With motion control looming on the horizon (and already here in the case of the Wii!), I wanted to discuss the future of gaming control. Perhaps a scary subject for those of us that had come to love the humble joypad controller. With Nintendo having changed it almost beyond recognition and Sony, who already have motion sensitivity in their existing control pads, seeking to take it one step further with their answer to motion control, it truly looks like the end for the classic joypad. What’s more, Microsoft, with Project Natal, are looking to do away with them altogether! Are we losing control?
To discuss what I thought of the matter I found it was best to fully explain my position. It turned in to a personal journey through the history, present and future of controller design. It is not a list of dates and facts and figures about controllers. It is a lot of personal opinions about how I have interacted with various controllers over the years. I very much doubt you will agree with everything I have to say, and I will be keen to hear where your opinion differs to mine, just try to comment without losing control…
Thirteen. Unlucky for some. The number has been associated with doom and death ever since the days of the Last Supper. With the Natal World Order looming on the horizon, is the thirteen button controller used by both Sony and Microsoft seeing it’s end of days? Are gamers, who have put their faith in the humble control pad for generations, about to be left high and dry just because somebody crossed Judtendo’s palm with silver?
I, like many of you, have grown up witnessing the evolution of gaming controllers. For me it started off with the one button, one joystick simplicity of the Atari 2600. The humble joystick saw more complicated designs over the years, often tending to resemble flight sticks, with trigger and turbo buttons and all other manners of bells and whistles, but the Atari 2600 Joystick is a controller that still serves as an iconic symbol of that gaming era.
The transition from a joystick to a joypad may not sound much now but it was perhaps the biggest leap in game controller design of all time. Most people are familiar with the now iconic standard NES pad. Transferring movement controls to a Directional Pad (or D-pad as it has become more commonly know) is something that defined a generation of gaming and still remains a feature of all modern controllers and handhelds…even if Microsoft can not make D-pad’s as good as Nintendo did twenty or more years ago!
To come up with the Master System pad design must have taken ages. Unlike the NES pad it had no start and select buttons and relabeled the ‘A’ and ‘B’ buttons, ’1′ and ’2′. It also had a square d-pad attached by a hole in the centre of the controller. The European version of the Atari 7800 also came with a very similar design of joypad.
I did not play that much on either of the NES or Master System pads. I think I played more Duck Hunt on my friends NES than anything else and the only game I remember playing on the Master System pad was Sega Tennis. Although more simplistic in design, it is the Atari 2600 joystick that stands out in my memory, probably helped by the fact I still have two functioning joysticks in my house to this day (which is more than can be said for a lot of consoles since). In my lifetime these joysticks have seen me through countless hours of River Raid, Frogger, Pole Position and, my favourite game of that era, Seaquest.
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