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Classic Game Console Design Mistakes
Harry writes "Some bad decisions in game console design get made over and over. (How many early systems had nightmarish controllers?) Others are uniquely inexplicable. (Like the Game Boy Advance's lack of a headphone jack.) Some stem from companies being too clever for their own good. (Like the way the RCA Studio II and Atari 5200 drew their power through their RF switches.) Benj Edwards has rounded up a few classic examples, and has attempted to figure out what was going on in the designers' heads — and what we can learn from their mistakes."
Or the oldest mistake in the world, where developers/publishers DO NOT listen to beta testers and preview testers and PUSH their "better" ideas to the final gold cut even if they get told by everyone playing it that it's wrong/stupid/not enjoyable etc.
Hello, Star Wars: Galaxies combat system for probably the BEST example of being pig headed and pushing through a joke of a combat system even when EVERYONE playing the game says it sucks ass.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Some stem from companies being too clever for their own good. (Like the way the RCA Studio II and Atari 5200 drew their power through their RF switches.)
Anyone fancy some DRM? Or a bullshit non-standardized mobile adapter? I know imitation is flattery but...
Perfect System ;-)
My cousin had an Atari 5200. I recall him at some point noting his Atari being "better." But seemed every other time I saw him, the 5200 was away being repaired or some such.
My 2600? Never broke. Paddles did develop the jiggles, but I never lost a joystick. Then again, I never had Activision Decathlon.
His last article submitted to slashdot had 24 pages... and over half of the replys were people loudly complaining.
He's cut it down to four. Much more reasonable. (Though still unnecessary.)
FanFictionRecs.net
Correction: The Gameboy Advance SP had no headphone jack; the original Gameboy Advance did, as did the Gameboy Micro. But who bought a Gameboy Micro, anyhow... My first video game platform ever was an Advance SP. And I had to go buy a dongle to use headphones.
Nice that this article fails to consider that all of these technologies come from companies developing within their comfort zones, unaware another company was pushing the boundaries or under immense budgetary pressures to save every last cent.
In the author's world of retrospect, everything should be fantastic.
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
On the bright side, the 5200 joysticks included the world's first on-controller pause button.
Er, the Intellivision had a system-wide pause function that would pause any game when you held the "1" and "9" keys (I believe "3" and "7" also worked) on the keypad simultaneously.
If you want to get picky there was not exactly a button marked "PAUSE", but it served the same function.
It's a nice controller for sure. I've go the X-Box 360 version for my PC just so I could play Burnout Paradise (The Ultimate Box). It was well worth it IMHO. But if your into console emulators such as the SNES, Genesis, and PS1, nothing beats the Gravis GamePad Pro (USB). It's basically a Playstation controller for the PC. I'm surprised they didn't get sued by Sony unless a deal was already cut between them.
Life is not for the lazy.
Unfortunate, as long load times is one of the things that really irked me with the PlayStation.
They state that game publishes were reluctant to invest in cartridges, as CDs were less risky and had higher profit margins, but if the focus had been on making good games that people want to play rather than trying to weigh risks and balance game quality with profitability, they really shouldn't have had to worry about that.
Nevertheless, there were a few good N64 games and couple of great ones. Cartridges weren't a complete mistake.
No existe.
the d-pad question sounds more like a patent problem than a real design problem.
good luck doing a good D-pad without running into a sega, sony or nintendo patent.
Problem 1: Poor Controllers, Problem 3: Ergonomically Hellish Controllers, Problem 4: Unreliable controllers. That and the fact power through RF is mentioned twice - this could have been a lot more concise without losing a lot of the facts.
Actually, I miss the older, larger controllers; Everything switched to the smaller controllers (which apparently many folks preferred, but which I found uncomfortably small), then to the 360 controller (which corrected some of the small controller's other flows, but is still physically smaller than I like). It's not even like I have gian hands - I just like holding something larger than the smaller controllers, and find the button positions more natural.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
My suggestion for the series: classic smartphone design mistakes: on the t-mobile g1, you need a humongous dongle with two mini usb slots (one for power, one for a headset), and two normal headset jacks. And with the battery life of the g1 you need to connect it to a loader as much as you can... Just search for htc yc a300 to see how ugly it is...
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
...had two (identical) momentary buttons on the top of the console, one for 'pause' and one for 'reset'.
I remember once playing Zillion, where you had to press the pause button to switch character. I had been playing for about 4 hours when I reached for the pause button and.....
Or you can simply buy a 5$ adapter to plug your PS1/2 on your computer (USB) and use the actual PS controller. (linux even supports PS3's wireless controller)
Segmentation Fault in "Life, Universe and Everything" at line 42. Don't Panic.
Remember having to put your PS1 on its side (or completely upside-down) or else it wouldn't read your games? The optical pickup mechanism of the early models of the PlayStation used a plastic piece as a guide for the sliding laser assembly, repeated motion degraded the plastic piece over time causing optical drift - turning the PS1 on its side forced the laser back to its correct position (yay gravity!).
Sony replaced that piece with a shiny metal guide in their later models, much like every CD-ROM drive has used for the past two decades or so.
How about bonehead decisions on the current consoles?
Like the PS3/X-Box analog stick "button"....who in the hell thought it was a good idea for the analog sticks to double as game buttons as well? It is impossible to NOT press these "buttons" by accident in the heat of a tense moment in any game. I can't tell you the number of times I've suddenly gone into "crouch mode" in Fallout 3 or activated my "search for power sources" mode in inFamous.
Can we get rid of this idiotic controller design, like right now?
And don't forget flaky PSUs which caused the console to get trapped in an infinite reset cycle.
Also the Dreamcast optical drive is obnoxiously LOUD!
In my experience, really bad design decisions aren't always motivated by idiots trying to push their hobby horse, but often because better solutions have been patented to death.
Case in point: electronic television guides. Every format under the sun is patented. Philips refused to submit to extortion for years and implemented one miserable scheme after another, until they finally got an agreement with a patent holder. Even then, the patent holder refused to let Philips implement the whole thing themselves but instead insisted it had to be their own, horribly buggy, implementation. You can still hear the tv-guys at Philips gnashing their teeth.
I fear it's sort of similar with these controllers: the good ideas were being patented, so the designers had to avoid them and come up with something 'original'. That doesn't always work out for the best, as demonstrated in the article :)
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Of all the crappy design decisions Atari made with the Jaguar, they're giving it crap over the controller? The controller was pretty comfortable and worked well for most of the Jaguar games. The crappy cartridge slot that was wearing out before mine hit year 1 of ownership, the incredibly awkward and unreliable CD drive, and hardware complexity that would stump Saturn developers would've all been better knocks to make on the Jaguar.
And as far as missing items, where the HELL is the sidetalker? The original N-Gage belongs on this list more than half the items listed.
Some other mistakes not mentioned:
/. Early production runs of the SNES shell used a cheap plastic that over time turned a ghastly yellow.
Sega Master System - as mentioned in a previous comment, the pause button was on the console (right next to the identical reset button) years after the Atari 5200 placed pause buttons on controllers. There were also only two buttons on the controller, while the competing NES had four.
SNES - previously mentioned on
PlayStation - a malfunctioning CD-ROM drive on early models that caused many a PlayStation owner to play with the PlayStation upside-down.
Dreamcast - a big controller with big analog triggers, based on the Saturn's analog controller. Developers didn't make use of the analog functions of the triggers and there weren't as many buttons on the controller as there were on the PlayStation. There was also only one analog stick on the controller as well. Similarly, the VMU wasn't used for much. And it drained battery power rapidly, even while it was plugged into the controller, making it useless for playing the few mini-games that were available for it. To make matters worse, the VMU used lithium "coin" batteries that were a pain to replace.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
But if your into console emulators such as the SNES, Genesis, and PS1, nothing beats the Gravis GamePad Pro (USB).
I have one. Its D-pad makes it too easy to press diagonally, which screws up my Tetris big time. So instead, I bought an Adaptoid for my N64 controllers and an EMS USB2 adapter for my PlayStation controllers.
good luck doing a good D-pad without running into a sega, sony or nintendo patent.
Exactly copying the design of the Famicom (NES) D-pad from 1983 shouldn't be illegal, given that patents run out after 20 years. Yes, unlike trademarks and lately copyrights, patents actually expire,
I want the nextgen consoles to have a standby or hibernate mode like a Windows box. I would no longer have to issue fatwas against game designers who put save points three hours apart.
First of all, let's understand something here. The Studio II was the second programmable console released, ever. I saw it in a list of "10 worst consoles ever" the other day... a list which I consider invalid for never mentioning the horrible Arcadia 2001. Basically, the Studio II had nothing other than Pong machines to use as a reference, since the Channel F hadn't been around long enough. (FYI, both systems were designed by chip companies trying to hype their own chipsets, and the Intellivision was a 3rd-party use of a pre-existing chip manufacturer's chipset.)
So you see, it's got the controllers built into the main console unit, and one wire for both the RF and power. But in actuality this design meant that the console was the controller! And the RF-powered idea was a clever idea to reduce cord clutter. If you're picking up the whole console and using it as a controller, you don't want a second wire getting wrapped around things.
As for the 5200, Atari was trying to cram as many patents as they could into that thing, and most of them were crap ideas that went into the controller. But this time, Atari wasn't just trying to reduce cord clutter, it was also the first system with an automatic RF switch. It's just that unlike Nintendo, they tried to do the switching with clunky relays. Atari were thinking in the right direction, but got it backwards. You give power to the RF switch, not the other way around.
However, both the Studio II and Atari proved that you could put DC and RF on the same wire, which is what made automatic RF switches a standard in every console since the NES.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
That's not a resistor, it's actually a mini-fuse in packaging that looks like a resistor. Those things can really be a pain in the ass if they're set up where they are easy to blow.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
If you're charging your iphone daily, you're doin it wrong. Just turn down the screen brightness and the auto-lighting-adjust feature, and it'll run for three-five days on one charge (depending on your usage levels of course).
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
and trying to keep it as low as possible, is why bad decisions are made.
Absolute statements are never true
I'm a Xbox fanboy, but MS's decision to eliminate the standard hard drive from the 360 still baffles me. I know they wanted to save a buck, but it's still rare to see a console manufacturer actually take a step BACKWARDS from one console generation to the next. It basically meant that developers couldn't rely on the hard drive for caching (the way they could on the Xbox 1), and so now I can't walk through Oblivion without getting annoying texture pop-in's. Though they've largely improved on this by allowing hard drive installs and moving to phase out the harddrive-free SKU, it was still a bonehead move that left the 360 way more crippled than it ever needed to be.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I want the nextgen consoles to have a standby or hibernate mode like a Windows box.
This is on the DS and PSP, as well as in select Game Boy Advance games. Or are you asking for a separate hibernation file per title and per user? That could get real big real fast.
I would no longer have to issue fatwas against game designers who put save points three hours apart.
Yet people still bitch about New SMB's save points because they can't squeeze in a round of Nintendogs or Animal Crossing 2 while New SMB is sleeping.
Wow
It looks like this guy just discovered the angry video game nerd video files, spent the weekend watching them all, and rehashing every complaint made in those videos for hardware on his own site in text format with the humor stripped out.
I would say it is a good list, if it wasn't for the fact I've seen all of these problems complained about in one place before
The PSX D-pad has never been good. It's seperated, and the pointy ends of the buttons face inward,s o it tears up your thumb. The last good dpad was the the on the N64 controller, which isn't saying much because that was the SNES dpad on there.. the Wii's is usable, but you don't have to use it much.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
Both made consoles that merely pushed the graphics while overshooting the regular cost for a console due to pushing too hard and without checking if the customers really care about that improvement, racked up MASSIVE losses (Sony has lost all the money they made from the PS2 on the PS3!) and got pushed into a minority role as they were bested by a competitor who skipped the graphics pushing and instead went for something the customers could appreciate more. Now THAT is a design mistake.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Like every Game Boy model before it, the original Game Boy Advance model did not include a built-in light for its LCD screen.
While it was Japan only, the Game Boy Light did have a backlight. http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Game_Boy_Light
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Dunno, I like my Speedlink Stormtrooper gamepad because when set to digital the left analog stick has a perfect deadzone for playing 2D games. I can even do doubletaps easily with it.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
What made the original Xbox controller nice (for anyone who actually used it, as opposed to Sony fanwanks and Tycho/Gabe who don't ever even fucking play the games or consoles they talk shit about) is basic ergonomics.
The original Xbox controller is not designed to be held in the "traditional" controller position (wrists curled, hands tucked under, 3rd/4th/5th fingers curled in to support the console). That position is why people get carpal tunnel and "nintendo thumb".
Instead, you can keep your hands vertically oriented ("handshake position", like these absolutely fucking fantastic mice), rest the controller in the crease of your palm, and allow the fingers to rest. Much less worry about RSI, much easier to actually use the damn buttons without worrying about losing your grip on the controller.
If Gabe/Tycho and the Sony fanwanks would ever have used it, they'd know this. Instead, they just screwed around hating on it because it was from Microsoft, and the rest of us now have to suffer with ergonomically incorrect pads because of it.
The Nintendo patent has expired some years ago, definitely before the 360 was released.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I think that the xbox360 d-pad is a bit mushy but other than that not bad. What is bad about it is its location. My thumb is at a nearly 45 degree angle, and so I tend to press NE when I want N or E unusually often. Also it is harder than it should for me to press W, SW, and S because of the location. My thumb needs to rock for those.
The most natural controller that mixed a d-pad and analog stick was for the N64. It was a good idea to split the controller like that so that if you held it one way it was an ideal D-pad (also cross shaped) and if you held it another way you had a natural analog stick (and trigger). The other good idea was to have 4 ports on the console. The failings of the N64 controller were the quality of analog stick and the size of the 4 C-buttons and their distance from the B and A buttons. This should have been the finest controller for fighting games but those stupid C-buttons were useless.
No, he's talking about the huge controller that came with the machine at launch. That fucker was enormous.
Incredibly comfortable though...
Splitting an article over four pages.
What were they thinking?
Beetle B.
And yet the 360 controller still has a d-pad that bad.
Two things:
1) Good D-pad designs are all patented; the reason Microsoft's sucks is because they were late to the market. Any other latecomer would have the same problem.
2) Xbox games generally don't bother using the D-pad anyway. Normally when it's used, it's just used as 4 additional buttons, and not as a joystick.
Given those, I think Microsoft's doing about the best they can with their controller.
Comment of the year
Many stores sold headphones that had the funny plug built in. And Fry's carried the adapter jack.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
One mistake they missed that plagued the 3DO and others was having to daisy chain controllers. In theory it sounds like a genius solution. In practice it usually ended up with Player 1 ripping the controller out of Player 2's hand if they happen to move.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
BULLSHIT the Gameboy Advance didn't have a headphone jack. I friggin owned one, and I used headphones all the time. Now the 'SP' on the other hand...
Except on a Mac.
The Wii controler is not that bad.
I'll assume the standard wiimote+numchuck setup.
The nunchuck has 2 buttons (trigger style) and 1 analog stick. As far as non motion-based controls that is it.
In the remote position, the wiimote has 2 readily accessible buttons, and a d-pad. (the dpad is positioned to awkwardly for regular directional use, but for item switching, etc it is fine) Two buttons that could logically be used as start or select are reachable with some strain.
So: 4 main buttons (3 in trigger positions), 1 awkward dpad, 1 analog stick, 2 secondary buttons (start/select style).
That is roughly equivalent to what was accessible at one time with the n64 controller. If it were not for game developers feeling the need to include some action that requires shaking the Wiimote or Nunchuk, just to say they did (like with the many of Nintendo's more traditional first party games (mario/zelda)) it would be a pretty reasonable controller.
I mean, when I play DK64, I actually wishe there were more buttons, such that they did not need to use the 2 button combos to access some features (in a fairly awkward manner too).
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Because at least with my 2600 the solid plastic center part would snap and joystick would no longer work. Actually atari sort replacements but it was pretty easy to take the controller apart and swap out the part.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I mean seriously that design was better than the 2600. You didn't have to go behind the tv to take care of things and only one wire came from the TV to your game system. (Of course the one place most likely to have a wall socket was behind the TV.) They made it more convenient with less clutter. Why did people complain? Because they couldn't swap wires from the 2600 to the 5200 because it wasn't compatible.(Which you could do with other systems.) Yes, the reason people complained was because they were too stupid to figure out you could just chain the switch boxes which is what I did.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
No soft reset on the playstation. Some games had their own but it wasn't required. That was annoying since if you hit the reset button on the system the PSX took quite a while to boot up. (Saturn had start+A+B+C for what it's worth which would always take you to the title screen.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I loved the box as technology. The thing where the power came down the line from the RF diverter was outstanding, and never a problem. I think I owned all eight games made for it as well. And the track ball. And the plastic thingy that let you mount both controllers together so you could play space dungeon. Hell, I still might. The thing survived, fully functional, for numerous moves over like 20 years, and every now and again I would plug it back in only to remember...
Its death was the controller. I opened one once and discovered that they basically had the X and Y potentiometers on the same circuit. I never did understand how it worked, but as near as I could tell the magnitude of change of resistance for X was way different than for Y so it could (sort of) tell what you were doing with the joystick. But _only_ sort of. Moving from the extreme corners to other other extreme corners was super obvious and worked okay. Trying to maneuver Pengo from the north side of a cube to the east side, so that you could then shove the cube west was basically impossible.
The fact that the four "trigger" buttons were stacked one above the other, two to a side, on the east and west sides of the controller, in side semi-recessed rectangles was "freaking impossible".
I eventually figured out that they wanted you to hold the controller in your left palm, use your left thumb and fore-finger to operate the triggers, while _gently_ and _unerringly_ operating the joystick with your right index finger. My response to this realization was "ch'yah right".
Then again nobody invented "ergonomics" till like five years later. 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
... make me feel old.
I remember the VIC-20, darnit.
22 columns of fuzzy text! AND WE LOVED IT.
Actually, no, we hated it.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The heavy power brick with the plug built into it. So many systems have done this and it's just such a pain in the ass. (I think most of us have had experience of what a bad design this really is. Fortunately all the current systems try to get rid of it and use a plug.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.