Toymax Activision Game Pad - Jakks Activision Joystick

The Activision TV games Game pad was made by Toymax in 2001 and was amongst the first retro-gaming plug and play TV devices to hit the market.  The unit plays Activision games that were originally made for the Atari 2600.  Many of these Activision games are not duplicated by the other Atari based systems although a couple have since been included on newer plug and play type systems.

What is in the box

The Activision systems contain 1 game pad with a good seven foot audio and video RCA cable attached to it. There is also an instruction manual/pamphlet. The unit was available in at least two colors that I have seen, the common black and a less common yellow model. There were likely other colors available.

The Setup

The setup is like most other TV Games, You put 4 AA batteries into the back of it and screw the panel down, Then plug the cables into the appropriate jacks on the Television . You are now ready to go. Make sure the TV is set to the input channel that you have plugged the game unit into. Once you turn on the device you will see a title screen and then a menu. Your system is set up.

The Manual

The manual is a single sheet of paper the front explains the basic setup of the ToyMax Activision unit,and how to select a game. The back explains how each game is played and what the available variations are.  

The Console (controller)

The console is the game pad and contains all the needed bits and pieces to play the games. This controller does feel nice but to the poor position of the reset and  power (on/off) switches it doesn’t work well. The reset and power are where fire buttons on modern game pads tend to be. (The yellow buttons in the picture) It fits your hand not badly if you have fingers resting on the reset and power switch but you tend to press them in the middle of a game. It has a four way game pad for movement. The pad feels nice and works well but does not allow you to hit diagonals very well , for the included games it seems to work out though. There is also an A,B,C,D Pad that is used as a replacement for the single fire button on a regular Atari Joystick. This is another oddity of the design as only one of the four buttons is used and it is fairly easy to press the wrong one. In the center of the pad there are two buttons one for start and one for select.

The Menu

The main menu is simple to use, by pressing the joy pad  you move through a two column list of games. Once you have highlighted the game you wish to play you simply press the fire button (#4 on the second game pad) to start it.

The Games

There are 10 classic Atari 2600 versions of  some of Activision’s most popular games. I did find it a little that they included Boxing, Hockey and Tennis as they are better as two player games. Atlantis was a surprise as it was made by Imagic another of the great third party developers. Imagic went under in the  late 80’s and its properties were picked up by Activision.

The games are very reminiscent of the originals although there seem to be a few problems. Boxing has a graphics glitch, there are collision issues with River Raid and you can’t see your shots in Atlantis to name a few. The sounds in the games are not accurate to the originals but bearable. Some of these issues can be lived with and may not even be noticed by most.  It is too bad that some issues actually make the game unplayable or extremely hard.  These recreation do not have all the versions that the original Activision/Atari cartridge had, there is only a difficulty setting.

The Internals:

This Toymax system doesn’t seem to be a true emulator or even an Atari on a chip. It might be a custom work designed around an Atari graphics chip or a reasonable recreation of original games running on something entirely new.  It is most likely the infamous Nintendo on a chip with some extra memory for the 10 recreated games and then a bit of code hacking for the controls. I guess we should give the programmers some credit for recreating or hacking old Activision code to create the thing, but it really isn’t worth it.   

Final Thoughts:

It was a good idea and Activision had great games for the Atari 2600 but this unit doesn’t do justice to the name. The Toymax Activision TV Games is an exercise in what not to do. The game pad design is bearable but has more buttons than are ever used and is not the style of controller the games were designed for. The placement of the reset buttons is also inexcusable. The games they picked or licensed for the unit are all classics but many of them do not translate well to the single player game pad design. The games are still for the most part playable and do provide some enjoyment. I however think this unit was very poorly thought out.

The Jakks Pacific Activision Joystick comes about by their acquisition of Toymax who made the original device. This new version is the same on the inside and there has been no change to the game lineup. The only real change is cosmetic as it now resembles a Wico Joystick with a ball top and a top fire button. These were a common third party joystick for the Atari 2600, just like Activision was a popular third party game supplier.

With a new shape came the removal of the extra buttons that had no purpose. The  reset and power buttons were also relocated to the joysticks base making it nearly impossible to accidentally reset your game.

As far as the actual games and internal hardware goes nothing has really changed. The old Toymax copyright and the original menu glitch is still there as are the issues within the games. The joystick although a great improvement over the game pad doesn’t make playing kaboom easier.

 The new design does fit into the Jakks line of retro tv games better and makes a big difference but not enough to make it great.

The Jakks version is a substantial improvement from the original Toymax one and goes to show how important the controller design is. It would have been nice if Jakks had done a proper reissue, with better quality games or even different games. You can’t really blame them for using what they had though and it is an improvement.

Jakks Activision Joystick