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ThunderPeel2001

When did you break your first joystick?

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I think we've all been there. Wether it was through a fit of frustration, or just an incredibly demanding game, what were you doing when your second favourite thing you like to have in your hands* gave out a mighty --creak-- and was consigned to Joystick Heaven .

For me it was Supertest on my Spectrum +3. Supertest was a "waggle-em-up" (as this forgotten genre was known back then) in the same vein as HyperSports or the home-computer classic Daley Thompson's Decathalon (remember that?)!

I'm fairly sure it was the "Tug-Of-War" segment, which by the second time through the game, completely unfair and insanely difficult.

--snap!--

That didn't sound good... oh crap! My beloved Cheetah joystick!!!

haw-1.jpg

I upgraded to a Cruiser and never looked back (I still have it and I used it for years and years on my Amiga... ahhh, my Cruiser...)

The first and only mouse I ever broke was playing Cannon Fodder on my Amiga 500. The last level, as anyone knows who ever got there, was pure evil. Not least because you had to explore the map in order to know what to do... and the second all your men were dead it was back 5 levels - argh! - to reload and try again. No easy "quick save" back then, folks, you had to work hard to complete a game!

After the 10th attempt at working through the 5 levels to get to the evil 6th one... and then dying at the last possible second when I should have completed it... my mouse suffered the consequences what could only be described as "game rage".

haw-2.jpg

Still I managed to fix it and complete the bugger............. only to find an ending screen that subtley (but quite literally) told me to F-U-C-K O-F-F! Thanks, Sensible.

Sorry if that was a bit long, but when did YOU break your first peripheral?

* Your first favorite being the TV remote, of course.

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Heh, I destroyed a mouse playing Minesweeper. Buttons completely gone... the only time ever my finger muscles cramped on me...

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Hooray! Good work Thunderpeel.

Those waggle-em-ups were a killer, eh? Not just of joysticks, but of hands - I managed to take the skin off the palm of my hand while doing the hundred metres in James Pond's Aquatic Games (being dedicated, I didn't stop to scrape the skin off the top of the joystick until I'd won the race...)

The first joystick I broke was while playing another waggle-em-up on the Amiga - I have a feeling it was WWF Wrestlemania, where you had to wiggle the joystick to get the upper hand in various situations. It didn't just creak and give out, the whole casing gave an almighty crack and bits of cheap plastic shot across the room! I then found myself clutching a joystick that was literally in bits. Hmm.

I'm quite lucky that the Amiga was a tough old machine, because it wasn't the peripherals that bore the brunt of my anger, always the Amiga keyboard itself! Nowdays I wouldn't think twice about smashing up a PC keyboard in a rage (the stress relief would be well worth the money, though fortuantely PC keyboards are tough beasts too!), but having to replace the entire Amiga would have been rather expensive...

Oh, and the last joystick I broke? My beloved Logitech Extreme Digital for the PC, now pretty much irreplacable as it's a Gameport joystick (not USB). I was playing GTA3 and it gave out an almighty crack as I hauled my car around a corner at high speed, followed by becoming slack and limp in my hand. Yes, I'd knackered the springs that return it to the centre! Luckily it still works (I just have to centre it manually), and I don't think I'll be replacing it until it breaks entirely!

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I have never broken a mouse, although 3-4 months ago my Logitech Optical Mouse broke itself and I had to get a new one, lucky me that the mouse was still under warranty.

Logitech sent me a new one from Switzerland.

My first broken joystick was propably some default Commodore joystick that couldn't take the pressure in a good gaming moment.

But the joystick I've broken the most is Suncom Tac-2, me and my brother had to buy approximately 10 Tac's during our Commodore days.

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I broke one joystick which must've been somewhere in 1997. I remember it like it was 7 years ago:

I was playing Wing Commander 4, got very angry at a particular enemy fighter that was tailing me for several seconds, and in an attempt to make a false move to get behind him I broke my joystick. I guess I just jammed it too hard to the right. It was a Logitech Wingman Classic and I was very disappointed when I couldn't fly my fighter home to the carrier that day. Made me replay that tiresome mission all over again. :shifty:

Luckily, the joystick wasn't even 2 months old so I got a new one from Logitech at no charge.

B00000JCSB.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

--Erwin

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I broke a joystick in 1993 or 1994 or thereabouts playing TIE Fighter. It was a two-button stick I believe that I got free with my 486, and I've never bought another joystick since. From that point on I just always used mouse+keyboard (even for flight sims like TIE Fighter) and after 10 years of not owning a joystick I'm utterly incompetent on the damn things.

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It was a Logitech Wingman Classic and I was very disappointed when I couldn't fly my fighter home to the carrier that day. Made me replay that tiresome mission all over again. :shifty:

Ha, ha. That looks like a pretty flimsy joystick to start with. At least my Logitech Wingman Extreme broke in style.

Incidentally, I'm replaying Wing Commander 4, as I recently cracked and bought the overpriced DVD version off Ebay. Conclusion: I'd forgotten how awesome the FMV and the plot are, but the in-game engine has not aged well. At all.

It is, however, crying out for some kind of cheap Electronic Arts remake cash-in for the console market. WC4 with a modern game engine, on my widescreen TV with it-will-be-mine-oh-yes surround sound system, while sitting on the couch? Even if it is the devil spawn of bastardisation by EA? Yes please!

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Ha, ha. That looks like a pretty flimsy joystick to start with. At least my Logitech Wingman Extreme broke in style.

Flimsy?! Man, that thing weighs more than I do! Seriously, though: It's quite a sturdy joystick. Real Logitec quality. Better than that Sidewinder crap that Microsoft made.

--Erwin

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Flimsy?! Man, that thing weighs more than I do! Seriously, though: It's quite a sturdy joystick. Real Logitec quality. Better than that Sidewinder crap that Microsoft made.

I don't think you'd say that after a taking a thorough beating from a pair of burly men, each brandishing a Sidewinder Force Feedback joystick. In fact, I don't think you'd say anything.

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This is the only good Microsoft product, and I own one of those.

093007515936.jpg

And here's an image of Suncom Tac 2 if someone hasn't seen one

suncom_tac2_special.jpg

The best joystick ever.

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Since my Amiga I've never used a joystick (my trusty Cruiser). I wouldn't mind a cool arcadey one for use with MAME, but otherwise my equally trusty PlayStation Analogue Controller DualShock® will do the trick!

I have to say, I don't there's ever been an improvement on the Dualshock in terms of joypads, especially on the PC where most of them (especially Microsoft's attempts) are utterly awful.

Edit: Just seen the above post... I have to say - I HATE the Sidewinder! I can't believe you like it... I tried to use it for so many games but I never got the hang of it. I upgraded to a something with at least an analogue stick on it, but it was still nothing compared to the mighty Dualshock.

Now the Suncom Tac 2, I think brings back some memories from an old joystick round up in a Spectrum magazine? I recall seeing that it rocked, I wonder if I could hook it up to my PC? :D

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I don't think I could live without a joystick! I find the analogue controls on joypads far too fiddly - I need a big joystick to haul on! (Fnar fnar) I also have a Logitech force-feedback steering wheel for my Gamecube, which is fantastic fun with Burnout 2! I find it much easier to control, too, with practice - and it makes the exhilerating in-car view playable. I think it might also be on the verge of giving out, judging by the burning smell it gives off after a prolonged driving session...

P.S. What about those old joysticks with 'suckers' on their base, so you could stick them to desks? They were decent, until the 'suckers' came unstuck and your hand catapulted into the wall at high velocity. Joysticks nowadays just seem to have a really heavy base...

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Daley Thompson's Decathalon (remember that?)!

Ah, good times. Nearly mashed my keyboard with that game.

The only peripheral I've ever broken was a Sega Master System II game pad. It shattered into several pieces as it crashed into the wall, inches away from it's intended target - the head of my friend, who'd just managed to pull the power supply out of the wall, with only two games to play in the first division of Speedball 2. Wrapped with several rolls of electrical tape, the same game pad later saw me through to becoming league champion. Still pissed at my mate, though.

Aside: The 8-bit version of Speedball 2 was, and still is, superior to the 16-bit. Discuss :devil:

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Aside: The 8-bit version of Speedball 2 was, and still is, superior to the 16-bit. Discuss

Well I've never played the 8-bit adaptation, but I find it hard to believe that anything could be better than the Amiga original.... "Icecream!"

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I've got to agree with Kolzig here; for all their faults, Microsoft made the best pad ever when they made the sidewinder. I still use mine which I bought in 1998. The only problem is you don't get soundcards with midi ports much these days, which is maximum suck.

How did they go from the Sidewinder to the XBox Plastic-Hat style joypad?

The answer: MS are in kahootz with petroleum companies, churning out ginormous controllers to drum up business for the plastics industry.

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Actually there is a Microsoft Sidewinder usb port gamepad, but mine is also a midi/gameport Sidewinder.

At the time when I bought my gamepad, I had no usb ports in my computer... :frusty:

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Flimsy?! Man, that thing weighs more than I do! Seriously, though: It's quite a sturdy joystick. Real Logitec quality. Better than that Sidewinder crap that Microsoft made.

--Erwin

I had that same joystick and also busted it in a couple months. I guess that shows the quality.

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I've never owned a joystick in my life... unless one came with the Spectrum that I never used. Oh, wait. And I got a sidewinder with the PC but I gave the awkward little bastard to my brother.

I did, however, break the Cassette Player for the Spectrum. I can't remember exactly... I think it was a music cassette player or something. But it was a cassette player that had something to do with the Spectrum. Wait. Game cassettes, maybe? So long ago. Anyway, our first one of them I broke by inserting sandwiches into it when I was trying to change Dizzy cassettes and got sidetracked with a sandwich. In my defence, the new cassette player was better than the old one anyway.

And then I did the very same with the VCR a week later.

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Those cassettes were FANTASTIC! I used to listen to the hypnotic beeps and hi-tones for hours when I was young. It's better than smoking pot, I tell ya.

:dopefish:

--Erwin

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The only problem is you don't get soundcards with midi ports much these days, which is maximum suck.

Can't you get some kind of USB adaptor? I may have just made up their existence, but I think I saw some somewhere... maybe.

Also Erwin, you should try putting some CD-ROMs in your hifi. It's just the same but with lots more data for your brain to absorb.

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Those cassettes were FANTASTIC! I used to listen to the hypnotic beeps and hi-tones for hours when I was young. It's better than smoking pot, I tell ya.

:dopefish:

--Erwin

I blame listening to spectrum tapes for my deafness...

Those were the days, folks, when you could buy a magazine and inside you have the code for a game, you just had to copy it and compile it... Can you imagine a similar thing today? You'd get a yellow pages-worth of code to copy for a game like Doom3 and then wait a few days to compile - not to mention typing out the visual assets in addition...

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So you're how old? You certainly make me feel like I've been around a while! :)

Assuming you're talking about Yufster: Before she attempts to convince you of some bizzare and imagined attention-grabbing "fact" about her life, I'll just intervene and inform you that she's 18.

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Gasp! I remember those magazines! I used to sit up with my Mom for the whole frikkin' night, copying in code, and then it would crash and we'd have to start over!!! When I was 8, I could make yes/no answer games on the Speccy. But when I was 8 the speccy was old.

Our first one had like, a massive 1kb of memory!!!

P.S. I'm 80.

EDIT: Chris!!! Bastard!!!

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