Fifteen Classic Game Console Design Mistakes

By  |  Monday, August 10, 2009 at 9:59 pm

Sega Saturn (1994)

saturn

Problem #9: Overly Complex Architecture

The Sega Saturn contained two main CPUs, two graphics processors, and five other supporting microprocessors. This unconventionally large array of chips made the Saturn significantly complex to program for game developers (especially compared to the much simpler PlayStation) and more expensive to manufacture for Sega.

Chief among the hardware difficulties was the fact that the two main CPUs had trouble accessing the system memory at the same time. This situation often left one CPU waiting for the other to finish its task before beginning its own instructions, nullifying many advantages gained by having two processors in the first place.

Another complication of the Saturn’s design showed up later in the product’s life span. Throughout the commercial run of any game system, manufacturers typically find ways to reduce the complexity of their console’s hardware design, thus trimming production costs and allowing for lower retail prices. Unfortunately for Sega, the Saturn’s complex architecture made simplifying the hardware difficult, vastly reducing Sega’s ability to remain price competitive (and profitable) as the 32-bit generation rolled along.

Ultimately, these drawbacks allowed the Sony PlayStation to quickly overtake the Saturn in sales and third party support, ensuring Sony’s global video game market dominance for the remainder of the 32-bit era.

What Were They Thinking?

Sega’s Saturn was already under development when technical specifications for Sony’s new PlayStation console emerged in 1993. The PlayStation’s hardware–apparently much more powerful than anyone outside Sony anticipated–startled Sega management so much that the company ordered the Saturn design team to improve its console’s horsepower, especially with regard to 3D graphics capabilities. Any extensive re-design from the ground up would have added significant costs and delays to Saturn’s release at that point, so the Saturn team upgraded its console by piggybacking extra processors onto the extant hardware design.

Nintendo Virtual Boy (1995)

virtualboy

Problem #10: Red Monochrome Display

The Virtual Boy‘s innovative 3D display could not display color–well, no color other than red.

What Were They Thinking?

It all comes down to price and power consumption. The 3D display tucked inside the Virtual Boy utilized a line of red LEDs (light emitting diodes) reflected by two vibrating mirrors that directed images to the user’s left and right eyes to produce a stereoscopic effect. Massachusetts-based Reflections Technology developed this novel display method and sold it to Nintendo. The LED and spinning mirror combo proved inexpensive and power-efficient compared to other head-mounted 3D techniques, which typically required two very expensive, high-resolution backlit LCDs.

Gumpei Yokoi, designer of Nintendo’s 3D console, originally considered making a full color version of the Virtual Boy utilizing similar spinning mirror technology, but his plans changed when he found that the color version would not simulate depth correctly and would have retailed for over $500. Ultimately, he stuck with the original red LED design created by Reflections Technology.

Red LEDs had numerous advantages: they were not only cheap, but they were brighter and provided a higher refresh rate and contrast performance than the alternatives (yellow, green, or blue LEDs) at the time. Also, since Nintendo intended Virtual Boy to be a semi-portable system, battery life was important. A display consisting of red LEDs consumed less electricity than other LED colors, and far less electricity than a pair of backlit LCDs.

Problem #11: Awkward Form Factor

virtualboy_crouchMany people’s expectations regarding “virtual reality” in the early 1990s involved a very immersive wearable headset display. In contrast, the Virtual Boy sat on a clumsy stand, and Nintendo expected the user to crouch up to it to play — an awkward position no matter how you tried to contort your body.

What Were They Thinking?

Early on in the development process, it became apparent to Nintendo that the Virtual Boy could induce headaches and dizziness if played for extended periods of time. A wearable display would have encouraged the user to play for longer stretches without resting his eyes, and no doubt Nintendo was wary of legal liability problems from personal injury.

Moreover, the mechanically complex mirror and LED display in the Virtual Boy proved too heavy and bulky to have been comfortably worn on a player’s head. So the virtual ended up as an awkward, semi-portable tabletop console that quickly collected ridicule from most sectors of the video game industry.

Nintendo 64 (1996)

n64

Problem #12: Stubborn Reliance on Cartridge Media

Nintendo’s move to stick to ROM cartridges was very controversial upon the N64‘s release in 1996. Sega’s Saturn and Sony’s PlayStation had both made the switch successfully, but Nintendo stubbornly held back, and it caused a number of problems.

Third party game publishers for the Nintendo 64 were responsible for the cost of cartridge manufacturing up front, which proved to be a significant investment. If a game tanked, the publisher would be stuck with thousands of units of expensive inventory they couldn’t sell, adding up to a big loss on their part.

Compared to cartridges, compact discs were inexpensive to produce in mass quantities–just pennies apiece–and represented a substantially less risky investment and higher profit margins for the game publisher. Due to the attractiveness of CD media, publishers switched to the PlayStation in droves, and Nintendo began its ten-year decline in the home console market.

In addition to the cost issue, CDs could hold vast amounts of data. A cartridge with ROM memory chips of any substantial size (the largest available was only 64 megabytes) cost far more to produce than a CD that held 650 megabytes. If companies were reluctant to invest in cartridges, they were loathe to invest in more expensive, capacious cartridges. The complexity and depth of Nintendo 64 games suffered as a result.

What Were They Thinking?

During the controversy over Nintendo’s reliance on ROM media, Nintendo repeatedly claimed that cartridges were the superior format. They cited two reasons: access time and intellectual-property control.

Loading times for games on CD were very long in the mid-1990s, sometimes trying the patience of the player. This was especially true on the inexpensive-but-slow double-speed CD-ROM drives that console makers could afford to place in a consumer game system. In contrast, the access time for ROM chips in cartridges was nearly instantaneous, with nary a loading screen to be found. It made for a better user experience up-front, but ultimately that feature alone wasn’t worth the price of admission.

Also, Nintendo had been wrestling with software piracy since the 8-bit era. The historically protective and guarded company took one look at CD-ROMs and saw a potential nightmare scenario in publishing its games on the relatively easy-to-replicate medium. The cartridge format allowed Nintendo to keep a tighter leash on both unauthorized development and game piracy. It worked–the N64 suffered far less piracy than the PlayStation–but the big N’s obsession with control came at great expense for Nintendo, which lost its dominant position in the home console market.

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167 Comments For This Post

  1. Thrashy Says:
    August 10th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

    I've never understood the ahte for the big XBox controllers. When I first picked up one, I said to myself, "this is the best-feeling controller I've ever used." No joke. My hands aren't that big, but I have do have long fingers; the button and joystick placement just seemed much more natural to me than the later S controllers or the PS2's midget-sized gamepads (I seriously feel like I'm gong to drop them whenever I use a Playstation). I shouldn't have to operate the lower rows of buttons with the middle knuckle of my thumb, dammit! To this day, when playing games on an old XBox I will opt for the bigger controller if it's available.

  2. Hungryscot Says:
    August 10th, 2010 at 12:20 pm

    I too never really understood it. I'm only 6' — not huge at all, but the XBox's original controller was outstanding. It was never awkward for me to use, allowed gaming for hours and hours with no stress to my hands. The 'digital' direction pad had no issues at all.

    You want to talk about bad design? How could the author of this piece miss Sony's insane X, triangle, square, O button design. That was and still IS an unfixed and horrible design flaw. Why?

    When using a good controller design, in a short order a user should have the layout mentally down so that they can respond to the needs of a game. That means, however many buttons, and whichever their arrangement, a user should within minutes be able play competently.

    Sony's insanity has you trying to memorize 4 distinct face buttons, an irrational 1/2 design for L and R shoulders, along with 2 low analogs. All told, that's 13 'button rules' one must keep in mind versus XBox's 8(abxy in a logical order that requires minimal memorization (1), L R Shoulder / Triggers (2), 2 Analog, 1 Digital D-pad, Start, Select.

    Should really amend this to point out Sony's bad design.

    Also, no mention of the laughable 6-axis?

  3. digipham Says:
    September 14th, 2011 at 3:17 am

    Almost everyone I knew agreed (especially my fellow XBox owners). I think most of the others were just complaining about the weight. Which, I suppose, was fair for a demographic who don't really exercise.nha khoa

  4. Guest Says:
    April 26th, 2011 at 7:24 pm

    You have trouble with the PS2 controllers, which were basically a ripoff of SNES controllers? What are you, motor skill deficient or something?

    And guess what? Even Microsoft agreed their original controllers sucked considering the fact that they stopped making them. Even the people you're defending is against you.

  5. depaolz Says:
    August 13th, 2011 at 5:21 am

    To be honest, I had a riot making fun of the size of the XBox and, especially, its controllers. In time though, it was far and away the most comfortable controller around. PS and PS2 were both far too small. XBox S was okay, but the original just had everything in the right place. Almost everyone I knew agreed (especially my fellow XBox owners). I think most of the others were just complaining about the weight. Which, I suppose, was fair for a demographic who don't really exercise.

  6. Ghostwriter Says:
    November 7th, 2011 at 9:12 am

    Actually, this is the first time I hear/read that the xBox controllers were to big.
    I liked them, and I have small hands (wearing S size gloves).

  7. Harson Says:
    November 7th, 2011 at 11:25 pm

    I have Mattel Intellivision. It is good items for me.

  8. Seumas Says:
    August 10th, 2009 at 3:58 pm

    Sometimes I wish I was older and had experienced more of this history. I wasn't even born until the first item existed and I didn't own my first console until… well, it isn't even listed on here because the 360/PS3/Wii which I own didn't come out until just three years ago.

    As for the XBOX Controllers… the original ones were a little ridiculous as far as I can tell, but currently, I am an absolute fan of the XBOX 360 controller. It is the most ideal controller that I can envision and may have benefited from lessons in the initial XBOX iteration demonstrated in this article.

    Also, two words: Dreamcast Controller. 🙂

    In comparison, the PS3 controller is just so small and lightweight and oddly shaped and the triggers are miserable (fortunately, you can get these little attachments for $5 that you can snap onto the triggers which helps a little bit).

  9. Gadgetfan Says:
    August 10th, 2009 at 6:35 pm

    Where is Sixaxis? Modern console pad without rumble? How big mistake that was?

    Original xbox pad was great, smaller one was quite ok, but the 360 is awesome again.

    Playstation pads are good also but sixaxis is far beyond normal standards of that company. DS3 is awesome again. But for perfect we should mix the good parts of both pads from 360 and PS3..

  10. Guest Says:
    April 26th, 2011 at 7:25 pm

    Both Sixaxis and Rumble are useless gimmicks. Ooh, it shakes when something happens on screen! Big deal.

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    August 10th, 2009 at 7:03 pm

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  12. kevicoid Says:
    August 10th, 2009 at 9:34 pm

    I think the obvious missing item here is the drive mechanism in the original PlayStation requiring its users to eventually balance the system at crazy angles just to get it to work properly.

  13. Fred Says:
    August 10th, 2009 at 9:56 pm

    I agree with Thrashy here. Whenever discussion of the original XBOX comes up it always gets bashed for its size (whether the original controller or the unit itself is in question).

    Like Thrashy, I was over the moon when I first held the Xbox controller, as it was comfortable to hold like an N64 controller, but with many buttons, all reachable and ergonomically placed (for me). I found that with my clumsy hands (which may be bigger than average but by no means abnormal) I could still press complex combinations of buttons without mashing them or hitting more than one at a time by accident. This is the sole reason I never had a PlayStation or PS2, as the controller was so compact and full of buttons everywhere I felt like a great big oaf (joke's on me now though, my 360 crashed and burned for the 3rd time and I got myself a PS3 in anger…)

    As for the criticism the original Xbox recieved for being so big (at the time… I mean look at the PS3…) all I could say to those people were "what, are you gonna take it backpacking? No, you're gonna bring it home from the store and it will sit under your TV.. I dont see a problem".

  14. owyn999 Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 1:22 am

    I can't understand now, after seeing the direction that Solid State Drives have taken recently, how we can still see Nintendo's notice that solid state "cartridge" based games were not the way to go. I understand that at the time solid state memory cards were small in comparison to cds in the storage medium and this is why Nintendo HAD to go with a larger cartridge to get the storage space they needed, but there were a number of things cartridges could do better starting with load times.

    As we have seen though had stuck with the cartridge up until now, we would be seeing a Wii that had an even smaller form factor than what they have now and would be using a proprietary MMC/SD or a similar media for their games. And would be just as large as the BluRay discs.

    Furthermore, I think that had Nintendo not been ridiculed by the gaming media at the time we would be seeing cheaper games as the cost to copy 1.000.000 games onto say SD style cards is significantly cheaper than putting them onto CDs or DVDs.

    Finally, I would like to point out that had this been the case we may even have seen a HD Wii console NOW instead of in the next generation as they would have 16GB of space to work with per game.

    CDs and by extension DVDs were the worst the worst thing to happen to console gaming IMHO.

  15. arahman84 Says:
    August 7th, 2010 at 11:19 am

    Only thing I can say about your comment: flawd. 100% flawed. No. 1000%.

  16. HungryScot Says:
    August 10th, 2010 at 12:33 pm

    Yeah, you're really conflating two media types that are unrelated. The ROM chips from back then are different than the Solid State Thumbdrives of today. Going to tiny thumb drives could be a future, but I think streaming'll be what you see next. Physical'll go bye bye.

  17. DavidP Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 1:22 am

    I don't think the Intellivision controllers can be considered a mistake since the console was far from a failure. The main competition at the time was the venerable Atari joystick with its 8-position vs. 16-position Intellivision directional disc, and the one red button vs. the 3 Intellivision action buttons (2 of the 4 were wired together).

    By your logic, the Atari controller was a design mistake as well since no console manufacturer today includes in their package an 8-way full-size joystick, single fire button controller. It's all thumb-based controls – just like the Intellivision used.

    Plus the notion of "keypad gaming" is still alive and well today – it lives on in the form of PC gaming with a mouse and keyboard!

  18. Tsu Dho Nihm Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 3:12 am

    I remember the Intellivision controller. I loved that thing. The side buttons were truly a pain, but I never had any problems with the disc (perhaps that's because I had an Intellivision II) and the keypad + overlays added quite a lot to a game.

    If there's a design mistake there, it was the side buttons alone.

  19. Old Atari Fan Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 3:42 am

    A very disappointing article. You didn’t answer the question of ‘what were they thinking’, you just guessed. Instead of telling us what they “probably thought”, “probably wanted” or “likely wanted”, why not interview the actual engineers and get the answers? This article is nothing but guesswork. Imagine how interesting it would be to hear from one of those engineers and learn what really influenced these horrible design choices.

  20. Mike Cerm Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 4:59 am

    Most people don’t remember it now, but the 3DO console launched in ’93 with a retail price of $700. Designing a console that you can’t build for a price people are willing to pay is a pretty serious design mistake. In that regard, the 3DO is very much a spiritual successor to the PS3, which is still losing money for Sony.

    Neo Geo was another incredibly expensive console of that era with a (literally) huge design mistake: $200, cartridge-based games. Other console makers were already experimenting with CD-ROM drives as a cheap way to distribute large, data-intensive games, but the load-times were terrible. At the same time that SNES and Genesis carts were topping out at 24Mb, Neo Geo carts went up to 256Mb, making them 10-times as expensive to produce. Meanwhile, CD-ROMs offered 10x more capaticity than the pricey Neo Geo carts at 1% of the cost.

    Both of those were 24-bit consoles that tanked during the 16-bit era. The Dreamcast failed for similar reasons. It had trouble getting traction against the aging PlayStation, and then the PS2 came in and blew it out of the water. However, the Dreamcast really didn’t have any design flaws (maybe the VMU), it was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, and couldn’t compete with Sony.

  21. jamie herbert Says:
    December 19th, 2010 at 6:42 pm

    Considering the Neo Geo's lifespan was longer than any console (save the atari 2600) I would hardly call it a failure. It was originally in 2 flavors (MVS and AES) the MVS was designed for arcade companies to not have to move 500 lbs of cabinet to get a new game into their venue. some models even support up to 6 carts (hence the name Multi Video System) The Arcade Entertainment system (Or AES) was sold as a way to have the exact same thing as in the arcade at home it was pricey to say the leas but if offered exact arcade hardware not a "decent port" In short the game you have in the AES looks and plays exactly like it did on the MVS. IN fact the Neo Geo CD a way to hopefully better capitalize on the home system success they had (but did not expect) and further cheapen the hardware for arcades did get release (and was ironically a bigger flop due to a notoriously slow 1x CD drive in a time when the sega CD sported at least a 2x). which I would call a bigger design flaw than anything the Neo Geo Cart system does.

  22. Simon Starr Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 5:38 am

    “…it’s possible that Microsoft thought they needed a large controller body to fit two plug-in expansion slots. Or maybe the designer had really huge hands?”

    Obligatory Penny Arcade link: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/08/29/

  23. Martin Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 6:22 am

    You overlooked the Nintendo Gamecube’s proprietary HD Video cable that one could only buy from Japan since it was never released in North America “officialy”. Other big flops from Nintendo the Nintendo 64’s Dial-Up modem… oh yes little known fact the N64 was the first commercial gaming system with Internet access again never released in North America or even the can’t use a rumble pack and memory card at the same time factor.

    All systems had their quirks… no mention of the playstation at all in this article… ever play a game on playstation using the system link cable… seriously that was literally like making a proprietary null modem cable and not that many people had two playstations and two tv’s within the like 3 feet that the cable could span.

  24. Xcursion666 Says:
    August 21st, 2010 at 8:26 am

    thats not true the 64 was not the first system with internet access the snes had a modem attachment that could be used with doom

  25. Frank P Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 6:46 am

    Maybe not a huge blunder, but the Turbo Grafx 16’s choice of providing only one controller port on the console made it necessary to buy a special adapter to do multiplayer.

  26. d_bogdan Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 6:47 am

    I think the Dreamcast should have been here. It appeared a bit before the PS2 beeing the first 128 bit console but it lacked the abillity to play dvd’s which led to the downfall of SEGA and the ultimate withdrawal of the company from the console market.

  27. JEDIDIAH Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 6:56 am

    Compared to other controllers of it’s era, the Intellivision was
    really not bad at all. A lot of this stuff might seem “obviously
    wrong” in hindsight but I don’t think it really takes into account
    the broader context some of these “mistakes” existed in.

    The keypad with plastic overlays was decades ahead of Intellivision’s
    competition and allowed it’s games to be more interesting while avoiding
    the inherent usability problems with keyboards or lots of unmarked
    buttons.

  28. intellifan Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 6:57 am

    I can attest that the intellivision number pad was far from useless. The slipcovers provided guides to the number pad and in most games it would provide all sorts of functionality (Both AD&D games, Utopia, B15 Bomber, Baseball, Football. etc). I had (and still have) 40+ intellivision games all complete with the controller covers and they almost all served a purpose (except for snafu I think).

  29. Mike Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 7:10 am

    In sequence:
    – The Intellivision (and Colecovision) had a major use for the keypads + overlays idea. It’s simply this: memory was SO PRECIOUS back then (consider that the entire Intellivision library will fit onto a few floppy discs, and the entire Intellivision+Colecovision+Atari2600+Atari5200+Atari7800+NES library can be fit onto a single Zip Disk) that the idea of “menus” was almost impossible. Every bit was precious – your average Intellivision game fit into 12K of space and a text menu might mean you used up 80-90 bytes just on the text.

    The solution? Put all the “menu” options onto the pad. In B-52 Bomber, it’s a pad to switch your viewpoint screen (belly gun, rear gun, front gun, side guns, instrument panel, navigator’s map, bomb-bay door). In Tron: Deadly Discs, it’s a 9-direction fire button (8 directions plus “mode switch” to blocking) so that you can run in one direction and throw your battle disc in another. In another game (I forget the title) that was a tactical marine battle, it’s your selection menu to deploy your various ships available throughout the game. In Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin it’s your way to cycle through inventory and enter combat commands. Most of the Intellivision games actually made really good use of their numeric pad.

    As for the “too big” Xbox controller: I for one do not have “Huge” hands. On the other “hand” (pun unintended), I found it to be the most comfortable controller I’ve ever held. Why? Because the larger controller nestles firmly into the crease of the palm with the hand straight (in a “handshake” side position), rather than forcing the player to twist their wrists inward and curl their 4th and 5th digits underneath in a RSI-inducing position. With the larger controller, I can let my thumbs and trigger fingers work freely and easily. I wish that somebody would put out a similar form-factor controller for the Xbox360.

    This is not an uncommon feeling, either, or the larger-scale controllers and “game grips” (produced for Wii, Playstation, PSP, DS, etc) would not be so common and profitable.

  30. Jeff Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 8:26 am

    The Intellivision “disc” was actually better than the NES four way pad. A lot of people don’t realize the Intellivision disc equivalent to a 16 way joystick. There was more than four ways (N, E, S, W) and diagonals (NE, SE, SW, NW), you has more precise compass points (N, NNE, NE, ENE, E, ESE, SE, SSE, S, SSW, SW, WSW, W, WNW, NW, NNW).

    These precise digital movements were not heard of in other consoles at the time. Not all Intellivision games that could have taken advantage of the precision exploited them. Driving games worked better than other consoles (without switching the other consoles to paddles) with 16-way precision.

  31. Lee Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 9:07 am

    I for one loved the old xbox controller. -insert generic rant about how great I found it-

    Odd nobody ever mentions the sega master system’s fail excuse of a controller.

  32. rob Says:
    August 21st, 2010 at 8:31 am

    wasnt the sms controller the same design the nes a directional pad and two buttons

  33. Charles Forsythe Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 9:13 am

    The 7800 design was driven largely by cost. The goal was to develop a system that could reproduce coin-op games such as Joust on a home console. Since these coin-op games were created in the late-70s to early 80s, the sound was not particularly advanced.

    Backward compatibility with the 2600 was also a feature of the 7800 and having the same sound chip made that much easier.

  34. Richie 3 Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 10:22 am

    The Intellivision disc controller was incredibly awesome for a six-year old in 1980, but I discovered I had trouble playing it when I unboxed the system again in my teenage years. There was a joystick adapter offered by the INTV Corporation several years later but it was eh. Kinda worse. My issue back in the day was the side-firing keys. Too much pressure required as they got older. I still have my original system and can see why the grownups had issues with the disc, can’t get my whole thumb in there like I could. But I almost got my Astrosmash patch with that controller. Too bad you actually had to SHARE a TV set back in the 80’s..

  35. Richie 3 Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 10:30 am

    And about the 5200– Those controllers were MADE for Breakout. The analog stick worked like the 2600 paddle controllers. It lacked a center re-alignment spring but allowed precise control, almost like a mouse. Just wasn’t game oriented. You could make your Galaga ship move quickly or slowly, that was cool, and that Super Breakout game.. man we were hardcore addicted.

    ALSO about the pause–The Intellivision paused if you pressed 1 and 9 simultaneously on the keypad. Guess that’s not exactly a “button” but it was a standard feature of the system in 1979.

  36. Mike DiBenedetto Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 11:19 am

    The 360 does not scratch discs unless the console is moved while on which the console has a warning right on the disc tray when you buy it. In turn the person is dumb or is having a serious lapse in awareness.

  37. Mike Says:
    July 30th, 2010 at 5:07 pm

    Interesting !

  38. lawtonaaj Says:
    April 26th, 2011 at 4:44 pm

    Umm…all cd based games scratch, its more or less a relative thing. they use the same cd technology any cd works. The slightest resonance in the device can cause miniscule movement. These tiny movements build up over time to cause scratching. Companies are only required to write about excessive scratching causes. also the original xbox is infamous for how many had a market defect that could destroy games in 4 or less uses.

  39. Derek Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 11:32 am

    What about the Oddessy Game system? It had better graphics and controls than the Atari, but the controls were not removable, so when one broke the whole system had to be sent in.

  40. Jerome Lapointe Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 11:32 am

    I loved the original xbox controller. I got regular sized hands but it wasn’t uncomfortable in any way.
    I think that one was a case of exaggerated press…
    In reality the people that brought the topic up the most were probably PS2 fans as they tried an XBOX for the first time.

  41. Neeneko Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 11:39 am

    In regards to the original xbox controller.

    They got the size specs from focus groups. Unfortunately the focus groups tended to be, shall we say, demographically not that diverse. Very narrow age range, single gender, and the controllers fit very well for those people. So it is kinda a failure to gather statically useful information about your customers.

    That being said, for me, even the new smaller xbox controller hurts my hands. I find it large and heavy, and requires constant gripping to hold. The PS2 controller on the other hand fit nicely and rested in my hands. This is why more market variaty in controllers is a good thing.. no everyone has the same hand sizes or preferences in how much they want to ‘grip’.

  42. Rob Browning Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    owyn999, you have no clue what you’re talking about. A DVD costs at most 50 cents, while an SD card the size of a DVD costs around $7. Even taking the cost of disc pressing into account, this is a huge and insurmountable gap. A card the size of a Blu-Ray disc would cost more than the game! And the only real benefits would be decreased loading times and increased durability; most people will not spend $10+ extra per game for those minor privileges, just like they didn’t back in the N64 days.

    As for your argument that things would be different if Nintendo had stuck with solid-state technology, I’d like to remind you that it did–in the portable market. The DS currently uses proprietary cards ranging up to 256MB to great effect. This works well for portables, which are a couple of steps back in power relative to consoles and also have their own unique concerns, but it doesn’t scale. Even if Nintendo had totally abandoned solid state, however, it wouldn’t matter; other industries would still be heavily invested in the technology, such as digital photography. The simple fact of the matter is that we’ve already got the best and cheapest solid-state technology that we could possibly have at this point in time, and it’s still not good enough for modern consoles.

    BTW, the lack of HD technology in the Wii has nothing to do with storage media. The Wii uses an improved version of the regular DVDs that the HD-capable XBox 360 does.

    Rob

  43. Roger Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    @martin

    I was sure the genesis had a modem. Which would predate the N64, while trying to find a link I found that there was a modem made for the Atari 2600:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameLine

  44. s. Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    How does one lose the RF switch box?

    I mean, seriously, do you take it anywhere with you when you finish playing? Or do you take the console to a friend, take the AC adapter but forget the switch? The complaint “RF switch box is bad because it could be easily lost” seems as valid as “external controllers are bad because they could be easily lost” or “AC adapter is bad because it could be easily lost”.

  45. Jurgi Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    the 7800 uses the same sound chip as its little brother

    AFAIK the idea was to put better sound chip on game cartridge, when needed, so the 7800 didn’t lack good sound completely.

  46. Coridan Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    My biggest problem with the Sega Saturn was that the cooling vents were on the bottom, you leave it on overnight and the motor overheats and burns out.

  47. Doker Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    Bit of Trivia for you… The original Xbox controller was called “The Duke”

  48. arahman84 Says:
    August 7th, 2010 at 11:21 am

    Haha, I wonder what game they were referring to.

  49. mgabrys Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    Amusing – none of ya young-uns know why the 7800’s sound was poor. It was because in the design phase, they decided to put POKEY sound chips on the carts instead of the system (as used in Ballblazer and Commando). Eventually they would upgrade in the future to a “Gumby” chipset for even better sound.

    Then a polish dork bought the company and all plans went down the flush while the leftover pre-production was sold off.

    I learned this from a podcast of the developers – but it’s also found in wikipedia. But that’s not too obvious is it? Or does that screw up the list?

  50. linkf1 Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 3:35 pm

    That is why, no matter what you say the N64 was and is the best until now.
    The N64 has the best game if not the best (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time).

  51. Silicontrip Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    Regarding the N64 cartridge issue. I heard that Sony and Nintendo had entered into some agreement to make the next generation console, Sony to design the hardware and Nintendo to focus on the software.

    Sony spent had considerable time and money on, what is now known as, the PSX when Nintendo decided to pull out from the deal. In retaliation Sony decided not to license CDROM technology to Nintendo, which was required to make CDROM drives with copy protection. Nintendo would’ve been left with purchasing generic CDROM drives, with no copy protection or continue with cartridges.

    I do not know if this story is true, although it does sound plausible.

  52. elc Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 3:55 pm

    The original xbox controller was very comfortable for normal sized hands. It only felt big because everyone was accustomed to the littler ones. The original controllers are the only controllers I’ve ever used that never left my hands sore. And no, I don’t have huge hands at all.

  53. Matt Lulz Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    “clever and innovative” – the reason for most bad crap.

  54. ruben Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    you forgot the Apple Pippin!

    Apple and Bandai created this Hybrid thing. ive only seen one! I knew one of the guys who helped design this in Japan

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Bandai_Pippin

  55. James C Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

    How about the design decision Sony made with the original PS and repeated with the PS2. Any one ever see the bouncing screen bug? Sony cheaped out on the video output circuitry that resulted in some TV brands like Zenith being incompatible with the video signal. This caused an unstable horizontal hold control. Sony was at least willing to rechip the users machines who had this problem at no cost, but when you got it back, they included a letter blaming the TV manufacturer. Funny how no other consumer gaming system or appliance ever showed this design flaw. Their engineers clearly knew this would happen and their arrogance showed by passing the blame.

  56. dgp Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 8:09 pm

    @Mike Cerm
    >Neo Geo was another incredibly expensive console of that era with a >(literally) huge design mistake: $200, cartridge-based games.

    The neo-geo’s target market was people that wanted to play authentic arcade games in their home and were prepared to pay the price.

    >Other console makers were already experimenting with CD-ROM drives as >a cheap way to distribute large, data-intensive games,

    There are two CD based neogeos. Neither of them is any good.

    >Neo Geo carts went up to 256Mb, making them 10-times as expensive to >produce.

    Unless you have SNK’s books to take a look at you have no way of knowing what a neogeo cart cost to produce.

    > Meanwhile, CD-ROMs offered 10x more capaticity than the pricey Neo
    > Geo carts at 1% of the cost.

    Access latency on a 1 x CD-ROM is going many many times that of 70ns mask roms. So the console becomes more expensive because it has to have a bunch of extra SRAM in there and you have to add loading time to buffer data off of the disc, which makes your arcade authentic games not so authentic any more.

    > Both of those were 24-bit consoles

    When will people stop this ridiculous n-bit crap.. and for the record the 68k is 32bit, it has a 24bit address bus yes, but internally it’s 32bit. Lets start calling x86-64 machines 48bit. The word size of the processor used in a machine doesn’t necessarily dictate it’s graphic performance, or even how many colours it can display, so bringing up a machines word size for comparison is just stupid.

    >>The Dreamcast failed for similar reasons.

    I always wonder who decides if something “failed”. According to wikipedia the Famicom Disk System failed, but it shipped many thousands of units and had about 350 games released for it, is that failure?
    The dreamcast shipped lots of units, had lots of games, but it failed? It didn’t do as well as the Playstation2 but I wouldn’t say it failed.

  57. NeoSkye Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 9:37 pm

    I’m surprised no one mentioned the Game Gear Backlit LCD. Sure it looked amazing, but it devoured batteries and turned what was supposed to be a portable system into something that most people tethered to the wall. I remember my friend abandoning it after only a few weeks because he only could play it at home, where he already had a Sega Genesis.

  58. Greg Says:
    August 12th, 2009 at 1:14 am

    The orignal xbox controllers were way superior to the silly “S” type ones. They fit a normal sized hand better and the tilted oblong diamond layout of the buttons is a much more natural motion for the thumb than the rotated square.

    If the xbox had released with the “S” I probably would have gone with one of the other game systems at the time.

  59. Joe Says:
    August 12th, 2009 at 9:01 am

    Ahh, the Studio II, I have one of them and all the games save Bingo that came with the system. I still have an extra power supply and RF-Switch in the original boxes also. These are the game systems I grew up with, watching the gaming systems go from black and white boxes to the systems we have today. I still like to sometimes pull out the Atari or Colecovison and spend time playing. What I would like to see would be an Intellivision game come back out, that actually USES those type of controllers. I bought the handheld plug and play one they came out with, and you lose functionality.

  60. leandro koiti Says:
    August 12th, 2009 at 10:16 am

    I wonder why Sega Saturn’s story remind me so much of PS3’s story =P

  61. Judland Says:
    August 12th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    Although it was not a single button, the Intellivision controller had a pause “button”, too. You could pause games by pressing the key combo 1 and 9 on the keypad.

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  63. PLucas Says:
    August 14th, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    I have lost two Xbox360 consoles with the classic 3RL problem.
    It should at least been mentioned.

  64. James Says:
    August 15th, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    No RRoD? Seriously?

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  65. somedude11 Says:
    August 15th, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    This list screams Sony fanboy all over the place.
    Where’s the PSP’s lack of second analog stick?
    Where’s the PSX’s ridiculously high price?
    Where are the EyeToy bugs?

  66. Why the N64 hate Says:
    August 16th, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    Its funny how N64 games were 40mb about in size and the graphics looked far better than PS1 graphics, and how games were as long for the N64. I rather them make a cartridge game then experiment with CD technology, Let Sony do test it before Nintendo invests in it. Games for N64 were better and nicer looking anyways..

  67. Chris Says:
    August 17th, 2009 at 10:08 pm

    Heh. The N64 didn’t even come close to the PS1 (albeit some of this was *how* that graphical power was used–a really tight N64 game could match a mid-range PS1 game, while a bad PS1 game was indeed worse than a N64 one) generally. A case in point my brother likes to bring up is the Crystal Dynamics game ‘Gex’. Not a bad effort, but the N64 version had to cut levels, and the video sequences were converted to low-quality B&W all due to the space constraints. It took them another generation and finally converting to optical media (*very* proprietary minidiscs) on the GameCube to catch up and pull ahead of PS1 (granted, by that time they were competing against the PS2, but that’s another matter. 🙂 ). See ‘Twin Snakes’ as compared to the PS1 Metal Gear Solid. 🙂

  68. Alexh Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 6:48 am

    An interesting article but obviously sourced directly from other webpages rather than interviewing any of the developers.

    The worst part of the article is the Sega Saturn’s “Overly complex architecture” being a flaw! That is rubbish. The flaw was to have an “Overly complex, low-level SDK!”. It doesn’t matter how complex the hardware is underneath if the SDK can abstract it well enough for the thicko softies but reveal enough to give them power when they want it. The Success of the PSOne and XBOX-360 are in-part down to their much loved SDK’s.

    I think you should have put that the “HUGE” controller on the xbox only shipped for for a very short percentage of the consoles life! No mention about the main problem with the xbox which was the sheer size of the console? Not particularly portable when you want to take it round your mates on your bike! And of course it’s side problem of fan-noise when watching DVD’s.

    Do you not feel the SP thing was just nit picking? Nintendo probably did a review and found that of the 2 million or so Gameboy users, almost no-one ever used the headphone jack. Of those that did, the majority only did so when on the move. Using statistics and business sense they decided to drop the separate connector! I’m sure it didn’t put off “regular” customers one bit.

  69. Jeremysart Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 10:15 pm

    Everyone tries to claim a different system for “this was the first system to have a modem”.. well looks like most everyone is wrong, and the N64 was FAR from the first. Lets look back a few years earlier.. the Genesis had a modem which could be used to download a certain amount of games. This came about towards the end of the genesis’ life.
    And even earlier, the Intellivision from 1979 had the “Play Cable”, which was essentially a cable modem which allowed you to download intellivision games. This device was a service from certain cable companies from the time. And around the same time there were Atari computers, and the Coleco Adam, and IMB 5150’s that were connecting to some sorts of networks or another..

    SO.. modems were there all along.

    Also, the intellivision controllers are far from fail. The disk offers great movement. The side buttons work perfectly fine too, the only thing that throws you off is it does not feel like your pushing them, the dont “push in” like normal buttons. The keypad also added a lot to the games at the time, things you couldnt do on ANY system of the time until Colecovision. My only complain is the “telephone cord”, which does not allow you to sit very far from your system.

    Anyone who diggs on Intellivision, I have one thing to say:
    Thunder Castle.

  70. thepeng Says:
    August 19th, 2009 at 12:20 pm

    In regards to the Xbox 360 scratching its own discs: Yeah people ought to know that an xbox shouldnt be moved or subject to vibrations while its on. Naturally they must be idiots… Except for all the other disc drives that don’t eat their own discs, for example this laptop. I just put a dvd in, its spooling up and i now i have my laptop sideways, remove the disc, inspect, hey no scratched ring! Im sick of the microsoft attitude that any failure of their product is entirely the fault of the user. That aside, my friend bought a 360, he lives near an airport. In three days every game he owned was destroyed by the vibrations of 747s taking off nearby, I imagine someone who lives under the El would have similar issues. After microsoft refused to do anything for him we took it apart(thus voiding the warranty) for seventy cents at home depot we glued four rubber pads to the inside of the dvd drive, now you can swing the thing on a rope and only get the occasional smudge you can wipe off with a rag. The price of a 360 at launch was so astronomical I doubt anyone would have noticed the 1.00 four pieces of foam would have added to the bill. Or microsoft could have used a better internal dvd drive. Seriously, if you bought a peripheral dvd burner and whenever it shifted on your desk it ate your discs, you would want a refund. I admit tipping a console while its on isnt a good idea, but there are lots of innocent, less drastic ways Discs can be destroyed. I lost my copy of oblivion because my girlfriend lifted up the xbox to dust underneath it while it was off, and the disc fell off the spindle.

  71. Chris Says:
    October 21st, 2009 at 9:35 am

    Regarding whomever said optical discs are the worst thing that ever happened to game consoles–I agree. Read errors, moving parts wearing out, piracy…none of those were problems until CDs started becoming the standard medium for software. I have 3 cartridge based systems (an Atari 7800, a Sega Genesis, and a Nintendo 64) that still work perfectly because they have very few moving parts that can wear out. My PSX died because its CD holder broke. Since the carrying capacity of memory cards seems to increase exponentially every year, I think the day will come when they replace CDs as gaming media-albeit in a more proprietary (sp?) form to eliminate piracy.

  72. Gary Smith Says:
    November 14th, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    The N64 controller was guff. You had to juggle the bloody thing in your hands and the joy stick was too sensitive. Same goes with the Game Cube controller with its freakishly inbred buttons…..

    Best controller has to be the Xbox 360s. The PS controller is ok, but I cant get used to the thumb sticks being so central.

    Also note that the original Xbox was probably the most hacked console of all time as it was basically just a Pentium III PC in a flashy case (wether this is a BAD mistake is much to be debated :)).

  73. Deenox Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 5:06 pm

    The consoles have changed since time is now it is more change but also less rib.

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  75. Alex Says:
    March 23rd, 2010 at 5:17 pm

    @Old Atari Fan

    >>Imagine how interesting it would be to hear from one of those engineers and learn what really influenced these horrible design choices.

    We never will, the only other otion is to speculate.

  76. Automatic Jack Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 11:32 am

    @Old Atari Fan: Your comment on this article is spot on. @Alex, you ARE going to hear from one of those engineers. I worked for Atari Inc. from 1980 to 1984, and for Atari Corp. from 1986 to 1990. We in Engineering fought those !@#$%^&* controllers tooth and nail, and we were told by Michele Eberton, our fine French VP, to “calm our enthusiasm for the product”. Snailboy and his pet engineer, it so happens, had FILED PATENTS on this controller which they were “developing” at Atari. They weren’t going to lose their little cash cow (or cow flop, if you will). The fact that the controllers failed constantly we were told to ignore. Oh, and I am the reason why 5200s stopped getting slaughtered by wiggling the video cable (I put in an Engineering Change request to put a *fuse* inline with the power, and it was implemented).

    So, to make a long story short, what went on inside our heads? How about outrage and disbelief. Atari had over 10,000 employees at one time, so sources wouldn’t be that hard to find, if one were to, you know, solicit input from someone who was there, rather than someone who had been born the same year the equipment was released.

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  79. Matt Says:
    May 3rd, 2010 at 10:49 am

    i disagree with #14 i think the original xbox controllers were brilliant.. i always prefered them and when i used the smaller ones i just played much worse

  80. emploi au maroc Says:
    July 14th, 2010 at 10:09 am

    i think the original xbox controllers were brilliant.

  81. weeee Says:
    July 16th, 2010 at 8:31 am

    The Xbox 360 headset is garbage.The wire inside of it are made of the cheapest softest copper on earth…Also the overpriced wifi ,wireless headset and hard drives MS everyone knows you use a sub $50 laptop drive in your 1st xbox's but you charge us like it's a terrabyte drive.
    On the bright sight the the 360 slim seems to have gotten the message.But then again until i get i slim who knows what glitches MS added this time.
    Anyway,it's lightyears better than the Sony"no good games" Ps3

  82. arahman84 Says:
    August 7th, 2010 at 12:21 pm

    God of War III, Final Fantasy XIII, Uncharted 2, Motorstorm, LittleBigPlanet, Wipeout, Metal Gear Solid 4, Demon's Souls, 3D Dot Game: Heroes would like to have a word with you.

  83. Rick Bellefond Says:
    August 8th, 2010 at 3:45 pm

    I remember playing Pac Man with a 5200 controller a very long time ago.

    At the time it seemed pretty cool.

    We sure have come a long ways with games and controllers since then.

  84. guard system Says:
    August 13th, 2010 at 8:49 am

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  85. Microsoft CRM Says:
    August 16th, 2010 at 11:14 pm

    That was a very entertaining post.

    I am looking forward to reading your post on 15 Classic PC Design Mistakes.

  86. Aryu Limitless Says:
    November 23rd, 2010 at 5:06 pm

    I have had 4 classic black Xboxes. 5 of which died from bad dvd drives OR badly grounded RV wiring. (#O.o)
    I have owned 3 XBox 360s and only had issues w/ 2– RRoD! My latest one has HDMI! I love it!
    I have owned one of every game console known to mankind (US, at least)! The Fairchild Channel-F, Atari's Video Pinball console (had to fix 2 wires: a red battery wire and a speaker wire), Magnavox Odyssey I and II, Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, NES, SNES, Saturn, Sega Master System w/ the "Shift" controller for OutRun!, and many many others. All of which had their infallible quirks and problems and bad controller hand, head and wrist pain!

  87. emploi maroc Says:
    November 28th, 2010 at 9:30 am

    I loved the old xbox controller. -insert generic rant about how great I found it-

    Odd nobody ever mentions the sega master system's fail excuse of a controller.

  88. kingpoop Says:
    December 2nd, 2010 at 11:19 pm

    something to note about the original xbox controller design is the striking similarities with the dreamcast's design(with a second analog nub)…..both have ab/xy/lr buttons and 2 "expansion slots" built in…
    Microsoft had a huge part in the dreamcast's development and deployment…so it's only obvious to think they conceived the idea of a game console while sega worked on the dreamcast…almost like what they did to apple(walks away)

  89. Kevro Says:
    December 7th, 2010 at 9:19 pm

    I liked the Intellivison controller , I played the hell out of Burgertime with it after finding one in a garage sale in the 90's. The article says the only way to stop the NES “blinkies” is to replace the internal connector. That's not true. The easiest way is to clean your cartridges with a Q-tip and windex and/or break a Pin on the Nes lock out chip so it won't function.

  90. dreambox dm600 pvr Says:
    December 7th, 2010 at 10:00 pm

    By your logic, the Atari controller was a design mistake as well since no console manufacturer today includes in their package an 8-way full-size joystick, single fire button controller. It's all thumb-based controls – just like the Intellivision used.
    The dreamcast shipped lots of units, had lots of games, but it failed? It didn't do as well as the Playstation2 but I wouldn't say it failed.

  91. annonce moto Says:
    December 21st, 2010 at 2:19 am

    I for one loved the old xbox controller. -insert generic rant about how great I found it-

    Odd nobody ever mentions the sega master system's fail excuse of a controller

  92. Ben Says:
    December 21st, 2010 at 9:54 am

    What about the Atari Lynx system? I was (un) fortunate enough to get one for christmas when I was 8 or 9 years old. It was a color handheld gaming system long before GB and PSP.

  93. location voiture Says:
    December 29th, 2010 at 4:41 pm

    Maybe not a huge blunder, but the Turbo Grafx 16's choice of providing only one controller port on the console made it necessary to buy a special adapter to do multiplayer.

  94. Maroc referencement Says:
    January 3rd, 2011 at 12:25 am

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  95. Riad Meknes Says:
    January 3rd, 2011 at 8:21 am

    Maybe not a huge blunder, but the Turbo Grafx 16’s choice of providing only one controller port on the console made it necessary to buy a special adapter to do multiplayer.

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  98. location voiture Says:
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  99. pissedoffamerican Says:
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    i believe the angry video game nerd covered all this?

  100. web-créativité Says:
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    I remember the Intellivision controller. I loved that thing. The side buttons were truly a pain, but I never had any problems with the disc (perhaps that's because I had an Intellivision II) and the keypad + overlays added quite a lot to a game.

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    I too liked the original larger XBox controller. Though smaller is not bad either. I kept waiting for a 3rd party vendor to make a controller between the size of the original and the newest controller, which I find way too small. Oh well.

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  119. Anonymous Says:
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    Two things:
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    2) The Gameboy Advance's screen seemed fine to me late at night under the sheets with that little flip light that piggy-backed on the top connection port. Then again, it was mostly just Mario and Spyro…

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  121. Gregg E. Says:
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    The Atari 7800 had even more FAIL going against it. The lack of an onboard POKEY audio chip was supposed to be offset by the ability to include one in the cartridge of games usinf the better sound. Unfortunately that drove up the cost for those games and only Ballblazer and Commando for the 7800 used that feature, so that was a big fat FAIL for Atari.

    The 5200 was basically a slightly redesigned Atari 400 computer, the intention was to make it easy to port games for the computer to the console. That was quite an advanced thing for the time. Atari tried it again with the XE/GS but unfortunately the computer that console was based on was much further from current than the 400 had been for the 5200.

    Another 7800 fail was the controllers were too simple, a leap backwards to the old 4 directional switches plus one fire button (two switches in parallel for ambidextrous use). To buyers looking at the 7800 it was a big WTF? Why should I buy this new console with crappier sound than the 5200, far far less sophisticated controllers, which isn't compatible with the 5200 games?

    IIRC, the 7800 was actually going to be the next generation console after the 2600 and a ton of them had been made – then the design that was being developed to succeed the "7800" (which wasn't yet named" was pushed forward as the 5200 to catch up/leap ahead of the competition.

    I had a 4 port 5200 and loved the automatic switchbox. There were two reasons for that box, one was so there was only a single cable going back behind the TV and the other was so players didn't have to fumble around behind the TV to slide the switch.

    The Odyssey^2 / Videopac had some issues. First of them was repeating the Intellivision error of hardwired controllers. I had to hack one of mine to mount 2600 style ports in the back because the sticks wore out. Second was the graphics capability was underutilized. The bullet sprite in Armored Encounter showed how small a pixel the video *could* address but most other games used a minimum size about 4x that large. The bombs and missiles in the sub hunt game on the same cartridge looked to be 1 pixel high by about 4 wide. The minimum block size in all the other games was probably 4×4. I suppose that could be due to not having enough RAM to play with, which could be why the Armored Encounter playfields were so simple, a sacrifice made to get those single pixel bullets.

    The "fat" Playstation 2 suffered from Sony's penny pinching in using plastic sleds without even metal bushings for the DVD drive's lasers. They quickly wore, causing alignment and read errors. That was an error only corrected in the final "fat" version. (Which I have one of.)

    The Dreamcast was the first console with a modem as standard equipment. Unfortunately while Sega had carefully NOT made most of the errors they had with the Saturn (like not having dev systems available well before launch) they didn't have an online service up prior to launch. Sega wanted the DC to play DVDs but didn't have the funds to buy the drive mechanisms, so they invented the GD-ROM, a one gigabyte disc that also gave them intrinsic copy protection since nobody was going to have hardware capable of directly reading the discs outside the console. But then they put a serial port on the DC and gave the thing the capability of having software allowed full access to the port… plus the "backup plan" of having it able to read CD-ROMs just in case they couldn't get the GD-ROM ready in time.

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  124. omegle Says:
    October 28th, 2011 at 12:40 pm

    Plus the notion of "keypad gaming" is still alive and well today – it lives on in the form of PC gaming with a mouse and keyboard!

  125. moto piste Says:
    November 3rd, 2011 at 2:20 am

    The Intellivision (and Colecovision) had a major use for the keypads + overlays idea. It's simply this: memory was SO PRECIOUS back then (consider that the entire Intellivision library will fit onto a few floppy discs, and the entire Intellivision+Colecovision+Atari2600+Atari5200+Atari7800+NES library can be fit onto a single Zip Disk) that the idea of "menus" was almost impossible. Every bit was precious – your average Intellivision game fit into 12K of space and a text menu might mean you used up 80-90 bytes just on the text.

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  127. ivandesember Says:
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    I still had the Atari 5200, my father was very fond of that game. When compared with the design of these games today, indeed we can find faults in the designs ancient games. But that's okay in his time. Event planning jobs

  128. Ghostwriter Says:
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    I've never seen most of these consoles. Nice to learn about them(and their design failures)

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  139. TomPeris Says:
    November 24th, 2011 at 12:10 pm

    As we have seen though had stuck with the cartridge up until now, we would be seeing a Wii that had an even smaller form factor than what they have now and would be using a proprietary MMC/SD or a similar media for their games. And would be just as large as the BluRay discs.

    Furthermore, I think that had Nintendo not been ridiculed by the gaming media at the time we would be seeing cheaper games as the cost to copy 1.000.000 games onto say SD style cards is significantly cheaper than putting them onto CDs or DVDs.

    Finally, I would like to point out that had this been the case we may even have seen a HD Wii console NOW instead of in the next generation as they would have 16GB of space to work with per game.

    CDs and by extension DVDs were the worst the worst thing to happen to console gaming IMHO.
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    Like Thrashy, I was over the moon when I first held the Xbox controller, as it was comfortable to hold like an N64 controller, but with many buttons, all reachable and ergonomically placed (for me). I found that with my clumsy hands (which may be bigger than average but by no means abnormal) I could still press complex combinations of buttons without mashing them or hitting more than one at a time by accident. This is the sole reason I never had a PlayStation or PS2, as the controller was so compact and full of buttons everywhere I felt like a great big oaf (joke's on me now though, my 360 crashed and burned for the 3rd time and I got myself a PS3 in anger…)external rendering | What does a surety bond cost?

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  145. buy house Toronto Says:
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  148. jssi78 Says:
    December 31st, 2011 at 3:21 am

    I remember the Intellivision controller. I loved that thing. The side buttons were truly a pain, but I never had any problems with the disc (perhaps that's because I had an Intellivision II) and the keypad + overlays added quite a lot to a game. chiptuning

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    In 1982, Atari introduced the Atari 5200 to the gaming public. The originally planned sequel to the 5200 was a system called the 3200, but development was halted on it as being too difficult to develop for. Atari decided to produce a game system based on its line of 8-bit computers, which also happened to be fairly decent at playing games. Games could be ported very easily from the Atari 400/800 to the Atari 5200, and many were (especially in later years). The biggest hardware difference between the 5200 and 8-bit computers was the inclusion of an analog joystick with the 5200. This controller allowed a full 360 degrees of movement, but unfortunately it was not self-centering. This made it very difficult to play many games, such as Pac-Man. In addition, the controllers were prone to failure, making it very difficult these days to find a 5200 system with working controllers. Several third-party vendors (most notably Wico) did release better controllers and devices that allowed use of 9-pin 2600 compatible joysticks.

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  158. Garment Says:
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    There's a design mistake there, it was the side buttons alone. But still cool.

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  161. Axel Says:
    January 27th, 2012 at 6:59 am

    Well in the old days certainly some design mistakes were made. But taking a look at some of todays controllers I keep wondering if things are just getting worse? I'd gladly replace some of those modern controllers by one of these classics.

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  163. Drucker Says:
    February 13th, 2012 at 6:12 am

    It's amazing to see this classics, thanks for the share. Pretty unbelieveable how much technology developed since these days. I still like the classic approach though, this whole new motion detection controlling does not work well for me.

  164. Erp Says:
    February 20th, 2012 at 1:54 am

    I think no problem on it, classic is cool.

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  167. Gordon Says:
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    The Jaguar’s controllers are 15 pin, not 24. Same controller port as the Atari STe.

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