Remember the Quickshot? Why it’s worth rediscovering the joy of joysticks

The suction-padded joystick was once the games controller sans pareil until it was usurped by the multi-button joypad – but with the return of retro gaming, it’s making a comeback

For home computer gamers in the 1980s, your choice of joystick was a matter of intense importance and debate. Unlike buying a console, you didn’t get a controller with your machine, so every player had this vital input decision to make from the offset. Most of my friends went for the ubiquitous Quickshot II, a great hulking giant of a controller, designed to resemble a fighter jet joystick, complete with multiple fire buttons and an autofire switch so that you could cheat on R-Type. It was reasonably delicate, though, so a session with a joystic-waggling sports game such as Daley Thompson’s Decathlon could see over-enthusiastic players wrenching the shaft clean off – surely the most Freudian mishap ever to befall a schoolboy.

When I asked Twitter users for their favourite ever joysticks, the Quickshot got many mentions but so did the Super Pro Zip Stik and the pastel-coloured Powerplay Cruiser, both rugged, dependable stars of the Amiga era. More eccentric designs were also recalled – the squat little Cheetah Bug, the Konix Speedking (also known as the Epyx 500XJ), an ergonomic oddity designed to sit in the palm with the fire buttons on the side.

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