Ultimate Atari Fight Stick

[Cousin Vinnie]

Hi! I'm Funkmaster V aka Cousin Vinnie and I am a big 7800 fan. I run www.Atari7800Forever.com and never had a a 5200 before, and I was curious about getting the Ultimate Atari Fight Stick with the Trac Ball. It only comes with a handful of 5200 games, but it comes with a Raspberry Pi where you can download 5200 games into it.

 

I was curious on this: 1) is a good medium to experience 5200 games

                                2) which games require keypad input, and can the stick handle games that require keypad inputs

                                3) can you download homebrew roms on the r. pi?

                                4) what are the best games on the 5200 that you cant play on the 7800?

 

Check out www.Atari7800Forever.com................. who knows, I may make a www.Atari5200Forever.com if I dig the games. 

Funkmaster V

[8bitAndy]

That is a pretty cool product, I've never seen it before.

The controller is missing the analog stick and the keypad buttons. A few games won't work because of that. For example, Star Raiders, Tennis and Baseball use the keypad during the game. I'm sure there are others.

Most games should work well though, probably a lot better than with funky 5200 controllers.

 

[christo930]

The 5200 has a really good version of Qix. While the 7800 has centipede, the 5200 version is really faithful to the arcade and supports the trackball natively.  There is also a pretty good version of Millipede for the 5200 as an unreleased prototype.

 

I saw that joystick on YT the other day. Pretty expensive for what it is. It's about  $150 without the pi and without shipping (it is big and heavy if you don't have a micro center near you. Probably more like 250 after shipping and the pi). They are not arcade quality controls. You are probably better off just getting a USB trackball and a fight stick for the PS5 or whatever they are up to these days for a pi. Or, better yet, get an old one that uses standard size buttons and JS so you can put real arcade controls in them.  I have a pellican fight stick that I plan on doing that to. It has a PS1/PS2 style connector and so I just use the ps-usb converter.  Works on Mac and Windows without any fuss.

[Cousin Vinnie]

I got the Atari stick- I like it, but there are some problems

However, most of the 5200 games absolutely suck on it b/c the stick doesn't behave properly. Also, I can't figure out how to map the keypad strokes to the buttons, so when I fire up realsports Baseball... all i can do is watch the computer play itself.

 

Im too old for that shit.

 

However, the physical unit itself is friggin sweet. The emulation problems Im running into is because I dont know what Im doing.

Edited December 13, 2020 by Cousin Vinnie

[+MrZarniwoop]

Three tips:

 

1. Find a better RetroPie image. Virtualman is pretty comprehensive and actively supported at the moment, but there are others. I like Virtualman because I lack the patience to tweak a thousand little things.

 

2. The trackball needs tweaking almost per-game. It’s not the device’s fault, more that emulation is uneven on mouse (trackball) tracking depending on the emulator.

 

3. Paddle 2600 games are too much effort under RetroPie to be fun out-of-box. Don’t try, but know that you can run real Stella under RetroPie with a USB adapter and real paddle controllers.

 

The dual joystick/trackball really is a bargain and ridiculously off the charts for the fun quotient.

[8bitAndy]

1 hour ago, Cousin Vinnie said:

I got the Atari stick- I like it, but there are some problems

However, most of the 5200 games absolutely suck on it b/c the stick doesn't behave properly. Also, I can't figure out how to map the keypad strokes to the buttons, so when I fire up realsports Baseball... all i can do is watch the computer play itself.

 

Im too old for that shit.

 

However, the physical unit itself is friggin sweet. The emulation problems Im running into is because I dont know what Im doing.

Realsports Baseball is one of my favorite 5200 games, and my favorite baseball game on any platform. It uses the keypad for pitch selection, and the analog stick for bat swing and player selection. It is probably the worst 5200 game for a product like this.

[doubledown]

Any of the 5200 games that employ analog absolute positioning, like Kaboom, Pole Position, Gorf (due to it's horrible port), and most (if not all) of the RealSports titles, wont' be playable with any type of digital joystick.  The few 5200 games that offer analog relative movement, like Dreadnaught Factor, and Rescue on Fractalus, and I think Galaxian, are playable, but you lose the "fine" ability to "slowly/slightly" move in the available directions. 

 

There are only about 10-12 games in the 5200 library that employ analog absolute positioning.  The bulk of the 5200 library...is actually played properly with a 4-way or 8-way digital joystick.  

[MrMaddog]

If you need a keypad to work with a Pi, there's wireless numeric keypads that work over Bluetooth.

[Cousin Vinnie]

On 12/14/2020 at 5:04 PM, MrMaddog said:

If you need a keypad to work with a Pi, there's wireless numeric keypads that work over Bluetooth.

Yeah- the 5200 emulation on that Ultimate Fight Stick is horrible

[doubledown]

Word from the wise...most emulation is horrible!

[0078265317]

On 12/14/2020 at 4:04 PM, MrMaddog said:

If you need a keypad to work with a Pi, there's wireless numeric keypads that work over Bluetooth.

link?

[doubledown]

CLICK