captmcblack said:
This?? You're talking about this? Well, I had extensive playtime on the Intellivision back in the day, and I will agree that it actually worked better than it looked. In fact, when the disc works, the control is very smooth. I also thought the keypad/overlay idea was a neat concept and well utilized. It had a few killer design flaws though. First off, the main action buttons were these tiny rectangle buttons on the sides of the actual pad. They were a bitch to push, and would cut into your thumbs, not good for your "main" action buttons in a game. Second, because the pads were hardwired into the console, when the disc inevitably went bad, you had to send the whole console in for repair. I will admit though that the atari 2600 pad was very uncomfortable as well, and having never held a 5200 or Colecovision controller, I guess the Intellivision wins that era by default.
I used this in the 8-bit era. I loved my MAX. Yeah the disc was a gimmick, but I didn't use the disc. I pressed the actual black border around the disc, and used the disc merely to slide my thumb across. Without having to press the disc, I found my thumb wouldn't get tired. Anyway, I was also blessed with the thumbs of a sloth, so the turbos were key in some games that demanded button mashing (thank god that gimmick is dead).
In the 16-bit era, I loved both the SNES pad and the Genesis 6 button pad, like the majority. The original Genesis pad sucked in my opinion, everything felt soft. I can't remember what I used before the 6 button came out, but I remember going through several third party pads looking for something better.
The Jaguar Controller was a beast that deserves dishonorable mention. Two fatal flaws plus a good idea misused and killed for future generations of controllers. I was excited about the Overlay idea coming back, too bad it was never capitalized on, and will probably never be seen again. The two fatal flaws are of course the lack of analog for a primarily 3-d based machine and the measly three buttons. Of course they came out with a 6 button later, but I couldn't be bothered. The dpad on the Jaguar controller was horrible [/end Bill Walton].
Random thought, how come Atari knew that videogames were going 3-D in 1993-94 with Jag and Sega still scrambles in 1995 to make the Saturn capable of 3-d? An early sign of doom when Atari sees the future better than you? Certainly.
As far as current/32bit systems, imo newer gamers don't know how good they have it with today's controllers. While I certainly have my favorites, none of the current machines or last gen had a controller that I could consider horrible or even extremely flawed.
Ergonomics were not a strong suit then, but clearly there's been some excellent progress since.
