/vr/ - Retro Games

2) Joystick
Although I don’t know who had the idea of using a joystick to draw sprites and backgrounds in the first place, we know that the use of this tool wasn’t limited to one or two companies and that, as with the keyboard, it was sometimes used until the end of the 90s. One of the first companies to produce workstations controlled by joysticks was Taito.
“By the time of Metal Soldier Isaac II (1985), we had a device that could save data, explains Masayuki Suzuki. We used these big 8-inch floppy disks. It was not like a regular personal computer. It was Taito’s own proprietary system. They created graphics workstations by modifying circuit boards from unsold arcade cabinets for the game Qix (1981). The monitors were salvaged from old cocktail arcade cabinets. Computer mice weren’t available back then, so we operated these graphics workstations with a custom control box that incorporated a joystick and about 20 buttons, almost like a keyboard. […] For every four machines, we had one device for saving our data.”
Years later, Taito replaced its workstations with X68000 computers. They were compatible with its joysticks and you could save data on 5.25-inch floppy disks. Arcade games such as Kaiser Knuckle (1994) and Kirameki Star Road (1997) were developed with these tools.