Video games of all kinds.
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If you've ever seen Sega's Dreamcast controller you might have noticed its cross-shaped d-pad. If you follow these sorts of things, you might have noticed it and thought to yourself didn't Nintendo patent that? And you're right, they did.
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I received my Aleck64 PCB today, and it came with a pair of sticks on a standard J-arcade control panel. These sticks are really neat, with a fantastic quick-switching analogue/digital selector ring.
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The SNK Neo Geo cartridge system had a pretty great joystick (read the review) bundled with it. The internal mechanism was so solid and reliable that it was used again for the Neo Geo CD stick, and for several other joysticks from other manufacturers (and probably arcades as...
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I've put together a page on the Anatomy of a Joystick, the first in a series of articles about controls (I hope!).
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Nintendo, like Sega, used a novel mechanism for their analogue joystick. Instead of Sega's magnets however they went for a complicated but elegant optical encoding wheel assembly.
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The biggest thing that separates the Sega Saturn 3D pad from its contemporaries (the Playstation Dual Shock and the N64 pad) is the analogue nipple. It's a large device with lots of throw, and it uses something no other manufacturer does: magnets!
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Quite some time ago I really wanted to use my NeoGeo joystick on the GameCube. Hudson had released Star Soldier, and it was a great game, but you had to frantically pound the fire button to get the best weapon... And this was nigh impossible with a regular GC pad. It was only moderately easier with Hori's SNES-style...
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When Sega first sent the early Saturn hardware to developers they didn't have final controllers available, so they shipped out modified Genesis/MegaDrive 6-button pads. They used a customized PCB with an additional switch on it, drilled a hole through the pad's shell and presto, two shoulder buttons (the first was the...
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Despite being a manufacturing powerhouse, Sony had other companies produce their Playstation pads. During the first Playstation's reign at least two companies had the honour: ALPS and Mitsumi.
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Like most industries, patents play a huge part in the video game world. There's some interesting stuff to learn from these patents too. Here are some interesting patents I found:
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Patents are interesting things. Intended to give inventors a limited period of exclusivity over their inventions, they're now more often used to prevent one's competitors from moving past you. Companies patent anything and everything that comes out of their design labs. If you've ever wondered why Nintendo was the only...
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As you may have read, the Xbox 360 pad is really terrible for playing PacMan CE. Neither the execrable d-pad nor the analogue stick were up to the high-speed accuracy required for the game, so I had to take matters into my own hands:
I recently tore apart an X68000 dual-d-pad controller made by Dempa Micomsoft for the X68000. It was bundled with Crazy Climber, and also worked with Libble Rabble (another Micomsoft release). It's a fairly typical pad for the era: rectangular, flat, basically unadorned except for two d-pads and two buttons.
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