VCS Joysticks

[LDSilverman]

Some time ago I bought a collection of joysticks, including two VCS joysticks, but with an interesting circuit board.
Have any of you ever seen such a circuit?

[+bcombee]

It's definitely homemade.  The chips you see are two MC14538b Dual Precision Retriggable/Retargetable monostable multivibrators and a CD40106 hex Schmitt trigger.  The hex Schmitt trigger chip is used to turn noisy signals into clean digital signals, so likely is used to reduce the jitter in the four direction signals.  The other two chips are a bit of mystery as you'd normally use one of those to turn a trigger signal (a button press) into a short asserted signal, with it then resetting until the button was pressed again.  Maybe they're paired to do some sort of rapid fire mechanism?

[doubledown]

...somebody's attempt to try to improve on perfection...apparently!?!  Unless it was created for something other than the VCS/2600, as possibly evident by the round cable end connector, that I can see in the 2nd & 3rd pics...assuming that's part of this joystick.