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Good Games Ruined by Bad Controllers

When Street Fighter IV was released a few months ago, I found myself a bit annoyed by every gaming journalist informing me that I had to drop another $60-$150 on an arcade stick to fully enjoy the game. Longtime readers of 61FPS know that I'm a notoriously cheap bastard when it comes to gaming, so you can probably guess my response when these earners of a living wage stressed the importance of spending an obscene amount of money on a peripheral necessary to make a single game playable. The sad thing is, they were right; Capcom's fighting masterpiece turns into an unresponsive game of chance if you happen to be using something as poorly-designed and unreliable as the XBox 360's d-pad. But Street Fighter IV alone is not the only victim of bad controller design.

Posted Apr 09 2009, 03:25 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 5 comment(s)

Filed under: bob mackey, controllers, street figher iv, peripherals, Pac-man championship edition

The Periodic Table of Game Controllers

We've seen a good number of "history of game controllers" charts and graphics over the past few years, but none of them has captured my attention quite like this new one from Michael Vasilev, the Periodic Table of Controllers.

Clearly inspired by Squidspot's Periodic Table of Typefaces that hit the 'net earlier this month, this table arranges the control input devices of most of the major gaming consoles and handhelds in chronological order, along with information regarding their designer, CPU and more.

Posted Mar 23 2009, 06:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: derrick sanskrit, art, controllers, design

Make Your Wii More Like a Super NES for Only $75

So, Club Nintendo kinda sucks, doesn't it? As excited as I was to hear that Nintendo was finally bringing their customer rewards program over to the States, I couldn't help but feel disappointed when my loyalty was pimp-slapped by Nintendo's stinginess. And to make things even worse, the goodies offered by Club Nintendo don't even seem like they're worth buying dozens of games to obtain; what makes this even worse is that the Japanese Club Nintendo has been around for much longer and distributing much cooler prizes--all while Nintendo's American branch was most likely deciding to make 90% of their games inelegible for the service. Take the Super Famicom edition Classic Controller up there, for instance; at one point, American gamers could do nothing but pine for the peripheral that makes the current Classic Controller look like something that fell out of a Web 2.0 processing plant.

Posted Feb 19 2009, 04:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: nintendo, super nintendo, bob mackey, controllers, club nintendo, peripherals, super famicom

Bringing Sexy Back: Retro Controllers of the Future

Take a gander at this metal USB game pad from Dream Cheeky. It features all the buttons of a SNES controller and none of the ergonomics, but honestly, who cares? Look at how shiny it is! Look at how smooth and sleek it is, like your 24th century android girlfriend, with the tiny L and R buttons as her perk nipples and a rubberized grip as her toned synthetic hips. She has a six foot USB cord so as to not smother you, and she even swings both ways with both PC and Mac support. Sure, she doesn't have as many features as the Logitech pad that's been loyal to me for years, but I'm willing to sacrifice function for form when its a form like this.

There, now that your PC games have an extra dash of Björk's "All Is Full of Love," let's see what we can do about the sexiest home console around, Nintendo's Wii.

Posted Aug 27 2008, 04:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: derrick sanskrit, wii, bringing sexy back, PC, mac, controllers

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.