Racing the Beam : the Atari Video Computer System - Index of

In the arcade setting of the 1970s, it was not very important to be able
to play multiple games with the hardware in a single cabinet. So, ROM fi rst
made its way into Gran Trak 10, Tank, and other coin-op games as a way of
storing graphics data rather than programs for microprocessors. ROM
was used differently on the Atari VCS: to store whole game programs, code
as well as data. The system was designed to be modular and to accept different
cartridges, with different programs stored in cartridge ROM. The
ports that allowed the use of different controllers—either of the two types
that shipped with the system as well as additional ones from Atari and
other companies—were another versatile feature that offered an additional
sort of modularity.
Joysticks and Other Controllers
The Atari VCS was the fi rst cartridge-based system to come with a joystick
controller. Although joysticks were already in use in arcades by 1977, the
introduction of the VCS joystick into the context of the home undoubtedly
did much to popularize the controller. The system’s rubber-coated black
controller with its one red button has become emblematic of the Atari VCS
and of retro gaming, if not of video games in general. More generally, the
joystick became the standard controller for home video gaming and for
computer gaming. Joysticks are still important to modern console systems,
although now they are thumb-scale, allow more precise movement, and
fi nd their place alongside directional pads, buttons, and triggers on the
contemporary game controller.
Combat was based on an arcade game that used joystick controllers, a
game that infl uenced another home unit. Coleco introduced the dedicated
Telstar Combat! system in 1977, before the VCS hit the market that year.
Like Tank, it lacked anything resembling the Biplane and Jet games that
Combat had. But it was certainly a close cousin of the cartridge.
Telstar Combat! uses the General Instrument AY-3-8700 Tank chip, a
follow-up to that company’s AY-3-8500 Pong chip. It has four two-way
joysticks—two for each player—just like Tank. The most successful arcade
tank game, the one-player game Battlezone, also used a two-joystick
control scheme. The two joysticks controlled the speed of the tank’s two
treads in Battlezone, however; the two joysticks per player in Tank determined
rotation and velocity.
The Atari VCS running Combat, in contrast, used two four-directional
joysticks, one for each player. Even in the fi rst VCS cartridge, designed
as it was along with the Atari VCS itself, there arose the issue of the difference
between the controller scheme of the inspirational arcade game
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