Videogame Review, River Raid for the Commodore 64 Computer (Disk Form with Gold Atari 7800 Joystick)

Videogame Review, River Raid for the Commodore 64 Computer (Disk Form with Gold Atari 7800 Joystick)

All of those claims which state that the Atari 2600 joystick is #1 for River Raid are wrong.  In fact, the Atari 2600 joystick has soft plastic in its handle which is poorer in quality than the combination of hard metal and hard plastic found in the handles of Atari 7800 and Atari 5200 joysticks.  The fire button contact and the joystick button contacts are made of metal and hard items, and so soft plastic doesn’t work as well in pushing against metal and hard items, compared to… oh, hard metal and hard plastic.  River Raid has good controls for the Atari 2600 joystick even if the Atari 2600 joystick has decent controls for River Raid.  We have to distinguish what’s control from a game and what’s control from a controller; in fact, each control combines with another for a blend to form.  My gold Atari 7800 joystick allows me to lean better on the edges of cliffs and shores thanks to hard metal and hard plastic.  But with soft plastic, I’m more likely to crash and burn more quickly with the Atari 2600 joystick.  I hope my review is quite analytical on these points.  Atari 2600 joysticks can be rough, challenging, and dramatic at a seemingly random pace while the soft plastic takes time in pressing against metal and hard items.  I’m talking about the joystick construction.  When I play River Raid on the Commodore 64 (C64) with the Atari 7800 joystick my high scores go through the roof!  Atari 2600 joysticks feel sluggish in comparison to Atari 7800 joysticks, which feel firm and more consistent at the buttons.  There’s also more room to adjust my hands to the Atari 7800 joystick because of its pro-line design: long, sleek, and elegant.  I have absolutely no anger while using the 7800 controller to play Pac-Man on the Atari 2600- actually, I haven’t had anger for Pac-Man with the Atari 2600 controller.  So what makes River Raid different?  The difference between River Raid and Pac-Man is that the second game is designed on a restricted compass of control (North, South, East, West) which works only for holes in Pac-Man’s tunnels and not the walls, and you don’t die when you touch the walls; on the other hand, River Raid is played in a very complicated area- not a labyrinth in straight tunnels, but a long, long mountainscape made up of river(s) in ragged, mixed turns, and even a single rock touching the plane causes its destruction.  The Atari 7800 joystick has hard metal and hard plastic for which I don’t really need to wait for the joystick’s handle to activate the buttons; however, with the Atari 2600 joystick, I’m at more of a disadvantage because of how I have to “wait” for the soft plastic in the joystick’s handle to activate the buttons- a wait I may not be able to afford depending on the circumstances.  Keep looking.  I don’t want readers to walk off so easily in false lives about the Atari 2600 joystick.  Supporters for the Atari 2600 joystick have been utterly confused and unreliable for what they’ve done in video games since they, basically, relied on a less accurate joystick for a prejudiced definition of “control” before lingering on to Atari’s improved joysticks only to call them less accurate out of mere difference, despite the fact the controller they first relied on as a kid (Atari 2600 joystick) didn’t get everything right in the first place, or, if everything was right, everything was right only for a while before Atari’s improved joysticks came, as this little piggy went to the market and this little piggy stayed home- the prejudice of fools!