{"id":271,"date":"2007-05-21T07:00:53","date_gmt":"2007-05-21T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/271"},"modified":"2007-05-25T15:10:02","modified_gmt":"2007-05-25T20:10:02","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-strange-joystick-attachments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/271\/retro-scan-of-the-week-strange-joystick-attachments","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Dubious Joystick Enhancements"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"caption\"><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/joyballs_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/joyballs_small.jpg\" alt=\"Joystick Add-Ons from The Fun Group\" class=\"centered\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"caption_text\">Straight from &#8220;The Fun Group&#8221; comes these wonderful 1983 joystick add-ons.  The FYRE-BALL is a bulbous knob that fits to the top of your Atari 2600 controller &#8212; genuinely useless, unless it gives you a psychological thrill to pretend you&#8217;re using an arcade joystick instead of a handheld controller.<\/p>\n<p>Another add-on, the EASI-GRIP, turns your Colecovision controller into a flight-stick style joystick.  You know, for all those incredible Colecovision flight simulators out there.  They were <em>almost there<\/em> with that one, but they had to put the obnoxious finger grooves on it.<\/p>\n<p>The third add-on is not as useless as the first two &#8212; glue a giant &#8220;Sorry&#8221; game piece to top of the abysmal Intellivision controller, and you&#8217;ve got something way better than the original.  But pictured next to it is the QUIK-FIRE, a flaky-looking button attachment for the same controller which probably broke in the first hour of play time.  I find it hard to believe that <em>adding<\/em> any more pieces of plastic to a controller can allow you to press the buttons faster.<\/p>\n<p><small><em>If you use this image on your site, please support &#8220;Retro Scan of the Week&#8221; by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry.  Thanks.<\/em><\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Straight from &#8220;The Fun Group&#8221; comes these wonderful 1983 joystick add-ons. The FYRE-BALL is a bulbous knob that fits to the top of your Atari 2600 controller &#8212; genuinely useless, unless it gives you a psychological thrill to pretend you&#8217;re using an arcade joystick instead of a handheld controller. Another add-on, the EASI-GRIP, turns your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,13,24,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-design","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-humor","category-retro-scan-of-the-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","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=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}