Why Should It Take Two Hands To Play Videogames?

Thanks to StatePaper.com for their article discussing a Nebraska radio talk show host's plans to create a one-handed game controller. The host, Mike Reed, "has learned to play many of the games using a controller with only one hand", following an accident which happened when "an acquaintance at a party pointed a loaded .410-caliber shotgun at Reed [and fired]", leaving him with very limited use of his right arm. He says that "many games are impossible to play one-handed", and has "designed a dual-motion game controller that consolidates all movement, button response and directional function into a one-handed video game controller", although he and his partners "haven't built a prototype yet." In the meantime, are there any existing console controllers that might work for those only using one hand?

Comments

oh dear lord

[Frac]

There's a brain overload from the amount of jokes you can make from this...

Flight Simulators

[beders]

Sticks designed for flight sims seems to have most if not all of the buttons accessable to one hand, though this tends to be the right hand (I am left handed and notice).

Remapping the keys and clamping it to a flat surface should help too.

I would have thought a gameboy would work, with the pad and buttons close together, I'm sure someone else with a better knowledge of them could suggest a few

Arcade Games

[TheRedHorse]

Many Arcade games could be easily modified to be used with one hand since they only featured a control stick and an action button. Simply put the button on top of the control stick, voila, a one handed controller.

But with modern day games, the closest you'd come to a one hand remote would be something like a remote control, because there are so many buttons on your Xbox/PS2/Gamecube controller.

Re:Arcade Games

[Quarters]

The button was made separate to allow for the player to have a very fast rate of fire. You can't move a joystick and repeatedly press your thumb on a top button as efficiently as you can move the stick with one hand and slap the button with your other hand.

Your thumb would get very tired very quickly, too. Zaxxon did it that way, yes, but it did not require the frenetic firing rate of most arcade games.

Which games?

[iainl]

As long as you choose to use an automatic, driving wheels with pedals aren't going to be just fine with one hand.

Super Monkey Ball (and, lets face it, gaming doesn't get much better than the mighty Expert 7) just demands one analogue pad and no buttons during play, so that isn't a problem. Same with its inspiration, Marble Madness.

Many, perhaps most, things on PC should be reasonably playable with the Microsoft Strategic Commander, as it has three analogue axes and a myriad of buttons. Flight sticks offer much the same.

There are always going to be some games that require both hands though, and that is probably only right. Basketball would be pretty difficult to play one-handed as well, but we don't get rid of that. Ensuring games are playable by as many as possible is a good thing, but as a designer you shouldn't break the game just to ensure this.

News

[Anonymous Coward]

In related news:
"TECMO INC. release one handed XBOX controller for Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball."

Re:One Handed PSOne Controller

[cgenman]

It was actually released by ASCII, as a successor to the somewhat more successful SNES single-hand controller. Both were terrible to use.

The controllers were just overloaded with buttons. You had a D-Pad in the center, 4 buttons surrounding it, 2 on the underside, and a pad for L1R1L2R2SelectStart thrown in below. It was impossible to use the D-pad and any of the buttons at the same time except for the underside two because you were only using one digit, and even then you were busy using those fingers underneath to hold the controller. Anything involving action or timing was impossible to do. Most RPG's were more enjoyable with a traditional controller, but for those without that luxury it must have been nice.

I actually gave mine to a colleague with one arm. He was happy to get it, but he recognized the limitations. If you really want to make a controller for disabled people, use the feet. It would be rather easy to handle forward / back / left / right with your feet, and two analog sticks could be used concurrently. Mount 4 thumb buttons on the end of a cylinder and L1 R1 L2 R2 on the length, with a hand strap to hold it all together, and you're good to go. The feet are vastly underutilized in gaming, relegated to simple acceleration / deceleration, but they are capable of far more than that.

Nintendo had a controller at one point where the joystick was moved with the mouth, sucking counted as an A, and blowing as a B. Because today's controllers were built to the full capacity of both hands, it is somewhat futile to attempt to condense that down without looking to other input sources.

You've got the appendages. Use them.