The disappearance of the joystick

Question

In the Commodore and coin-op days, the joystick was the controller, with occasionally the trackball (for Marble Madness) and the paddle (for pong and similar concepts, e.g. Arkanoid). The use of the joystick remained alive in Amiga, and with the analogic joystick to some PC games.

Then suddenly the joystick disappeared, replaced by the gamepad. For the SNES/PSX era, joystick was simply a relic of the past. With the PS2, the thumbstick appeared, as a comeback to the joystick advantages, but still within an acceptable size.

My questions is: why did the full-stick joystick disappear?

additional "opinion question": Would you be able to envision playing your games today with a full-stick joystick controller ?

Asked by Stefano Borini

Answer

why did the gamepad take over from the joystick?

Many reasons!

My tuppenceworth: I guess once the NES pad came out, people making gaming hardware just copied it.

Firstly, from a business point of view, it has less plastic in it than an old style 8-way joystick, and offers the same precision of movement. Gamepads are significantly more compact and less bulky to store than old school joysticks too. Cheaper to make, smaller, better for business.

Personally, I think the main reason is one of optimal interaction within the constraints of the product - you don't need to rest it on a table, it takes up next to no space, and it can be more or less covered in controls as long as the user can reach and use them all comfortably.

IMHO gamepads represent an evolution of the old school joystick, (where the fitness function includes cost, ergonomics, and functionality available at your fingertips) and so they've naturally taken over from joysticks.

Sure it's less buttons than you'd need for a PC flight sim (every button on the keyboard anyone?), but you just don't need that many buttons for the vast majority of games.

TBH, the thumbsticks on an X360 pad offer the same angular resolution as any typical flight stick; so the only real reason for the massive flight stick still existing is that players want to have a joystick that makes the experience feel as close to how they imagine the real thing as possible - certainly that's why I bought one of those massive flight yoke things with the throttle controls and about a billion hat-switches to play Apache Gunship in 2001 :)

Answered by darbotron

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How to clean a Fightstick

Question

A while back I bought a Mad Catz Round 2 Tournament Edition Fightstick and I've been playing the hell out of it. I like it a lot and I'd like to preserve its condition for as long as possible while actively using it. Which materials and chemicals should I use to keep it free from dust, smudges and scratches?

Answer

First off, always check the manual or with the manufacturer before you clean a device - you don't want to void your warranty or ruin anything that's particularly special about the device.

That said, I would suggest a hard surface cleaner (ie, Pledge for Electronics or similar) or a mild glass cleaner (ie, like what you'd buy to clean eyewear) along with a microfiber cloth. You want to spray the cleaner on the cloth, and not on the device, to avoid getting the cleaner into the device.

Avoid anything that contains ammonia or acetone, or anything not really designed for hard surfaces - (ie, bathroom cleaner, bleach, dish soap, etc) as these are not really going to be appropriate. Using paper towels or tissues is just going to leave lint behind.

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Guide for improving aim at First Person Shooters in consoles

Question

I have played Half Life and Counter Strike since 2001 and many others since, so I have some years of experience in playing fps games in computers, with mouse and keyboard. While I am not very good, I manage to almost always with the top 5 players on my team.

However, when I play on the PS3, fps games like Wolfenstein, or games that are not fps, but ocasionally need some aiming like Uncharted or Fallout 3, I am totally lame, and end up dying even on easy difficulties.

Has someone with this same problem of mine published a guide that I will be able to follow and improve myself?

Answer

There's really nothing more to it than practice unfortunately. I've been playing PC shooters since the original Doom and thought I would never get into console shooters, but after playing a bit of CoD4, I started getting into it and after a year or so of playing, I felt as in control playing with a controller as I did with the keyboard / mouse combo.

One thing though, you will never be as accurate using a controller, it's just impossible. Whereas using a keyboard and mouse in a shooter could be described as "point and click", with a controller, I've found that it's more like sweeping towards the target and picking the right moment to press fire in that sweep.

It sounds kinda strange, but it can be 90% as effective as keyboard / mouse control once you get used to it.

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Why did many commodore 64 games require the joystick to be in port #2?

Question

Why did many commodore 64 games require the joystick to be in port #2?
( Despite being single-player games )
I remember being annoyed by having to unplug and plug the joystick between games.

Answer

I never really thought about that much as a kid, when I had my C-64 (we just left a joystick plugged into #2 all the time).

However, after some digging, according to Ode to Joysticks:

Port 2 eventually emerged as the default, mainly because joysticks plugged into Port 1 could interfere with the command line interface.

Which is a good point, now that I read that, I do remember that having a joystick plugged into port #1 would send bizarre key codes to the primary BASIC interpreter/command line.

Ahhhh, memories!

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How are the many signals of a N64 or Wii joystick sent to the console by only 2 wires?

Question

I am curious as to how only 2 wires (perhaps 3 or 4) inside a N64 or Wii gamepad are able to send the many signals of the different inputs at once.

It used to be that for just one ON/OFF input, we needed two wires. So why does it not take dozens of wires for the many inputs on a modern gamepad?

Answer

So the Wii Joystick uses a Blue Tooth interface which is a little different than the N64 controller. As a result this answer deals more with the latter than the former.

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The N64 controller uses a single transmission wire on which it encodes bits to send signals back to the N64 console. To accomplish this bits are encoded on that wire as follows:

This encoding can then be used to multiplex the connection and allow 32 bit communication. In the case of the N64 controller these bits are encoded thus:

0   A
1   B
2   Z
3   Start
4   Directional Up
5   Directional Down
6   Directional Left
7   Directional Right
8   unknown (always 0)
9   unknown (always 0)
10  L
11  R
12  C Up
13  C Down
14  C Left
15  C Right

With the remaining 16 bits being used for the Analog Joystick (providing 8 degrees of control).

More over, certain codes are transmitted for specialized function:

To Init: send 03 80 01 followed by 34 80's
To Start Rumble: 03 c0 1b followed by 32 01's
To Stop Rumble: 03 c0 1b followed by 32 00's

You can find more information in this vein here

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Why do some people play inverted?

Question

I'm curious why some people, like me, play inverted. Is there any correlation between classic gamers playing with real joysticks and playing inverted now or any other sort of correlations? I'm looking for any sort of reasoning behind it and why my brain acts in reverse of "normal". I've tried to play normal for long periods of time in 2 player because I felt like a dick having to pause it before every match to change the option and I just can't do it.

I figure there's a scientific reason.

Answer

There is no increase in performance. I majored in psychology and while there where no experiments specifically on games inverted vs non-inverted there are many studies on using remote devices where input is not only inverted but the left-right movement is also switched. These include not only machine operations but also surgical equipment. There is a penalty during the learning process but after a period of practice there was no difference in response times or accuracy for the controls being "backward". If you have a nearby university you can look up the papers in various psychology journals.

So @Edward Black the brain simply doesn't work like you think it does. It is so efficient because it can create shortcuts. Plus if you look up how the eyeball/brain work together you would see that your logic is simply wrong.

I know why I like to play inverted. I started gaming on the C64 and on a couple of the flight simulators I played you where forced to use the "inverted" control scheme. Those where the games I learned to control the y-axis on and that is what I continued to use.

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My joystick is not working in fifa 11 when playing

Question

My vinyson joystick not working when i am trying to play the match. But it works outside of the game when i am selecting menu etc.

I think i am doing something wrong. I am very new to this joystick stuff. Can you help?

Answer

It worked. With vinyson joystick you have to active the analog mode by pressing to analog button for joystick to work.

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