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I stumbled upon this video game controller "family tree". http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/ Not that interesting, but relevant.

First time I ever saw a pad was on the Intellivision... Those discs felt pretty comfortable.

Ever since the PS2 (that seems to be the watershed for me), the damn things have become stupidly unwieldy. I hate the analogue sticks on the PS2 Dual Shock. Not per se, but they just make the whole thing so cramped. As for shoulder buttons... one each side is permissable, but what idiot decided TWO could fit on there comfortably? The damn thing feels more like a chinese finger-trap than a fun controller.

I also don't like the 4-button diamond layout that started with the SNES controller and has persisted. The thumb has one comfortable axis to play with and keep uniform button-pressing movement - side to side. Thus the three-buttons-in-a-row structure is far better.

Certainly large amounts of buttons are more easily accessible on arcade games (I've never had a problem with Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, etc), but as you're using your fingers, palm-down to access them, that's far better than trying to hit 4 - or even 6! As per the Saturn for instance - with one thumb.

I play PC games more than console games, so I'm familiar with using a good 15-20 buttons to play Counter strike, World of Warcraft, what have you - but the layout of a keyboard is so much better for that than a cramp-inducing controller. It's not the complexity of what's involved, but the fact that your most useful digits are tucked away gripping the controller, and you're expected to hit 12 buttons and 3 directional pads/sticks with your two thumbs that is dumb.

Having said that, I love the Wiimote. Aside from the jumping-about-waving aspect, its design limits you by necessity to not using more than 2-3 buttons, which is great. The Nunchuk could use one mess "shoulder button", but it's forgivable.

There is a cute "family tree" of controllers available here: http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/

http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/detail/nes_m ax.html

Amazing, great form factor, and turbo buttons.

I'm just saying that Sony tried to copy the Wiimote, but they simply 'don't get it'.

I believe you'd agree that Sony's engineers are competent enough to understand the capability of the wiimote right? So when you say 'they don't get it', I assume you mean they didn't understand that people want innovative game play. But innovative games can also be achieved from various area. For example, increasing the processing power by 35-40 folds would allow the developer to do so much more in the software side, computer vision though the EyeToy etc. While the sixaxis represents an evolution, a new controller like wiimote OTOH would be like a revolution from the past. It appear to me that havng 3D position sensing would make sense only with the new form factor of the nunchuck and wiimote. Reportedly Nintendo has to come up with this classic wii controller for playing traditional games. I'd think Sony is like adopting a 'if things ain't broken, don't fix it.', 'wait and see' attitute. This new design and concept of the wiimote is unique and still need to be proven in the market place. When it prove itself, history tell me that the competitors will start to immitate it. Depending on how successful it is, the competitors will either add immitation as optional controller or simply adopt it.

I agree that Sony added the tilt motion sensing feature in response to the wiimote controller, but it is still basically a conventional controller. Wiimote controller is a far more drastic change from its predecessor. Besides the tilt sensing, its form consisting of the nunchuck and remote controller style wiimote, and its ability to sense 3D position are two of the most significant changes. If you look at the family tree of controllers, this change is as significant as, if not more than, from the joy stick to the controller using directional pad. I'd say the analog stick is sorta thumb controlled joystick, so the wiimote's new form factor and 3D position sensing are truly unique. Although tilt sensing also appear to be new feature introduced by both sixaxis and wiimote, the difference between sixaxis and wiimote, quoting someone else, is that motion sensing is an option on sixaxis, but it is a requirement on wiimote. It remain to be seen whether the competitors will copy the unique changes introduced by wiimote.

I think you are confused about what happenned to Commodore (by which, I assume you mean the Amiga line). The Amiga always had superior 2D graphics, from the start in 1985. The PC wasn't able to touch it until about 1993 or 1994, when VGA cards became ubiquitous in the PC scene. Even then, you were limited compared to what the Amiga could do, because the VGA card was essentially a frame buffer - any and all effects had to be handled by the CPU. The Amiga had the advantage of a parallel chipset - consisting of chips for graphic manipulations (mainly the blitter), chips for sound (Amiga had the best sound - 4 channel FM stereo as well as digital sample playback - since 1985), and the CPU. Also, there were two different types of RAM in the Amiga - regular and something known as "Fast" RAM. Fast RAM was typically used for graphics and sound, while the other RAM was used for the OS. The blitter allowed for some weird and wacky things, like having two different frequency screens overlayed on top of each other. Plus, the Amiga also had planar graphics (as opposed to the scalar architecture of VGA), which also allowed for some interesting effects.

With all that said, though, that isn't what led to the PC outpacing the Amiga (I doubt it was cause for the downfall of Commodore - I blame that on mismanagement of the company and bad marketing of their products) - what led to that was two fold: not using the fastest and greatest Motorola 68xxx processors for their machines (and not making it easy to upgrade to a faster processor), and not pricing the machines aggressively enough to compete with the PC. Sure, there were third party CPU and RAM upgrades available, but the whole Amiga line, both OEM and third-party hardware, was an expensive beast.

At the time (ie, 1993-1995), the Amiga 1200, 600, and 4000 were the real Amiga line. Unfortunately, only the 4000 had the horsepower to be really effective for 3D games, but not many people owned them. So, software publishers targetted most games and such for the 1200 and 600 (which was really a strange form of the 500 - it didn't have the AGA chipset). When Wolfenstein 3D came out on the PC, it stunned a lot of people, myself included. But don't kid yourself: Wolfenstein 3D was a 2D game at heart - for that matter, so was Doom, and Doom 2. Arguably, Quake was "2D" as well (from the standpoint that it didn't have hardware accellerated 3D graphics), but it doesn't count since the graphics were really 3D, just rendered in software. The first three games, though, all used a form of graphic rendering called "raycasting", which was a very ingenious method combining the Bresenham algorithm and sprite scaling to simulate a 3D rendered world, very quickly, using very optimized assembly code.

The Amiga certainly had the horsepower to render such a world - indeed, shortly after Wolfenstein 3D stunned the world, other programmers figured out the "tricks" and the Amiga got its share of raycast games - not as many as the PC world (which may have been a good thing), but there were a few nice ones made. What really changed is that it proved the PC capable of doing some really nice graphic effects. The capability was there all along (in both the Amiga and the PC, mind you), probably since the days of the Amiga 1000 and PCs with CGA graphics - I say this because a guy named John Kowalski proved you can get a 2 MHz 8-bit machine to do raycasting (the TRS-80 Color Computer 3 - 320x200 16 color mode), along with a host of other wierd and wild stunts that were absolutely unheard of back in the heyday of the CoCo 3 (ie, 1987-1990 or so). From this, another individual used his talent (Nickolas Marentes) to create a game based off the Gloom-3D code, called Gate Crasher. Yes - both of these projects came out around 19

"So will the ps3 come with a triple-shock controller?"

They need the Sega Master System Controller. Square edges = owww after sustained gaming, and the one-piece D-pad made controlling extra challenging.

A much better examination of the evoltuion of the controller is Sock Master's Video Game Controller Family Tree (http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/). Instead of just hilighting the heavyweights like the story article does (what, no Master System controllers? What about the original Genesis controller?), Sock Master's chart is more diverse, showing who borrowed what from who.

A nice VG controller "family tree": http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/

Previous Slashdot blurbs on the subject of controller evolution:

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/09/ 1559252
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/14/ 068200

I find that Sock Master's Video Game Controller Family Tree -- http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/ -- is more informative...

As far as whether there was anything else interesting you could do with OS-9, the answer is "yes" - if you had an assembler, a C compiler or BASIC-09, plus Multi-Vue (windowing). I mean, look at (just a few) of the CoCo 3 games that were made for OS-9: Koronis Rift, Sub Battle (IIRC), King's Quest III - unfortunately, only the really "hardcore" users of the CoCo ever went there...

I don't think it had so much to do with the complexity of OS-9 vs DECB, but rather the expense. Back in the day, to have a reasonable OS-9 system on the CoCo 3 required at minimum 512K and two floppy drives - an easy outlay of well over $500.00, and that is just for hardware. The license costs for OS-9, Multi-Vue, and BASIC-09 could easily bring that total to over $1000.00. If you wanted to get the best value of OS-9, you wanted to either upgrade RAM to 1 or 2 MB with third-party boards (Tandy only officially supported 512K), and add a hard drive (which back then, a 10-20 MB drive was insanely priced). Just too much money for what was, really, a hobby system.

Today, it has gotten much cheaper, but unfortunately there isn't any demand - the CoCo 3 has long been discontinued, and nobody has made a replacement (not that one is really needed). Nostalgic owners of the CoCo, people who want to play the old games, and those who have just a basic few needs for a computer - can emulate the CoCo 2 and 3 almost perfectly via a variety of emulators, most notable of which is the MESS system (put MESS and MAME on a fairly recent PC with TV-Out, and enough ROM images, and you can the dream system of yesteryear). OS-9 has been "replicated" via NitrOS9 (and even made better in some respects), though there isn't a replacement (AFAIK) for Multi-Vue. It will even run on original hardware (if you have it or can find it). Also, for more goodness, recent hardware and peripherals continue to be made - see the Cloud-9 site. I have also heard "rumblings" that a USB interface is in the works as well. Lastly, for other goodness, there is Sockmaster's site (he is the CoCo 3 graphics wizard) and the CoCo3.com site.

Is the CoCo dead? Yes and no. I would say it "languishes" along much like the C=64, Apple IIe, Amiga and a ton of other "old" machines. It will probably have a following for a long while. I intend to keep mine running and I play with it now and again. I have already set up an emulation box and have transferred all (well, a vast majority - some were unreadable) of my old floppies to CD. I was also instrumental in helping to get Diecom's "Gates of Delerium" (a clone of Ultima) restored and running under emulation (I was like one of seeming three people who owned it, and my copy was degrading), as well as helping to get Dave Dies to formally release the old software of Diecom to public domain (score another point for abandonware rescue!). Unfortunately, no one has yet put the ZIP file of GofD up - I have tried to get Curtis Boyle to do it, sent it to him with documentation from Dave Dies about the release - but he hasn't put it up yet (though he has a great repository of old CoCo software)...

Maybe you *should* pull that CoCo down from the attic, if you still have it. Dust it off (clean it good inside and out before powering it up if it has been sitting long - be careful with the keyboard ribbon cable connection, though, as you take the case apart), do some searching on the internet (there are a lot of CoCo and CoCo emulation sites), then if you are interested, let me know and I will point you to the CoCo mailing list (unless you find it yourself - I think you can get to it from the CoCo3.com site). It is a fun list, with a great

...the "traditional controller type" was itself basically invented by Nintendo, as a radical departure from the then-traditional joystick.

I'll concede that Nintendo has designed a lot of really good controllers that have been widely imitated. But until now, each new design has been a simple refinement of previous designs.

...the "traditional controller type" was itself basically invented by Nintendo, as a radical departure from the then-traditional joystick.

I'll concede that Nintendo has designed a lot of really good controllers that have been widely imitated. But until now, each new design has been a simple refinement of previous designs.

Like it or not, and regardless of what you think of their consoles, Nintendo has been responsible for every single important controller innovation for the last 25 years.

While perhaps not of the magnitude of the D-pad, Sega was first with analog triggers (Saturn controller). They've since been copied by the xbox and the Gamecube. In some games shoulder buttons are just as good, but in other games nothing beats triggers.

I just stumbled upon this page which has a "family tree" of game controllers. Interesting to browse and somewhat nostalgic.

The Revolution controller intrigues me, but I'm undecided if it's going to be that great. I'll have to try it to see. I really hope it feels better than the Gamecube controller. Button-layout opinions aside, Nintendo's controllers have felt cheap to me ever since N64. Holding a PS or xbox controller, they feel more substantial... better made, to me. My Dreamcast controllers feel rather cheap as well.

Here's a link to a fairly comprehensive video game controller family tree (complete with thumbnails).

http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/

The article just seemed a little too verbal when a good summary graphic could have guided readers that might not have a clue about some of those systems.

Although the article gets the company right, they've messed up on which system introduced analog triggers. It wasn't the Dreamcast that first featured them, rather it was the Saturn's 3D control pad (released in response to Nintendo's unveiling of the N64 controller) that first did.

Actually, that's one thing I always find odd. No one ever seems to remember that beast, prefering to talk about the Dreamcast's controller (which was essentially the same thing with 2 fewer face buttons and the VMU slots) instead.

(And, as a note: I, for one, liked the Dreamcast's controller. Well, except for the D-pad, which I'll still complain about whenever I dig the system out.)

Found it. Controller family tree.

You should check out the rest of the Controller Family Tree (sorry, Mr. Sock Master) it's pretty neat.

You should check out the rest of the Controller Family Tree (sorry, Mr. Sock Master) it's pretty neat.

You should check out the rest of the Controller Family Tree (sorry, Mr. Sock Master) it's pretty neat.

This site shows a speculated tree of evolution of game controllers.

It is indeed evolutionary, with each generation resembling the previous one, but a bit different.

Perhaps this statement from that site might clear up your mind - "In response to the revolutionary Nintendo 64 controller, Sony retooled their own controller to make it more suitable for the future of 3D gaming.

Instead of adding one analog thumb stick like on the Nintendo 64's controller, Sony added two to theirs. I suspect this was mainly in order to maintain the controller's symmetry as there was no convenient location to add just one. The "analog" button was added to enable or disable the thumb sticks - a way to retain compatibility with previous games.

Sony also added an innovation of their own in the form of a push-button within each thumb stick. The sticks click when pushed in, essentially creating the equivalent of two additional shoulder buttons. Lastly, Sony incorporated two vibration motors within the controller's shell - adding a built-in equivalent to Nintendo 64's Rumble Pak."

Perhaps this statement from that site might clear up your mind - "In response to the revolutionary Nintendo 64 controller, Sony retooled their own controller to make it more suitable for the future of 3D gaming.

Instead of adding one analog thumb stick like on the Nintendo 64's controller, Sony added two to theirs. I suspect this was mainly in order to maintain the controller's symmetry as there was no convenient location to add just one. The "analog" button was added to enable or disable the thumb sticks - a way to retain compatibility with previous games.

Sony also added an innovation of their own in the form of a push-button within each thumb stick. The sticks click when pushed in, essentially creating the equivalent of two additional shoulder buttons. Lastly, Sony incorporated two vibration motors within the controller's shell - adding a built-in equivalent to Nintendo 64's Rumble Pak."

Likely just dropping it in favor of the analog stick. Anyone remember the nes max controller? It had a, well, look at the picture. I hated it and would always use the outer black edge to control instead of the moveable thumb pad thing. I never used the dpad on my gamecube controller, but part of that is because I feel they made it too small. The xbox and ps2 ones have a better feel. Anyhow, I guess the only use left for the ol' dpad is on a belt buckle

6809 combined with the MMU system in the CoCo3 made for a very nice little computer.

Maybe the CoCo 4 could! Really, someone's put some serious thought into it - three CPUs even: The CoCo 4 - Some Ideas

We had one in the TI world. The TI-99/4A had a TMS 9900 16-bit processor (in *1979*, boys and girls), but back then, memory was super-expensive. The ROM, video processor and TMS9901 coontroller were on the 16 bit bus, everything else was on a kludged together 8-bit bus... including the RAM.

A popular TI hack was to solder 8 bit static RAMs piggybacked over the 2x8bit ROMs which resided on the 16 bit bus. A little address decode logic (piggyback some 74xx chips onto some other ICs, and a little point to point wiring) and you had a TI-99/4A with full 16-bit memory. Instant speed increase of over 40%. And because of the bus bottleneck and the *really slow* doubly-interpreted BASIC, those machines desperately needed speed upgrades. Running object code instead of BASIC, on a TI with that upgrade, was lightning fast.

And I thought that was an impressive TI hack until I saw this. My God, that looks like a bank of 72 pin SIMMs in a TRS-80.

So you think you are old? ....I'm not old (26) but HD didn't exists on the consumer market when I started. ....my first real personal computer was an Apple II. and then the macintosh. Anyway, just remember how much application you could put on a single 800k floppy.

TI-99/4A [99er.net]! :) I had a 5.25" single-sided single-density floppy disk drive, with a whopping 90k per diskette.

Floppy drives (and both Apple and TI hardware) were for wusses. Real men used Scotch brand cassette tapes with the "data recorders" on the radically new and innovative VIC-20 system. We ruled, not like those johnny-come-lately scum with their Radio Shack Color Computers. (Sorry to have to mention the members of that particular psycho cult; if you want to revisit the horror, see the web site of the kookoo CoCo High Priest. The best link on that page is about an innovative 4 MHz acceleration project they are putting together. I'm not kidding.)