Overview

Being a pretty huge fan of Atari and owning the 7800 ( also cable of running 2600 games) and the 5200 I have a pretty good appreciation for warn down controllers. Seem no matter what I do paddles just get bad over and over, keybads fail me, and cables connection ware out. In working with the adapters out there, its all junk IMO. 

Why the stock interface is limiting

Of course there is nothing wrong with what Atari did, but it is over 40 years old...Though finding controller to work right is a pain and so many new method have been learned.  IMO, I think its best to merge the new with the old. 


Discovering the Bridge 

In having some experience with Bliss-Box products and reading more about the Bridge I wanted to try it out. There was an output to atari 2600/7800 and 5200 and owning both I figure why not. 

Reverse engineering the ports

 I have to admit for me this is where the fun it. Well other then playing the gamer ;)  I wanted to learn a bit about how this worked.  I know how controller  figures out the lotion of the stick. Good old charge pump! It charges up a cap and then pulls it to ground while it being drawn thru a arable resister (the pot). The Atari runs a timer and counts up, the number it hits when the voltage is 0, is the location. But how in the heck does a digital controller like the Bridge to that?  Its not a real variable resister... After some probing I found out!  It was able to sense then the charge started, then it waits x ms, and flips from 0 to 5 volts. Genius!  And the Bridge has a calibration tool that lets you adjust it. 

How this enables modern controllers

The Bridge does a pretty good job of translating. The thing that makes this work so well I think is that the Bridge emulates the 5200 ( i this case) and the Gamer-Pro does the communication for the controllers. They talk back and forth but are independent. So they both can do things are the same time. So it does not matter if you use controller A B or C, it will work as long as it can be read. It really is the best way to do thing if you think about it.  I think its sports up to 16 controller interfaces inputs but they group them in to these categories. 

About the Gamer-Pro

Bliss-Box also makes another device called the Gamer-Pro Advanced. It is only a USB adapter but you use this with the Bridge. The two are what makes it possible. I already owned the GPA and it supports lots of inputs. Here is the full list.  


What I did to make this work

1) Using the Bridge and the correct cable to connect to my 7800 or 5200 console I was able to instantly use any controller on my console. Although I was not interested in a replacement for my atari stick, I did find it rather pleasing to use for the 7800 two button games. Though if that is your goal, I'm happy to say that is all you need but I was after something I bit more. I wanted to use other types of devices. 



Operation

There is a switch on the db9 connector, took me a bit to figure that out. (Tip reading the manual helps). Its a way to change modes. In one operation its a two button 7800 controller the other is a signal button, and this cable also work on the sega master system. 


Paddles

First up, I wanted to test about Kaboom!  I used my arkanoid paddle and sure enough worked like a charm, I also tried a racing wheel for fun and that worked too. Just for S & G  I tried the atari paddles ( mind you its not doing this directly ), no point in doing this but I wanted to see how well the lag and simulation of the paddles was compared to the real deal, and its 1:1. Not sure how they pulled that off... Also figure why not see if they thought about motion controllers, so I took out my nunchucks. This controller is supported by the GPA so there is a small chances it will work.  To give you an idea on how this works, you plug in the controller you want on the input end, and if its not working you may need to hit the reset button. I was pleased to see the nunchucks actually did work but I do not recommend playing this way. 

Keyboard

This one didnt not work on the Atari 2600, but does work on the 5200. However the 5200 was designed to use a keyboard style controller so that makes sense. Unsure about the atari keypad ( star raiders ) maybe need to revisit that. 

5200

This console is a bit more fascinating, since you only really have the one controller. The analog controllers all seem to work well even on mussel command. Looks like the 5200 trackball games think that is was plugged in, as it act just like it. I had a pippin controller with a mouse ball and it was very accurate. Super breakout works well as well. There is also a built in calibration stepper for the Bridge.  You can center the controller with it instead of messing with the pot in the console. HUGE plus for me...

Other goodies. 

I also owned a Blender and A.I.R so I wanted to talk about those too. These are add-ons you can get with the Bliss-Box stuff. The Blender is really cheap and the A.I.R will set you back 100...So maybe not for everyone. 


A.I.R - This is a 2 part wireless device. You plug one end in to a PC(USB) or Bridge and the other device you plug in a adapter like the GPA. So its sits in the middle of the two adapters. I'd not call this wireless as you still have cables, but it does free you up. This adapter didn't change any of my testing, it just let me sit back. Though the one thing on my mind was lag. so I desired to test two games. 1) Breakout, 2) Asteroids. There is no way you can swing a paddle back and forth without feeling lag, not going to happen, and Asteroid to me requires timing. The Breakout game test was spot on, it does react and elects the position of your hand. Asteroids also was 1:1 for me, if I'm not effected I do not think anyone will be. I did look up some specs and they claim 2ms round trip but the claim is that lag is not actually relevant.  I short explanation is this

 "The game reads the controller once a frame, 16.6 ms on NTSC. And we read the adapter after the frame draw. We have more than 16ms to do this so the games waits on the adapter"


Blender - This adapter is hard to explain but I can put it into a simple example that explains it all. Robotron on one controller. As you may know robotron has a two controller mode. This adapter will split one controller into two and you pick the mappings. Turns out there is already a profile for Robotron so no setup was needed. wow, so much better... I used a psx controller and the d-pad for movement, button for shoot. you can even switch to the analog controller if you want and use that big ol' flight controller PlayStation had. 


Conclusion 

Well for me, yeah love it. Its the main reason I write this up. I love Atari, its what I grew up on, and this makes it a lot better. If your not looking to do a lot of things with controllers this maybe too much of a price hit. for me I had most of this stuff and use it for other things. If you just got a Bridge, GPA, and the cables, you just over 100. You can go overboard easy with this.