Slashdot Mirror
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!
Evolution of Controllers
January 30, 2006
by: Sud Koushik
We take a look at the evolution of controllers from the days of Atari to Revolution.
If you approach any avid gamer, and ask him or her what they like best about video games in this time and age, there is a fairly good chance they will respond with something relating to either graphics, or gameplay. While those two criterias are very important to the creation of good video games, we often ignore, and neglect the main aspect that changed the way video games were played. I am of course referring to the main method of input in video games, the controller.
Since the dawn of video games, weve seen controllers ranging from numeric pads, to wireless, rumble emitting, ergonomic controllers. Some have been utter failures, while others have seen runaway success. However, with any successful product, its features and design will be mimicked in the hope of similar success. Thus through countless of variations of previous controllers we have arrived at what we hold and use today.
To show you how video game controllers have evolved from its primitive state, to their modern form, we have compiled an interactive chart of controllers ranging from the days of Atari, to the newest innovation in controllers, the Nintendo Revolution controller.
Atari 2600 Controller
The Atari 2600 had one of the first well known digital joysticks to ever be introduced. Long before Nintendo arrived with the Nintendo 64 and made analog sticks mandatory on a controller, Atari experimented with the 2600 joystick. Unfortunately for Atari, and any of those who tried playing with this controller, it was too bulky and difficult for anyone with small hands to hold. In addition to its large base, the joystick was stiff and often didnt work, and when it did, it was barely useable. The joystick only had eight directions, so in technicality it wasnt an analog joystick. 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.
Atari 5200 Controller
With the Atari 5200, the joystick method of input returned. However it was accompanied by a numeric keypad positioned underneath the joystick. This joystick turned out to be slightly better then its predecessor, by sporting 360 degrees of complete motion, unlike the 2600s simplistic eight direction joystick. Atari also addressed the complaints of a pause button, and it was included with the 5200. Unfortunately the button placements on the controller were awkward, and lead to frequent hand cramps. There are buttons place in front of the joystick, causing you to have to literally have your hands upside down to press them.
NES Controller
The NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) and Famicom (as it was referred to in Japan) had a rectangular shaped controller with a total of four buttons. There were two circle buttons, A and B along with a Start and Select button. The last feature the controller had was a four way directional D-Pad, which was designed by Gunpei Yokoi, as a superior alternative to the joysticks from Atari. The D-Pad revolutionized the gaming industry forever. It was Nintendos way to revitalize the slowly dying gaming industry and put it on its feet again.
SEGA Genesis Controller
With the release of the Sega Genesis, we see controllers start to have curved handles and a more sleek design. The original controllers that were packaged with the Sega Genesis included the typical A and B buttons that the NES featured, but added on a C button. The D-Pad itself was more of else like Nintendos design with a few alternations to get around the patent. Sega soon changed the Genesis controller to feature a total of six face buttons to coincide with the release of Street Fighter II: Special Championship Edition. Even to this day some fans consider the six button Genesis controller to be one of the best for fighting games.
SNES Controller
The SNES control
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
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.
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
How do you figure? The Revolution controller is a remote gamepad with positional sensors and an optional self-centering thumbstick that can be plugged in. The 5200 controller was a non-centering joystick with a clunky keypad attached.
The Revolution controller is really more like a combination of the NES Gamepad, the Powerglove, and the N64 thumbstick all stuck together in a blazingly white plastic package. (Fruity colors are on their way, I'm sure.)
Actually, it's quite amazing that so many games were played with the Atari controllers. A joystick just wasn't a very good choice for a non-fixed controller, and the microswitches wore out easily. (Try opening up a 7800 Proline controller sometime. That sucker is CHEAP.) The Nintendo gamepad was a serious revolution in gaming for several reasons:
1. You weren't constantly ripping the controller out of your own hand.
2. The switches were replaced with long-lasting circuit switches. Any wear and tear could easily be repaired with new rubber parts.
3. The lack of protrusions made it easier to store and less likely to break.
4. Nintendo could give us a quality controller at a very low price. (I don't even want to think about what the 5200 controller cost per unit.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
I forgot to mention. A lot of players mod their Genesis or Nintendo controllers to work with their old 7800 systems. I guess they get tired of playing with the Painline^W Proline joysticks. :-)
The Genesis controller seems to be the most popular as it uses the pins in a similar 1 Pin == 1 Button type of arrangement that the Proline controllers use. The NES uses a serial protocol, making the controller more flexible but much less easy to convert.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
That's pretty much correct. The article seems highly critical of the joystick controllers, but when Atari was king the joystick was all that anyone had envisioned. The few arcade games that didn't use joysticks (Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaxian, etc.) used simple cherry-switch buttons instead.
:-)
Nintendo was ahead of its time when it developed the NES controller. Instead of a joystick, their extension of the buttons concept to a D-Pad created a huge boon in home gaming. Atari was still using their joysticks at the time (since they'd delayed the release of the 7800 by two years), but they quickly designed a joypad for the 7800 to compete. The joypad replaced the Proline as the standard controller for the European edition of the 7800.
Pretty much all controllers that followed the NES included a DPad. (Including Atari's own Jaguar.) The controller didn't change significantly until Nintendo again changed the landscape with the analog thumbstick. While an analog stick had been tried before on the 5200, it had suffered from two major issues:
1. It didn't center. At all. You had to move it back into place if you wanted to stop your character.
2. It was designed to be held in your hand. This meant that you were applying force across the entire controller, making it hard to hold onto. The thumbstick corrected this problem by using only your thumb for control while the rest of your hand maintained a solid grip on the rest of the controller.
The other issue with the 5200 controller, of course, was that it was simply ahead of its time. When the 5200 was released, analog sensor and ADCs weren't that cheap. By the time Nintendo released the N64, Analog to Digital converters were so cheap that one had to wonder why not to use them.
That being said, I'm glossing over the ADC on the Paddle Contollers, but that's another story all togther.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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
I don't know about anyone else, but there's no way I'm clicking on that link
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
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!