Science Fair Project Encyclopedia Paddle (game controller) A
paddle is a game controller with a round wheel and one or more
fire buttons, where the wheel is typically used to control
movement of the player object along one axis of the video
screen. How it works: The paddle wheel is usually mechanically
coupled to a potentiometer, so as to generate an output voltage
level varying with the wheel's angle relative to a start
position. The first successful video game console, the Atari
2600, used paddles for several of its games, as did early home
computers such as the Commodore VIC-20. Some famous video games
using paddles are Pong, Breakout, and Night Driver. The reason
for the name paddles for this type of game controller is that
the first game that used it, Pong, was a (somewhat crude, but
pioneering) video game simulation of table tennis, whose
racquets are commonly called paddles. Even though the simulated
paddles appeared on-screen (as small vertical line segments), it
was the hand controllers used to move