The Atari Ultimate Fight Stick w/ Trackball
An honest review from an honest man of Funk
I never get excited about Christmas presents, but this year I saw something on that damned interwebs and immediately salivated... Micro Center's Atari Ultimate Fight Stick WITH a Track Ball. I placed the order, it came before Christmas, and I squealed with glee. The package boasted 140 games that included hot all Atari on Atari action... including games from the 2600, 5200, 7800, AND a bunch of Atari arcade games to boot.
Well... just like a Christmas with no snow and tons of presents that turned out to be knitted sweaters, I was initially disappointed with the product. Don't get me wrong- there's a lot to unpack with this system. There's a lot to love, and if you are looking for a super deluxe plug n play Flashback type thing OR you are an expert with video game emulation and DIY, there's a lot to dig on. This thing is built like a brick sh*thouse. But, if you are annoyed with having to tinker, screw around with emulation, download jive, tweak, screw up, screw up again, and fuss over video games instead of just playing them--- there's quite a few issues here.
HOWEVER, if you put time into it, like I did (off and on for 7 weeks), you can polish this thing up into something beautiful.It wasn't easy for me... and the end result is not perfect. Emulation is not perfect. The 5200 games are virtually unplayable with ANY emulation due to their funky joystick- and in this package there's not an easy way to assign buttons to correspond with the 5200 key pad. And emulating the Atari Jaguar with this set up? Forgetaboutit. I made a video that is QUITE long, but it should help things with noobs like me. In it, I look at what Micro Center sent out. I take a gander at its emulation image, the games included, we look at the hardware itself, I review the stick for 3 different types of consumers, I go through an extensive list of issues that I had with the stick and how I ultimately fixed each problem, I go through Trebor's Atari 7800 ROM pack on it (AWESOME), and I show you how you can customize the image to your liking. There's a bunch to this Atari Stick, and a video is the best way to go through it. So here we go... get a snack... this is a long azz video.
Street Fighter Button Config
Y - X - L
B - A - R
Funkmaster V's Ultimate Guide to
The Atari Ultimate Fight Stick w/ Trackball:
I was also annoyed that there was no game list online of what the 140 (plus) games included with the stick were. So here you go, because the Funk loves ya.
ATARI ARCADE
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe
Atari Baseball
Atari Football
Atari Soccer
Avalanche
Basketball
Black Widow
Canyon Bomber
Centipede
Cloud 9
Crystal Castles
Dominos
Fire Truck/ Smokey Joe
Gravitar
Liberator
Lunar Lander
Major Havoc
Millipede
Missile Command
Monte Carlo
Poolshark
Qwak
Red Baron
Space Duel
Sprint 1
Super Breakout
Super Bug
Tempest
Warlords
ATARI 2600
3-D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure
Air-Sea Battle
Aquaventure
Asteroids
Backgammon
Basketball
Black Jack
Bowling
Boxing
Brain Games
Breakout
Canyon Bomber
Casino
Centipede
Championship Soccer
Circus Atari
Codebreaker
Combat
Combat Two
Crystal Castles
Dark Chambers
Demons to Diamonds
Desert Falcon
Dode 'Em
Double Dunk
Fatal Run
Flag Capture
Football
Frog Pond
Golf
Gravitar
Hangman
Human Cannonball
Haunted House
Holey Moley
Home Run
Home Run
Hunt & Score
Indy 500
Maze Craze
Meltdown
Millipede
Mind Maze
Minature Golf
Missile Command
MotoRodeo
Night Driver
Off the Wall
Peek-A-Boo
Quadrun
Radar Lock
RealSports Baseball
RealSports Boxing
RealSports Football
Realsports Soccer
RealSports Tennis
RealSports Volleyball
Saboteur
Save Mary!
Secret Quest
Sentinel
Shooting Arcade
Sky Diver
Slot Machine
SlotRacers
Solaris
Sprint Master
Star Raiders
Star Ship
Steeplechase (Sears)
Stellar Track
Street Racer
Stunt Cycle
Submarine Commander
Super Baseball
Super Breakout
Super Football
Surround
SwordQuest - EarthWorld
SwordQuest - FireWorld
SwordQuest - WaterWorld
Tempest
Video Checkers
Video Chess
Video Olympics
Video Pinball
Warlord
Wizard
World End
Yar's Revenge
ATARI 5200
Countermeasure
Microgammon SB
Millipede
MInature Golf
RealSports Baseball
RealSports Basketball
RealSports Football
RealSports Soccer
RealSports Tennis
Star Raiders
Asteroids
Centipede
ATARI 7800
Asteroids
Basketbrawl
Centipede
Dark Chambers
Fatal Run
Food Fight
Motor Psycho
Ninja Golf
Planet Smashers
Scrapyard Dog
Well... just like a Christmas with no snow and tons of presents that turned out to be knitted sweaters, I was initially disappointed with the product. Don't get me wrong- there's a lot to unpack with this system. There's a lot to love, and if you are looking for a super deluxe plug n play Flashback type thing OR you are an expert with video game emulation and DIY, there's a lot to dig on. This thing is built like a brick sh*thouse. But, if you are annoyed with having to tinker, screw around with emulation, download jive, tweak, screw up, screw up again, and fuss over video games instead of just playing them--- there's quite a few issues here.