Having Atari trouble!

So I'm new to the Atari. I recently bought one with a bunch of games for it. When I play Pac-man or E.T, everything works perfectly fine. However when I seem to play other joystick games like Asteroids, my joystick is unresponsive. It's the same for few other games and only happens with SOME joystick related games. I have 3 copies of asteroids so I'm assuming it's not the games themselves. Any advice?

Edit: None of the Asteroid games work with the joystics, and I have three different joysticks.