The 5200 Supersystem was a fantastic game system.  Atari took their existing 8-bit chipset which was used in Atari's home computers and basically turned an Atari 400 computer into a sleek black game machine that could play the best games titles around.   

Atari also went a step further and designed the ultimate joystick.   Featuring such innovative features as putting START, PAUSE and RESET right onto the controller, the gamer had complete control at the palm of their hand.    Also to fire back at Mattel Intellivision that continued to advertise how its joypads were far more accurate then the Atari 8-way joysticks for the Atari 2600 (Model CX-40), Atari engineers lead by Craig Asher who was in charge of designing many of Atari's hand controllers, designed the Atari 5200  joystick with a revolutionary speed sensitive 360 degree control system, also it was loaded (perhaps overloaded) with an assortment of control buttons.   

PriPrior to the 5200's launch, many engineers petitioned Atari's management not to release the 5200 (many referred to the joysticks as jokesticks) with its current version of analog controllers but Atari under pressure from Intellivision and the newly released Colecovision moved to use the joysticks as the were.   The joysticks are excellent for games like SpaceDungeon and Centipede and Missile Command, but try to play Pac Man or any other game that needed precise 4 way control with the ability for the joystick to reset back to neutral and gamer found themselves fustrated with difficult gameplay.   Apparently a newer lower cost version of the 5200 joysticks were in the works.   Gone was the rubber hood which wore away within hours and added were spring loaded potentiometers. 

While videogaming history seems to want to label the Atari 5200 with the worst controllers, this is not necessarily true.    The Colecovision controllers were painful and difficult to use for long periods of gameplay and while not suffering from the non self-centering issue as with the 5200 controller, the use of the joystick on its controller presented its own difficulty in use as well as the indented and strong springed fire buttons of the Colecovision controller.

  While rummaging through a bag full of 5200 joysticks which came to the Atari through a contact from one of Atari's 5200 former engineers  just such an animal showed up from Atari's design labs.   A 5200 joystick which works FANTASTIC on games such as Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man and Mountain King.     Atari engineers also were working on a digital joystick and a 5200 arcade joystick as well.