The Commotron Turbo 2000 Super is a modern wireless joypad that works on the Amiga, ST, ZX-Spectrum, C64 and other systems that use the familiar Atari style DB9 connector.

I have been looking for a wireless Amiga joypad for years and this looked like a great alternative especially since you could use a firebutton as a substitute for pressing up on the d-pad.

I am not a huge gamer anymore but occasionally from time to time it can be fun to play an old (or new) game on the Amiga. I prefer to use a joypad these days to play Amiga games but have had some success with various joysticks through the years.

Joypads and joysticks I have used before

• Back in the day I liked to use a Sega Master System joypad, I remember it had two buttons (that a surprisingly amount of games actually used) and a d-pad that worked relatively well. I can not remember anything negative about using a Sega Master system joypad other than it got worn out and failed to register directions after many heavy duty gaming sessions.
  
• For the past years I have been using a Commodore CD32 joypad that I got in NOS condition from a local shop a few years ago. I really like the CD32 pad. It has a decent d-pad, great buttons and is the official Amiga joypad. It is also great for playing Doom because you can strafe with the shoulder buttons. It is however not perfect as it can fail registering diagonal button presses on the d-pad.
  
• One of the most famous joysticks in the nordic region was the Suncom Tac-2 (the original version with the steel shaft off course, not the cheap plastic shaft version). Naturally the Tac-2 has passed my hands too, it is a nice joystick but had to be modded to make fire buttons more responsive. These days I can not play games with a joystick like that anymore but sure the beige Tac-2 looks so bad-ass besides the late gen C64, probably why it is commanding hefty prices on action sites these days.

So the question is, is the Commotron Turbo 2000 Super the perfect Amiga joypad?

Ranking the Commotron Turbo 2000 Super wireless Amiga joypad

This are the things I was looking at in a gamepad and how I think the Turbo 2000 Super joypad ranks:

Wireless joypaD functionality – (A4000TX 5/5 – ReAmiga1200 1/5)

I mainly use two Amiga computers as my primary systems, my A4000TX and my A1200 based on a ReAmiga motherboard, both systems are expanded to the top.

The Turbo 2000 Super is wireless and it works perfectly on my A4000TX without dropping connection. But it fails to work reliably on my A1200. The connection is regularly dropped. I suspect it might be because I have quite a few hardware devices crammed into the buiild. Not sure what the problem is on the Amiga 1200 but this was a huge disapointment and possibly not something related to the Commotron wireless joypad. More about this later.

AAA Battery powered (5/5)

The Turbo 2000 Super runs from two regular AAA batteries, I run mine on rechargable AAA batteries so can easely swap out fresh batteries if they run out of juice. I prefer regular batteries since you do not have to mess with USB chargers or worrying that the chargable cell runs out or catches fire.

Joypad looks (4/5)

There has been some radical joystick designs for the Amiga during the years, from hand grenades to Simpsons and bugs. This joypad is styled after the NES joypad and I like that shape. I chose the Amiga styled joypad so it has a sticker with the Amiga tick.

One thing I find irritating is the cheap looking LED that powers on when using the joypad. I would have prefered it to be in a more discrete location or being put behind a plastic window.

While the joypad looks fine the receiver looks quite homemade.

It is also a little bit too long, perhaps it has too because of signal reasons. The cutout for the pinout on the side is also sloppily made. Since the receiver is glued together you can not open it up to clean up the cut out for the pinout. That pinout looks weird seeing it externally if not being used for anything.

Finally, there is a old school LED pointing out at the back of the receiver.

two button functionality (5/5)

The Commotron Ultra 2000 Super has four main buttons and two function buttons. It is possible to configure buttons for various setups. I would have prefered only 3 or just 2 fire buttons, but I guess 4 is fine. The joypad supports Amiga games that uses more than one fire button.

Must have option for mapping “up” to a button (5/5)

Many Amiga games requires you to press up to jump or accelerate. I do not think this worked fine even with a high quality joystick, it always felt like a compromise.

Mapping “up” to a separate fire button makes the game much more enjoyable and is a must have IMHO and the Commotron 2000 does that function fine.

button comfort (3/5)

Buttons on the Commotron 2000 is a bit stiffer than what I am used to. It takes more force to push the button than say a Sega Saturn pad or a genuine SNES/NES pad. I would have prefered a little bit more forgiving button stiffness.

One effect of stiffer buttons is the vibration I can feel for less than half a second after pressing the fire buttons. I press a button and get the feeling like there is something on a spring vibrating inside it. It makes me nuts so I had to open it up and investigate!

I thought it was because there was an antenna inside dangling around, but it was just the spring that holds the AAA battery to the side that was soldered to the PCB of the joypad. It was the batteries that vibrated. It is probably possible to fix this by running a wire from the spring to the PCB instead of soldering it directly to the PCB. I will probably mod it in the future.

Update 260726: I fixed the joypad vibration problem by placing a thin slice of foam between the battery cover and the batteries. No vibration anymore and no need for soldering hacks.

D-pad comfort and Diagonal friendliness (3/5)

This is in my opinion one of the most important things a joypad or joystick for 2D games should excel at, however in my opinion the Super 2000 Commotron wireless Amiga joypad was slightly disapointing when it came to diagonals. The buttons and d-pad are already quite stiff, registering diagonals with the d-pad requires even more force used and even then I get the feeling there is no guranteee that the joypad will register diagonally. How disapointing. For example, I did not even reach the city level in Banshee with the Commotron.

In games where diagonals are not that important I find the d-pad has no problems and is actually quite nice to use.

TOTAL ranking: 3/5

Motivation behind score: Buttons are too stiff, d-pad can not reliably register diagonals. Receiver looks cheap. Does not work on my Amiga 1200 reliably (however that might be because of my hardware setup!).

It works fine for games like Nitro and Skidmarks. But it is a real pain to use in games like Dragonstone or Banshee were diagonals are critical and important.

A few comments on the manual and configuration

Typically I would not comment anything about a manual for a joypad but I am going to do an exception in this case. As you can see you can program the joypad for different functions and the manual is an important reference for this.

For example, it supports autofire and different autofire frequencies. It is also possible to switch around mappings of buttons.

One thing I wonder though is that you can switch between button 2 and 3 being “high active” or “low active”. I have not tried what difference high active makes from low active.

Update 260726: Took the time to ask ChatGPT about the high/low active mystery and got the following answer:

The purpose of these presets is to make Fire 2 and Fire 3 electrically compatible with different retro computer systems. Some systems expect an active-high signal, while others such as the Amiga and Atari ST expect an active-low signal. Selecting the correct preset ensures that the extra fire buttons are detected properly without sending the wrong signal level to the joystick port.

Also there is this function on the receiver, there is a pin header here that gets tied to ground if you press button 2-3. I think it is intended to be used in WHDLoad for example, so you can bind it to F10 to quit a game or bind it to reset the Amiga. Or maybe I am misunderstanding the whole thing, can you send two signals with button 2 AND 3 or do you press button 2 and 3 at once to trigger the ground signal. What happens if I connect 12v to the pin header?

Issues with my A1200

So my Amiga 1200 is quite expanded (TF1260/IndivisionMK3/Solas/PicoWyfy/SharkPSU) and there is a lot of stuff between the receiver and the joypad in the A1200, makes me think there might be something messing with the signals or problems with powering the Amiga, though my PSU provides up to 40w. I already tried removing the PicoWyfy and disabling the Solas but it did not help, so no idea what is going on here. Maybe my ReAmiga1200 build has problems, maybe it is the SharkPSU…

Will try it out on my Denise/Alicia and second ReAmiga1200 when I have time and update results here.

Next steps

I will keep the Commotron Super 2000 wireless Amiga joypad for the A4000TX but will stick with the CD32 pad for the Amiga 1200. But I have been thinking about what else to try so here are a glimpse into possible future options.

• NES joypad (with genuine Nintendo rubber domes) converted to Amiga. Would be more finger friendly, supports mapping “up” button to second fire button but wont be wireless.
• Genuine Sega Saturn joypad converted to USB and made working on the Amiga with a MouSTer. The best d-pad ever. Too many buttons but could be made CD32 compatible with the MouSTer. Hopefully can map the “up” button to a fire button. Still not wireless.