Is Spy Hunter rubbish with a regular controller?

[Spector]

Someone on a Facebook Colecovision page was talking about Spy Hunter and how he enjoyed it, but when asked he said he had never tried to play it on a regular controller. I know it can be played using the standard stick,  but is it rubbish? Is it a waste of time playing it without a Super Action Controller? 

[Pixelboy]

I've practically never played Spy Hunter with the SAC, and I played a lot of Spy Hunter BITD, so I had little trouble with the stock controller. The only "problem" was positioning the car properly with the enemy chopper while pressing the keypad key to launch a missile. That always gave me a little bit of trouble.

 

Edited July 24, 2020 by Pixelboy

[Loafer]

It’s a tough game with the controller but a lot of other games were tough with that controller! LOL. Even though I had the SAC, I think I played SH more with the standard controller, it played fine, just needed to reach for the keypad a bit

[doubledown]

I don't have any problem playing Spy Hunter:

 

 

Seriously though...most of my BITD Spy Hunter playing was done on an C-64...that only has a 1 button joystick.  If I'm not mistaken, the <space bar> was used for secondary weapons.  Obviously Spy Hunter is 100% playable with the standard hand controllers, but as mentioned, fumbling to find a "keypad button" when you want it, can be a little clunky.  Obviously the SACs were much better suited for Spy Hunter due to the 4 necessary buttons being right at your fingertips.  In all honesty, I don't know if I've ever tried to play Spy Hunter with a standard hand controller.  Before I built the controller pictured above, I would just use my Jaguar ProPad to CV/SA controller, and before I built that, I would just use a SAC.  

[Zinister]

2 hours ago, doubledown said:

I don't have any problem playing Spy Hunter:

 

 

Seriously though...most of my BITD Spy Hunter playing was done on an C-64...that only has a 1 button joystick.  If I'm not mistaken, the <space bar> was used for secondary weapons.  Obviously Spy Hunter is 100% playable with the standard hand controllers, but as mentioned, fumbling to find a "keypad button" when you want it, can be a little clunky.  Obviously the SACs were much better suited for Spy Hunter due to the 4 necessary buttons being right at your fingertips.  In all honesty, I don't know if I've ever tried to play Spy Hunter with a standard hand controller.  Before I built the controller pictured above, I would just use my Jaguar ProPad to CV/SA controller, and before I built that, I would just use a SAC.  

On the C64 Spy Hunter you could use the button on controller 2 for secondary weapons.  That was the version I played the most. 

[doubledown]

32 minutes ago, Zinister said:

On the C64 Spy Hunter you could use the button on controller 2 for secondary weapons.  That was the version I played the most. 

I definitely don't remember playing it that way...but I know you're right, and that's also how the 2600 & 8-bits were programmed too.  I also made a Spy Hunter controller for those:

 

 

 

[Zinister]

17 minutes ago, doubledown said:

I definitely don't remember playing it that way...but I know you're right, and that's also how the 2600 & 8-bits were programmed too.  I also made a Spy Hunter controller for those:

 

 

 

What a neat idea to make a controller like that.