That’s like saying every pad needs six face buttons because, what about Street Fighter? (Which is a response I got on Ye Olde IC every time I suggested otherwise, IIRC.)
(But, yeah. Best use.)
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yeah, forget 2D fighting games in this discussion, their requirements are the opposite of most sensible pad designs. I really wish everything had GC-style asymmetrical face buttons and analog gates.
this reminds me that virtually no one uses the PS4 controller’s touchpad. also, there seems to be less consensus than I thought around the PS4 controller having replaced the 360 as the best all-rounder.
the older dualshock is pretty terrible but it was also the only mainstream console controller with a good dpad and symmetrical thumbsticks for a decade. I had snap-on triggers for my DS3 to make it less bad.
You know, the GBA has a close to ideal layout for traditional 2D console game design. Buttons are just kinda there – nothing like the NGPC – but the arrangement is perfect. Any more buttons, placed any differently, and we start to get into sprawl territory.
This shoulda been the SNES layout.
the steam controller’s middle/ring finger buttons are generally agreed to be pretty good, right?
FWIW I quite enjoy my Madcatz fightpad it serves pretty well as a light-duty 2D platformer controller/fightman pad
I like the SNES pad a lot. Or at least the bootleg Super Famicom pads I bought. They’re really comfortable and have enough buttons to be useful without feeling overwhelming. 360 pad is probably still my favorite of the Twin Stick Generation, despite a d-pad that’s pretty atrocious even for its “new” purpose of Selecting Things In Menus Only. The Dualshock 4 is quite nice, too, though I’m very upset they chose to map Screenshot to Select, rather than making it a “new” function button for backwards compatibility purposes.
The back plate ones? When I first used it they were in the way of where my fingers wanted to rest, but a couple accidental presses later I got used to them.
I can’t believe I haven’t talked about the Virtual Boy controller yet
It’s the only perfectly symmetrical controller that I know of. It’s got two flipping d-pads. It’s so subtly bizarre that I actually love it to death. It’s really comfortable to hold and the double d-pads get used for a few interesting things. Specifically, Teleroboxer uses them like left hand and right hand for punching, IIRC.
It’s really not that good overall, nor is it boldly bizarre like a lot of the other controllers mentioned, but it’s got a quiet sort of strangeness about it. It compliments the Virtual Boy’s overall design ethos of “nobody asked and we provided.”
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I want to highlight some satisfying rhythm game controllers too, the genre that has bespoke controllers per game. Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and Samba de Amigo don’t have particularly brilliantly designed controllers in a technical sense, but they literalize their game’s metaphor in a compelling way. As for more abstract rhythm games, I want to highlight the satisfyingly clicky giant orbs of Pop’n’Music:
and the giant square buttons of Jubeat, which are backed by 16 button-sized LCD screens depicting notes “approaching” on the z-axis, letting you look directly at the controls the whole time:
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nothing else has ever come close to being as good as the japanese saturn pad
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[quote=“VirtualClint, post:11, topic:2670, full:true”]
I have two problems with clicky sticks. First, the aforementioned “accidentally hit it while I’m playing” problem, and second, they’re really uncomfortable to hold for any prolonged period of time. The worst offender is Halo in my opinion. Having to hold the right stick in to crouch, but also use the stick to move the camera at the same time? Awful.[/quote]
do you mean zoom? it’s a toggle
unless you mean hold the left stick to crouch+walk, in which case, i think it’s an intentional design decision to put that there bc crouch walking sucks
e: just realized you may be talking about halo 5… heh heh… oy
xbone is nicer all round than 360, but i moved into a house with a ps4 and god it just feels so right. the parallel sticks feel way better than I thought they would? probably the extended handgrips. also LB on my xbone pad is getting dodgy
Kb and mouse for life baby
GC 'troller is my favorite. SFC/SNES gets major cred for canonizing the diamond-shaped button layout that became the controller standard after Sony copied it for the PS1, as well as having a pleasing form (colorful SFC version is the best). Dualshock has a comfortable hand-fitting shape and has gotten consistently more responsive with each generation. Shout out to my Logitech Dual Action which is a great, blatant Dualshock ripoff that works plug-n-play w/ our PS3 and seemingly every version of windows (and has a clean, numbered layout that makes it breezy 2 program in joy2key).
Least favorite ever: Wiimote. Pick your poison: fidgety, imprecise motion controls that require a sensor seemingly designed to fall behind the TV and break? Sideways alignment that’s like playing a 3D game with an elongated NES controller? Dual-wield nunchucks that make me feel like my brain is splitting itself in two? ironically, by making a system crafted for young folks & old folks alike, Nintendo briefly made me wonder if i was too old for videogames.
Obligatory Steel Battalion mention
Anyway the Sega / 360 style D-pad is an abomination IMO
At 18 or so, my thumbs became hyper sensitive to the little circles on the 64/GC joystick, I can’t play these consoles for more than 30 minutes
Dual Shock wins by default
honorable mention: N64 controller, for sheer creativity & consistently making me forget how to hold it whenever i haven’t played in awhile
When the N64 came out i was 6, looking at those controllers and full-3D games was like gazing upon alien tech found in a meteorite
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I got a PS4 controller because everyone raved about it.
It was broken in two hours.
Came at a time when it was a significant investment on my part, too.
I want to defend the Wiimote. I didn’t play enough Wii games; had that been the Rental Period, when Blockbuster was everywhere, maybe the system would have gotten a fair shake. But I’d check the weather and news on the Wii every morning before college, because it was an excuse to use the Wiimote-as-mouse. I could have done the same thing on five other devices, but the Wiimote was just…fun.
The problem with the Wii was shovelware, and good games couldn’t compete, so…so no one tried to make good games, despite it having an absurdly high install base. Much like smartphones today.
This sounds like you reluctantly bought something and treated it like garbage so now you can treat your abnormal experience as a reason to justify how right you were to be reluctant.
This sounds like you’re confusing your identity with brand identity.
I dunno, man. Everyone was saying the PS4 controller was alright, but raving? Also, we’ve bought 6 PS4 controllers because we use them to show off our game at shows. They’ve all gone through hundreds of hours of hard use and the worst thing that’s happened was that one of them had liquor spilled on it so the L2 doesn’t work.
But whatever. Please continue.