{"id":2174,"date":"2018-08-16T09:56:28","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T14:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=2174"},"modified":"2018-08-16T10:06:04","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T15:06:04","slug":"retro-scan-the-atari-trak-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/2174\/retro-scan-the-atari-trak-ball","title":{"rendered":"[ Retro Scan ]<\/span> The Atari Trak-Ball"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Atari<\/a>A controller bigger than your head<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The reports of Retro Scan’s death are greatly exaggerated.<\/p>\n

I just emerged from the other side of a huge house move that taxed my body and soul. Moving my huge collection was very difficult, and now dealing with where to put it all keeps that stress going. I feel behind on lots of things, but it’s time to catch up. One of the best ways to do that is with a new Retro Scan. So here we go — let’s talk trackballs.<\/p>\n

As far as I know, the first arcade video games to use a trackball were Midway’s Shuffleboard<\/em> and Atari Football<\/em>, both from 1978. As to which came first, I have no idea at the moment.<\/p>\n

Atari really ran with the trackball (they called it a “Trak-Ball”) and produced several mega arcade hits that used the interface, including Missile Command<\/em> and Centipede<\/em>. It only makes sense that they would bring the tech home to their Atari 8-bit computer line — and the Atari 5200, as seen here — in the form of the Pro-Line Trak-Ball controller.<\/p>\n

(An aside: Despite the ad saying the Trak-Ball controller works for the Atari 2600, I know of no vintage 2600 games that support trackball mode natively. There is a joystick mode switch on the bottom of the controller, however, that lets you use it with any game.)<\/p>\n

Of course, the 5200 version of the Trak-Ball controller is legendarily huge. It’s almost as big as the (already big) console itself. But I’ve heard good things about it, despite never having used one. I do have the smaller CX22 Trak-Ball controller and I enjoy games of Missile Command<\/em> on my Atari 800XL with it from time to time, although it is criminally under-supported<\/a> (in Trak-Ball mode) by games on that platform.<\/p>\n

So how about you guys: Have you ever used the Atari 5200 Trak-Ball? What did you think about it?<\/p>\n

[ From Video Games Player, October-November 1983 ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

Discussion Topic:<\/strong> Have you ever used a trackball with any game console? Tell us about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A controller bigger than your head The reports of Retro Scan’s death are greatly exaggerated. I just emerged from the other side of a huge house move that taxed my body and soul. Moving my huge collection was very difficult, and now dealing with where to put it all keeps that stress going. I feel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,27,26,9],"tags":[139,150,170,500,1608,168,1612,590,1027,1613,1611,60,1191,1609,1610],"class_list":["post-2174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-retrogaming","tag-139","tag-advertisement","tag-atari","tag-atari-2600","tag-atari-5200","tag-atari-800","tag-atari-football","tag-centipede","tag-controllers","tag-midway-shuffleboard","tag-missile-command","tag-retro-scan","tag-trackball","tag-trak-ball","tag-video-games-player"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2174"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2192,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions\/2192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}