Gabriel

Unlike the last one, this is a very easy decision for me. Real Joystick > Pad The Atari 2600 stick all the way.

On the one hand we have the fucking uncomfortable Dreamcast pad with it's screwy analog mushroom and shoulder buttons. On the good side, it has 4 buttons on front so your thumb doesn't get overloaded. On the other hand, we have the purely digital Genesis 6 button pad, which is decent, but your thumb has to deal with too many buttons, and they're all a little bit too close together. In addition, the top buttons just never feel right. I'm going to go with the Genesis 6 button. It has less of what I dislike in a controller. No gimmicks (no memory card in the controller, no rumbling shit). No stubby and unresponsive analog controls. And overall, it just feels better in my hand. I'd like it a lot better if it moved X and Z to shoulder buttons, and had A, B, C, and Y in a diamond pattern, but I guess you can't have everything.

I started the non-vote voting. Even though I am fairly certain I would have voted against the SMS controller due to its similarity to the NES pad, I didn't feel using the controller in question for 5 minutes over 10 years ago was sufficient exposure to cast a vote against it. Whether others cast a non-vote for the same reason, I have no way of knowing.

Jaguar

SNES. I find the Genesis 6 button awkward with any game which uses all the buttons.

I had Qix for my original 5200 I owned back in the day. I played it all the freakin' time. I never had any problem with the controllers with that game. Now that I'm all growed up, and have a new replacement 5200, I can play some games I didn't have back then. One of these is Pac Man, constantly ridiculed for its horrible control. Oddly, I had no problem whatsoever despite not having used a 5200 controller in somewhere near 15 years. The control was pinpoint precise, and it was the same way on Jr Pac too. Now, Super Pac had some control glitching going on. Super Pac controls VERY loose, but that is the only 5200 game I've played where I feel the control is really poor. And I'd ascribe that one to the way the controller was programmed rather than the merit of the controller itself. However, the 5200 controller does deserve its reputation for unreliability. Then again, there are other controllers out there that are equally unreliable.

%^$r**&%^$! Obviously we have here nothing more than a bunch of Sega zombies who wouldn't know innnovation if it came up and bit them in the ass. You are all blinded by nostalgia for an inferior dead system! Yes. That was a joke. Possibly not one in very good taste, but it was still a joke. So, no one blow a gasket. 'k? But, like Kisreal and his Nintendo rant, I have to admit I don't understand why anyone would prefer to play a game with a Dreamcast controller over a PS2 controller. But, if the DC pad wins (and it looks as if that is a foregone conclusion at this point), then it completely changes my thoughts on the third tier matchup.

The PS2 pad wins hands down. It is much more comfortable to hold than the Dreamcast Pad. Plus, the PS2 digital shoulder buttons feel much better than the smushy DC analog shoulder buttons. And the analog buttons on the DC pad seem to have to be pressed at least halfway down before they even respond in the first place. Now if we could just get rid of those useless stubby little analog mushrooms on the modern controllers.

No contest. The Sega Saturn pad is much much better than Intellivision's excuse for a controller.

The GameCube controller is yet another Nintendo invention designed for appearance first and with no concern for function. While it isn't the worst controller of all time, it's pretty damn close. If anything, it proves that Nintendo's invention of the SNES controller was a total fluke. Nintendo couldn't intentionally design a decent controller if their market share depended on it. On the other hand, the Jaguar controller is an ugly son of a bitch that somehow miraculously feels comfortable and responds well to player command. I've spent many hours in flawless enjoyment of Tempest 2000 and Iron Soldier with the Jag controller, and, unlike the frustration produced by the NGC craptroller, it is transparent to gameplay. There is no doubt whatsoever. Do the math. The Jaguar controller is plainly better.

I abstain, because I haven't ever used a SMS controller for any length of time. I'm just posting to let it be known that I actually voted, since I'm one of the regulars on these threads.

This is another no brainer. The Atari 2600 wins, no contest. The N64 controller is a goddamn piece of shit.

SNES

IMO, the high price has doomed it. Plus, when I was looking at the titles available for it on gamestop.com, I didn't see anything either appealing or that I couldn't get on something else.

I think I've already said somewhere that I feel that the Colecovision controller is the most worthless controller ever made for a videogame system. Meanwhile, the Genesis 6 button is a decent control pad. It's not the best, but it works well. So, the Genesis 6 button wins.

Well, its the comparison of a marginal controller (at best) to a total crap controller. The Dreamcast pad is better. Despite the cord that gets in your way no matter what. Despite the unresponsive analog buttons and stick. Despite the controller mounted memory cards and jolt packs. Despite its abnormal size. Despite the fact that it just sucks. But at least it isn't a pointy rectangle with the responsiveness of a brick, which the NES control pad most closely resembles. So, yeah, Dreamcast is better in this choice for the lesser of two evils.

NES = Wild Gunman Saturn = Virtua Cop 1 and 2. PS-1 = for the most part, forget any gun game that doesn't use the Guncon. The must haves are: Time Crisis and one of the Point Blank games PS2 = Time Crisis 2 and Ninja Assault I've avoided the SNES and Genesis gun games because the Super Scope and Menacer are just goofy. And, in the case of the Genesis, I was never into Lethal Enforcers, so I never had the urge to try out Konami's special gun.

The basic Nomad unit consists of two parts. The first part is the Nomad itself. It's a little bit bigger than a Game Gear with most of the excess mass being from the console being thicker. The second part of the console is a plastic shell that holds the batteries to power the system. This shell clips onto the back of the Nomad and allows it to operate. There are some pehipheral devices. You can get an AC adaptor. This will be of the same kind as used by the Game Gear, and will plug into a port on the top of the Nomad. When you have a power source plugged in through that port, you don't need anything clipped on the back. There are a variety of battery packs. I'm told that Game Gear battery packs will work with the Nomad. If so, they plug into the same port used for the AC adaptor and don't require anything be hooked on the back of the system. There is also the Sega PowerBack. This is a rechargable battery pack exclusively for the Nomad. It connects to the Nomad in exactly the same way the default battery shell connects to the back. Hope this has helped.

I've had my PS2 since January 2002. It gets usage on the heavy side. I use it to play PS2 games, to play PS1 games, and as a DVD player. Although, I must admit, I haven't used it much as a DVD player since I got a dedicated Panasonic DVD player. In all the time I've owned this console, I've never had any real problems with it. None. Zilch. Zip. Sure, there are the "incompatible" PS1 games. MK Trilogy freezes if you let the timer run out on the continue screen. Paperboy on the Atari Volume 2 disc is pretty much unplayable (but I never really played that one to begin with). And there are a are two DVDs I've had problems with, Moldiver and Tron. I think most will agree that those are VERY minor glitches. One of my friends with a PS2 has owned his since March of 2001 (I think that's the date). His console has seen incredible amounts of use since then. I think it sees about 6 to 16 hours of use PER DAY. He has only just begun to have problems with DVD playback. Considering the amount of use he's gotten out of it, I think that's pretty good. And even with the problems he's having, the console still plays his games perfectly. Many of my other friends have PS2s. Most of them have owned them since Summer of 2002. None of them have had any problems. That has been my experience and my observations.

I have one of those too. Got it for $7 at a used game shop. I use it to play RPGs and take notes/make maps at the same time.

Wow. It's copying the NES box pad design, which is one of the worst controllers ever invented. Then on top of that it uses those damn stubby ass analog sticks that make modern controllers suck so damn bad. YUCK.

It isn't just you. The GameCube controllers are just utter POCs. Either they stop working at inopportune times, or the control is just really REALLY loose. I find the Pac games almost totally unplayable with the GC pad because they lack any kind of precision whatsoever. And this from a guy that loves Atari 5200 controllers and has no problems playing games with them whatsoever.

The worst controllers of all were the Colecovision controllers. You'd have better luck playing the games with a pile of dogcrap whan with a colecovision controller. Honorable mentions for utterly craptastic controllers go to the Intellivision, NES (the original boxes), Nintendo 64, and GameCube. Nintendo is excellent at creating the shittiest controllers known to man. The best controllers of all were the original Atari 2600 control sticks. Sure, they only had one button and 8 directionals, but they were responsive, stood up to much abuse, and fairly comfortable. Honorable mentions for excellent controllers are: ASCII SG-1 Fighter Stick, ASCII NES Advantage, Nintendo SNES control pad, and the Sony Playstation 1 control pad (before they added the stubby analog pieces of shit).

Initially, I was disappointed to see that the original Defender was not on this list. Then I saw Satan's Hollow and Vindicators. Since those are on there, I think I can forgive them. But I'd much rather have original Defender than Splat or Bubbles. Very cool compilation anyway. I'll be buying this as soon as it comes out.

The RAM cart is a battery back up cart to archive saved games. It's very useful (almost invaluable) if you have any of the RPGs or strategy games. It doesn't actually boost memory, just storage space. This is incorrect. I don't have the L/R audio or the sound mixer jacks hooked up and music fed directly from the disc always plays through the TV speakers just fine. I presently use a front loader, but the top loader I used for a while was the same way. I've never been able to try out a CDX or a third party Sega CD. And, yes, many problems with SegaCD operation can be solved by cleaning the parallel connector.