The complete history of game consoles and controlers (part 2)

first home console to claim to be 16 bits. Well, other than having a slightly more modern style, the TurboGrafx-16 controller seems to be pretty much like the Nintendo Entertainment System controller. The only change is the two turbo switches. These switches enable or disable slow and rapid autofire functions to the [1] and [2] action buttons. This controller has two shoulder buttons and two center buttons like on the Super Nintendo controller, and a directional pad and face buttons like on the Genesis controller. Oddly, though, the center buttons are labelled X and P instead of the otherwise almost universal select and start. As the 3DO was intended to be a multimedia machine, the controlle also features video/audio playback controls labelled on the controller itself. The center buttons are stop and play/pause while the directional pad itself has labels for fast forward, reverse, skip forward and back. (The later Sony Playstation also seems to have adopted similar multimedia designations for it's controller.) In keeping with the multimedia theme, the controller also has a headphone jack built into it, and a volume knob. At some point Nintendo suddenly terminated the project, infuriating Sony. Sony vowed to take revenge and developed their own game console. The only significant alterations to the design are the addition of two additional shoulder buttons, and handles to make the controller more comfortable to hold. Because games would now be in 3D, the additional shoulder buttons were originally intended for the purpose of allowing players to move in or out along that extra 3rd dimension. The Jaguar was Atari's last venture into the console market. And if there was ever an odd blending of two dissimilar controllers, this would probably be it. Instead of following in the footsteps of their previous console, the Jaguar controller seems to be a mix of their older Atari 5200 controller and the Sega Genesis controller. By this point in time, the 8-directional control pad was used instead. An analog stick might have fit well with the Jaguar's 3D capabilities, They wanted to introduce analog control but didn't know how well it would be recieved. Would game developers still want the traditional 8-direction control pad or would they switch to analog? The design of the Nintendo 64 controller is likely the result of these questions. Nintendo came up with a 3 pronged solution. Hold the controller by the two outer handles for digital control, or hold it by the middle and right handles for analog control. The fact that they put the analog thumb stick in the center of the controller suggests that even they had doubts that analog would catch on. On the whole, not many games make use of the PS2 controller's analog buttons because they still feel very digital. most of these are reflected inside of the console and show there potential in that era.