20th Century Gamer

Nostalgia is a tricky thing. If left unchecked, the past becomes more fantasy than reality. To some extent, that is what has happened with the Atari 2600 joystick.

Until recently, nostalgia and internet fanboy revisionism had effectively masked my Atari 2600 controller memories. Like so many others, I reminisced about when simple gaming was fun, and when a controller only needed a single joystick and a single button. Playing classic games using emulators and modern gamepads perpetuated my rosy view of the past. I began to speculate, “Surely the experience would be even better if I was playing on original hardware and with the original controllers.” Boy, was I wrong.

With red and orange on black, the Atari joysticks are instantly recognizable, even by those who weren’t alive when the Atari 2600 was in production. Most would agree that they are remarkably cool aesthetically. Unfortunately, there is nothing else redeeming about them whatsoever. To say that the Atari 2600 joysticks were flawed is an understatement. Atari’s 2600 controllers are by far some of the biggest pieces of crap in gaming history.

On one hand the Atari 2600 joystick is iconic, almost ubiquitous for retro gaming. On the other hand, it’s notoriously uncomfortable and unreliable. It interesting that this controller, that is so inferior, is still regarded as such a classic.

Ergonomically, the Atari 2600 joysticks were a complete disaster. Holding the base and firing with a thumb on the button was done with one hand, while the other was used to control the joystick. This arrangement was difficult to maintain comfortably. Regardless of user age, the controller left pain in digits, hands, and wrists. The longer the joystick was used, the more pain it caused, making it much more difficult to engage in extended gaming sessions. “Atari Cramp” was a phrase commonly used to describe a condition that included swelling, stiffness, and tendonitis.

Almost everyone I knew had a technique to deal with the 2600 joystick’s horrible ergonomics. Many of my friends played with the controller base pressed solidly against a table or the floor, relieving some of the stress to the wrists. If done properly, this also allowed the player to use fingers other than the thumb for firing. My solution was to brace one side of the controller’s base against my chest, which also alleviated wrist stress and arm fatigue.

And then there was the physical construction. Each joystick registered input with dome switches that simply didn’t wear well. The domes rapidly cracked, stuck, or disintegrated with normal play so that even a well-cared-for joystick, pristine on the exterior, could be rendered useless within several weeks of purchase. As the controls grew unresponsive, more extreme and forceful movements were required for input to be detected. More than once I witnessed joysticks literally snap as frustrated players tried to make their actions register on-screen. The injuries and skill required to get flaky controllers to work could turn playing the Atari 2600 into a sport.

It was the Atari joysticks and the high cost of replacing them so soon after purchase that introduced me to my father’s opinions about wasteful consumerism, planned obsolescence, and conspiracy theory. It was bad enough when one joystick needed replacement, but when the second one failed it exposed Atari’s master plan to fleece the consumer with expensive but poorly made junk. When I suggested that we upgrade to a more reliable third party Wico joystick, the $50 price tag convinced him that Wico was in on the conspiracy to separate him from his hard-earned money.

When the Atari joysticks broke, which they inevitably did, parents were furious. “What were you kids doing that broke that controller?” was heard throughout the land. No doubt many were needlessly punished because of Atari’s craptastic design and manufacturing.

Not all kids had parents who were willing or could afford replacement joysticks. Most of those tortured souls had to wait until Christmas. If they were lucky, their household still had a single working controller, albeit until that one died as well. With only one controller, two player games were impossible. Even worse were the battles over the one working controller and the hours of misery watching other people play while waiting for a turn.

There are those who have defended the original Atari joysticks by proposing that the controller’s problems were a result of period manufacturing and technical limitations. It has also been suggested that the 2600 joystick was created at the dawn of the industry, so it was inevitable that there would be flaws. These might be valid arguments for when the controller was first released in 1977, but it is no excuse for why the same flawed design was still being produced 5 years later. The argument is completely negated by the existence of the Wico joystick, which managed to get everything right while still using the same 1970s technology and manufacturing. With smooth action, better durability, and a improved design, the Wico provided everything the Atari 2600 joystick lacked. It was no accident that the Wico’s improved physical experience lead to higher scores.

The next time you read about how overproduction of lackluster games like Atari 2600 Pac-Man or ET caused the video game market to crash in the early 80s, try playing those games with an original Atari joystick. Make sure to buy one new, just as you would have at the time, so that when the joystick breaks you will feel the same resentment. It is just as reasonable, and even a little more so, that people were tired of blisters and unreliable hardware as it was that the industry crashed because of low-quality games. Taken as a whole, the bad hardware and software combined to create the conditions for the first video game bubble to burst. It’s time for video game journalists and historians to give the Atari 2600 joystick proper credit for its position in gaming history.

Rediscovering the harsh reality of the Atari joysticks wasn’t all bad, though. Without spending money on the classic controllers, suffering through playing them, and becoming a chump when the joysticks broke – all as a middle-aged adult – I might never have remembered that special moment when my father introduced me to the deeper meaning behind that special relationship between consumers and corporate America.

Decades have passed and history has proven there was no Atari joystick conspiracy perpetrated on the consumer. Very early on Atari had to know that these controllers were incredibly flawed. Even with years of unhappy customers, Atari did nothing to change or improve the hardware. Rumor has it that Atari originally used micro-switches that would have created decent joysticks. To save manufacturing costs, they replaced the micro-switches with cheaper dome switches. If true, that would explain why Atari refused to improve the faulty design.

As unreliable as the joysticks were, they became a standard that was eventually adopted by Commodore and cloned for use with their computers. Commodore used the same plug interface so Atari, Commodore, and third party controllers were all interchangeable. For every superior product like the Wico, there were dozens of 2600 joystick clones that were even less reliable. Because of Commodore’s lack of inventiveness, their adoption of the Atari interface meant the horrible 2600 joysticks became a standard for a decade longer than they should have.

The 2600 joysticks are cool because they are retro. They are best displayed on a shelf with other memorabilia rather than put to use creating blisters and outbursts of expletives.

In 1998, speculation about Sega’s upcoming game console was rampant. There was a lot of excitement about this unseen new product, code-named Katana. Most agreed that Katana would have advanced 3D graphics, networking, and DVD. Basically, everything but the kitchen sink was on the feature list and fair topic for discussion. By summer, Sega announced their new console as the Dreamcast, and the specs were impressive. Other than not having DVD capabilities, the Dreamcast was remarkably close to the fantasies and rumors that had been floating around for months.

The Dreamcast was released to Japanese gamers in November 1998. Screenshots and descriptions of Japanese Dreamcast games trickled across the globe, teasing US gamers who wouldn’t be able to buy the console until its September 1999 US launch. But it was more than the speculation and hype that got people excited — many gamers, and not just Sega fans, hoped that the Dreamcast would make Sega relevant again. An editorial on page 175 of the January 1999 EGM captured the anticipation felt by many. “Sonic will become a household name again, and everyone will wonder how we ever went so long without Sega in our lives.”

In early 1999, Sega started a $100 million dollar marketing campaign. The catch phrase “It’s thinking,” was accompanied with “9.9.99,” in magazine spreads, TV spots, and event booths to make sure that everyone with a pulse knew about the Dreamcast and when it was arriving. Sega was everywhere. As the launch day approached, a few customers may have been burned out from overexposure — but the marketing blitz was effective enough that there were 300,000 Dreamcast pre-orders, setting a record for the time.

September 9, 1999 was on a Thursday, yet the local Funcoland was filled with kids who had skipped school. My attempt to try out the new console was in vain, because with the crowd it was impossible to get within 15 feet of the Dreamcast kiosk. I was among those who hadn’t pre-orded a Dreamcast and was out of luck on launch day, but within a few weeks shipments caught up and consoles were re-available. The 24 launch titles had gamers talking for months, with several of the games selling out weekly. For many that didn’t already have one, a Dreamcast was on the top of their wishlist for the 1999 holiday season.

Sega was challenging Sony’s majority market share, just as they had challenged Nintendo a decade earlier with the Genesis. The Sega known and loved from the Genesis days was back, along with their “in your face” attitude that pushed the industry to new heights through competition. The Sega magic had returned, albeit briefly.

Before Dreamcast, years of missteps followed by the failure of the Saturn had left Sega with over $267 million in debt. Sega needed to sell 3 million Dreamcasts to break even, and between 4-5 million for the system to establish a sustainable consumer base and become profitable. Even with the successful launch, at the end of the year (and including holiday sales) only a little over a million consoles had been sold.

Months before the Dreamcast launch, Sony announced the final specs for the PlayStation 2. Sony’s PS2 graphics demos were shinier than anything seen on the Dreamcast. The PS2 was backwards compatible with the first PlayStation, it included a DVD player, and it would be sold for $299. At a time when the cheapest stand-alone DVD players were still $400 or more, for most consumers the allure of the $299 DVD-playing-PS2 trumped the $199 Dreamcast. Even without a finished product to show, Sony had convinced many to forgo buying a Dreamcast and hold out for a PS2.

In May 2000, Sony released the PlayStation 2 in Japan. Even with superior technology, the PS2 launch games were generally inferior to their Dreamcast counterparts and massively disappointing when compared to the Sony graphics demonstrations from the previous year. Logically, real-world comparisons between the two systems should have boosted Dreamcast sales — however, Japanese Dreamcast sales almost ceased completely as people bought the PS2 for its DVD features.

The Dreamcast launch had been deceptively impressive. Unfortunately, that first million Dreamcast owners appeared to be early adopters who weren’t enthusiastically followed by the general gaming public. By July 2000, things weren’t looking good for Sega. Dreamcast was dead in Japan, less than 500,000 had been sold in the US that year, and Sega’s losses had increased to $1.12 billion. Over the next six months Sega tried almost everything to sell Dreamcasts, including aggressive price drops and rebates. Just as in Japan several months before, the November US release of the PS2 slowed Dreamcast sales even further. Even a holiday shortage of PS2s didn’t increase Dreamcast sales. The promise of the PS2’s DVD player proved to be too much competition.

In January 2001, less than 2 years after its US release, Sega announced the Dreamcast was no longer in production. Sega left the consumer hardware business and came full circle to where the company had been in the early 1980s – an arcade machine company and a third-pary game developer.

While it lasted, the Dreamcast was something special. In a strange way, it was like a summer romance. The summer ended, someone new came to town, and our crush was soon forgotten. The Dreamcast is remembered as much for as what could have been, for the anticipation and excitement the system created, as for what it actually was.

Since I was in the area, I figured why not stop by one of our local Play ‘n Trade franchises. This store is particularly well run, both clean and organized. I try not to visit too often because of the temptation to overspend. I told myself that a few Genesis games shouldn’t cost much, so with limitations in place my financial conscience was silenced and justification for the visit was complete.

The Play ‘n Trade was surprisingly busy for a Monday morning. I wondered why all of these people weren’t at work, then remembered that I wasn’t at work, either. For many their summer vacations would soon be over, so people were trying to squeeze in as much as they could. Vacation and gaming are a natural team.

I’m not sure if it was my attention deficit or the jostling customers, but perusing the merchandise was more difficult than usual. Even staking territory by kneeling in front of the Genesis case for several minutes had not been as effective as I had hoped. With legs asleep and no decisions made, I decided to walk around and get my circulation restarted.

My eye wandered between many games and systems. Then, as though guided by the powers that be, a throng of customers parted and revealed a PlayStation controller I didn’t recognize. I walked over to take a closer look.

The PlayStation Analog Joystick was shown on the box as a larger-than-average tabletop controller, with two flight-style joysticks and large buttons on the base. I moved to a less busy part of the store for inspection. What was this PlayStation beastie and why had I never seen one before?

The photo on the box didn’t do this controller justice. The 4 face buttons, 4 shoulder buttons, start, select, and analog/digital switch were on the base. Each joystick had triggers and buttons duplicating those on the base. The right joystick had an additional thumbstick. This controller was a sleek-yet-freakish exercise in redundancy, as though it was plucked from a Dr. Seuss story about buttons on top of buttons and joysticks on top of joysticks. What convinced me to buy it was the silky smooth joystick movement that felt well above average for console controls. I could forgo buying any Genesis games, instead spending the $20 on the boxed PlayStation Analog Joystick, and not feel guilty about the purchase.

It wasn’t until I got home and did some research that I realized how lucky I was to find this controller, especially for that price. The PlayStation Analog Joystick was popular in Japan, but it wasn’t available for as long in the US and comparatively few were sold. The original $70 retail price certainly didn’t help sales.

Instead of switches, potentiometers were used to detect joystick position. This created smooth and precise analog control, but more extreme movements were necessary when used in digital mode. Unfortunately, few PlayStation games at the time read analog input, so the clunky digital mode was necessary to play most games. A brief review of the Analog Joystick appears on page 20 of the September 1996 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. Aside from the price, the biggest complaint was the limited selection of analog games. Dan Hsu’s conclusion was, “Wait for Sony to (hopefully) build a hand-sized analog controller like Nintendo and Sega.” Sony must have agreed, because the Analog Joystick was replaced by the Dual Analog Controller less than a year after its US release.

It may be only a minor footnote in gaming history, but playing the Analog Joystick is a great experience. The mid-1990s was when consoles were finally able to reproduce even the most sophisticated arcade titles. Home versions of the 3D arcade hits Ridge Racer and Virtua Fighter sold millions of PlayStation and Saturn consoles. Likewise, the PlayStation Analog Joystick brought the solid quality of arcade controls to the home in a crossover device that is unique to its time. Discovering comparatively unsuccessful oddities like this controller is part of what makes collecting fun.