Annoying things about your favorite systems?

[mr_me]

Any console with primary fire buttons on the SIDE of the controller (7800, 5200, coleco, intellivision etc) this simply has never been 'normal' or comfortable.

 

...

There's nothing wrong with side buttons. They are not much different than shoulder buttons. Plus you have multiple fingers and only one thumb.

 

The problem with side buttons happens when the game design has you use both sides e.g. coleco vision. Side buttons should only be used on one side with their functions repeated on the other for left and right handed players.

Edited July 13, 2018 by mr_me

[Flojomojo]

The fact that side buttons don't annoy YOU doesn't nullify the experience of others. I think it was a good insight and I agree that in general, side buttons are "annoying," per the thread topic. Of course that's subjective.

 

I just thought of something else ...not really an "annoyance" but I do wish there was more of a meta game with oldies to make them more purposeful. It would be kinda cool if there were rewards for long term grinding on arcade-style games that you play over and over again. Some modern mobile games (Phoenix II!) do this well. Chasing high score is nice but I wish Activision Patches and other "achievements" were in more places. Counterpoint; too easy to fall into scummy currency mechanisms like many modern mobile games.

[mr_me]

I thought I was clarifying the issue not disputing it. As I said side buttons do annoy me when I'm forced to use both left/right sides. I thought there's something there worth noting; I guess I was wrong.

Edited July 13, 2018 by mr_me

[zzip]

Mostly great. 2 major flaws:

 

1. There are 2 different screens. The early one is dim, the updated one is perfect.

2. No headphone jack.

I thought it has a headphone jack, but it's a non-standard connection... fine I guess that is a flaw!

[Flojomojo]

Not wrong, just a different opinion. I think side buttons are ergonomically bad and make claw hands. 80s kids wouldn't care though.

[dj_convoy]

Let's face it; most controllers suck.

[zzip]

Atari 7800 - Having only 2600 sound is ridiculous for its era. I know Pokeys could be placed in carts, but why not just place one or two on the main board?

 

Lynx - Bulky

 

DS - It's a strange system overall, stylus games mixed with traditional controllers, two screens. I never liked it as much as the Gameboy SP Advance that preceded it

[Flojomojo]

Let's face it; most controllers suck.

And our standards are a lot higher than the days of "wow, Pac-Man!"

[dj_convoy]

Years of video games and drawing (probably mostly the drawing; I used to have delusions of adequacy as an artist) have all but ruined my hands anyway; I'm not quite forty yet, and my hands are already probably in pre-arthritic trouble. Most portables (even with fancy ergonomic whatnot grips) fatigue my hands, older controllers certainly bug the heck out of em. Arcade sticks and stuff like modern controllers usually don't bother me too much. I can still rock a Genesis controller (or ones of that sort of semi ergonomic shape/style) without too much effort. Most anything else (Coleco controllers, Intellivision controllers, etc.) bug me even after fairly short amounts of use.

 

To say nothing of how they work; the SMS pad sucked, even back then (and their arcade stick thing was weird)... 5200 controllers sucked and were fragile... Dreamcast controller sucked for most games... N64 controller was lame, etc. etc.

 

Before I owned a PlayStation, I HATED that controller. After owning one, I grew to like it. Really like the PS4 controller nowadays. I also like the 360 controller (d-pad kinda sucks).

[Tanooki]

Not wrong, just a different opinion. I think side buttons are ergonomically bad and make claw hands. 80s kids wouldn't care though.

Because the claw will get you next time!

[John Stamos Mullet]

Coleco Gemini - Weak, brittle solder joints everywhere.

 

Atari 7800 - games on system box that were never released

 

Sega Master System - can't using Light Gun and 3D games on modern TVs

 

Sega Genesis model 1 - No stereo audio through AV port.

Edited July 13, 2018 by John Stamos Mullet

[Flojomojo]

I thought it has a headphone jack, but it's a non-standard connection... fine I guess that is a flaw!

 

The rest of it is so great, it ALMOST makes up for it.

 

This sums it up perfectly by comparing it to the iPhone 7, which came with a dongle for traditional headphones. Nintendo charged extra for theirs.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/09/no-headphone-jack-nintendo-did-it-first/

[BassGuitari]

A couple more from me:

 

Vectrex - I always feel like the joystick is going to break; the monitors in all of mine need calibrating

 

Odyssey 300 - No single-player game = it never gets played = a sad waste of such a great, funky-looking game system

 

Odyssey 2 - Of all the games that came out for it, only about a dozen are actually any good (eh, okay, maybe 20); the keyboard is mostly ornamental

 

Atari VCS/2600 - Many games will only seldom ever be played by me due to inconvenience of having to connect a different type of controller (namely Indy 500 and Keyboard Controller games)

 

Game Boy - Agree 100% on the screens--I don't know how we ever put up with it

 

Video Arcade II - This should be the ultimate 2600 system...but those controllers...!

 

Jaguar* - There's so much to like about this system on paper...but it has almost none of the games I want to play from that era; $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

Master System - "Stop moving diagonally, dammit! I'm just trying to go right! WHY ARE CARDINAL DIRECTIONS SO HARD?!"

 

NES - The Blinkies, obviously

 

PlayStation - I honestly can't think of one thing about the PSX that annoys me. I've never played PlayStation and thought, "I really wish the system did X or Y differently." Memory cards, maybe? Having to use those when other systems had battery backup was initially sort of a bummer...but it also meant I could take my RE2 and Tekken 2 save files to my friend's house without having to bring my entire console or start the games all over, so that canceled out pretty quickly. Otherwise, I dunno...it looks great, works great (or at least mine do), the controller is exactly what it needed to be, it has a huge library of great titles...

 

EDIT: WAIT, I thought of something: the old tall jewel cases games used to come in early on. I must have shattered every one I ever had BITD. Fortunately those were on the way out by the time I got my PSX for Christmas in '96.

 

*(Okay, I can't honestly count the Jaguar as one of my "favorite" systems, but I feel like if it had even just a half-dozen more A-list arcade titles--or even well-done B-list one--it might make the cut for me.)

 

********

 

Chiming in on the side button issue, I think the Coleco did them about as well as they can be done. My problem with the Coleco controller is the short, stiff, flat, nubby joystick. Intellivision, eh...it honestly doesn't bother me but I can see why anyone who's played a videogame made after 1984 would have issues with it. But personally, most of the Intellivision's games move slowly enough that the fire buttons aren't obstacles to gameplay for me. The 7800 ProLine joystick, though...2-button games with that thing is a recipe for carpal tunnel syndrome.

 

Which do you think is worse, though: side-mounted fire buttons, or single centrally-positioned "fire bars" placed in front of a joystick, a la the TI-99/4a or VIC-20?

Edited July 13, 2018 by BassGuitari

[Tanooki]

Everyone here is ganging up on the Gameboy (DMG in particular) because of the no lighting on the panel. Is that really that big of an issue though? I'm only asking because the one thing no one is bringing up here that plagued both the DMG model primarily, but it did it a lesser degree on Pocket (and lesser yet on Light and Color) was the horrible refresh rate. DMG was the real stone cold killer in that it blurred so horribly in motion it could easily get you killed in games. Sure you didn't need that great of detail to see things of size (8x8 +) moving along, but the tiny stuff (shooter bullets, general projectiles, pinballs) could get blurred into obscuring the ability to see things. I remember having problems with stuff like Mega Man little pea size incoming shots, sometimes bullets in gradius and friends, that was the real suck moment. It was a huge selling point of the Super Game Boy and the Game Boy Pocket too because you could now make out lost objects.

[derFunkenstein]

Let's face it; most controllers suck.

 

You're right. I think there are some pretty timeless controller designs that have always been comfortable. The original Sega six-button controller (not the later version) the Saturn model 2 (or just the Saturn in Japan) are flawless for the systems of their respective era. edit: also the Xbox One controller, it's a really solid and comfortable design to me.

 

But those are the exceptions to what is largely a series of suboptimal compromises.

Edited July 13, 2018 by derFunkenstein

[derFunkenstein]

Everyone here is ganging up on the Gameboy (DMG in particular) because of the no lighting on the panel. Is that really that big of an issue though? I'm only asking because the one thing no one is bringing up here that plagued both the DMG model primarily, but it did it a lesser degree on Pocket (and lesser yet on Light and Color) was the horrible refresh rate. DMG was the real stone cold killer in that it blurred so horribly in motion it could easily get you killed in games. Sure you didn't need that great of detail to see things of size (8x8 +) moving along, but the tiny stuff (shooter bullets, general projectiles, pinballs) could get blurred into obscuring the ability to see things. I remember having problems with stuff like Mega Man little pea size incoming shots, sometimes bullets in gradius and friends, that was the real suck moment. It was a huge selling point of the Super Game Boy and the Game Boy Pocket too because you could now make out lost objects.

 

On the DMG it was not an issue. because the "colors" were contrasty enough. It didn't really become a problem until the GameBoy got a color screen. By the time 2001 rolled around and the GameBoy Advance had no backlight, that's where it got really annoying. A clip-on light was almost mandatory at that point.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Man, it's hard to rag on my favorite systems but I'll do my best to be objective. I'll just go down the list of systems I currently own, since I've pretty well narrowed down my console selection to just my favorites over the years...

 

 

Atari 2600 - Finding a good joystick controller for this thing is a lot harder than I would have ever imagined. Most sticks from back in the day are way too stiff and modern ones like the AT Games Atari Flashback sticks are too loose. Best Electronics got the joystick tension right with their gold CX-40 PCBs but the button on it is crazy stiff, then there's the Wico Command Control sticks that have perfect button tension but overly stiff joysticks and the Completion Pro that has a great microswitched joystick but loose floppy buttons. Ultimately I settled for an AT Games Flashback joystick since at least they got the button tension right but there really is no good joystick option for this system short of spending big $$$ to build your own custom arcade stick.

 

 

Sega Master System - What exactly was it about controlling your character in a platformer that Sega just didn't understand? Alex Kidd and Psycho Fox control like they're walking through mud! Did Sega even play Super Mario Bros? It's no wonder this system sold like crap everywhere except for the countries where the NES was too expensive for anyone other than rich spoiled brats to afford.

 

 

Sega Genesis - Trying to find a Sega Genesis with the best sound quality is like playing the lottery. There's a dozen different versions of this thing and no matter which you have there will always be some audio snob telling you theirs is better. Also, the membrane contact for the reset buttons on model 2 Genesis systems go out all the time and usually need replacing.

 

 

Sega CD - Do you love skipping audio tracks and having your games freeze up or crash constantly? If so then you're going to love the Sega CD. Mine is working well after hours and hours of work degreasing the gears and laser rail and applying a fresh coat of white lithium grease to everything, but keeping one of these things running and not making you want to tear your hair out every time you try to play a game is a huge pain in the ass; and you better hope that there's not a single scratch or mote of dust anywhere on your discs. The Sega CD is about as picky as a disc based system gets.

 

 

Sega 32X - Do I really have to kick this thing when it's already down? *sighs* Okay... Crappy Doom, giant power brick, have to take it off to use the Master System converter, too many almost identical ports of old Genesis games, etc., etc. At least it's not the Atari Jaguar.

 

 

Sony PlayStation - This one is predominantly my wife's system, but it's also the reason we haven't swapped out our old CRT gaming TV for a modern HDTV. I'm not sure my life would feel complete without being able to play Area 51, Crypt Killer, and Time Crisis; and thus the PlayStation keeps us tethered to a CRT TV for it's light gun games.

 

 

Game Boy Color - Using a Worm Light sucks, and that's all there is to it. Sure, you could play your Game Boy Color games on a Game Boy Advance with an AGS-101 backlit screen but then you have to deal with the turgid protrusion of the cartridge jutting out of the system to snag on everything and scratch up the label; not to mention having the screen size shrunk down to not much bigger than a postage stamp. You could play your Game Boy Color games on one of those Chinese knockoff GB Boy Colour systems instead and get a nicely backlit and decently sized screen, but for some reason the jackalopes who designed the GB Boy Colour couldn't seem to figure out that the Game Boy Color has a 10:9 aspect ratio screen so they made it 4:3 instead, squishing the aspect ratio of the games to the point that your Pikachu looks morbidly obese.

 

 

Nintendo GameCube - $250 for a component cable? Really?

 

 

Nintendo Wii - Collecting for the Wii is like looking for needles in a haystack. There are probably 150 or so games on the system worth playing, and about 1,100'ish pieces of shovelware garbage. Sometimes it can be fun to sift through the piles and piles of Wii junk in used game stores and pawn shops looking for a game you'd actually want to play, but other times I do wish the gems weren't so literally hidden.

 

 

Nintendo 3DS - With a game system finally offering true stereoscopic 3D depth you'd think it would be a perfect fit for action intense first-person shooter games, but guess how many new first-person shooters were made for the 3DS? Zero. Absof**kinglutely zero. The only FPS games the 3DS got were a couple digital download only remakes of Moon and Dementium for the original DS, and that online team based Metroid Prime: Federation Force doesn't count. That wasn't a first-person shooter, that was a steaming pile of cash grabbery. And what did the 3DS get instead of the first-person shooters that would have worked so well on the system? A small mountain of boring, monotonous turn based RPGs full of sexually objectified prepubescent anime girls. I didn't spend $200 on this hunk of plastic to look at little cartoon girls' panties, I bought it to shoot some s**t! Thanks for nothing Nintendo.

Edited July 13, 2018 by Jin

[dj_convoy]

100% agreed re: the SEGA CD. I like it, but it's a pain in the ass.

[Jess Ragan]

I should add to my abrasively snarky thought.

 

SEGA CD: I've sweetened on the machine over the last twenty five years... Sega was going to release an upgrade for the Genesis no matter what, and if it had only been this one, I could have learned to live with it. Having said that... some games demonstrate the machine's potential, while too many others were full motion video debacles or marginally enhanced Genesis games. Access time is a problem. It doubles the footprint of the Genesis, and it requires an extra power supply (heaven only knows where you'd put it).

 

INTELLIVISION: Painful controller. Games that were impressively deep in the early 1980s are frustratingly complicated now. The slow processor leads to sluggish gameplay. Graphics are low res, without the layered colors that made the best 2600 games so attractive. Picking an incorrect option gives you an obnoxious sustained "BWAAAANK!" noise.

 

ATARI 5200: For my money it's the superior next-generation pre-crash game system. However, it's unreasonably large. Early models are a pain to connect to television sets, and later models aren't compatible with all the games. (No Mountain King?! GTFO!) The stock controller, as stated time and time again, is lousy. Alternatives exist, but they're either expensive (Wico) or take more work than necessary (Gameport to 5200 adapter, 2600 to 5200 adapter). The Wico Command Control is fantastic, but it raised expectations for Wico controllers on other systems, and none of them met the same standard of quality.

 

SEGA GENESIS: Slightly dated after the Super NES arrived. Lots of Western developers who didn't really know how to design console games. No native S-video, and the composite video is among the worst I've seen in a game system. Three button controllers are difficult to go back to after you've had a taste of the Sega Arcade Pad.

 

GAME BOY MICRO: A shrinky dink game system that's uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time. Fixes the flaws of the SP, but at the price of ergonomics and backward compatibility. Nintendo gives with one hand while taking with the other.

 

PANASONIC, etc. 3DO: Some good ideas that never really gelled together. Much too expensive (although mine was $25 when I bought it). The controller sucks in ways science previously never thought possible. Tons of largely untapped potential. Like the Sega CD, the library is larded with full-motion video games which haven't aged well (if they were fun at all).

 

SEGA SATURN: Bernie Stolar. Also suffered from an antiquated design that was a poor fit for the polygon-happy late 1990s, but mostly Bernie Stolar.

 

SEGA DREAMCAST: Crap controller. System had the lifespan of a mayfly. Games that demanded Sega's attention didn't get it, and were instead pawned off to third party developers. Have you SEEN Virtua Fighter 3tb? Yeech. Screams at you more than an eclectus.

 

PLAYSTATION 2: Too much Grand Theft Auto. Aggressively pushed video games into the mainstream, for better or (mostly) worse.

 

NINTENDO 3DS: 2D handicapped, struggling with emulation that the original DS could handle pretty well. Needed a hardware update to fix the wimpy processor and add head tracking to the temperamental 3D. I won't touch it now that Miiverse has ended.

 

RECENT CONSOLES (take your pick): Insane resource hogs. Usually ship with 500GB hard drives, but that space is used up in a matter of months. All games must be installed to the drive, even those on disc.

[lushgirl_80]

GameBoy- Hate the original monochrome screen itself! So hard to look at after long hours. Why didn't it already come with a backlight? My friend thinks it's because it would've cost them too much,but still would've made sense if they had they backlight originally. Even more annoying are those tacky light add-ons they released for it!

 

 

Sharp Twin Famicom- I hate the eject button for the carts. It propells them way too hard that they might fall on the floor if I don't gently grab them once I press the button. Other than that I love everything else about that system.

 

Super NES - Why wasn't the color scheme based on the original Super Famicom? The lavender and purple buttons are sooo borring looking!!!!

 

Atari 5200 4-Port - Can't stand the RF box!!!

 

Famicom - The RF box sucks. A/V mod please.

[Tanooki]

If I remember the Game Boy had two good reasons for the lack of backlighting and going with a b&w panel. Color LCDs were a lot more expensive, and even Nintendo then knew that you'd have to light them to see anything and that along with the panel for a handheld developed in 1988/89 would have been expensive on the magnitude and crap visual quality of the Turbo Express/PCE GT. So that's why they cut both and ended up with a cheap screen 25 hour plus (4AA) behemoth of a brick instead. It's hard to want to argue against it, but some do and I can see why if they could tolerate a stock Game Gear, Lynx, TE/GT in that period. The trade off was nice, but the cost was awful both in up front money but also the quick expensive battery deaths.

[Tanooki]

 

On the DMG it was not an issue. because the "colors" were contrasty enough. It didn't really become a problem until the GameBoy got a color screen. By the time 2001 rolled around and the GameBoy Advance had no backlight, that's where it got really annoying. A clip-on light was almost mandatory at that point.

 

I agree, that's why I questioned the repeated comments about the old pre-GBA hardware needing a light. It got worse as the revisions came, colors made it worse, then the even finer details and well more colors on GBA was a death blow requiring lighting.

 

That's why I brought up the bad refresh ghosting problem the DMG had, it ruined some games nearly as you just couldn't make some stuff out well at all in motion. GBP cleaned it up a lot, the Light did a little more too, and the GBC didn't have the issue.

[Video]

3ds. That was one, for the exact reasons jin listed. I got mine day one (yep, I was one of those that paid $250 for it) it's a gimmick for sure, but one I actually wanted. It's 3d blew me away. I've always found 3d fascinating, and I get it clearly, and well, and don't have to wear dark or odd colored glasses, or those clunky battery hog shutter things? Yes please. It was amazing, and the very first thought is, "finally 3d shooters in, you know, 3d! F$#% yeah!!! I don't care that the first few were going to be ports of ports of the typical Doom and Wolfenstein. That's obligatory, I was ready to get that stuff, though I did (and still do) want it NOW. Where the hell are they? I'm still waiting....and nothing. Literally nothing. Ds got several fps, so it's not undoable or anything. Hell, gba got like a dozen or so (including three dooms and wolf, and even duke nukem. Where's the 3d love? Even effin dmg got a fps (faceball 2000) and would have gotten another at the end of its life (tyranosaurus tex IS done, just never released, even in rom as far as I'm aware ) and the 3ds can't get friggin ONE?!

 

Not just that, but how about first person perspective adventure games? I have on for ds that is very elder scrolls feeling. I think a redone morrowind, or heck bethesdas earlier es games would have been great. Are there ANY such similar games?

 

The idea of 3d is great, and eventually will go mainstream. But the number one thing is to put you in the game in a way 2d simply can't. Closest thing we have are the few racing games that let you in the car, or at least a bumper perspective, and those even are rare.

 

At this point a fps is almost as terrifying as it is awesome, due to do many games starting to be released without 3d support. WTF is the point of that on a 3d system.

 

...still waiting...

[mr_me]

... The slow processor leads to sluggish gameplay...

Many Intellivision games were slow because they were programmed that way not because the processor was slow. Still, the processor was slow. Later Intellivision games, particularly from Atarisoft and Activision show Intellivision games don't have to be slow.

[pacman000]

PC - Installing games. It takes time I could use to play the game, & back-in-the-day I'd always run out of hard disk space.

 

PS3 - They removed backwards compatibility with the PS2.