[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Dubious Joystick Enhancements
May 21st, 2007 by Benj Edwards
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 almost there with that one, but they had to put the obnoxious finger grooves on it.
The third add-on is not as useless as the first two — glue a giant “Sorry” game piece to top of the abysmal Intellivision controller, and you’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 adding any more pieces of plastic to a controller can allow you to press the buttons faster.
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May 23rd, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Hey hey now, the FYRE-BALL would have been something I’d have bought! You see, in 1983, I was 9. A year or two before that, I’d had this great idea to make a paper-mache joystick head and put it on my 2600 joystick, because it would make it like I was playing in the arcades.
Being 7 or so when I had the idea, it was quickly forgotten and never implemented. This would have been right up my alley.
May 28th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I had another company’s “improvement,” a sleeved stick handle with a spring-loaded button on top that pushed the regular button on the joystick. It made the normal button unusable and wouldn’t stay in place.
May 29th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
it says that it also fits Sears “super video arcade” any body have a clue what this one was like?
May 29th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
that game console not the joystick
May 29th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
I believe I do. I think it was a redesigned Atari 2600 clone (officially licensed from Atari) that Sears released in the early 1980s. I might be able to get a scan of it for you from a Sears catalog I have.
June 13th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
LOL. i had the intellivision one. it was useless, it broke off constantly and the center of gravity was kinda off so if you ‘moved forward’ it would fall out of your hands!
April 11th, 2008 at 10:04 am
I had something very similar to the FYRE-BALL for my 2600. It was called “The GRABBER” and was a black ball with a sticker going around the ‘equator’ of it with a Pac-Man eating dots on it.
I sold it with my 2600 at my game store two weeks ago.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:12 am
I also mail-ordered the Intellivision joystick. The metallic plate covering the disc came unglued within minutes of attaching the “skil stik”. Not only that, but the stick was too small to hold w/ your hand, yet too large to comfortably control using your thumb.
There’s $4.50 I’ll never get back.