I forgot about this thread...
shamino wrote:I agree that it's hard for a bunch of small game developers and joystick manufacturers to get together on something like this, but I think the computer manufacturers should have done it themselves while launching their systems. Seems to me it would have been a selling point, especially for gaming computers. As you mentioned, there were certainly ways to expand the buttons without breaking 1 button compatibility.
Atari and Sega both expanded to 2 buttons eventually, but using slightly different methods. Both methods were compatible with the 1 button standard, which allowed those to still be useful for games that didn't need the 2nd button.
I wish Commodore had done this for the C64 at the time of system launch. I also wish Atari had done it a lot earlier than they did.
They could have, but they would have had to make the joysticks themselves at first because I doubt any third party would produce joysticks for a system that hadn't even been launched yet. You can't have software on the market that requires two buttons and not have a two-button joystick ready to go. And if they had done that, people would have complained about having to replace their Atari compatible joysticks with new ones for this new machine. It would have taken a while for other companies to jump on the bandwagon and start making two-button joysticks for it.
shamino wrote:Didn't the C64 launch in 1982? By that time they should have been defining 2+ buttons IMO, especially given it's gaming capability. I guess Commodore didn't make their own joysticks..
Actually, they produced two joysticks to go with the VIC-20. The first was an exact clone of the standard Atari joystick, just with a white top on the case. The second was structurally similar, but it had a rectangular base, a triangular stick and an oval fire button centered in front of the stick. I never used the 2600 clone one, but I have one of the second model and it sucks. I seem to recall that most people didn't like it.
I guess by the time the C64 was released they decided that it wasn't worth making their own joysticks when people could just use third party ones.
BTW, they also made a set of paddle controllers that were identical to the Atari ones except for half-white cases as well. Supposedly they were actually better quality than the Atari ones and gave a smoother response on the C64, although I never had any problem using Atari paddles in the few games that supported them, like Arkanoid and Pinball Spectacular.
BloodyCactus wrote:fs-uae > win-uae. by miles.
Maybe better features, but ugly UI in the launcher!