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What is the Best Console Controller of All Time?
Mateo Slovinsky asks: "Is the XBox 360's controller the best controller of all time? CNet seems to think so in its line up of the top five gamepads of all time. If you expected the Wii's controller, you will be dissapointed. It's a brilliant piece of innovation, but there simply aren't enough games to judge it against the best controllers ever." Which controller would you pick? What controllers have not left your hands cramped after a marathon session of gaming?
I'd agree that the 360 is the best controller of all time. it's damn comfortable and has pretty much every function you'd ever want. If they included a Dreamcast like VMU screen it would be "perfect" IMO.
Collector's Edition
Everything else has too many buttons.
It's great to see the SNES controller, it provided 6-button, finger-and-thumb controlling in about the most compact design possible. I see it as the bridge to all modern controllers, from the previous controllers like the NES, Atari,etc.
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Adjustable turbo on A and B, large buttons, comfortable stick, fits on your lap or a tabletop nicely, even a slow-motion hack for those games that could support it. Next question....
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Hmm I would definately have to say the most comfortable is the gamecube controller, it just seems to slide into your hand and is great for everything except games that use the D-Pad really. The dreamcast controller is also pretty nice and the dpad is great for fighting games although hardcore gamers will still prefer a joystick. The original analog controller for the playstation was also damn comfortable as it has a longer handle then the dual shock which honestly feels kind of small to me. Overall I would say the gamecube though, since I never remember my hands ever getting tired from that controller (and it certaintly wasn't from lack of playing!).
Maybe they should have played some Wii games rather than just dismissing it.
It does not take a lot of games to notice that:
1. I no longer have to play games with my hands together as though I'd been cuffed.
2. Easy to distinguish buttons, not too many of them, with convenient support for things like "thumb+forefinger = grab", making controls easier to remember.
3. Broad selection of simultaneous actions. I can move and turn at the same time without trying to remember button combos.
The wiimote is, hands down, the best console controller ever. It's not even close. Can I invent a game that works better on something else? Sure. I can make games that are better on keyboard than mouse, too. Still, the dominant case is pretty clear.
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Atari 2600: One Joystick, one button. What more do you need?
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I started reading the article, and got through XBox360, PS2, and then N64 at 3rd place. That's when I stopped reading it. There's a general concensus among my friends that the N64 controller is among the worst ever designed, and possibly is the worst. Whose idea was it to make a controller that you needed 3 hands to properly use?
It's so... bad.
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Am I the only one that cannot STAND the Dual Shock controller? In fact, the controller is one of the reasons I never finished many PS2 games...I just couldn't stand using the friggin' thing
For a while, I thought it was the Dreamcast controller...it fits perfectly in my hands, has a good weight to it, and the D-pad felt solid.
Overall, I would have to agree with C-Net...the 360 controller is AWESOME. The buttons and triggers have a nice solid feel, the thing just cradles in your hands, and it has a decent weight to it. My only gripe would be with the D-Pad...other then that though, the 360 controller is at the top of the list.
Nothing beats a good keyboard/mouse combo though;-)
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Come on! That list totally sucks. The GC controller is much better than the N64 one, and there's nothing better than the SNES controller. Ever. Why is the Wiimote out of the list? Not too many games? Pff. I call a fanboyism ranking.
Minti: What's that huge shuriken in your back?! Kin: It's the instrument of my victory.
Ok, at the top end of the scale, I've got to agree with assessment the 360 controller is the best ever made. Prior to the 360's launch, I'd have pointed to the Xbox S-controller, which was well ahead of anything else in terms of shape, quality of build and buttons, weight balance and overall ergonomics. The only downside with the S-Controller was that the black and white face buttons were awkward and uncomfortable to use. The 360 controller corrects this flaw, essentially by converting those buttons into bumpers and also improves the weight balance still further. Range, reliability and ability to survive being thrown on the floor after Dead or Alive 4 drives me to my snapping point are all excellent.
The Dualshock 2 was also an excellent controller in its own way, despite being a little too small for comfort. It did a good job of doing absolutely everything a modern controller needs to with a minimum of fuss and bother. However, the pressure-sensitive function of the buttons could be extremely finnicky and was hard to use properly in games that demanded it (such as the Gran Turismo series). The Sixaxis is a big improvement in this respect, but... well... I'll come to the Sixaxis later.
Leaving the consoles aside for one moment, I'm going to get a bit retro for my final pick of "great" controllers and go back to the PC's Thrustmaster F-16. I had one of these eating up half my desk-space for many years and never found anything more fun to play flight-sims with. Sure, the customisation software was all DOS based and didn't work properly under Win 95 or later, but I still have very fond memories of this stick.
Now... the bad.
Top pick here... the Gamecube controller. Not in terms of sheer, outright awfulness - you can certainly find worse examples of that. But rather because this controller managed to be the only controller to "get it wrong" so badly in a generation where everybody else (including PC accessory manufacturers) seemed more or less able to agree on roughly how many buttons a controller should have and where they should be. One huge, stand-out flaw was the pathetic cable length, particularly unforgivable on a system so heavily geared towards party games. Shelling out extra for wireless controllers became effectively essential for anybody with a living room larger than a small cupboard. The right analogue stick wasn't even a proper stick - it was a stumped and malformed nub, which was no use whatsoever for gaming and made fpses on the cube a truly nasty proposition. The mis-shaped buttons, with the huge green blob and the tiny little kidney-beans around the edge meant that you were forever hitting A when you didn't mean to. All in all, the official Cube controller felt like a nasty, $5 third party accessory.
Also high on the list... the PSP's analogue stick. Gums up with dust far too easily and is not pleasant to use even after cleaning. The rest of the PSP interface is fine and many games avoid using the little stick, but this is definitely something for Sony to tackle in the next revision.
And now the "why weren't they includeds"
Basically, because while allegedly revolutionary (although the results of this "revolution" remain to be seen), the Wii-mote at best represents a very early and unpolished attempt at a new type of controller. Accuracy is questionable at best, especially during rapid movements. Less understandable, and harder to forgive, is the positioning of the buttons. If you want to use more than 2 buttons, then you are going to get sore fingers. Using the Wii-Mote for anything other than a "wave the wand around manically" game for any protracted period is deeply uncomfortable and cramps up my hand like nothing else I've ever tried. The 360 controller is a massively polished traditional product - as good as it's going to get for regular controllers for the forseeable future. That the Wii-mote fails to measure up is perhaps inevitable given how novel it is, but it still doesn't mean that it's as good as the 360 controller.
And the Sixaxis? Well..
This is one thing the Nintendorks software writers need to fix for the next Wii software update: include a goddamn calibration routine.
I have a 50" screen. I was getting really annoyed at how twitchy Zelda was, how twitchy the general Wii response for visuals were. If I pointed to the edge of my screen, the mouse zoomed WAY off to the side.
Then, inside Zelda, I found this awesome feature. It let you select your screen type (4:3 or 16:9), then it displayed a yellow bar. You lined up your IR bar ("sensor bar" my ass, it's a bar of plastic with a set of IR LEDs in it) with the center of it, sized up the yellow bar so it matched the IR bar, and the Zelda interface adjusted itself. Now, in my Zelda games, if I point to a spot, the little cursor goes right where I'm pointing.
NO other Wii game has implemented this yet. Red Steel, had they had this in, would have actually been playable. Trauma Center: Second Opinion would be playable. Wii Play would make a lot more sense in Duck Hunt mode.
Nor have they done us the simple courtesy of pushing a simple recalibration routine out over the system software, which would stop any other software company from having to do so.
Bad Nintendorks. No Cookie.