Evolution of Video Game Controllers 185
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.
sure it's dupe-a-licious (Score:2, Informative)
Re:/.'d already (Score:5, Informative)
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
Old consoles lacking, new ones only mainstream (Score:4, Informative)
We're missing the TurboGrafx 16 [wikipedia.org], the Neo-Geo [wikipedia.org], the Sega Master System [wikipedia.org]... and quite a few others.
3 Best Contollers ever...IMHO (Score:2, Informative)
SNES controller - again I liked the fit of the unit.
Semi dupe (Score:4, Informative)
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
Aren't we forgetting (Score:3, Informative)
Commodore 64 joystick... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Relations (Score:4, Informative)
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.
It's like the Seventies and Eighties didn't happen (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Article is almost completely garbage (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Poorly researched. (Score:3, Informative)
The 5200 had an analog stick (with no centering and poorly-designed potentiometer rails that made diagonal movements irregular). Are you thinking of the Intellivision's 8-switch, 16-directional digital stick?
The console bias means that all the analog controllers of home computers are ignored by this article. The original IBM PC joystick interface, the one that musicians hung their MIDI interfaces off of in the days before USB and Firewire, was designed to have 2 joysticks attached to it, each with 2 digital buttons and 2 axes of analog joystick control.
Even my trusty CoCo's joysticks were analog -- CoCo BASIC even had functions for reading them.
Xbox Controller Mods (Score:3, Informative)
basically its a USB Hub with a built in joystick
The controller Cable is 5 wire however the yellow wire is only used for a light gun and can be safely ignored.
generally standard usb colours are used so.
here's a hint of what to do.
take the extension cable and split this in half (theres a big ferrite core in the middle which you may be able to dig out the plastic) and take a usb extension cable and split this in half solder the female half to the xbox half and you now have an adapter to allow std usb devices to be connected (keyboard mouse anything else supported by debian). google xbox xebian for details.
The other half of the extension join the male half of the usb connector to it and plug into pc. the xbox controller identifies as a microsoft usb hub in XP drivers are available to make the xbox controller as a std game controller. Xbox Memory cards can be read plugged ino an xbox controller using drivers used by action replay with a modification to the inf file. use USBinfo.exe to find the pid and vid numbers for the particular card.
incidently this hack should work to get a usb stick to be readable on a Pc in Xbox format.
so lets see for one controller extension and one usb extender cable you get std usb port on xbox ability to use usb stick on xbox as a memory card. maybe other types of card too.) a great controller for the PC and a dongle to connect an xbox memory card to the pc.