Well… not “new” new.

While it’s no secret I’m a Commodore fanboy, I do like to give credit where credit is due. Although pretty much across the board the Commodore 64 versions of games looked better than their Apple II counterparts, there was one thing I was always jealous of — the Apple II’s second fire button. While Commodore opted to use the standard Atari 2600 DB9 joystick port, Apple went with an analog format that supported two fire buttons. Both designs have advantages and disadvantages, but there were several games that took advantage of that second button on the Apple.

For the past few months, I’ve been using this this Apple compatible Kraft joystick, and while it works, I’ve never liked the feel or the layout of the buttons. The actual joystick itself feels weird, and the button on top of the joystick isn’t very comfortable.

So, lucky day; last week I ran across a different Kraft joystick on eBay.

It was listed as “untested,” but it arrived earlier this week and works great. The first game I tested it out on was Lode Runner. On the Commodore 64 version of Lode Runner, because you only have one “dig” button, you have to be facing the direction you wish to dig. On the Apple II version, one button digs left and the other one digs right.

My Apple IIe is now happy. Between the CFFA3000, a floppy drive (that allows me to transfer physical disks to disk images and back) and a working joystick, all is good.