The most famous controller of the 80s returns with the Quickshot 2

A recreation of the most popular joystick on 8-bit and 16-bit home computers will be out soon, from the people that brought you The A500 Mini.

Your rarely hear the term joystick anymore, outside of fighting game and flight sim circles, but back in the day it was the default way to play a video game, at least when it came to home computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, and later the Amiga and Atari ST.

Joypads were rare outside of consoles, which in the UK and Europe were themselves not widely popular until the Mega Drive arrived in 1990. That’s very much not the case in the US and Japan, though, where they’ve probably never even heard of the Quickshot 2.

However, British company Retro Games have and after masterminding home computer revivals such as The C64 Mini, The Spectrum, and The A500 Mini they’re now planning to bring back the UK’s favourite (or least most common) joystick.

To be honest, we favoured the Competition Pro 500 back in the day, but the Quickshot 2 was certainly a common sight in the 80s and early 90s. (Retro Games do have something that looks very much like a Competition Pro, but it doesn’t seem to be officially licensed.)

The new version of the joystick looks the same but now has a USB connection and a lot more buttons – believe it or not but the vast majority 8-bit and 16-bit computer games used only one-button controllers.

That’s not quite as crazy as it sounds, because you could also rely on the keyboard of the computer itself, but the new Quickshot 2 has eight action and feature buttons, so you don’t need that. It also has an all-important autofire button, which was deemed an essential option at the time.

The joystick is fully microswitched but it’s been a while, so we honestly can’t remember if the original version had that as well, but we do remember they used to break a lot – which presumably this one won’t.

There’s also a 1.8 metre cable and suction cups on the bottom, which is definitely something we remember from the original.

Unfortunately, TheQuickshot 2, as it’s rather awkwardly called, doesn’t have any in-built games, so the idea is that you use it with one of Retro Games’ existing mini-home computers.

Thanks to the USB connection though you can use it with any PC as well, potentially allowing you to do things like try and play Battlefield 6 with it, which is going to be an amusing culture shock.

It’s priced at a quite reasonable £29.99, which is certainly less than most modern controllers, but it’ll miss Christmas, as it’s not out until January 30.

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