I didn’t realise people like the 360 controller. I got one a few weeks back and don’t like it much at all. The should buttons are in a bad spot (though sometimes their out-of-the-wayness is good), analogue triggers are bad most of the time (and the terrible d-pad doesn’t even need to be mentioned, though I didn’t imagine it would be this bad.). The sticks feel pretty good, apart from the tops. If I want to hit exactly left or right on the right stick it’s way too picky. Might be a problem on my end.
I can’t think of any controller I like enthusiastically. GC one’s okay, but the shoulder buttons feel pretty bad (though I like the analogue+click idea). Probably feels the nicest to hold.
I think my ideal controller is an N64 one with a better analogue stick.
I wish every game could come with its own controller/s.
I actually really dislike trackballs, because they feel so slippery and out of control for me.
But that’s what interests me abut that controller: It’s not a track ball, attacked to a controller. it’s more like the shoulder socket of an action figure, and you grasp it around the top and turn it like it’s your character’s head, except by tilting your head forward (not just swiveling it to look at things) you move as well.
I thought it was the most comfortable controller I had ever used when it came out. I just don’t think it’s a very good all-purpose controller, and Nintendo was being kind of narrow-minded in designing a controller that would work well with all the games they could think of at the time.
When we just look at good Gamecube games designed for the Gamecube controller it’s easy to forget that:
The weird button placements make standard stuff like CvS2 hot garbage.
The lack of a second left shoulder button made multiplatform games not perform as well.
That C-Stick wasn’t as glorious as the one true analog.
I loved that thing and it made for some great games, but it did make it hard to play other great games.
That analog stick and that mean A button, though. I suspect that it’d be the best controller to play something like VideoBall.
the GC controller lasts and endures because it’s remained functional across 3 different hardware generations (one via adapter but still promoted) and Nintnedo continues to still make some of the greatest couch-multiplayer out there, a lot of people, even if they didn’t regularly play it, just have these things lying around.
its a good controller that only works best with certain nintendo games, but those certain nintendo games have had cult and mainstream appreciation for about 15 years
I can’t stand the location of the c stick, the edges of X and Y (hard to press them along with A) and I could never get used to the huge amount of low tension travel of the triggers. I’d prefer the consistent high tension of say, any Xbox controllers instead of that. Metroid prime was especially fatiguing. Instead of being able to pull your whole hand against the trigger, you have to continually provide a weirdly low amount of finger pressure. Just strange.
The GC controller falls into the pitfalls of Web 3.0 overdesign (think Discourse).
They thoughtfully considered how they could mold form to function, genuinely engaging how their tool would be used and attempting to build towards those uses in an intuitive, streamlined way. They may have even bee trying to make up for the N64 controller in a sense, which felt like a mess of features thrown together, arranged so that they technically worked but didn’t really offer a clear path.
Unfortunately, when you try to anticipate every possible method of engagement and design to that, you will almost invariably overlook some user behaviors. Discourse doesn’t realize that maybe I want to put one quote on top of the other without combining them or to repost something I deleted so that it’s replying to the correct person or make a post that is just a quote of someone else. Whereas the GC controller doesn’t understand that in some games as many as four or six buttons have essentially equal weight, and shoulder buttons need to act like triggers, rather than utility buttons or acceleration buttons.
Honestly, the GC controller is fine or great for most use cases, but they definitely decided to go less modular and more directed, and of course that will annoy some people.
I got the controller in record time and tried it out on my comp with emulators. Clicky stick was fantastic and a good time.
I haven’t tried it with a fighting game yet because I can’t get fightcade to detect the stick. I guess I’ll try it on the PS3/4 soon.
This is unrelated but how the hell did I miss Gunstar Super Heroes? I played like halfway through it at one E3 and then never bought it when it came out, but playing it now, it’s unabashedly a Sega fangame with every other level being an overt homage to a Sega franchise when it’s not being a retread of the original Gunstar Heroes. I’m a fool for missing out for so long.
I feel like this is as good a thread as any to mention the strange habit I used to have of holding a sega genesis controller backwards and upside down. I guess you could call it inverted.