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How come a lot getting into retro games skip Atari?


totallyterrificpants

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I was exactly the right age for the NES, and my childhood experiences in the arcade were of the " begging for quarters variety" as mentioned by Stardust. What I think we really missed was the competitive experience of the arcade. I was drawn to games that let me explore and play on my own. Nintendo didn't invent this, they just kept working on it while others dropped out. The industry also had to learn how to sell a gaming experience outside of the arcade and many of the early experiences didn't seem to inspire many spinoffs (Superman, Adventure).

 

My point is that usually a NES gamer looks at Asteroids and wonders "where's the rest of the game". That's because NES games were meant as a contained experience. "The rest of the game" for Asteroids was trying to beat your brother sister or dad - something that kids my age just didn't want to look for.

 

All that being said, I love the 2600, and after having really dug into both libraries I have had a lot more frustrations with NES titles. Yes there are bad games on both, but even some good NES games are confounding. Quick example - I can tell Legacy of the Wizard is a great game, but I'm never going to take on the built in difficulty added by required repetition needed to actually finish the game. My realization of this as I'm playing really takes away from the experience. I could have more fun with Beamrider in as much time as it takes me to search for a LoW walkthrough.

 

Good points, I can distinctively remember rarely playing arcade style titles on the NES because they were hard and without an ending. The modern game experience, you can actually watch your friend play and give them tips and experience the game almost like you were beating it yourself. Or even collectively taking turns was more fun than trying to get a high score at something. It also could come down to what you had, despite rarely playing the arcade titles on NES, I did play the arcade style games on my Vic-20 until it broke. If you judge Atari by its cover, it's not too thrilling, but if you put half an hour into Freeway, you find yourself coming back. I love the game, everyone had it, but who really played Duck Hunt on the NES? It just didn't fit the mold of the contained experience you mentioned that the system evolved into.

 

Lest we forget that hardcore NES fans generally also skip or pay no attention to the Sega Master System, a console with the exact same types of 8-bit games, so it's not like a lot of these people make sense to begin with.

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For the kids the NES was fine, but at the time the NES arrived on European shores, we had ST and Amiga.

For us, going back to 8-bit was a step backwards, hell the better games were on 16 bit.

 

The D-pad is the worst controller ever invented (arcade invention), you need accurate joystick controls for better gaming, for example for platform games, and flight simulators.

The Flight simulator is the ONLY and I mean ONLY genre of games where a joystick comes in handy but even then in games like Warthunder and WoWP some of the best players on simulator mode can get by using a mouse and key board or a 360 controller with thumbsticks. (Although the SNES got by with Pilotwings)

 

The D-pad just doesn't give precise controls, but it's ok for quick and easy games on NES. It's also the wrong way around, of course, you need control with your right hand.

The world record for beating Super Mario Bros is roughly 5 minutes. To simply say that the d-pad is imprecise for platforming leads me to believe that you don't know what you are talking about. Also, the d-pad uses the standard movement and action button layout found in the arcade. But this has been pointed out to you ad nauseam.

Edited by empsolo
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Lest we forget that hardcore NES fans generally also skip or pay no attention to the Sega Master System, a console with the exact same types of 8-bit games, so it's not like a lot of these people make sense to begin with.

I wouldn't say that's true considering you have NES fans on youtube giving props to the Master System. Hell, it's one of the reasons why games like Golden Axe Warrior cost as much as Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy for the NES.

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The Flight simulator is the ONLY and I mean ONLY genre of games where a joystick comes in handy but even then in games like Warthunder and WoWP some of the best players on simulator mode can get by using a mouse and key board or a 360 controller with thumbsticks. (Although the SNES got by with Pilotwings)

 

The world record for beating Super Mario Bros is roughly 5 minutes. To simply say that the d-pad is imprecise for platforming leads me to believe that you don't know what you are talking about. Also, the d-pad uses the standard movement and action button layout found in the arcade. But this has been pointed out to you ad nauseam.

It's ok for a Mario game, I can do it in 4 min 58 secs, but try playing H.E.R.O. with a D pad, you need a precise joystick. Believe me (or not, obviously your choice but of some importance) when I tell you I know what I'm talking about. Mario games don't need precise controls (kids games), but a game like H.E.R.O. does.

Edited by high voltage
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With that dogshit controller. Good lord, how I hated that thing. One of my friends got that system when it first came out, I remember being at his house and trying the games and not being able to play a single one for long because of those controllers. And people complain about the 5200 controller! That stupid 4-button cross directional pad (though good that it had more than one fire button) was a deal-breaker. And people accepted that! Fine for every game? No thanks.

Come on, the D-pad was legendary. If it sucked so bad, why does every modern controller known to man still include it? Besides they made a special controller for people like you:

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That was another "advantage" of the 2600's horrible graphics. I mean, can you imagine trying to create a Sonic hedgehog using the 2600's LEGO block graphics?

Yes. A programmer by the name or Chris Spry imagined it. Now it's a reality:

2600_ZippyThePorcupine_CartSet.jpg

https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1052

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I think Lynxpro and others really 'nailed it' early on in this thread.

As a cough... 40-something :-) a lot of my friends back in the day had the 2600, it seemed like, every house had one, but after that?
A few of us went the 800XL route thanks to the stock clearance here in the UK high street chains, but most folks were firmly in the C64/ZX Spectrum/Amstrad CPC group, many of the 800XL owners had to jump ship to 1 of these as they had the software support, A8 did'nt.
As for A400/800/XEGS/130XE owners..never knew any.
The ST was THE upgrade path for a lot of us, but sadly seen as vastly inferior to the Amiga, so many try and find an Amiga rather than an ST.
Popular internet opinion has seemed to establish both the Lynx and Jaguar were crap, had no good games so friends ask why should they bother?
And as for the 7800, despite limited Press coverage in likes of Raze,C+VG, ACE etc format is far too obsure for most UK gamers it seems.
People simply seem to return to what they once knew....
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:waving:

I actually understand where you're coming at, TTP. For me, like you, I never grew up with the old systems. I started with the NES, I adored it. When I got the 2600, I immediately thought Atari was BETTER than Nintendo. But of course, it all comes down to opinion, you can say Atari sucks, but you have to consider it's standards by it's time line. Most people I meet actually think Atari is cool, but they always put Nintendo and Sega waaaay above Atari. :thumbsdown:

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I like both interfaces (as well as spinners and the lot) and I use d-pads for many types of games.

 

There are, however, a quite a few games that d-pads are not well-suited for (Star Wars vector arcade, TRON, Discs of TRON, Major Havoc, Tac/Scan arcade, Tail Gunner, Star Trek: STOS, Two Tigers,...).

Others that I suppose people could adjust to, but that I find it to be imprecise on a d-pad are: Crystal Castles, Marble Madness, Qiks, Venture, Missile Command, Centipede, Millipede, Gyruss)

 

And yes, there are definitely titles like TRON, that had the stick on the right as a flight stick or gave you a choice of whether to use buttons on the left or right (like Xevious, Dig-Dug, Frenzy, Sinistar, and Mr. Do). If you got used to fire buttons on the left and then picked up a d-pad, it would be a bit of an adjustment.

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I seem to remember that a lot of early simpler arcade games (one or two buttons or none like Pac Man) would often have buttons on each side so you could use your right or left hand for the controller. Growing up with the Atari, it has always felt more natural to me to use the stick with my right hand so it did always bug me that the d-pads are on the left (and modern arcade games followed this trend).

 

The durability of the d-pads is an advantage. At least compared to the original Atari sticks. Also, Atari made some really questionable controllers from the 5200 to the Painlines on the 7800. I would take an NES d-pad over the 7800 controllers any day. But even Atari's European 7800 controllers are not very good (IMHO). On the other hand, I think the Jaguar pads are about the most comfortable controllers I have used so take that into consideration ?.

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With that dogshit controller. Good lord, how I hated that thing. One of my friends got that system when it first came out, I remember being at his house and trying the games and not being able to play a single one for long because of those controllers. And people complain about the 5200 controller! That stupid 4-button cross directional pad (though good that it had more than one fire button) was a deal-breaker. And people accepted that! Fine for every game? No thanks.

Hmm, on the d-pad subject, I guess it depends. I find the NES and Sega d-pads to be close to perfect. The Atari Lynx had a pretty good d-pad as well. I'd say my favorite d-pad would have to be the Jaguar version. Of course, d-pads for the Xbox 360, 3DO, and Sega Dreamcast, not my favorite. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say the d-pad is worse than the 5200 controller. The 5200 controller sucks, and is only good for certain games like Missile Command.

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First and foremost, I can play games for hours just fine using the d-pad. The D-pad allows me to to have a full range of motion without needing make use of my wrist due to the fact that my thumb can engage in a full 360 degrees. Plus the arcade style layout makes it much easier to engage in movement because the left side of my brain (the side geared toward precision thinking and movement) doesn't have to send signals to the right side of my body in order to move characters.

Good for you. But you describe one of the very things that this thread is talking about, the differing mindsets between those of us who grew up with/played with the really old consoles (2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, Vectrex, 5200, etc.) and those who only come to them after the fact and stop at the NES/SNES type games and consoles. For us who love the 2600 experience (bad graphics and all) part of the appeal is the more accurate, more unique controllers. Analog controllers cannot be reproduced well with digital controls. So any games that require such a controller (Breakout, Warlords, Indy 500, Star Raiders, Missile Command, etc.) suffer greatly using a d-pad. Those d-pads that include analog sticks are far superior to just buttons but I'm talking about 2600 controllers vs. NES. There is no contest.

 

You can play games for hours just fine using the d-pad. I can't take more than 10 minutes of that shit, I'm ready to read a book or go outside and do something. Many of my contemporaries are the same way. Others aren't. But, again, you point out one of the key delimiters.

 

Not to mention that the d-pad allows for tighter controls for games that require quicker reaction time and thinking. I cant imagine playing a game like Super Mario Brothers with archaic control schemes of earlier consoles.

And I can't imagine playing Warlords with a d-pad. Or Missile Command with a d-pad (I don't like playing 2600 Missile Command with a joystick, I need the variable speed of a trak-ball, or an analog stick at least). Or Tempest with a d-pad (that is fucking useless). If you can, great, but you're not playing the game that the label says it is. It's something else once you force the d-pad controller onto it. But then I grew up with arcade games that had specific, unique controls, I want that in any home port that claims to be the same game. People who grew up after the '80s arcade heyday don't have that experience and don't see it as anything special or required. I understand the reality of that, I weep for their loss.

 

That's your problem that the industry ended up making it the standard. Hell, Atari's europe division saw that the writing was on the wall for older joystick style controllers when it released the NES style controller for the 7800.

So what that the industry made it a standard after years of the "standard" being cool, interesting controllers. The industry is cheap, anything that can make things easier and cheaper, they're all for it. I hate JAMMA standardized arcade cabinets, too, because that also made arcade game controls standardized and bland. Just look at Star Trek: SOS, a spinner and 4 buttons, how terrible that would be with a d-pad. Ok, it's also color vector so that makes home console ports problematic, but the controls are the key to that game! Variable speed in the rotation as you fire at one target and position yourself for the next one, moving the whole time.

 

It's this type of of thinking from the older generation that I think would have held back gaming immensely. I understand that you may not like platformers and that's fine. I don't like games that are strictly puzzles in nature or the modern cinematic style RPGs either. But the fact of the matter is that in order to drive the medium, you can't simply stand on old classics and expect people to stomach it indefinitely. Eventually you will hit your saturation point and people will start reacting negatively to the medium.

Why would our thinking have held back gaming immensely? I'm not saying only arcade shooters. Have your platformers and FPSs and all the other types. Just don't get rid of classic arcade style gaming. But again, due to the 2600's primitive guts and graphics, arcade shooters (and puzzle/maze games) are about all you're going to get from it. So if you want games with more memory and better graphics, look to the NES and elsewhere.

 

And this is a bad thing because.......?

I already explained that. Because with better graphics it became possible to make a game with shitty gameplay and it would sell because ooooh, look how cool it looks! Happens to this day. How many people have regretted buying certain games because they were boring or too easy/hard or repetitive? The first thought would be if they'd spent more money/time on the gameplay and not cared about all the textures and object design, this could have been a good game. This was not an option for 2600 programmers, the garbage resolution forced them to concentrate on gameplay. Of course there were still many dogshit games but you certainly couldn't blame being tricked by the awesome graphics, right? Blocks moving around other blocks shooting blocks at blocks. If you thought that looked great then you needed something stronger than glasses.

 

As I pointed out, this is absurdly false. The d-pad offers the same controller layout as your standard arcade cabinet. Don't believe me? Go look at your standard arcade cabinet and compare.

Dude, what in thee fuck are you talking about.

 

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Second, the d-pad allows the users to engage in movement without needing to put the full force of their body-weight onto the controller with through the thumb. Where as arcade cabinets are built with the idea of supporting people's body weight when people are pushing and pulling on the joystick. This is something that was lost on many earlier joystick style controllers because in many cases you had to hold them while having your supporting hand fire the action button. This is a very awkward set up. In fact, it wouldn't be until the Saturn and the Neo-Geo that you get joystick controllers that are actually supported. But then these were massive and expensive bricks that were built to play only fighting games, really.

I would argue this is a false perception. Considering the fact that the joystick style controller was something that even Atari abandoned as a bad idea in the end, it tells me everything I need to know really.

What you need to know is fine for you (for everybody), but the discussion is about younger retro game collectors stopping at the NES/SNES and discounting the 2600/5200, yes? Well, take a look at the 2600 joystick. It's got fucking rubber feet on the bottom! So you could set it on a flat surface for your proposed "full force of their body-weight" requirement. To be fair the paddles and driving controllers don't have that, they were meant for holding in your hand. But the trak-ball controller was meant for a flat surface, so would a spinner if they ever made one.

 

So, if a younger gamer wants to do the retro thing and all he's ever known is d-pads and every game being controlled the same way and that's what he prefers then he won't want to waste his time with a console that had multiple controllers that only worked with certain games. Which is fine. All I'm trying to do is give what I think is a reasonable explanation for why we older types who like/love the 2600 and 5200, and prefer that type of console.

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Thread's getting a bit rough. Dpad took over not because it was better for every game - it just happened. Once everyone realized how easy it was to make the Dpad portable, it was over for Joysticks. I prefer sticks, but most others don't. That's reality.

 

I will say that the perception that Dpads are somehow more accurate doesn't ever make sense to me. Digital buttons being pressed by a stick or pad are exactly as accurate as each other. The distance and pressure required to move/press is the diff and that depends completely on the controller design.

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I was exactly the right age for the NES, and my childhood experiences in the arcade were of the " begging for quarters variety" as mentioned by Stardust. What I think we really missed was the competitive experience of the arcade. I was drawn to games that let me explore and play on my own. Nintendo didn't invent this, they just kept working on it while others dropped out. The industry also had to learn how to sell a gaming experience outside of the arcade and many of the early experiences didn't seem to inspire many spinoffs (Superman, Adventure).

 

My point is that usually a NES gamer looks at Asteroids and wonders "where's the rest of the game". That's because NES games were meant as a contained experience. "The rest of the game" for Asteroids was trying to beat your brother sister or dad - something that kids my age just didn't want to look for.

That is a very good point. Arcade games (and the 2600) had that try again/higher score/beat your friends aspect which I grew up with and which is "normal" for me in terms of video games. Ya, there's no "rest of the game" for most 2600 games. Maybe with Adventure or Pitfall, a few others. Most arcade games didn't have it, either. The closest I got to that mindset was Xevious, I tried really hard to get to the end of that game (assuming there's an end) in the arcade but I've heard it just keeps going, starting over the same terrain again eventually (is that true?) but it certainly wasn't a 1 or 2 screen repetition game. Newer games and systems had a lot of those continuous adventure/world type games that were about exploring and not really about high scores or total enemies killed.

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I do believe ledzep is insane. :twisted: :-D

 

The importance of graphics got overblown without a doubt, but it's not like the classic post-Atari games, and there's gotta be a few thousand of them all had terrible controls and gameplay. Just because the 2600 had no power doesn't mean you need a game system to have no power to make great games. And young people today are used to dual sticks, so the D-pad would be different to them as well. It's pretty common knowledge that a Genesis controller works with the 2600, so I think if a kid wanted to try it out, he would find no issues if a D-pad was his thing. It's in the AVGN video, and that's likely where a kid these days is gonna get his chops in the retro gaming world.

 

I can't imagine using the original 2600 stick in an arcade style fashion... I hold it like I thought everyone else held it with one hand supporting it and the other controlling. I also can't imagine someone not being able to use a D-pad. And the NES had joysticks as well if you wanted to go that route, it wasn't until the coming of the shoulder button on the SNES that sort of threw a wrench into people who couldn't grasp a D-pad. Selecting every arcade game with special control schemes doesn't exactly help your point that d-pads are bad, it just says that certain games will live and die only in an arcade room. And last I checked, the 2600 didn't live and die on the strength of Indy 500 and Warlords? Not to mention most Atari paddles don't even work today, you gotta know how to fix 'em. I gotta hand it to ledzep though, I am not even kidding, I play my Vectrex using the joystick as a thumbstick and it never even occurred to me you could lay it flat like a tiny arcade stick. I have pretty big hands so it never bothered me, I just thought it was kinda bulky, but most older systems had controller issues so I thought it was par for the course.

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I do believe ledzep is insane. :twisted: :-D

 

Nah, he's just mad that the Nintendo kids are trodding on his lawn!

 

I love a good arcade quality joystick and I've built a few of them for myself. I am just now experiencing trackballs for the first time as well and they're amazing. But seriously, the 2600 sticks and nearly every other pre-Nintendo controller sucked. The Nintendo Dpad design that everybody copied is because a Dpad is cheap and it works amazingly well. You can't built a cheap joystick controller and have it not be junk. More expensive home joystick controllers were made and developed a kind of niche. Other specialty controllers were produced over the years for a wide variety of gameplay styles but most remained niche and didn't catch on. Early 80s were the wild, wild west in terms of game controls, both in arcades and home consoles. Look at the late 80s onwards. Most later arcade machines (racing cabs excluded) got the standard 8-way joystick on the left with an array of 2 to 6 buttons on the right: a control scheme perfectly adapted for home use by gamepads such as NES, SNES, or the 3/6 Genesis.

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Sorry but I'm pro-joystick as well having grown up with arcades and Atari's as a kid. I've aways hated the NES gamepad and kept buying 3rd party joystick replacements (which kept breaking down), even taped a wad of paper towel around the edges. But I will say the D-pad itself is good for those types of games and even got a USB version of the SNES gamepad for emulators.

 

The Sega gamepads however (both SMS & Genesis) are really good and I even used them on Atari systems when I needed better 8-way control in games.

 

For me analog thumbsticks are a godsend since the Playstation days. Yes even when playing emulated games I use the thumbstick over the D-pad because I like the control and feel joysticks give me.

 

But right now the best D-Pad I used is the one on the Xbox One controller with microswitches and 8-way. While it's great for fighting games, the thumbsticks on it though keeps missing diagonals so ugh... :P

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Good for you.

Yes, good for me and good for the industry too.

 

But you describe one of the very things that this thread is talking about, the differing mindsets between those of us who grew up with/played with the really old consoles (2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, Vectrex, 5200, etc.) and those who only come to them after the fact and stop at the NES/SNES type games and consoles. For us who love the 2600 experience (bad graphics and all) part of the appeal is the more accurate, more unique controllers.

You mean archaic controllers where the control schemes are awkward as hell to use on damn near almost anything (the Intellivision disc pad and the colecovision), where the joysticks are cheap and prone to breaking, (the atari 2600) or are unmitigated disasters with non-centering joysticks and fire buttons that wear out (Atari 5200). To say that there is an "appeal" for the older systems because they are "unique" doesn't really seem like a selling point. Novelty? Sure. A game room discussion peice. Absolutely. But to say that the "unique controllers" are in anyway "more accurate" is patently absurd. Considering that a good number of older retro gamers do in fact either mod their older systems to accept NES or Master System controllers or will simply plug in a Sega Genesis Model 1 controller where applicable.

 

For an older guy you seem to speaking for a lot people in the retrogaming community when it appears you are simply speaking for your self.

 

Analog controllers cannot be reproduced well with digital controls.

That is extremely debatable.

 

 

So any games that require such a controller (Breakout, Warlords, Indy 500, Star Raiders, Missile Command, etc.) suffer greatly using a d-pad. Those d-pads that include analog sticks are far superior to just buttons but I'm talking about 2600 controllers vs. NES. There is no contest.

Considering that Breakout had some damn near great updates and ports to the NES and Famicom Disk System and all but one port of the game made use of the NES/Famicom controller. (I believe Arkanoid was specifically programmed for the Famicom trackball) And the fact that Missile Command, Asteroids, Centipede, etc all had great ports to the Gameboy lends me to believe that either you haven't played them or never gave the d-pad a real chance.

 

 

 

You can play games for hours just fine using the d-pad. I can't take more than 10 minutes of that shit, I'm ready to read a book or go outside and do something. Many of my contemporaries are the same way. Others aren't. But, again, you point out one of the key delimiters.

This isn't an agument. This is just whining.

And I can't imagine playing Warlords with a d-pad.

No shit. Considering the game originally came out in 1989 for a PC that had a GUI and mouse peripheral and never got a console port. Here's the thing. You can play Ultima on the NES with a d-pad. You can play detective games and early forms of visual novels and first person exploration games on the Famicom with a d-pad. You can play Sim city on SNES with a d-pad (a damn good game I might add). To say you can't imagine is kind of silly considering it's been done to death.

 

 

 

 

Or Missile Command with a d-pad (I don't like playing 2600 Missile Command with a joystick, I need the variable speed of a trak-ball, or an analog stick at least).

Or Tempest with a d-pad (that is fucking useless).

Oh look somebody making claims without giving evidence. Meanwhile in reality, you can play supposedly "superior" trakball games on a d-pad just fine.

 

 

If you can, great, but you're not playing the game that the label says it is. It's something else once you force the d-pad controller onto it.

I'm sorry but does Yar's Revenge magically change into a different game the moment you plug a Sega Genesis Model 1 controller in the standard Atari VCS controller port? No, I didn't think so.

 

But then I grew up with arcade games that had specific, unique controls,

There's that word again.

 

I want that in any home port that claims to be the same game.

Because games magically change into another game once you play with a d-pad. Well, perhaps they do change.....into something better and playable.

 

People who grew up after the '80s arcade heyday don't have that experience and don't see it as anything special or required.

Must be why the arcade scene ended up dying out only to be revitalized by fighting and racing games in the 90's, only to die out yet again.

I understand the reality of that, I weep for their loss.

In reality, nothing of value was lost.

 

 

 

So what that the industry made it a standard after years of the "standard" being cool, interesting controllers. The industry is cheap, anything that can make things easier and cheaper, they're all for it. I hate JAMMA standardized arcade cabinets, too, because that also made arcade game controls standardized and bland. Just look at Star Trek: SOS, a spinner and 4 buttons, how terrible that would be with a d-pad. Ok, it's also color vector so that makes home console ports problematic, but the controls are the key to that game! Variable speed in the rotation as you fire at one target and position yourself for the next one, moving the whole time.

Not necessarily. The SNES could get around this very easily by simply mapping the thrust and deceleration configuration to either two of the 4 face buttons or the 2 shoulder buttons. In fact, how do you think Pilotwings, one of the best games on the system, handles? (In fact The 16-bit gen would see a lot of previously unported pc flight sim games.) The NES simply wasn't designed for the multi-button arcade ports. However, that has absolutely zero bearing on whether or not you can play a flight sim game or a game like Star trek: SOS on a d-pad. To which, the answer is unequivocally: yes.

 

 

Why would our thinking have held back gaming immensely? I'm not saying only arcade shooters. Have your platformers and FPSs and all the other types. Just don't get rid of classic arcade style gaming. But again, due to the 2600's primitive guts and graphics, arcade shooters (and puzzle/maze games) are about all you're going to get from it. So if you want games with more memory and better graphics, look to the NES and elsewhere.

We haven't gotten rid of them. They are repackaged and sold every year as Arcade classics. The NES had an entire line of games that were called "Arcade classics." Half of Konami's back catalog alone on the NES/Famicom is nothing but early 80's style arcade style games. Simply put, everything that was done in terms of classic arcade style games has been already done and was already dated by the time the 7800 rolled to the public. There simply is no great demand for mass production of newer arcade games that you can't get in compilation form for 20 bucks on the DS.

 

 

I already explained that. Because with better graphics it became possible to make a game with shitty gameplay and it would sell because ooooh, look how cool it looks!

Except games like Super Mario Bros were not only praised for it's graphical innovations but were praised because of the fact that the controls were tight and the level design great. In fact, Super Mario Brothers 3 became the de-facto standard by which all games are measured vis a vis tight mechanics. Super Mario Bros 3 is the sumum bonum of how a game can be controlled with such fluidity and ease.

 

Happens to this day. How many people have regretted buying certain games because they were boring or too easy/hard or repetitive? The first thought would be if they'd spent more money/time on the gameplay and not cared about all the textures and object design, this could have been a good game. This was not an option for 2600 programmers, the garbage resolution forced them to concentrate on gameplay. Of course there were still many dogshit games but you certainly couldn't blame being tricked by the awesome graphics, right? Blocks moving around other blocks shooting blocks at blocks. If you thought that looked great then you needed something stronger than glasses.

More fucking whining about graphics. As if games like Castlevania, Megaman, Kirby's adventure, the Legend of Zelda series, Contra, Bionic Commando, the Mario Brothers series, Nazo No Murasame Joh, Kid Icarus, Sonic 2, Adventure Island, Summer Carnival '92 Recca, Smash Tv, the Kunio-kun series, Eggerland, double dragon, Little Nemo, Bomberman, TNMT: the Arcade, Excitebike, Ballon Fight, SCAT, Gradius, Duck Tales, Ninja Gaiden, Shatterhand, Metroid, Rad Racer, Faxanadu, Bubble Bobble, Blaster master, Punch-out, Final Fantasy, Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, and Holy Diver don't exist.

 

Your complaints would be better served if directed against modern AAA games on 9th gen modern hardware. That's something I generally agree upon. But these complaints about the era in question or the Nintendo consoles in general are either severely unwarranted, reek of severe desperation, or are opinions that have no basis in fact.

 

 

Dude, what in thee fuck are you talking about.

 

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What's that? You posted images of non-standard arcade cabinets or cabinets that had special mechanisms for controls? Talk about cherry-picking.

 

What you need to know is fine for you (for everybody), but the discussion is about younger retro game collectors stopping at the NES/SNES and discounting the 2600/5200, yes? Well, take a look at the 2600 joystick. It's got fucking rubber feet on the bottom! So you could set it on a flat surface for your proposed "full force of their body-weight" requirement. To be fair the paddles and driving controllers don't have that, they were meant for holding in your hand. But the trak-ball controller was meant for a flat surface, so would a spinner if they ever made one.

You could. But the problem is that Atari 2600 joysticks are not only pretty damn cheap, they aren't built for that force in mind. Hence why Nintendo actually put out a joystick controller with that in mind.

 

So, if a younger gamer wants to do the retro thing and all he's ever known is d-pads and every game being controlled the same way and that's what he prefers then he won't want to waste his time with a console that had multiple controllers that only worked with certain games. Which is fine. All I'm trying to do is give what I think is a reasonable explanation for why we older types who like/love the 2600 and 5200, and prefer that type of console.

And yet these same older types are looking for ways to mod thier 7800 and 5200 to accept the NES or Master system controllers. Looking for ways to make the colecovision run through a standard d-pad or are simply plugging in a Sega Genesis model 1 controller into an Atari 2600.

Edited by empsolo
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Good for you. But you describe one of the very things that this thread is talking about, the differing mindsets between those of us who grew up with/played with the really old consoles (2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, Vectrex, 5200, etc.) and those who only come to them after the fact and stop at the NES/SNES type games and consoles. For us who love the 2600 experience (bad graphics and all) part of the appeal is the more accurate, more unique controllers. Analog controllers cannot be reproduced well with digital controls. So any games that require such a controller (Breakout, Warlords, Indy 500, Star Raiders, Missile Command, etc.) suffer greatly using a d-pad. Those d-pads that include analog sticks are far superior to just buttons but I'm talking about 2600 controllers vs. NES. There is no contest.

 

You can play games for hours just fine using the d-pad. I can't take more than 10 minutes of that shit, I'm ready to read a book or go outside and do something. Many of my contemporaries are the same way. Others aren't. But, again, you point out one of the key delimiters.

 

And I can't imagine playing Warlords with a d-pad. Or Missile Command with a d-pad (I don't like playing 2600 Missile Command with a joystick, I need the variable speed of a trak-ball, or an analog stick at least). Or Tempest with a d-pad (that is fucking useless). If you can, great, but you're not playing the game that the label says it is. It's something else once you force the d-pad controller onto it. But then I grew up with arcade games that had specific, unique controls, I want that in any home port that claims to be the same game. People who grew up after the '80s arcade heyday don't have that experience and don't see it as anything special or required. I understand the reality of that, I weep for their loss.

 

So what that the industry made it a standard after years of the "standard" being cool, interesting controllers. The industry is cheap, anything that can make things easier and cheaper, they're all for it. I hate JAMMA standardized arcade cabinets, too, because that also made arcade game controls standardized and bland. Just look at Star Trek: SOS, a spinner and 4 buttons, how terrible that would be with a d-pad. Ok, it's also color vector so that makes home console ports problematic, but the controls are the key to that game! Variable speed in the rotation as you fire at one target and position yourself for the next one, moving the whole time.

 

Why would our thinking have held back gaming immensely? I'm not saying only arcade shooters. Have your platformers and FPSs and all the other types. Just don't get rid of classic arcade style gaming. But again, due to the 2600's primitive guts and graphics, arcade shooters (and puzzle/maze games) are about all you're going to get from it. So if you want games with more memory and better graphics, look to the NES and elsewhere.

 

I already explained that. Because with better graphics it became possible to make a game with shitty gameplay and it would sell because ooooh, look how cool it looks! Happens to this day. How many people have regretted buying certain games because they were boring or too easy/hard or repetitive? The first thought would be if they'd spent more money/time on the gameplay and not cared about all the textures and object design, this could have been a good game. This was not an option for 2600 programmers, the garbage resolution forced them to concentrate on gameplay. Of course there were still many dogshit games but you certainly couldn't blame being tricked by the awesome graphics, right? Blocks moving around other blocks shooting blocks at blocks. If you thought that looked great then you needed something stronger than glasses.

 

Dude, what in thee fuck are you talking about.

 

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1586_1_fs_cp.jpg

 

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Star_Fire_-_1979_-_Exidy.jpg

 

What you need to know is fine for you (for everybody), but the discussion is about younger retro game collectors stopping at the NES/SNES and discounting the 2600/5200, yes? Well, take a look at the 2600 joystick. It's got fucking rubber feet on the bottom! So you could set it on a flat surface for your proposed "full force of their body-weight" requirement. To be fair the paddles and driving controllers don't have that, they were meant for holding in your hand. But the trak-ball controller was meant for a flat surface, so would a spinner if they ever made one.

 

So, if a younger gamer wants to do the retro thing and all he's ever known is d-pads and every game being controlled the same way and that's what he prefers then he won't want to waste his time with a console that had multiple controllers that only worked with certain games. Which is fine. All I'm trying to do is give what I think is a reasonable explanation for why we older types who like/love the 2600 and 5200, and prefer that type of console.

 

Totally spot on.

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[...]

 

Considering that Breakout had some damn near great updates and ports to the NES and Famicom Disk System and all but one port of the game made use of the NES/Famicom controller. (I believe Alleyway was specifically programmed for the Famicom trackball) And the fact that Missile Command, Asteroids, Centipede, etc all had great ports to the Gameboy lends me to believe that either you haven't played them or never gave the d-pad a real chance.

 

[...]

Excellent comeback! :grin:

 

I agree with everything that you said, except the Taito made their own NES paddle controller to bundle with Arkanoid. It is called the Vaus controller and Arkanoid is I believe the only commercial NES game that uses it. 8-bit Xmas 2013 and Beat 'em and Eat 'em from RetroUSB also support this unusual controller.

 

Famicom saw the release of Arkanoid II and some racing game I forget the name of that supported the Vaus, but the Famicom Vaus used pins on the expansion port not present on the NES, meaning the NES port had to be reprogrammed and an adapter would need to be fabricated or an original Famicom Vaus to play these games.

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Excellent comeback! :grin:

 

I agree with everything that you said, except the Taito made their own NES paddle controller to bundle with Arkanoid. It is called the Vaus controller and Arkanoid is I believe the only commercial NES game that uses it. 8-bit Xmas 2013 and Beat 'em and Eat 'em from RetroUSB also support this unusual controller.

 

Famicom saw the release of Arkanoid II and some racing game I forget the name of that supported the Vaus, but the Famicom Vaus used pins on the expansion port not present on the NES, meaning the NES port had to be reprogrammed and an adapter would need to be fabricated or an original Famicom Vaus to play these games.

D'oh! Right. Alleyway was a gameboy title. Why did I confuse it with Arkanoid? Oh well.

Edited by empsolo
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I do believe ledzep is insane. :twisted::-D

 

The importance of graphics got overblown without a doubt, but it's not like the classic post-Atari games, and there's gotta be a few thousand of them all had terrible controls and gameplay. Just because the 2600 had no power doesn't mean you need a game system to have no power to make great games. And young people today are used to dual sticks, so the D-pad would be different to them as well. It's pretty common knowledge that a Genesis controller works with the 2600, so I think if a kid wanted to try it out, he would find no issues if a D-pad was his thing. It's in the AVGN video, and that's likely where a kid these days is gonna get his chops in the retro gaming world.

 

I can't imagine using the original 2600 stick in an arcade style fashion... I hold it like I thought everyone else held it with one hand supporting it and the other controlling. I also can't imagine someone not being able to use a D-pad. And the NES had joysticks as well if you wanted to go that route, it wasn't until the coming of the shoulder button on the SNES that sort of threw a wrench into people who couldn't grasp a D-pad. Selecting every arcade game with special control schemes doesn't exactly help your point that d-pads are bad, it just says that certain games will live and die only in an arcade room. And last I checked, the 2600 didn't live and die on the strength of Indy 500 and Warlords? Not to mention most Atari paddles don't even work today, you gotta know how to fix 'em. I gotta hand it to ledzep though, I am not even kidding, I play my Vectrex using the joystick as a thumbstick and it never even occurred to me you could lay it flat like a tiny arcade stick. I have pretty big hands so it never bothered me, I just thought it was kinda bulky, but most older systems had controller issues so I thought it was par for the course.

 

I'm not in any way saying d-pads are bad for games that are intended for that controller. What I'm saying is that back in the early days many games had unique control schemes. More variety in arcades vs. home consoles, to be sure, but the 2600 had 4 specific types of controllers - joysticks, paddles, driving controllers (ok, one game, but there was nothing stopping Atari from making more games for it) and keypad. The trak-ball was a kluge if I remember, it wasn't actually analog? At least not when used in joystick mode. The 5200 had the best trak-ball of any of the early systems, along with a great analog joystick that unfortunately didn't self-center rendering it useless for many joystick games (and its fire buttons suck). The Vectrex did have a self-centering analog stick along with 4 buttons. You can shithammer a d-pad to work with all those systems, I suppose, but why do that?

 

And it's not that I can't use a d-pad (certainly if I'm playing games on a system that has that sort of controller then that's what I'm going to have to use), it's that I can't stand using d-pads or gamepads. They le suck when they are applied to games that weren't designed for them. Mostly analog controller games, of course. A d-pad isn't too far away from button games or digital joystick games. But even so I'd rather have the joystick than a d-pad. I'm not the only one, based on the responses on this thread. I prefer button layouts like the arcades, not like a d-pad, in terms of directional movement -

 

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The reason I picked the arcade game examples that I did was to show that back in the day there were many games that deviated from the single joystick + a few buttons control panel. I left out many trak-ball and spinner games, too. There's no such thing as a "standard" arcade cabinet, no matter what empsolo believes. Standard for him? Sure, I can believe that's all he's used to or likes. But, yet again, I'm talking about the early days of arcade and console gaming when nothing was standard. Analog/digital, single/multiple buttons, paddles, different companies tried all sorts of shit to stand out from the crowd and get kids to spend quarters on their games, and then to buy the home versions. That sort of "let's try this" free thinking, along with mostly arcade game shooters, is what is at the core of an early system like the 2600. So I can see why someone with more of the NES/SNES mindset would stop there and not bother going back further in time to the Atari 2600 or 5200.

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