It may surprise you to learn that before it was bought by Commodore in 1984, Amiga Corporation manufactured peripherals for the Atari 2600. Essentially, the peripherals business was a front to hide the company’s top-secret work on the 16-bit Amiga chipset, codenamed Lorraine, although getting into the accessories business also helped the fledgling company to open communication channels with retailers and distributors. When the Amiga chipset was finally shown at the January 1984 Consumer Electronics Show, selected business people were escorted past the rows of peripherals at the Amiga booth to a private demonstration.
The Power-Stick was a tiny controller, much smaller than Atari’s official joysticks, and it was designed so that it could be played with just one hand, with the player’s thumb resting on top of the diminutivemore unusual proposition. Launched at $39.95, it was essentially a precursor to the Wii Balance Board, although with nothing like the Nintendo controller’s precision. The Joyboard stands on a central pivot and works like a joystick for the feet, with your movements back and forth and side to side being mapped to the four joystick directions. It was bundled with a game called , which sees you skiing into the screen with the aim of passing between red and blue gates, and Amiga Corporation even got Olympic skier Suzy Chaffee on board to promote it.
