Saturday, November 21, 2009

Coddle Your Joystick with Tammy Sue's Rack!

Boy, I'll tell you what, I play a lot of videogames, and I'd probably play a whole lot more if it weren't for that darned Holding Hand Fatigue.  Fortunately, my friend Tammy Sue Distributing has just the thing:



Yep, it's a slab of plastic that holds an Atari (or similarly-sized single-button joystick) in place with four awkward-looking little plastic doohickeys.  It's supposed to simulate an arcade mount, but it's got a couple of major issues.  I don't think Ms. Distributing really tested this gadget out -- the ad's promise that the Video Rack will "Improve Your Highest Score" seems questionable at best.

First, as shown the joystick appears to be mounted upside down -- the fire button is in the lower right hand corner, which means that if it's closest to the player, moving the stick forward will send a "down" signal to the game, moving right will send "left", and so forth, sending scores plummeting.

Second, even if the photo is actually upside down, we can see that actually hitting the fire button is going to be considerably more difficult with the joystick inserted into the Video Rack.  Instead of using our thumb to squeeze it in its normal handheld position, we now have to position a finger or two on the side, taking care not to interfere with movement of the joystick itself or get hung up on the little plastic thingamabobs.

So in the end, I suspect this gadget "Eliminates Holding Hand Fatigue" by replacing it with Holding Slab Fatigue and seriously inhibiting Rapidly Hitting The Fire Button Syndrome.

And what the heck is "Both Left & Right Hand Play" supposed to mean?  The Atari 2600 joystick only works one way -- fire button on the left, joystick on the right.  I suppose if you created an actual left-handed joystick, then it could be used with the Video Rack.  But the Video Rack is not going to magically imbue it with southpaw compatibility.
 
In the end, the ad's only arguably truthful statement appears to be that "Once you've played with the Video Rack, you'll never go back!" 

Though I don't think that's quite how they meant it..

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