The Joystick That Ate Los Angeles

Posted by Gary Hodges at 1:14 PM Apr 18, 2008

Last night, LA gallery Machine Project hosted an event where guests could try their hand at a projected, wall-sized game of Donkey Kong, Missle Command or Pac-Man using a similarly-scaled (i.e., massive) Atari 2600 joystick.

According to Machine Project’s website, the joystick – built by artist-slash-mad genius Jason Torchinsky – is 15 times normal scale, making it about 5 feet tall and all but impossible to work on your own. This results in team efforts as seen below, where you work the bottom part while your girlfriend works the actual shaft... um… what was I talking about?

Torchinsky seems pleased by how well the evening went, albeit harried. He did express relief, though, that Joystick Division’s Chris Ward didn’t attend the event, because “the massive woody he would’ve popped seeing a wall-sized Pac-Man game might have stolen the joystick’s thunder.” No, not a real quote.

You can read Mark Maurer’s full account of the event at his LA Weekly blog HERE.

What version is this? Donkey Kong's on the wrong side.

As of press time, the World’s Largest Ball of Twine had not returned our calls for comment.