I searched and didn't see this mentioned here yet so thought I would toss this out there...
Curt Vendel is almost done with the XM modules and slated to be shipping them soon. In the meantime he has also created some new arcade style controllers for the 7800 and 2600. He started offering these around the middle of this past December. I ordered one of these and thought I would share my thoughts and provide some pics for others to see and get an idea about them. They come in both a left handed or right handed configuration on the joystick placement.
I'm a right handed person, however, I've always been used to arcade style controllers and thus I ordered the left handed version controller. In fact, the exact left handed controller that was sent to me is the one that is shown in the pic of both controller types that curt posted on the AA forums.
Control wise it feels really good and everything responded exactly as I needed it to. It is a bit more clicky than I would like in that it is loud when using it. Same for the buttons and I've been toying with the idea of perhaps putting leaf switch versions into mine.
Speaking of the buttons, they feel nice but are reversed on mine. That is when using the 7800 diagnostic Utility in the Joystick test, Button 1 on the left is actually button 2 on my controller and vice versa. So it could be awkward to use if you are used to the buttons being mapped differently. I might change these at a later time to match what I'm more used to.
The paddle controller works well or at least it did for the game of Steeplechase I was testing it with. On mine the On position is actually 7800 controller mode and the off position is Paddle mode. But I did find it odd that when using the Joystick test in the Diag utility, that the paddle has ZERO response on the other inputs variables and I'm used to see number values move across when using standard paddles in the ports for testing before. But the paddle does indeed work.
Also an odd quirk to be aware of if you should you get one of these, is that on mine at least, it doesn't matter which position the switch is in, but if you move the paddle to the far right clockwise, it will always activate button 2. So in the game Commando for instance, if I had the paddle all the way to the right, then I would be tossing grenades constantly one after the other until they were depleted. So if you find odd button 2 behavior, you might check that you haven't moved the paddle knob all the way clockwise.
I've included some pics of my controller in this post and of the inside so those asking about the circuit on how the switch controls the paddle lines..etc could have a better idea on how that is being done.
Here is the original forum link over at AA regarding when these were announced and additional details from Curt about them:
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/285914-new-desktop-arcade-controllers/page-1#entry4175100