Joy 2B+: Joystick with 2 and 3 buttons for Atari
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Under the name Joy 2B+, Chilean Abel "Ascrnet" Carrasco has developed a joystick with up to three buttons with different functions for Atari computers.
The project dates back to mid-2018, when Carrasco sharedin the Atariware forumhis idea of making "a joystick that had the possibility of a second button, since for some games it is necessary."
So, he thought about using the three of the nine pins on the connector of a conventional Atari joystick, dedicated to the use of paddles. "My idea was three buttons: one normal and two using the paddles. But when I put everything together, I didn't have enough space to put the third button," he admitted.
He then performed a series of tests, all of which yielded positive results, as can be seen in the video he shared at the end of last September.
However, aside from the hardware, the games needed to be modified to replace the use of specific keys with the added button. Screaming Wings (Red Rat Software) was the first of a list of titles - which we detail at the end of this article.
"For this game, the space bar was replaced by the second button; in the future, the third button can be activated to throw bombs, which is used with the D key," he explains.
"Each game is a world apart; sometimes they use different ways to do the same thing, for example reading the keyboard (...) There are several classics that I would like to have modified but they require making a patch much bigger than modifying a few bytes. But little by little we are seeing which game can be easily patched."
In early January, "Ascrnet" added a third button to the prototype joystick. As if that weren't enough, he also managed to make it compatible with the Atari 2600 console in order to use the second button with his modified games.
The list of modded games includes Shamus Case II, where the second button allows you to view the map; Twilight World, where the player can activate the shield using the second button; and Defender, where the second button fires the bombs and the third button allows you to jump into hyperspace.
Finally, the programmer José Tomás Parga -author of therenowned roomhack Montezuma Again!- has been collaborating with games for the Joy 2B+ project.
The list of games modified to date includes:
- Airstrike II.
- Culmins.
- Defend.
- Gemdrop.
- Gigablast.
- Green Beret.
- Hardball.
- The Last Starfighter.
- Raid Over Moscow.
- ReadDoor.
- Roxblox.
- Screaming Wings.
- Shamus Case II.
- Spy Hunter.
- Star Maze.
- Tetricize.
- Twilight World.
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