu navigation if joystick 1 breaks?


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I see one of the included joysticks (player 1) has special buttons for Menu, Select, Start and Rewind. You can use original 2600 joysticks with this, right? But what happens if the included joystick 1 breaks and you don't have those special buttons any more? I'm guessing you lose the ability to rewind? But then are you even able to select and start games with only original controllers? Or is the unit effectively broken if joystick 1 breaks?

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was just playing a Flashback 9 that I bought for a friend's family.

 

You can navigate the menus with either joystick plugged into either port, (I know because the 5 year old I was playing with was perpetually fighting me to choose games). In the menu screen the joystick and fire button is enough to select and start a game and within each game you have normal atari 2600 functions with the joystick/fire button/mode,reset and difficulty switches. In the absence of the extra buttons you have to turn the console of and on to change games.

 

I didn't use the rewind or freeze state functions except once by accident but I don't see how you could use them without the special joystick buttons. 

 

My bigger concern, and the reason I'm posting here is that in my experience with the Flashback 9, original 2600 controllers DO NOT WORK.

 

I tested two high quality joysticks and a pair of paddles. Both provided some input, but not correctly or reliably. They appeared to me to be wired incorrectly and not compatible.

 

When I read reviews of the flashback 9 I saw something about paddle controllers being planned but never released. So I think the paddle games are basically unplayable. The two paddle games that I tried seemed like they may have been patched for the included joysticks because left/right and fire seemed to correspond with paddle spinning and button, which is not the case on real 2600 pinouts. But they were still not really playable that way, with much too abrupt responses to the joystick. My real paddles gave nonsensical input.

 

 

 

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On 12/18/2019 at 4:25 AM, fiudr said:

I see one of the included joysticks (player 1) has special buttons for Menu, Select, Start and Rewind. You can use original 2600 joysticks with this, right? But what happens if the included joystick 1 breaks and you don't have those special buttons any more? I'm guessing you lose the ability to rewind? But then are you even able to select and start games with only original controllers? Or is the unit effectively broken if joystick 1 breaks?

 

The Flashbacks from 2 onward will work with standard joysticks.  The Flashback 9 Does not work with standard paddles, unless modified.

 

The included joysticks give ‘impossible’ combinations of directions to define the special buttons.  You could modify a hard-wired joystick to replicate the special buttons.  (I have the parts to do this, but haven’t got around to it yet.)
 

 

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1 hour ago, gliptitude said:

My bigger concern, and the reason I'm posting here is that in my experience with the Flashback 9, original 2600 controllers DO NOT WORK.

 

I tested two high quality joysticks and a pair of paddles. Both provided some input, but not correctly or reliably. They appeared to me to be wired incorrectly and not compatible.

Joysticks work correctly on all Flashbacks from 2 onward.  Standard paddles won’t work on the Flashback 9 without modifying the hardware.

 

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/285261-fb-9-paddles/?do=findComment&comment=4419552

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7 hours ago, boggis the cat said:

The Flashbacks from 2 onward will work with standard joysticks.  The Flashback 9 Does not work with standard paddles, unless modified.

 

The included joysticks give ‘impossible’ combinations of directions to define the special buttons.  You could modify a hard-wired joystick to replicate the special buttons.  (I have the parts to do this, but haven’t got around to it yet.)
 

Thanks. I got the Flashback X for Christmas, and from what I understand, it fixes the paddle issue that the Flashback 9 suffered from, and they plan on making new paddle controllers for the X.

 

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