Nostalgia is big in the modern games industry. It’s ironic that the most technologically obsessed art form on the planet is just as watery-eyed about the past as cinema and music. And to prove it here is the new version of the legendary QuickShot II, a plasticky joystick from the early 1980s that wasn’t even that good the first time round. It was, however, cheap and it resembled an actual fighter plane control stick with its multiple fire buttons and ergonomic shaft. If you wanted a rugged and precise controller you’d go for the Competition Pro, but that one didn’t let you pretend to be in Star Wars or Airwolf. Plus, the QuickShot II had suckers on its base so you could stick it to your cockpit control panel – sorry, I mean MDF computer table.
The new QuickShot II from Retro Games and Plaion Replai is almost an exact replica in terms of its dimensions. You can grasp it in your fist and wrap your thumb and forefinger around its large red buttons. Yes, you can stick it to your table; the designers have even included the original auto-fire switch at the rear for players who weren’t prepared to hit the fire button repeatedly while playing Green Beret.
It has been tastefully updated, though. The two fire buttons on the stick can now be separately configured – a feature I yearned for as a young Commodore 64 fanatic so that I could independently control the laser and bombs in Skramble. There are also six buttons on the base, which align with standard joypad layouts, and the USB cable means you can plug it into a PC or any of the modern computer remakes released by Retro Games, such as the C64 or Spectrum. I tested it with the latter and have already spent many hours blasting through Ant Attack, Pheenix and Head over Heels.
In terms of build quality, it’s a good balance of necessary updates and respectful nonaction. The stick itself has plenty of travel (you have to push it quite far to register movement), which is just as I remember. This made the QuickShot famously unsuitable for joystick-waggling titles such as Daley Thompson’s Decathlon as you had to move it a long way left and right, often causing damage to the joystick and indignity to yourself. At least now the designers have added microswitches so you get a nice click when the stick moves. The fire buttons, however, still have the same old soft click, and the sound and feel of them is one of the most warmly nostalgic parts of the whole thing. I spent so many hours of my teen years pressing those buttons – the sound is as hardwired into my memory as the smell of school dinners or the wash of the ocean against a pier.
I also tried the QuickShot II with Steam and it worked absolutely fine after some simple calibration – although the auto-fire proved problematic. It was lovely to play the Steam version of classic shooter Truxton with this stick, returning me to memories of playing arcade games in Blackpool then going home and pretending my computer desk and joystick were an arcade cabinet. You think these feelings are gone but it doesn’t take much to bring them hurtling back – sometimes just a hunk of plastic will do it.
If you’re looking for a serious modern joystick, this isn’t it. It’s low-budget and awkward and, despite an hour of configuring, I couldn’t get it to work with PC emulation platform RetroArch, which was a shame, though others may manage it. But this is the point: the QuickShot II was not the best joystick, it was the one we could afford. And it looked cool.
I respect that the remake is true to that spirit. It is affordable and a little compromised. But if you owned one back in the day, it is a fun thing to have, and the fourth star in my review is for the absolute raw nostalgia of it. Every time I see it sitting there beside my hi-tech PC and big HD monitor, I smile. It’s good to have you back, old friend, with all your flaws and shortcomings.