"joystick killer games" for the VIC20?

[JanD]

Hi,
I recently made a controller for playing decathlon and crank crank revolution on the C64.
Decathlon is known to be a "joystick killer game" (well if you have a cheap joystick), now I want to know if there are such games for the VIC-20.
You know, those kind of games where you need to wiggle your joystick as fast as you can to left-right-left-right-left-...
So if anyone knows such a game for the VIC-20, please let me know, as I would like to try my new controller on the VIC.

Fore those who have no idea what I'm talking about, here is a link to a video I made about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_Sl2QlrraI

Kind regards,
Jan

[Vic20-Ian]

Try Villain by Interceptor Micros

also

Sport Sport 4 player demo by Aleksi Eben 2002

I can't think of many more. Decathlon on C64 was the forerunner

[hasseapa]

Those games are sadly missing for Vic. Vic's popularity was in steep decline when the multi event & joystick waggling genre rose to prominence.

I made several very simple Basic coded and keyboard controlled track & field games for myself to fill the void back in the days.

Villain is the only commercial one AFAIK.

There is also the Biathlon type-in https://www.commodoregamebase.com/VIC/2281.html but it is keyboard only. It's ripping off Epyx' brilliant biathlon event of C64 Winter Games. The original is a perfect blend of rhythmic joystick waggling, as-fast-as-possible waggling, and button press timing.

I watched your video. Very nice It's perfect for Crank Crank Revolution (which I have played with not-so-enjoyable keyboard control). However it won't work well for as-fast-as-possible waggling unless friction is minimized and rotational inertia is maximized so that that angular velocity can be built up to about 3600 deg per sec. I am not sure what kind of angular velocity a hand-spinned trackball can reach?

I guess there are C64 games like the gymnastic vaulting of Hyper Sports that should work well. Activision's Tour de France may sound like a likely candidate, but no - Up & Down is for steering and Left & Right for speed.

BTW my favorite Decathlon video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phOjmGxK5EQ
Check for example 4:00 and 6:00 in. I can't help thinking of prying neighbors and be thankful for the lack of internet porn back then!

[highinfidelity]

I think that Commodore joysticks were not very sturdy: together with three high school mates of mine we actually managed to break one, exactly at the base of the stick, while playing Decathlon on the C64. Thanks heavens I wasn't the one who actually broke it - it was a fellow who always use to do damage, both physically and methaphorically. You had to see the face of the C64's owner, poor guy. I remember very clearly that, although "the guy" perhaps misused the joystick a bit, by no means what he did could have been sufficient to break the stick of an Atari joystick, which I considered back then and still today exceptionally sturdy.

As a side note I never really considered "amusing" games like Decathlon in which you ended with a medicated wrist. Most of the disciplines were too similar to each other, and in most cases I remember that strategy was very thin or absent altogether.

[JanD]

thanks for the feedback, I'll soon try them out.

[Reading_Steiner]

I'm pretty sure the development of these games was sponsored by the joystick manufacturers ironically enough, the first time I broke a joystick while playing was on a PC running on Windows 3.1... Hell if I remember whether this was Tyrian or Raptor:Call of the Shadows, but I was in a sweat after that, both from the game and from the general idea of what awaited me when my father would find out!

[Jeff-20]

I think some games were "joystick killers" just because I was playing them wrong.

[siccoyote]

I'm not in Soviet Russia but I find that Joystick breaks me.

I think as far as people breaking their joystick is depends which one you had. Zip sticks had a solid metal pole down the joystick and microswitches for the directions, so not likely to break that.

The Championship Pro joysticks had very poor fire buttons which relied on a stick of plastic flexing every time it's pressed, which to me doesn't sound like osmething to give it a long life.

The ones like the one below of course were almost fully plastic with a translucent center. While I never broke one of these myself I could understand how someone would. I remember we bought a bunch of these (with sinclair connections) at poundland and my dad rewired them to kempston standard to use with my Atari ST, so I suffered through with these for most of my childhood.



Was never that keen on joystick killing games.