I don't know whether your dad was the greatest dad or the greatest engineer. Both in my book!! I have mentioned in a previous comment on a different article how the membrane keyboard was the reason why I didn't get a 400. If my dad was your dad, I would've been an Atari man. :)
Nothing as brutal as those OG Atari joysticks. As soon as the welts I would develop from the SW corner of that stick's base to my palm would heal, I'd promptly create another one. The favorite joystick of my youth is still the Epyx 500JX -- though it, too, wasn't the most durable. But when it worked, it worked best for me.
The Epyx was good - I still have one for my XEGS - but the Wico Ergostick was a bit larger, softer, and sturdier. (I still have one of those, too!) And, yes, the Atari 400 keyboard was awful! And yet, somehow we wore off the plastic membrane over part of the "space bar" and a couple letters as well. (It, too, is somewhere in the collection of the Computer Museum of America in storage at San Diego State.)
The mercury stick was called "Le Stick" by Datasoft. And so funny you mention it after the decathlon game, as that was my secret weapon for that game - since the game just looked for left/right, you could shake the stick wildly and it would generate those inputs faster than you ever could with an actual joystick!
I don't know whether your dad was the greatest dad or the greatest engineer. Both in my book!! I have mentioned in a previous comment on a different article how the membrane keyboard was the reason why I didn't get a 400. If my dad was your dad, I would've been an Atari man. :)
Nothing as brutal as those OG Atari joysticks. As soon as the welts I would develop from the SW corner of that stick's base to my palm would heal, I'd promptly create another one. The favorite joystick of my youth is still the Epyx 500JX -- though it, too, wasn't the most durable. But when it worked, it worked best for me.
The Epyx was good - I still have one for my XEGS - but the Wico Ergostick was a bit larger, softer, and sturdier. (I still have one of those, too!) And, yes, the Atari 400 keyboard was awful! And yet, somehow we wore off the plastic membrane over part of the "space bar" and a couple letters as well. (It, too, is somewhere in the collection of the Computer Museum of America in storage at San Diego State.)
The mercury stick was called "Le Stick" by Datasoft. And so funny you mention it after the decathlon game, as that was my secret weapon for that game - since the game just looked for left/right, you could shake the stick wildly and it would generate those inputs faster than you ever could with an actual joystick!
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2Fbefore-the-nintendo-wii-nunchuck-there-was-the-motion-v0-yXro-6UlQ0uvk-FmLjkXASbtdX-iqzI0RPRA45WLnyI.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D0477373cea7d1ecacf3ac988c9c20c413b5ce1e5
Yep - that's it! Thanks, Brian!
lol - NOW you tell me!