Arthur Annis, Monday, 03 November 2008
If you’re like me, you’ve bought your share of retro game bundles for the P.C. or tested the emulator scene, only to be disappointed that the games you played in your youth are not as fun when playing with a keyboard or modern joypad. Even though I had bought various bundled packages, such as The Activision Anthology, or Atari 80 Games in One, these games would wind up gathering more dust than play time as I would head back over to my faithful 2600 to get my 8 bit fix. I had pretty much written off emulators like Stella or Z26 because the nostalgic fun factor wasn’t there for me. In my mind, it was either real hardware or nothing. This was until Curt Vendel of Legacy Engineering Group contacted us at Retroblast about a new product L.E.G. had for the retro-gamers out there. More after the jump.....
RetroBlast! Review: Legbacy Consumer Electronics Classic Controller Pt. 1
Arthur Annis November 2008 Curt and his team have managed to fill the void in the emulation world with a new product, the Classic USB Joystick Controller. This controller is a replica of the infamous Atari 2600 joystick, and connects to the home computer via the USB port. The Joystick requires no additional drivers to be installed. It pretty much works right out of the box. In fact, all the games I tested this joystick with recognized it as a standard USB controller and required no extra work from me. The quality of this stick is superb. It has the same rugged durable feel that the old CX-40’s had with the improvements that were found on the newer Flashback 2.0 joysticks. I spent quite a few hours playing various Atari titles with this stick. Both playing classics I was familiar with from my own Atari collection and games I thought I would never get a chance to play with the right hardware. The joystick held up well during my marathon gaming session. In fact a little too well, as the wife had to stop me a few times to either take a break and eat, and also to go to bed for the night. L.E.G. also had the hardware hacker in mind; the PCB includes 10 additional contacts which could be used to add more functionality. Perhaps with the right ingenuity, you could get rid of the keyboard all together by wiring these up for reset, select and other buttons needed for your emulator. The price of these sticks starts out at $14.99 for one, and even less if additional joysticks are purchased. A pretty decent price if you want to experience emulated games the way they were meant to be played. I myself, plan to stock up on a few of these, though I will not be getting rid of my Atari any time soon, these sticks make a great alternative to the real thing. 
 
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