Atari 2600 Amiga Power System Joyboard Controller

(Amiga - 1982)

A quarter century before Nintendo released a balance board controller for the WII, the Joyboard by Amiga was released for the Atari 2600. It was a groundbreaking video game accessory that was just shrugged off as a novelty by most, but in truth, the home video gaming world just hadn't matured enough to appreciate it yet. It would be over 25 years later that the video gaming community would embrace the technology in the form of the WII Fit.

The Power System games designed for it like the game packaged with the Joyboard, Mogul Maniac, were directionally controlled by leaning your body. There was a joystick port on the joyboard to hook any Atari joystick (like the Amiga Power Stick) to so that you could use a fire button when needed.

But the absolute coolest thing about the Power System joystick and joyboard is that they were a smokescreen for the real development going on behind the scenes... the development of the insanely popular Amiga computer line. The funny thing is that Atari passed on the Amiga line, allowing Commodore to snap them up, becoming the 2nd most popular computer line of the day.

It is unfortunate that no other games were released for the Joyboard. There are only prototype and homebrew games that can take advantage of the futuristic gaming technology that the Power System Joyboard represented.

System Specifications for the Atari 2600 Amiga Power System Joyboard Controller

Basic system specifications for the Atari 2600 Amiga Joyboard controller are listed below.

Model:

3120

Announced:

1982

Released:

1982

Original Price:

US $39.95

Connector:

9-pin sub-D connector

Dimensions:

12"(305mm)L x 16"(406mm)W x 2-1/2"(64mm)H

User Comments

Below are the user comments about the Atari 2600 - Amiga Joyboard topic. Feel free to join the conversation and share your comments or experiences with the Geek Vintage community.

(2) comments leave a comment

Amiga Joyboard

save2600 | Feb 26, 2010 1:52pm

Really cool to see Amiga doing anything for any system. I thought the little controllers they made for the 2600 were neat and so was the Joyboard. A concept that was way ahead of its time. One only has to look at the popularity that this Wii exercise stuff is all about to know Amiga had it going on. And now for something completely different:

http://www.bogost.com/games/guru_meditation.shtml

Name not applicable!

CebusCapucinis | Feb 20, 2010 7:12pm

To this day I still shake my fist at the sky and curse the deity of choice that decided to produce the Joyboard. Why, dare you ask? It is neither a board nor a joy! A more apt title may have been 'StrangeSquare' or 'EasilyBreakablePlasticDevice', for the Joyboard is incredibly difficult to use and the contact detection to actually make items move on-screen is nigh on impossible. You are left flailing about like a small child whose water wings have just popped in a 13 foot deep pool in the hopes that your character skiing will not decide to promptly faceplant into the nearest rock, tree, or other not-so-soft surface.

Despite this, though, the Joyboard is a very unique piece of technology. Unfortunately it just falls into that 'too early for its time' category that so many great ideas reach. Great idea, but the implementation of that idea just wasn't there yet.