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Evolution of Video Game Controllers
Ant writes "This Revolution Advanced article takes a look at the evolution of controllers from the days of Atari 2600 to Nintendo Revolution." Tragically the Intellivision controller is missing. But oh the nostalgia.
game controllers really WERE intelligently designed!
Is it just me or does the Nintendo Revolution controller kinda resemble the Atari 5200 controller, at least in concept. We've come a long way indeed.
The controllers went, in my mind, from joystick to gamepad... is this an incorrect viewpoint?
Is it too much to ask to use the Coral Cache in article links?? .nyud.net:8090 isn't that complicated...
I cannot really say that its eveolution, to me its probably just a hotch potch, with the same atari controller with more buttons on the same controller.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
but I missed the first one. This actually reminded me of my genesis six-button controller, which was one of my favorite pads before analog got big. The only issue I had with it was the edges on the d-pad would irritate the callouses that my thumbs had formed from the nes pad (overall winner in my book). I'm hoping that when they start coming out with revolution controller add-ons (to do fighters, etc), it's similar to either the genesis pad, or the Dreamcast controller...the grip just seemed right on that.
How Jaded Are You?
The Intellivision controller was this stupid little disk. Why are you crying over its exclusion, ffs?! Now Colecovision's Super Action Controllers were wonders to behold!
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
I have the PS2 port of some games, but it just isn't the same
Xaotik Designs
I've played lots of gaming platforms and I have to say that, I perfer the original Nintendo controller it was very simple to use, almost an extension of my body while I as playing very little thought had to be done reguarding what buttons to push, also it had alot of control. nowadays you have 1 joy stick that control the camera view and another that control the direction your character is heading, then you have and about 8 - 12 more button for more control but you have to consentrate more on what button you pushing... a big differant from the day is arrow keys, start select, and those great A and B buttons
There are many systems' controllers missing from that list; no Colecovision, Jaquar, Tubografx 16, or any handheld.
For something that talks about the "evolution" of controllers, they could of at least listed paddles and light guns; two staples of controllers from yesteryear.
This isn't complete by a long shot and it certainly isn't front page worthy.
This article skips an awful lot of consoles. Where the heck is the Atari Jaguar controller? Or the Atari 7800 for that matter? Colecovision and Intellivision are also MIA, though their controllers don't look all that different from other systems of their era.
We're missing the TurboGrafx 16, the Neo-Geo, the Sega Master System... and quite a few others.
The original Playstation controller, it fit my hand, and I found it intuitive. I found it so nice I bought a PC version from Gravis
SNES controller - again I liked the fit of the unit.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
A nice VG controller "family tree": http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/
/ 1559252/ 068200
Previous Slashdot blurbs on the subject of controller evolution:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/09
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/14
rooooar
The article sure does a time-warp and goes directly from Atari to NES. What about the multiple variations of Colecovision controllers and Intellivision controllers?
The ColecoVision came out the same year, was much more successful, and its controllers were far better than the 5200 imo. The ability to template cards made those 12 buttons a lot less imposing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colecovision
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Remember the Commodore 64 joystick? It was basically the Atari 2600 joystick but with a triangular "stick". The button was mouted in the center (instead of off to the side) making you reach around further to push it. This thing had carpal tunnel written all over it! My hands would ache after just a few minutes of playing. I think I have permanant scars from that thing- or maybe those are from that other hand/eye coordination building technique I learned a year or two later.... Image available at http://www.geocities.com/big_al_1401/c64joy.jpg
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
Not a "revolution". A revolution would maybe be a HID you plug into your brain. But as long as controller means "take it into your hand and manipulate it with your fingers", it's still the same old thing.
... well, what other console do you want to buy, hmm?
Keyboard, mouse, joystick, gamepad, whatever. The idea is to make the machine do what I want it to do. How this is accomplished, and which way is "best" is determined by the application, not the input device. The input device is the necessary evil to make the machine do my bidding.
In fact, how is the revolution controller REALLY going to be used? Let's be reasonable here, how many games can you see that will really take advantage (and make good use) of that cool "three dimensional movement" gadget? Can you see yourself aiming your gun this way? Can you see yourself guiding Mario through the levels by waving the controller like Harry Potter flicks his wand?
In fact, it looks a little like an oversized NES stick, and I fear it might be limited to that use.
And I hope and pray that I'm wrong, 'cause
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This article could have been slapped together in a day. "The joystick only had eight directions, so in technicality [sic] it wasnt an analog joystick." Yes-- because it was a DIGITAL joystick as the author pointed out earlier! Then he says the 5200 joystick had 360 degrees of motion! So did the 2600, it just output in only eight directions by using four switches. The 5200 joystick may have been a 16-direction model, at best, but it certainly was not a 360. And the NES controller was also 8-way, not 4-way as described in the model or diagonal movement would have been impossible. Overall, the level of writing in this article is childish and chaotic.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Plus you could do the diagonals properly, in comparison with the cross shaped nintendo controllers.
I used them on my Amiga as well! (B button is fire)
PS: the offical 6 button controller is actually much lighter than the 3 button standard controllers.
Maybe if OUR CHILDREN weren't playing video games ALL DAY LONG we wouldn't be getting offshored left and right to hard working brown people who don't play video games.
Instead they work-work-work and develop skills while OUR CHILDREN will be scabbing along at $7 an hour at walmart for the rest of their lives while americas's brain trust falls to shit.
The most intersting part of the evolution of video game controllers is what they came up with just before and during the 2600 era. Paddles used to be the standard controller design back when all home systems had some derivation of Pong on them. The Fairchild system had a very interesting controller with a directional stick on top and a stick as the base. The Astrocade also had a similar controller layout. The Telstar arcade was also pretty unique with the Steering Wheel, gun, and paddles all on one unit.
I can't say much about the article, do to a slashdotting. I will take this opportunity to spot off on how much I really think thumbpads are a step backwards from the joystick. I pretty much stop playing console games once the Nintendo became king, because I found the gamepad so frustratingly hard to control. You might think is was lack of experience. However, once computer games came along, I picked up controlling with a keyboard (or the keyboard mouse combination) just fine.
Of course this is just one person's view, and commercial success has proved me wrong. I'm sure many people like the thumbpad controllers better, but I'm not one of them (and I'm not sure I understand why). I will point out that thumbpad controllers do have some pratical advantages. They are certainly cheaper and more compact.
The list should start with Ralph Baer's dual-knob analog design for the original Magnavox Odyssey (one for controlling the paddle, one for the ball's English). It'd be fun to include Atari Pong and a Coleco Telstar unit, too. Anyone remember the triangular Telstar Arcade with the steering wheel, light gun, and paddles? Now that was cool.
Other nifty stuff from the Seventies... the slightly odd Magnavox 2 and Fairchild Channel F. And from the Eighties, what about the famed Tac 2 controller that accompanied so many Commodore 64s? Or the Intellivision/Colecovision/Vectrex. Almost like the list was written by a teenager who doesn't know how to Google.
Sure, the left prong was useless, but the asymmetry of holding the middle and right ones actually felt a lot more comfortable than a normal controller. I was sad to see only two prongs on every controller since.
I am trolling
I know I'm not supposed to say anything if I have nothing nice to say ... ... but man, that list is weak. I could have thrown that together in an hour from memory and google image search. Paddles and light guns are painfully missing. What about Nintendo's Power Glove and UForce controllers? Nintendo's Power Pad and how it evolved into DDR dance surfaces? I'm not even getting into the platforms it missed - Sega Master System, TurboGrafx/PCE, ColecoVision, Intellivision, NeoGeo home arcade sticks. They show the 6 button Genesis pad but not the original 3 button one that shipped with the system at launch? It boggles my mind. I won't even get started on the actual copy. I'm fairly certain that I'm missing some big swathes of history myself, right now.
A little harsh I know, but if I had to write a paper on the history of game controllers for a school paper when I was twelve, that would have been what I wrote on the school bus the morning of the day it was due, after a night of not writing it because I was playing Temple of Apshai Trilogy waaaay past my bedtime. (ignore glaring temporal issues)
The article made it sound like the Dual Shock 2 was when they first standardized on having the 'rumble'/vibration feature. This is untrue. The original Dual Shock was that (hence the name-- it had two different vibrating motors. (Commence jokes here.))
Also, the "you can push down on the sticks for another two buttons" feature, I believe, first appeared in Dual Shock 1, not 2.
Furthermore, they left out the fact that on the Dual Shock 2, the four buttons (triangle, square, circle, X) are velocity/pressure-sensitive. In other words, games can (if they are programmed to do so) tell how hard you pushed the buttons. This feature isn't used in too many games, but oddly, my copy of Kingdom Hearts seems to NOT BOOT without a Dual Shock 2 (a Dual Shock 1 will not do), and I believe some games in the "fighting" genre use the velocity sensitivity...
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
They missed a major point about the PS2 controller: the fact that it had analog sensitivity on every button. That's how Gran Turismo 3 tells you how hard you're pressing the gas or brake. Also I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure the original Dual Analog controller featured L3 and R3 buttons (by pushing down on the analog sticks).
-gjr
I wouldn't worry about it. This story sucks the big one. The reviewer unhelpfully skips over huge swaths of history (Hello? Intellivision? Colecovision? Oddessy 2? Where do they think Nintendo got their idea for the DPad?), attributes nonsensical statements to antique hardware (Users complained about the lack of a pause button on the 2600? WTF?), and yet manages to include the Playstation controller as if it had something notable about it.
;-)
I'm not really sure why this article exists. The reviewer is probably familar with modern systems, but really doesn't know that much about the history of video games. He needs to find something to write about that's more in his area of expertise. Either that, or do a bit more research next time. I can get him a 2600, 5200, 7800, Colecovision, and Intellivision no problem. I can even get him a Famicom floppy disk system, though it wouldn't come cheap.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Turbo-button controllers came out WAY before the SNES. I specifically remember the NES Max and the NES Advantage, and there were probably ones before that too.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
First off, I do think Nintendo HAS historically been at the forefront of meainstreaming new controller design, from D-pads to Shoulder buttons to crosspad-aranged regular buttons to analog sticks and analog triggers.
But the bias here is funny, Atari gets bashed for not being "really analog" (duh) in the first generation and only having 8 directions, but Nintendo gets praised for bringing, which while probably an improvement in comfort and some responsiveness, really has about 4 directions, not even 8...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
I only read through the 8-bit NES controller before I gave up.
The Atari 2600 joysticks were actually damn good joysticks. There were plenty of knockoff and lookalike joysticks in the aftermarket that sucked, but the actual Atari-manufactured joysticks were of superb quality. They were durable and lasted through years and years of heavy use and abuse. The reviewer probably took some 30 year old worn out third-party sticks and tried them out for 10 minutes before determining that they were inferior.
The NES cross pad was hardly looked at as an improvement at the time. Gamers accepted it because it worked well enough, and it did grant a master very fine control over his game character, but it was less comfortable for long playing than holding a joystick. It was cheaper to manufacture, and due to the lesser stresses involved in the design (the joystick is a lever which magnifies the force applied to the sensors the longer the stick is) and it was smaller and lighter and could be manufactured more cheaply.
The article confuses "analog" and "digital", claiming that the Atari 2600 joystick was not "analog" "because it only had 8 directions". Analog has nothing to do with how many directions, and everything to do with whether you have discrete states or a continuum of potential states in the joystick's range. On a digital stick, you're either applying force in a direction or you're not. On an analog stick, the degree to which your stick is pushed toward the extreme end of the stick's range of motion determines just how "hard" or "fast" you're pushing in that direction.
Modern analog sticks are horrible compared to true joysticks of days gone by. Give me something I can wrap my entire hand around, not some wimpy little "hat" stick controller that I have to diddle with my thumb. The current generation consoles largely suck to play in their standard configuration because they don't give the user a flightstick type control, and the button layouts on flightstick type controls are not well laid out for most types of games outside of flight simulation.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I'll supply the Odyssey^2 :-)
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Look on the bright side; once the server gets slashdotted, the dupe will still be available.
Yes, the Intellivision controller was tragic, indeed. Every catalog I saw selling Intellivisions also sold little snap-on sticks that converted the disc to a joystick. People swore by the things.
Now, if you want to see an ergonomic controller from the 80s, you want the Epyx 500XJ controller, which was Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 compatible. That thing was comfortable to use and lasted forever.
It looks funny, but it works by putting the button under your left index finger, giving your ring and pinky fingers a case-cutout to rest in (so the thing didn't pop out like a bar of soap when your hand got sweaty from holding it in a deathgrip for hours), and there were grooves in the case for each finger.
The stick itself had a steel rod in it that was balanced on a ball bearing on the bottom of the controller, so it had only about 3/4 inch of throw at the top; it was like the Mazda Miata shifter, before there was a Mazda Miata. The switches were Cherry switches, which made a clicking noise when activated. You could also feel the switches activating. No more wondering if you were really doing a diagonal or not. It was the joystick equivalent of a buckling-spring Dvorak keyboard.
And did I mention that it was built tough? ABS plastic, 1/8 inch thick, with plenty of reinforcing ribs. Between that and the steel joystick, you had a controller that, if thrown at the wall, would easily defeat drywall.
I miss that thing.
The author of this review/article/whatever puts in a LOT of unfounded, incorrect, or just plain stupid claims about each controller.
The article is hack and I'm embarrassed that it's on the front page of Slashdot. I can see it being on Digg, since Digg is just a bunch of blog crap all the time.. but come on.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Awful ergonomics for the ps1 controller. After a few hours of play my thumb would be shredded. Not to mention it was too easy to push up and have it register up and slightly left or right (not enough dead zone?).
Best controller I've ever owned NES Advantage. Excellent weight, good size. Perfect for any nes game.
I do not think that the rumble feature deserves to be listed with the analog stick and shoulder buttons as an important advance in controller design. How does a shaking controller enhance the gaming experience? Until they make a controller that vibrates strongly enough to shake itself out of my hands, thus increasing the skill needed to play a game, I will continue to turn it off.
Like the Intellivision. It was a controller that you either hated, or you loved. No matter your view you need to admit that many controllers today owe a lot to it. Look at the XBox controller, it either has a direction thumb pad or mini stick for directional control with your left thumb. Looking at the three major game systems way back in the day, Atari, Coleco and Intellivision, the Intellivision was the only one that was not a joy stick. It was a disc that was used the same way as modern thumb pads. The numerous buttons allowed for more interactive and intimate game play. Using the thumb pad for moving and the key pad for shooting enabled gamers to move in one direction, yet shoot in a completly different direction. The interchangable sleeves also allowed the game pad to be customized for looks and ease of finding buttons. You don't need to remember buttun 6 is for selecting X, because there was a picture of that item right on the controller. This is a predecessor for all those "configurable" gaming keyboards for games like Doom, Quake etc. And as for Wireless, Intellivision 3 which was never released was designed to have up to four wireless controllers.
Also missing from this discussion is any non-stock, third party controller.
Yes, the Atari joystick sucked, and was the same stick also used on several computers (Commodore Vic-20, 64, 128, Amiga, and, of course, all Atari computers) and some other game systems (could be used with ColecoVision, for instance) and was a de facto standard at the time.
That said, you could buy third-party controllers from a number of sources. I liked the SunCom TAC-2 joystick, because it was super-reliable, and it had some swing to it. It also had dual fire buttons, so you could give it to a lefty and they could play pretty well with it.
Then there was the prize of all, the Wico stick. Wico made the josticks found in many arcade consoles, and they used the same design for their game controller, complete with cherry switch buttons. It was mounted in a broad, heavy base, which would sit nicely on a table and give you a pretty realistic feel of an arcade console.
Point is, this analysis is missing a lot.
www.wavefront-av.com
The TG-16/PCE is such an underrated game system. I personally believe it was released too late to make a difference in the market. The system dethroned the Famicom (Japanese NES) from its top spot in Japan with its improved graphics, sound and CD-ROM capabilties. It was the first console that did anti-aliasing.
The controller wasn't revolutionary in the least. It was a two button NES/Famicom look-a-like with a D-Pad, but it was the first controller bundled with a console to have dual turbo-fire selectors. This isn't a major advance, I believe the most significent advancement in game controller design is analog joysticks, as well as button velocity sensors, button presseure sensors, and motion sensors (I've heard the Dual Shock 2 has this feature, and the Revolution's controller will definitely have it). The other major innovation is reliable RF style (non-IR) wireless controllers. Logitech's PS2 wireless controller isn't IR like other wireless game controllers. It works via an RF frequency so if somebody moves in front of the console you don't loose control of the game and you have a longer range than IR permits. The 40 hour battery life is significent also because RF wireless devices, especially wireless mice, have a notoriously short battery life.
Reducing the number of cords and cables used to clutter your living room up is a major plus for the next-gen systems, in my honest opinion.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Terrible article. It says about the Playstation pad:
"Nothing was truly different with the controller from its predecessors" when in fact the playstation pad was a revolution in pad design. There was a definite "what the hell is that?" in your mind when you first saw it and the chunky palm grips have been copied by pretty much all other pads since.
Anyway,from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, the C64, Amiga, and other home computers were the breeding ground of controller design. Consoles came with pads because they were cheap to manufacture, not because they were any good. Joysticks from the 8/16-bit era came in all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes and sizes. The Konix Speedking has been mentioned (as the Epyx), but there were many more: The Bug, Quickshot II, and The Boss are just three other notable designs.
Have a look at Syntax Error's Joystick and Controller archive for a much better overview of controllers through history.
Tragically the Intellivision controller is missing.
How about "inexplicably"? That is a better choice of words.
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.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
I think it's pointless to have an article covering the evolution of game controllers then including a controller we don't know much about and know even less about how it's really going to be used.
And that's not to mention that this article talks about "evolution" but then presents controllers which are all essentially the same exact thing but merely molded to different shapes and sizes. The most different controllers are the Atari 2600 and 5200 designs and whether those are evolutionary designs is questionable.
The Revolution controller is basically a NES controller reformatted to look like a standard remotre control. The internal functionality, of course, allows for far more, but the external design, despite being attractive and minimalist is fairly mundane.
I think it's the games that need to evolve to properly exploit any innovative controller designs. I think designing a different controller is insufficient to spur most developers to try anything. I don't doubt Nintendo will exploit that controller to it's fullest extent, but whether anyone else will bother is questionable. I'm still not convinced that the Revolution controller will inherently spark some innovation in gaming.
The wikipedia article also has some good general info, and some decent external links.
Aside from the controllers not mentioned, I have several other issues with the article:
- I don't think the Sega Genesis controller pictured is the original one included with the Genesis, nor is it even the original 6 button one. Also, the original Genesis controller had only four buttons (Start, A, B and C).
- They failed to mention how absolutely crappy the N64 controller is. I've never met ANYONE who found it comfortable. Unless you have three hands, you can't reach all the controls. The ones I could reach would cause strain (and pain) in my hands. I found this omission in the article especially aggrivating in light of their mention of user displeasure over the size of the original XBox controller (which, while unweildy, still let me reach all the buttons without causing pain in my hands!).
- I don't buy the speculation about why the second analog stick was added to the original PSX Dual Shock, mostly because the two sticks register independently with the system.
- I believe the info on the PS2 controller is also incorrect. The original PSX Dual Shock could register pushing down on the analog sticks as L3 and R3 buttons, but few games supported it. I'm pretty sure the PS2 controller actually has touch-sensitive X, O, Square and Triangle buttons, as I recall playing a PS2 launch title beat-em-up by Squaresoft that took advantage of this.
In my opinion (as someone who isn't very interested in any modern consoles to begin with), the article smacks somewhat of pro-Nintendo bias.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Someone just sent me a fantastic link to Syntax Error's Joystick and Control Pad Archive. It's filled to the brim with dozens of wickedly funky controllers, including personal faves like the TAC 2.
I had an old Mattel Intellivision that was one of my earliest childhood friends. My parents (gamers?!) bought it before I was born in early '83. You know how kids have their 'security blanket' or whatever? I had my little green pillow named Po. Mom and Dad tried pretty hard to get me to dispense of it for a long time, until they made the offer of a copy of Commando for the Intellivision. Po was gone in under a second.
The Intellivision was one of my most treasured pieces of historic gaming hardware. Sadly, it was sucked by Katrina's storm surge (along with the rest of the house that contained it) in Pass Christian, Mississippi.
Two notes, one, the NES Max deffinetly belongs in there after the regular NES controller, but before the Sega Genesis...assuming that my memory serves well. The NES Max is the genetic patriarch of the N64, the SNES, the Dual Shock series, and the XBox controller. It featured lightweight design, contoured handles, and turbo. http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://atar iace.com/nintendo/images/nes_max_controller.jpg&im grefurl=http://atariace.com/nintendo/joysticks.php &h=579&w=640&sz=109&tbnid=BkBUYTaNt8XQaM:&tbnh=122 &tbnw=135&hl=en&start=2&prev=/images%3Fq%3DNES%2BM AX%2Bcontroller%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26s a%3DG
Second note, am I the only person who feels that Nintendo, after a certain point, has constantly inovated on the industry and yet they haven't come in first since the SNES in the Home console market? I fear, sadly, that the Revolution's controller will be the first in a long line of similar controllers that will be quickly adopted by many systems. Nintendo, however, will continue to be 2nd fiddle while there technology is the mainstay of their competitors.
Playstation 2 Dual Shock 2
The Playstation 2 Dual Shock controller was more or less an exact copy of the original Playstation model except with few minor alterations. After the Nintendo 64 introduced a rumble pack peripheral, Sony went ahead and made rumble standard in all of its controllers. The two analog sticks now also feature touch sensitivity. This allowed you to press down on the analog stick to make it perform a different move. Essentially it allowed for two new control options for developers while retaining the same amount of buttons.
I could swear that the original Dual Shock (for the PlayStation) allowed use of both sticks as additional buttons...it was just a horribly underused feature, as PlayStation developers couldn't count on players having a Dual Shock controller (due to the large number of original controllers out there). The PS2 saw much more use of them, because Dual Shock (or even Dual Shock 2) controllers were a prerequisite for pretty much any PS2 game.
Also, no mention of the fact that (again, if I remember correctly) the Dual Shock 2 had pressure sensitive buttons, allowing for "analog" input from every button on the controller. This ended up being the underused feature of this controller, as a majority of players were still using the old Dual Shocks as backups (after all, the main selling point of the PS2 was backwards compatibility, and not just for games!)...so not too many games required the Dual Shock 2. Some did, however (I seem to remember couple sports games that required Dual Shock 2 controllers and made heavy use of the "analog" buttons).
I put analog in quotes, because I'm pretty sure the buttons didn't have all that many postions...but definitely more than just "pressed" and "not." If I didn't have class in about 10 minutes I'd actually go look this stuff up.
Cripes.. how many times do we have to hear about the Revolution being an evolution of a game controller?!
Cut it out already! We get it, okay?!
Give me a good ol' CH Products Mach series joystick for the Apple II. Those things were indestructible... even the Flightstick Pro, with its user-configurable buttons (and, get this, customizable acceleration curve)... runs circles around the just-adequate crap Nintendo and these other "game console" makers have put out.
Under the Atari 2600 section: Lastly with all the problems that plagued the controller, the absence of a pause button only made it worse, when the joystick stopped working, you couldnt even pause the game.
WHAT pause button? As I recall, there was no pause button on the console either. Good grief - we're talking about a 2600 here. There was no pausing PERIOD back then.
Its a shame that fact checking is SOOOO expensive these days.
The XBox Controller is a very moddable piece of kit.
basically its a USB Hub with a built in joystick
The controller Cable is 5 wire however the yellow wire is only used for a light gun and can be safely ignored.
generally standard usb colours are used so.
here's a hint of what to do.
take the extension cable and split this in half (theres a big ferrite core in the middle which you may be able to dig out the plastic) and take a usb extension cable and split this in half solder the female half to the xbox half and you now have an adapter to allow std usb devices to be connected (keyboard mouse anything else supported by debian). google xbox xebian for details.
The other half of the extension join the male half of the usb connector to it and plug into pc. the xbox controller identifies as a microsoft usb hub in XP drivers are available to make the xbox controller as a std game controller. Xbox Memory cards can be read plugged ino an xbox controller using drivers used by action replay with a modification to the inf file. use USBinfo.exe to find the pid and vid numbers for the particular card.
incidently this hack should work to get a usb stick to be readable on a Pc in Xbox format.
so lets see for one controller extension and one usb extender cable you get std usb port on xbox ability to use usb stick on xbox as a memory card. maybe other types of card too.) a great controller for the PC and a dongle to connect an xbox memory card to the pc.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
"Dreamcast Controller
The Dreamcast controller shared a resemblance to the 3D controller released late in the Sega Saturns lifetime. The controller was rather large, but comfortable to hold. It had a D-Pad, one analog stick, X, Y, A, and B buttons. However the true unique feature was the controllers VMU (Visual Memory Unit). It was essentially a memory card but had an LCD screen that provided information for the player while he was playing. It also could hold mini-games that you could play while not inserted into the Dreamcast controller."
Comfortable? The sides of the controller curved inward, which was NOT comfortable by any means for any serious length of play! There's a reason that every other controller curves outward!
The VMU was nothing more than a cheesy, expensive gimmick. The so-called minigames weren't even worth playing, and if you did play them, killed the batteries of the VMU quicker than you could say 'First Post!' on Slashdot. Of course, being flash-based, this did not affect storage... Aside from the problem that the stock batteries had a very bad habit of leaking and thus destroying the $25 VMU.
1) It was a 12 direction controller rather than an 8-way. (Video game companies had this stupid idea that More Features == Better, and damn the consequences.)
Actually, the Intellivision disc had a total of 16 directions to move in, as it had a total of 8 different sensors to play with (as opposed to a traditional digital pad's/joystick's 4 for 8 different directions). =)
And though it wasn't there by default, a separate plastic joystick attachment was sold separately, which when mounted to the disc would convert it into a traditional joystick.
Mirror
If you haven't see it; see it. This is David Cronenberg's statement on video games, reality, and, yes, video game controllers... The movie, (and game in the movie) is eXistenZ.
The article is very biased towards nintendo. I found the n64 controller very awckward and bought a playstation instead. Having to hold your two wrists at different angles pointed funny really made my hands sore if I played for any amount of time.
They were wrong about the dual shock controllers. The first version had vibration. The second version had preasure sensitive buttons. That was very usefull in the metal gear games, gt4 etc..
Personally looking forward to their next controller. The nunchuck thing is what I think is the most exciting since you can position your hands in whatever orientation you want.
I thought the gamecube controller felt too small, too light and had a cheap plastic feel to it. I've only bought one console each generation, the next time it's going to be the nintendo.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Get one of these: [o]
and then get one of these: [o]
The design of the Atari 2600 joysticks changed dramatically in about 1980, so it's difficult to directly compare. You can tell an early model joystick (on the off chance you can find one intact) because the button makes a distict click when pressed and has significantly more travel than the late model joystick. There is also more play in the stick itself, with as much as 25 degrees of travel.
The primary distinction is that early model joystick used a spring mechanism for return to center with plastic actuators to press the on the PC board. (Actually I'm trying unsucessfully to recall whether there was a PC board in the early model and whether it used mylar buttons like the late model.) The early model also used a soft rubber D connector. The late model used a semi-rigid plastic ring for both actuation and return to center. By necessity the later version had far less travel. The ring on the late model was stronger than the actuators on the early model. The early models really didn't stand up to more than a year of playing tank plus. The late model was much more sturdy, but they were still susceptible to breakage of the actuating ring.
The other main problem was wear on the rubber D connectors. It was common to jam a couple cartridges under the connectors to improve the connection.
I've got a couple broken early model sticks in a box somewhere. I'll need to pull the out and look at them.
But all in all, the 2600 controllers are far superior to the pads every console since (except colecovision) has had. Little tiny joysticks suck, too. The only thing that makes modern controllers usable is that the games require the multitude of controls that they provide. Nothing on new controllers really provides the precision of large scale digital joystick.
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Nintendo should have Indiana Jones made for the Revolution. You could use the analog stick to move around and use the wand to control how and where you swing your whip. That would be fun.
This article doesn't mention how much more expensive today's gamepads are than the old ones were. The NES gamepad cost just $10. The Xbox 360 corded gamepad is $40, and the wireless one is $50 plus the burden of limited battery life and recharge time. Why are we paying so much? The whole point of handheld gamepads is that they're supposed to be cheap! If we're paying $40 and up for an input device, we deserve a lot more than a mere gamepad. A large joystick or steering wheel would be more like it. A gamepad should cost $20 at most, simplified if necessary to keep cost low.
> If controllers had evolved by natural selection, you'd expect to see
> incremental change in features that indicated common ancestry.
>
> Ramen.
Don't be naive, you Pastafarian fundamentalist, you!
You can clearly see evolution within families of game controllers and a simple progression as to how new features evolved. How else do you explain the survival of that nearly-useless "select" button from the NES controller to the SNES controller? What kind of "intelligent" design is that!?
Where there might seem to be "gaps" in the record, that is only because you have an insufficient understanding of the technological record and have ignored all the evidence of beta versions and unreleased models that show precursors of the modern, successful gaming technology.
If you can't see how much of an idiot he is, you are one as well. He / She / it obviously has no idea what analog is, and pulls stuff from deep inside his / her / its anus. Complete idiot.
Regarding the Atari 2600 joystick.
You moron, yes technically it wasn't an analog joystick because it was a fricken digital joystick!
I got as far as that and gave up. If the author can't get his facts right on something that basic the article is not worth a damn..
rotate the fucking thing, it's square ooh, looky, the button is on the top right!
my sister is a southpaw, that was her solution.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
We played choplifter with paddles, required real teamwork with one person controlling altitude and another controlling speed & direction.....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random