hardware
A few different types of controllers were used in the Atari 2600. The four-way joystick is the most famous, but probably followed by the paddles. After all, it was an era pong There can still be a selling point for your game; Well, if you prepared it and called it video olympicsstill.
However, you can notice a big difference from the actual Atari pedals. Not only are there a few more buttons and switches, but there is only one! Atari paddles actually come in pairs that you plug into controller ports; Paddle games were heavily multiplayer-focused. And yet, when Jax brought out the Atari Paddle, they had both a one-player and two-player versions. And I found a player.
While this is mostly fine, it also has some interesting implications. For example, in Street racer Above, the player on the left sits where he gets involved in most car accidents. For ponga game that he additionally included video olympicsThey had to implement a CPU player.
So it’s pretty clear that this thing is not running original Atari 2600 games. Take a look at the other arcade games included, chieftainsAnd you’ll also realize that it’s not running Atari 2600 hardware at all. Modern 2600 homebrew may have a lot of magic, but consoles can’t churn out pixels that small.
then what is it?
In 2004, Atari launched the Atari Flashback 1, designed by legacy engineering. Well, they didn’t call it Atari Flashback 1, just Flashback. Surprisingly for something that looked so much like the Atari 7800, this machine was based on the ubiquitous NES-on-a-chip (“NOAC”) hardware. This is correct; If you could get the ROMs out, you could play their games on, say, the Twin Famicom. This is especially evident friend’s revengeWith its color neutral zone. Here’s a screenshot I took from the Atari 2600:
And here is one from the NOAC port. Note that the NES cannot display as many colors simultaneously on the same screen as the Atari 2600; One advantage of this ancient technique is that there is very little color variation in the neutral zone. (Although, in motion, aggressive palette-cycling makes this less obvious)
Therefore many people have assumed that the Atari pedal is also based on NOAC hardware. After all, the NES had a paddle controller (used for ball), then this is not a hindrance. And chieftains Especially because it actually looks like a NES game.
But it’s worth noting that this device was created by a completely different team than the Flashback console; The Flashback was designed by Legacy Engineering and the Atari pedal by Digital Eclipse Vancouver.
But there’s one more thing that really blows up the NOAC theory. Game selection screen. Sorry, you don’t get as much color or detail on the Famicom hardware.
Could this be one of the advanced VR technology NOACs? They significantly expanded the capabilities of the NES architecture. Well, you can actually read their datasheets today, and looking at the dates on them, they’re from mid-2005; It seems unlikely that they would be available in time for the release of the Atari Paddle a year earlier.
So, usually I go to MAME and explain to you what someone there already understood. But here’s the surprise: MAME doesn’t actually have an Atari paddle! At least, I couldn’t find it. These things have been reverse engineered by people, so it’s not surprising that they haven’t got it 100% yet.
Should we crack it open?
If you were expecting anything other than unlabeled epoxy blobs, I don’t know what to tell you. This is 2004. Interestingly, unlike some of the other Plug and Plays I’ve taken apart, there’s no possibility of using a ROM chip in this one; My guess is due to the small size of the PCB.
I didn’t really do a very good job of manipulating the PCB to show the back, but the only interesting thing of note is the PCB labeled EL-555A1 with the datecode of 2004.05.08, and the strange sticking up PCB in place of the DIP chip, labeled EL-555C1. I’m not sure what it is; An analog-to-digital converter for the pedal, perhaps? However if you look at the pads on the other side, they appear to go to a missing transistor Q1 and big blob. this must be done Some?If you have the ability to decap these chips, I might be willing to sacrifice this little toy for this purpose,
internet archeology
The AtariAge forum, where Atari experts hang out, has discussed Paddle before. They seem to like the paddle because of the cheap toy, but the most interesting comment comes from user onmod-ky.
For your information, the system was programmed by Jeff Vavasour’s team at Digital Eclipse Vancouver, in what was described as a “partial emulation”. The underlying hardware appears to be a Winbond W55x-family microcontroller, which is 65C816-compatible. Years later, after the closure of Digital Eclipse Vancouver, Vavasour’s current Code Mystic Studio would develop the first Jakks Pacific Plug-n-Play game system that would run entirely through software emulation, their 2011 Taito (“Retro Arcade Featuring Space Invaders”) system.
I’m not sure what “partial emulation” means. Perhaps some of the 6502 code from the original game was reused? (65c816 Is Backwards Compatible) But the graphics system of the Atari 2600 is so different from anything else that I have to assume that only a small part of the logic can possibly be shared. Still, it seems quite plausible.
Taking a look at MAME, I found a Winbond-made SoC that used a 65C816 CPU. The “Trkfldch” core emulates a Winbond BAx-family chipset, used by Konami in 2007. Track and Field TV Challenge Plug-and-play game. I thought about getting one, but it’s one of those floor mat things and it seemed like exercise.
Unfortunately, that’s probably about as far as I’ll get in figuring out what’s going on in this thing without decapping or other more invasive forms of research. Instead, let’s play some more games.
Lineup
These screenshots of the menu screen are really dirty, aren’t they? It appears to be just that; My guess is that the mixed encoder here is not the highest quality. As far as gameplay goes, definitely prefer single-player games spread out, super breakout (various sports), circus attic, from demon to diamondOr night driver Play as you expect steeplechase And chieftainsThose who are stuck in single-player mode only.
There is definitely something strange going on in the rendering of multi-line effects, which are present almost everywhere on this system. View rendering of defeated enemies from demon to diamondFor example. These strange patterns appear everywhere; In the actual game, they are the skull and crossbones. However, they are inconsistent on a game-by-game basis circus attic The score uses a similar effect and presents fine.
This is despite the fact that high levels of accuracy are created in other games. For example, did you know this? casino Was there a paddle game on 2600? Did you care? Notice those weird lines on the edge; This happens when you call HMOVE Instructions that load the exact horizontal motion. They are very common in 2600 games and many games don’t bother to hide them; you can see them inside from demon to diamond Even above.
night driver On the 2600 is a first-person racing game that creates its own unique perspective through the constant flickering; I can’t show you a single screenshot because no one frame renders everything, but try pausing the video below. (Warning: this is very choppy, and ends with a full-screen color flash. This may cause problems for those with photosensitivity) The effects have been faithfully recreated, as are HMOVE Bars, which you can see during the color flash.
One thing you might notice about the Atari paddle is that it’s missing a lot of controls. The Atari 2600 did not rely solely on paddle buttons; It uses a number of toggles and switches on the console itself to configure the game you’re playing. Well, most of those controls have been moved to software; Pressing the large red “Menu” button brings up a list of commands.
Two-player compulsory games are controlled in different ways. as noted, Street racer Above you are simply given another player who does nothing. video olympics (name of 2600 pong) meanwhile seems to give you the same AI from the “arcade” version pongOf course, you have a smaller playing field, so this will affect the difficulty,
Should you play Atari today?
The Jax Atari pedal was released in 2004. Given that the 2600 was released in 1977, and this blog post is being written in 2025, this makes it more or less equivalent to what a retro release of the Sega Dreamcast would be today. So that’s exciting.
Overall I think the Atari pedal is where it should be. If you can find one for cheap, it can be fun to play. I think this includes the 2600 version chieftains Actually more fun than the included port of the arcade version, and if you’re absolutely desperate for single-player video olympicsThis may be your only choice. But there is no reason to look for it. It, like all of Jakks Pacific’s contemporary releases, is nothing more than a fun novelty. This was what had to happen.
update:Thanks to “The Dude” at BlueSky for pointing me to Jeff Vavasour’s own site. I recommend reading it, it has a lot of good details on how he reverse engineered the 2600 titles and Jeff even notes that he created the Atari 2600 menu screen himself. Excellent!
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