Ian's Retro Museum
Retro Sticks of Joy

My collection of joysticks and joypads

Also known as controllers

Did you waggle or button-bash any of these back in the day, and how many did you break while furiously waggling them playing Daley Thompson's Decathalon?

I broke a few of the C16 Plus/4 joysticks with their silly Mini DIN style connectors

Or do you remember the hassle of connecting them to the Spectrum, did you have the Kempston, Cursor, or Sinclair interface?
Or did you have one of the later Amstrad Speccys that didn't use the Atari standard despite using the same plug?

Did the cable cause the interface to move slightly and disconnect itself causing a crash?

Nightmare!

In this room is my joystick collection, yes kids, this is what we used before control pads were invented. Most joysticks are all based on the Atari standard and can be used on most machines of the era, for reasons I don't know they were known as "Kempston" on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum

The Sega Master System control pad used the same wiring as the Atari standard, but had two buttons, which would later be adopted by the Commodore Amiga etc
There was six wires as a minimum, a common wire, then a wire for each direction, and one for fire. Depending on which direction the stick was pushed, a switch would connect that direction wire with the common wire to make the connection and the host computer or console would register the movement

Later controllers with more buttons than available pins which used the same style plug may have used a shift register to read all the button inputs

There was a Sinclair standard which used the same socket and plug combination, but with different wiring, some joysticks had two plugs for this reason, the black plug was the Atari standard, and the grey plug was the Sinclair standard. There are joysticks with these two plugs in this room.

Under Amstrad's reign of terror they made Sinclair joysticks called the SJS1 and SJS2.

Lastly there was the TED series of Commodore computers which introduced the mini-din style socket for it's controller ports (and other accessories), although you could get adaptors to use the normal Atari style joysticks as what joysticks you could get for these machines was rather limited. Holding one of these brings back maximum nostalgia

There are 46 controllers in the museum

Logitech Driving Force Pro



Made for the PS3 and Xbox 360 but can be used with anything as it's USB

Sega Arcade Racer



For the Sega Saturn, bought from FB Marketplace along with the virtua stick below and two games

Sega Virtua Stick



For the Sega Saturn, bought from FB Marketplace along with the arcade racer above and two games

Interact V3 Racing Wheel



Cheap wheel and pedals for the Playstation, not bad, but not good either

Mad Katz Dual Force Racing Wheel



The less said about this Playstation wheel the better!

Google Stadia Premiere Edition



Free local pickup from FB Marketplace, can work as a Bluetooth controller if the device supports BT Low Energy. Which my Retropie PC doesn't!

Sega Mega Drive Arcade Power Stick



Bought from a Retro Gaming store in Wrexham for £15. Some haggling was involved

UDraw tablet for the Wii



£1.99, yes £1.99 from Gamescene in Kingswood near Bristol

Joy Tech Jordan Grand Prix Wheel



Cheap wheel for a PS2, and despite looking like the gear lever has a lot of travel, it doesn't

Lotus Wheel



Lotus branded wheel for the Xbox

Nintendo NES Advantage



Arcade stick for the NES bought from CEX in Swindon

4Gamers Compact Driver



Bought from the Fishponds branch of Gamescene in Bristol, had a pack of blank DVD's in the box

Sega Light Phaser



Light gun for the Sega Mastersystem, bought from Revival Games in Plymouth

Cherry G270 Keyboard



Found in a local charity shop, wouldn't normally bother with including keyboards, but this is Cherry branded and it's for a Mac

Microsoft Sidewinder



Saw LGR's video about this PC joystick, then saw it again in a local charity shop

Asciiware Super Advantage



From Retro Gamez HQ in Swindon for the SNES

Sega Control Stick



Kind of an arcade stick for the Mastersystem, it's wrong, but right at the same time

Quickshot QS-135 for Sega Megadrive



Found in a box, can't remember where I got it from, it's for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis

Quick Gun Turbo



Third party joystick for the NES, features microswitches and autofire

Triax Turbo Touch 360



A strange third party controller for the Sega Megadrive which uses a capacitive area instead of a more traditional D-Pad

Ace Joystick



Third party joystick for the Atari 2600

Amstrad JY-2 Joystick



Bundled with the Amstrad CPC 464, has a passthrough for player two

Commodore C1311 (X2)



Bundled with the C64

Cheetah 125+ (X3)



I may have had this with my Toastrack and Kempston interface back in the day

Cheetah Mach I



Found boxed in Retro Bristol

Competition Pro



A recreated version of this was included with the C64 Mini

Powerplay Cruiser



Has an adjustment to tighten or loosen the stick

Atari CX40 (X8)



A timeless classic

Fantastick F3



I never saw one of these before I got one with a donated Atari 2600Jr

Atari Pro-Line



Some say the worst controller ever

Quickshot QS-129F



Odd controller found on Vinted

Quickshot QS-131



Looks like an earlier version of the Python

Spectravideo Quickshot II Turbo



Very red joystick

Spectravideo Quickshot Python (X2)



My joysticks from my Amiga days

Sinclair SJS1



Bundled with the later Amstrad made Spectrums

Sinclair SJS2



Also bundled with the later Amstrad made Spectrums, feels extremely cheap

Konix Speedking (X2)



That strange controller shown in magazines of the time

Spectravideo 318-102 (Quickshot II) (X4)



This feels familiar, I may have had this with an adaptor for my Plus 4

Spectravideo Quickshot I



Lop-sided joystick

Commodore T1341 (X2)



The joystick that came with the C16 and Plus 4, the first joystick I remember using

The Arcade



Seen this in Facebook groups, then found one in Super Tomato

Cheetah The Bug



A donated joystick, doesn't feel that bad to hold

Zipstick (X5)



Some say the best joystick ever made

Quickshot QS128N (NES)



Third party arcade stick for the NES from Quickshot, this was bought from Super Games World in Middlesborough

Quickshot QS160 (SNES)



Third party controller for the SNES from Quickshot, this was bought from Super Games World in Middlesborough

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