Re:Retro

Age-old debate: Joystick versus other controllers

by Joel on August 28th, 2008

I’ve been a big fan of joysticks since I first took hold of that shaft attached to a flat box which made up the main controller for the Atari 2600. This healthy respect for the joystick as a video game controller went up a notch in the late 80s when arcades started sprouting in my corner of the world.

During this time, on the other side of the world, video game consoles were coming out. These consoles didn’t come with joysticks as controllers but something called D-pads, an adaptation of the arcade controller sans the stick. The joystick was replaced by a button shaped like a cross that allowed movement much like a joystick, eight directions: north, east, south, west, northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest.

I remember the time Nintendo started marketing the Nintendo Entertainment System (repackaged in some Asian countries as the Nintendo Family Computer), bundling it with two hot video games at the time, Super Mario Brothers and Hudson’s Adventure Island. The controller that came with the Famicom felt clumsy in my hands. I found myself longing for a joystick, primarily to make my adventures in Super Mario Brothers more palatable.

So we went out to a shopping center to look for a joystick for the Famicom. Of course, we failed to find one. The closest thing we found was a joystick-like contraption that took the place of the cross-shaped button. A few hours of playing Super Mario Brothers using the stub was enough to drive me bonkers. “It’s not a joystick!”

I think that was what forced me, and probably a thousand other players, to adapt—and adapt fast—to the controller of the next generation, the D-pad. Of course, there’s also the fact that it’s hard to play new games using the joystick.

Here’s an opinion from a pro d-pad guy:

I have a great dislike for the joystick of more modern video game system controllers. Controllers like the ones for the Playstation, Playstation 2 and Gamecube all bug me in one very big way with their joysticks or whatever you wish to call it. Joysticks have to have this way where you can control how fast the character or cursor moves by how far you tilt the stick. Push it a bit to make the character or cursor move at a crawl or walk, and push it all the way to move the character or cursor fast. This is where I have problems.

I find the D-pad (the plus sign thingy on the left side of most controllers) so much easier to work with. There’s no need to tilt the thing to control the character or cursor for the games.

Now let’s take a look at the comment of someone who loves joysticks:

Today’s controllers are the main reason I don’t play action games anymore. I dislike the controllers you describe but I was never a fan of the D-pad either. My favorite joysticks remain the ones we used to have in the late 80s to early 90s: a rectangular box with a hard lever and suctions that make it stick on the table. And if the game only needs one button, even better. You control the lever with your right hand and push the button(s) with the left one; an old arcades feeling, the joystick is really a part of yourself and you can feel in control. How today’s gamers enjoy sitting on the couch and playing with their thumb is beyond me.

Nice. So how about you? Joystick or D-pad? Joystick or other video game console controllers?

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POSTED IN: Arcade, Atari, Atari 2600, Discussion, Do the Mario, Gamecube, General, NES, Nintendo, Playstation, Playstation 2, Re:Retro, Sony