Commodore VG-200AQ

Commodore made its first Atari compatible controller in the early 1980s, and it was followed by a few other original designs. In Finland, however, a large variety of controllers were sold under the Commodore name – or at least an affiliation thereto. Timo Eskeli, who worked as a product manager for PCI-Data, the Finnish importer of Commodore products, told Janne Sirén in an interview in issue 2022.3 of Skrolli magazine that controllers were bought “from the Far East by the container”. Then, packaging was designed for them and approved by Commodore; however, Commodore’s management at the time, who were also interviewed in the same article, are not quite sure who approved the packaging or whether any royalties should have been paid.

Nevertheless, the “flight controller” in the glass case, commonly known as the Beeshu Zoomer, was occasionally sold in Finland as the Commodore VG-5600. However, the most common of the “Commodore” controllers in the late 1980s is the VG-200AQ, shown here, which was marketed in the UK as the Cheetah Mach 1, for example. As a product, it is positioned in the lower middle class and includes open microswitches similarly to the QuickShot II Turbo, for example. Other models linked to the Commodore brand included the VG-115 (cheap basic controller with membrane switches) and the VG-250 (which had both Commodore and Amiga branded versions, the latter being called VG-250AM). Both are on display in the glass case.