Exergaming Emulation II: Foot Craz (Atari 2600)

This is the second in a series of posts on pre-Wii retro exergaming under emulation, using newer (and easier to obtain) peripherals, while trying to preserve as much of the intended challenge. The previous post is here.

The Foot Craz was a circa 1983 mat-style controller for the Atari 2600 from Exus Corporation, apparently the very first mat-style controller, before the Power Pad for the NES. It had five buttons (one website says they were embedded microswitches). There were two games: Video Reflex and Video Jogger.

Video Reflex was pretty terrible. The screen showed colored rectangles, and when a bug appeared on one of them, you had to stomp on the corresponding mat button. Either out of bad UI design or for added challenge, the rectangles on the screen are not arranged in anything like the order on the mat itself.

Video Jogger is a simple jogging game with some twists that add depth over just jogging in place and make the game somewhat satisfying. You're a smiley face moving around a track, but there are two tracks, a slower and a faster one, and each track has a pacer circle moving on it. When the pacer is green, you may overtake it for extra points. When the pacer is brownish red, you need to avoid touching it. At any point, you can teleport to the other track, and most the depth of the game comes from this, as it lets you get around and pursue pacers more effectively.

The simplest way to play the games these days under emulation is with a USB Dance Dance Revolution mat, which can be bought on Amazon or ebay. I have Wii DDR mats with a home-made USB adapter, but I assume it will be very similar with a commercial USB-based solution. I will focus on Video Jogger, because Video Reflex is not worth it in my opinion.

• USB DDR pad
• Emulator with ROM (it's your responsibility to ensure legality, whether by ripping your own or fair use, or by using archive.org's Console Living Room if it's legal in your country)

The Atari 2600 saw the Foot Craz pad as a joystick with the following mappings:

• Foot Craz top (green): joystick button
• Foot Craz far left (red): joystick left
• Foot Craz mid left (blue): joystick up
• Foot Craz mid right (orange): joystick down
• Foot Craz far right (yellow): joystick right

You run on the mid left and mid right buttons. Far left takes you to the bottom track and far right takes you to the top track.

I recommend these bindings in your Atari 2600 emulator:

• DDR pad top-left = Atari joystick up = Foot Craz mid left (blue)
• DDR pad top-center = Atari joystick down = Foot Craz mid right (orange)
• DDR pad top-right = Atari joystick right = Foot Craz far right (yellow)
• DDR pad right = Atari joystick left = Foot Craz far left (red)
• DDR pad down = Atari joystick button = Foot Craz top (green)

This way you can run on the DDR pad top-left and top-center buttons, and teleport to a track by tapping the right foot on the DDR pad's top-right or right. These mappings are designed so you don't accidentally tap the change-track.

If you like, you can also map the Atari reset button to the start button on the pad. Video Jogger starts with the reset button, and I don't think the select button does anything.

Different Atari emulators have different ways of binding. The next step will describe how to do the binding using Archive.org's emulator.

You can play Video Jogger in a web browser on archive.org.

1. Ensure that your country's copyright laws allow you to play the archived games on archive.org. I am not a lawyer. In the US, this article on orphan works (Exus Corporation does not appear to exist any more) may be relevant.
2. Connect your DDR pad to your computer's USB port.
3. Go to the Video Jogger website.
4. Step on a bunch of buttons on your DDR to get the pad recognized
5. Click on the big play button on the website.
6. Press TAB.
7. Select INPUT (THIS MACHINE). (E.g., press DOWN and ENTER.)
8. Make sure that each of the P1 buttons lists a Joy option. If not, your pad was not recognized. Go back to step 2.
9. Select each of the P1 lines, press ENTER, and then step on the DDR pad button you want to go with that.
10. If you want, map the RESET button, too.
11. Press TAB to get back to the game.

For convenient reference, here are the bindings I suggest:

• P1 Up: DDR pad top-left
• P1 Down: DDR pad top-center
• P1 Left: DDR pad right
• P1 Right: DDR pad top-right

Then press whatever you mapped the RESET button to (MAME default is the 2 keyboard button) and start running on top-left and top-center.