The Ergonomics of Controllers

Rahul Choudhury writes "Over the years, the controller device we use as our extra limb into the world of gaming has evolved from joystick to d-pad, analogue control, and touchscreen. Gamingredients investigated the pros and cons of a variety of controllers from Colecovision to Xbox (and expressed their scores in flavours of coffee)."

Comments

New gen controllers

[phoenix.bam!]

I need a wireless controller that uses rechargable batteries. The next generation part is that the controller recharges off sweat. What a waste to continually wipe away all that sweet sweet sweat when the controller can be sucking it up and letting me game as long as my eyes can stay open.

Powerglove

[TD-2779]

No mention of the powerglove? That was about the only exercise my right arm got until puberty.

Re:Powerglove

[FriedTurkey]

According to the Wizard the Powerglove is "Bad".

He's wrong about the Dual Shock 2

[metamatic]

The fire buttons on the Dual Shock 2 are actually a minor masterpiece of ergonomics.

The circle button is the one next to the circular right edge of the joystick. The square button is the one next to the square center section. The triangle button points up. So all the symbols relate to the physical feel of the joystick in your hands, without looking at it, with the sole exception of "X" which I don't find hard to remember.

On the other hand, the GameCube controller does what he suggests, and labels each button with a letter. And as a result, every time a game tells me to push "X" or "Y" I have to pause, look down at the controller, and hunt for the symbols.

I dunno, maybe "X" and "Y" make sense to people who are long time Nintendo zea^H^H^Hfans, but I can't deal with it at all.

At the same time, he misses the really big problem with the Dual Shock 2, which is that the L1 and R1 buttons are impossible to keep fingers on comfortably while using the analog sticks. With my thumbs on the analog controls, my hands raise up and my trigger fingers naturally slide down to L2 and R2.

I did see a third party joystick which had L1 and R1 lower, and L2 and R2 banked slightly behind them, so that the natural grip was to have all four shoulder buttons under fingers, and thumbs on the analog sticks. Unfortunately, my experience of third party joysticks has been pretty negative.