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. 

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 out atari 2600/7800 and 5200 and owning both I figure why not. 

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 please 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....

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