Joystick testing and benchmarking system for Commodore Vic-20 and C64


This program measures the contact ability of your joystick and gives it a benchmark score so that you easily can pick out your BEST joystick and hopefully improve on your game playing results.




The program instructs you to move the joystick in different directions and measures how many percent of the time that is in contact during a very short measurement period after first contact. After a number of rounds, a score is calculated and shown. A judgement is also given, for example: This joystick is great or this joystick is in need of service.


Download:
Contact V2.0 (C64 version)
Contact V1.0 (Vic-20 version)
Contact V1.0 (C64 version)


The scores given by the different versions are not comparable. Running the same version on PAL and NTSC may also give different scores. All times presented are calculated as if the machine is PAL.

NOTE: Running CONTACT in VICE is useless! (And so is playing games if you want to break any records.) You need a real computer for this.


V2.0

The V2.0 version for C64 is much more sophisticated than V1.0. It records the measurements and shows them graphically so that you can see how the contact was in detail.

It also measures something that I call "initial wrong-time". This is the time from that some incorrect direction is in contact to that the correct contact is established. You will normally only get "initial wrong-time" with diagonals. Note that this will influence the score negatively if you move the joystick in the wrong direction by mistake; the score will be influenced by user errors.

There is also much more statistics shown from the recorded measurements: Mean values for every direction, mean values for different categories and the weakest and strongest areas of the joystick are pointed out.

The scoring system is completely different from V1.0. The total score is a combination of 50% up/down/left/right, 30% diagonals and 20% fire button. This way, the four contacts of the stick makes up for 4/5 of the score and the last 1/5 is the fire button.

My white Tac-2 gets around 961 points while my black Tac-2 gets around 912.




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Vic-20 version


C64 version


C64 version


C64 version


C64 version


C64 version


Development shot