Atari video game joystick, 9-foot-tall, sets world record for being the largest

A 9-foot-tall (2.7-meter-tall) video game joystick made of wood, rubber, and steel has been registered as the world’s tallest in the Guinness World Records 2022. In 2006, Dartmouth College professor Mary Flanagan designed the huge controller, which is roughly 14 times the size of a typical Atari controller, to commemorate her childhood memories of “maniacally” playing the Atari 2600 video games.

She also wanted to examine what happens when a single-player game is turned into a multiplayer game.

playing vintage Atari games such as “Centipede” and “Breakout” requires at least two persons to control the joystick and push the button.

“To have this common pop culture artefact just erupt in the middle of a space and allow people to play something familiar, yet not familiar, was exciting,” Flanagan told News18. She is an artist and the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities at Dartmouth.

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The joystick is now part of the permanent collection of the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, after touring Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Pigs are skilled at playing video games, according to an unrelated incident. What is the most unique thing pigs can come up with? They seem to be able to play video games! Scientists have taught four pigs, Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony, and Ivory, how to move an arcade-style joystick, enabling them to play video games.

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The fact that the animals were able to understand the link between the joystick and the video games has astonished scientists from Purdue University in Indiana, USA, who were part of the experiment.

The researchers rewarded the animals with food pellets every time they completed a stage, describing it as a “no small feat.” Another noteworthy observation made by the researchers was that the pigs continued to play even after the food rewards had expired, which the former believed was due to a need for social contact, which was aided by some encouraging words from the researchers.