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The Commodore Games System supported two buttons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64_Games_System

And in fact you can use these on the C64. I have built a two button NES controller for the C64 - the second button is actually using one of the paddle inputs and the button on/off is the extremes of the paddle resistance.

A few games were commercially released and several homebrew games support two buttons like for example the port of Super Mario Bros. to the C64.



>And in fact you can use these on the C64. I have built a two button NES controller for the C64 - the second button is actually using one of the paddle inputs and the button on/off is the extremes of the paddle resistance.

Earlier support than that for two buttons came in the Commodore Mouse. Both the 1350 and 1351 have two buttons. The 1350 is basically a joystick, but the 1351 is a true mouse.

I'd forgotten or not known (not sure) that the C64 console has two-button controllers (of course, far too few by 1988); I wonder if its two-button support is compatible with the 1350/1351's approach?


Not compatible. For the mouse, the Fire Button and the Up are used for the two buttons and the PotX and PotY are used for the mouse X,Y data.

For the two button joystick the up/down/left/right/fire are as usual but the PotX is used for the second button.


That's unfortunate, but not surprising given how obscure the Commodore mice were even in their time.

Had a single gamer (an Intellivision owner, say) at Commodore c. 1982 advocated for even one more fire button on the forthcoming C64, and used the "We'll be able to sell Commodore-branded joysticks" argument, the entire C64 gaming landscape would have immeasurably changed.




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