Sunday 27 July 2014

When playing games on the Amiga transparency seems to be your friend

There seems to be a slight trend in the Youtube retro gaming community of late whereby people discuss and demonstrate the gaming peripherals of their youth: the good, the bad and the ugly as it were. Continuing the trend and putting my own spin on it is an overview of two most excellent joysticks from the Amiga era.


I got my first computer in the late '80s it was an Amiga 500 and in hindsight I do not know how my parents afforded it. The retail price back then was £400 (if memory serves) which equates to over £800 in today's money (according to very rudimentary internet research). Whilst I think one of the main reasons that my parents bought this machine was because of its potential as an educational tool; its vast library of games is what kept me hooked long after Fun School 3 had been lost (read hidden) by me under my bed.

My parents didn't mind me playing games. In fact, the first Christmas that I had the machine I remember that they bought me Batman: The Movie,  Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade and Time Machine. Whilst I could never get past the first few screens on Time Machine (something to do with interacting with a blue gemstone encased in a rock), the first two games were very good and I believe that Batman: The Movie stands up to scrutiny even today. Based quite faithfully on the plot of Batman (the feature film of 1989), gameplay spanned both platforming and driving/flying levels. Yes, you got to both drive the Batmobile and fly the Batwing. If I remember correctly, unless a game specifically required keyboard inputs - for example, flight sims etc, there was very little in the way of controller configuration and certainly none of the extensive keyboard mapping that one engages in when playing PC games of both the era and now. I never have quite worked out why that was the case.

Given this information, it would be very difficult/impossible to play a broad range of games on the Amiga without a joystick. Indeed, the first peripheral that was bought by many Amiga (and I presume ST owners) was a joystick and the market was absolutely saturated with different variants. Almost all of which were also compatible with the Atari ST. As an indicator of how many different models of joystick there were, out of my twenty or so friends that either had Amigas or STs, not one of them had the same joystick as anybody else and I was no exception.

As you most likely know if you were an Amiga/Atari user during the 80s and 90s, other than price being a fairly good indicator, joystick buying was a fairly hit and miss experience. This was a time pre-Internet remember. The Youtube review was decades away. Yes there were several machine specific periodicals on the market that dealt with game and hardware reviews: CU Amiga; Amiga Format and Amiga Power to name but a few. However, despite being an avid reader of at least two of these publications, I cannot remember joysticks ever being placed under any critical scrutiny. Indeed, if I remember rightly, I never saw a review of any joystick in  these magazines. Consequently, I consider myself quite lucky as my first joystick (again purchased by my parents) stood the test of time admirably. Admittedly, I don't own it now...it did eventually break irreparably and was discarded. However, it lasted for approximately six years before that happened.

The Quickjoy Topstar in all its glory. Picture
taken from www.richardlagendijk.nl
The joystick I am referring to is the Quickjoy TopStar (at least that is how Richard Lagendijk refers to it on his website. However, I am not convinced that marketers penchant for joining words together and capitalising them in this way was popular back when this was released. For that reason, I shall hereafter refer to it as the Quickjoy Top Star). Again, this was purchased by my parents and it was, if memory serves a relatively expensive piece of equipment coming in at the equivalent of £40.00. My parents bought it for me solely because it had a transparent base and they thought that I would probably like to "see how it worked". Perhaps this was an adroit move on their part, if I could see inside it, why would I want to take it apart and risk breaking it (I had been known to do this before...and since!)? They didn't know this at the time but it was a very high quality piece of hardware, fully micro-switched with a robust yet comfortable feel. Its only weakness was the trigger button which after months of hammering would come loose from its spring mount and not make contact with one of the aforementioned micro-switches. That said, unlike many of its cheaper competitors, my Dad actually managed to take this apart and fix it relatively easily. Ok, it only meant hooking the switch back onto the spring mechanism but so many other more cheaply made joysticks couldn't be repaired like this.

 
 
 
 
I don't think I "needed" to replace this joystick. Yes, after a good few years the trigger button fault did occur more frequently and this did become  an annoyance (by this stage I too had learnt to repair it); instead, I think it was more a case of "I have birthday money to spend and I am going to spend it". Thus, when the opportunity arose, I found in a local branch of Electronics Boutique (now defunct)  an arcade stick which was in some respects an even more versatile gaming implement than its predecessor. The QJ Megastar (QJ denotes Quality Joystick but the branding on the stick only included QJ) was, in hindsight a fantastic piece of equipment. Like the Topstar it was fully micro-switched and the fire buttons laid out in arcade style next to the stick as opposed to on it had a very definite, responsive feel to them. Another "feature" that I found or invented was the ability to hook one's finger around the metal shaft of the stick [minds out of gutters please] and force the stick in the direction required. I don't know why I considered this a feature but I think it took the strain out of playing certain games that required character movement that involved moving the stick one way or another for a long period of time. Also, its form factor was small enough that I could arch my hand under the stick in a cradling motion and yet still access the fire buttons whilst operating the stick with my other hand. Alas, it didn't need to be suction-cupped in line of sight between me and the TV!
 
So, "what on earth has all this got to do with the rather cryptic sounding headline of this piece?" I hear you cry [well actually murmur as this blog doesn't have that many followers yet], well the main feature that both of these products had in common was their transparent cases. Now I assume that much like eyes are the windows to your soul, transparent joystick cases are a window to their internal mechanisms. Thus, even the least observant consumer could spot cheap construction and those with a bit more knowledge could pinpoint poor soldering or cheap component use. Therefore, my rule of thumb would be if you want a good joystick of the period one potential indicator of quality is whether the manufacturer has been bold enough to build their product into a see-through case.
 
Please feel free to comment below and provide details of any of your gaming hardware related experiences.


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