24 replies to this topic

[The Eidolon]

I always liked arcade games with non-standard control systems--
something more than just a joystick and fire button or two.

One of the few dissappointments with playing games in emulation is
that some of them just never feel the same with a standard keyboard/
mouse/joystick setup. Any games any of you rememember with controls
that particularly delighted or infuriated you?

My picks (good games):

Forgotten Worlds: loved the joystick/spinning fire/satellite system
Assault: Standard 2 stick tank controls with lots of fun special moves
Star Wars: A classic! Loved the "cockpit" style controller
Tempest: See how fast you can turn the spinner!
Robotron: I was never coordinated enough to move and fire independently...

well, that's all off the top of my head.

--The Eidolon

[NE146]

Defender at first.. then later of course STARGATE (with the extra inviso button )

by the way here's my keyboard layour for Defender.. works pretty good!

q=up
z=down
a=reversse
/=thrust
r.shift=fire
enter=smart bomb
space bar=hyperspace

That approximates the arcade layout so it's all 'right' in my mind still. Anyway I digress.

Yeah a lot of Arcade games had funky controls! The ones I remember being somewhat befuddled by are

Front Line & Wild Western. They had the joystick plus click rotating controller that you also depressed for firing. Felt sort of revolutionary for me at the time.

Time Soldiers: (sensing a trend here?) More rotary controller action.

Ninja Gaiden. There were some issues with the button on top of the joystick to grab onto poles. I didn't even realize I could do this until I had spent a good amount of money!

Crazy Climber: it took a lot of practice to learn to learn how to "climb" well. Could never get the hang of it as a kid. Of course now I'm a master though

Assault and Battlezone: same reason you mention. .those 2 sticks. I couldn't really understand the tank movement as a kid so it got frustrating. I get it now of course

[Adrian M]

When I was a kid, I used to hate the way the controls were arranged for the coin-op version of Asteriods...too complicated at first! However, somewhere along the way I developed some gaming skill, only to suddenly discover that Asteroids had a brilliant control panel layout!

You haven't really played Asteroids until you've played an actual coin-op unit! Nothing else can approximate it's intuitive layout.

[sku_u]

Robotron 2084 had the coolest strange controls. I still love playing that game.

Fire Truck had the strangest configuration. Having to coordinate with a second player who was stationed behind you? What were they thinking?

[Ralph3]

DDR. Home dance pads just plain suck unless you want to fork out some hard cash.
DrumMania:Same reason.
Basically all Bemani games.
Stun Runner:Same contros as Star Wars.
Super Punch-Out:Pulling up on the handle to duck. And cool uppercut button.
Sega's Brave Firefighters:A fire hose can't be made for the home.
StarBlade:Again same as Star Wars(if I remember right) and the large fresnel lens screen.
Fisherman's Bait/ Sega Bass Fishing series:suck with joystick.
Slot machines:Casino:The handle. Home-Virtual money.
All pinball games!!!

[The Eidolon]

I thought of a couple more I hadn't mentioned:

(bad): Gondomaina! This is a cool game, where you can twist the
stick to redirect your fire, but the stick is always broken or very fussy
wherever I've seen it so that you can't twist it back easily. So I go
through the game trying to shoot only diagonally to the left or somesuch.
Would be a pretty good game if I could find one that worked.

(good) Sinistar: I think this had a custom 49 position joystick so you
could control your speed and direction with a lot of finesse. (In theory,
I always got shot by the warriors while I was mining crystals and not
payikng attention. Or eaten.)

(?) Neuman Athletics. I laughed when I heard of this game. I believe the
only conttrol is a single button.

--The Eidolon

[Cassidy Nolen]

Major Havoc was amazing with the light up spinner ball thing. Not the same in a Tempest conversion. Never saw one as a kid, only as an adult.

Reactor was a trackball, but still major cool gameplay. Not the same at home.

Lunar Lander was great. Always felt like a starfleet commander or something with that giant grip.

Never could get Qbert to go the way I wanted it to go. Still lousy at it as an adult.

Does Baby Pac Man count for a wild set up?

Cassidy

[Ralph3]

The Eidolon said:

I thought of a couple more I hadn't mentioned:

(bad):  Gondomaina!  This is a cool game, where you can twist the  
stick to redirect your fire, but the stick is always broken or very fussy
wherever I've seen it so that you can't twist it back easily.  So I go  
through the game trying to shoot only diagonally to the left or somesuch.
Would be a pretty good game if I could find one that worked.

(good) Sinistar:  I think this had a custom 49 position joystick so you  
could control your speed and direction with a lot of finesse.  (In theory,  
I always got shot by the warriors while I was mining crystals and not
payikng attention.  Or eaten.)

(?) Neuman Athletics.  I laughed when I heard of this game.  I believe the
only conttrol is a single button.

--The Eidolon

Gondo you twist the controls 360 degrees (in 8 point increments)to aim your shooting direction. Games with the same controls:Heavy Barrel, Ikari Warriors series. I haven't seen any bad controls for them myself.

Numan Athletics uses the 3 button Track & Field setup.

Sinistar does use a 49 way joystick and along with a few other one:Arch Rivals, NFL Blitz's

Major Havoc used a barrel type spinner.


Some other cool contols are the Tron/Dscs of Tron controller schemes.

Xybots was the game where you twist the controls to look left and right.

World Series Baseball with the spring loades mini metal joysticks.

Viper and Danger Zone with the moniter mounted control panel where you grab the handles and move the whole moniter up/down/left/right to aim and shoot the objects on the screen.

Silent Scope series. The vierfinder aim moniter.

And not to mention all the weird Japanese only arcade games like a big hand that spanks an ass, ot the big finger which you stick up an ass-NO JOKE!! If I find some web pages with these games, I'll post to show how weird the Japanese gamers are

[Ralph3]

Here ya go!
The Japan games:
http://www.sixsixfive.com/229.html
http://www.wired.com...1,48438,00.html
http://www.monzy.com...ga/brochure.jpg
http://www.monzy.com...ro_april01.html scroll down to March 7

Other games:
http://www.cs.berkel...videogames.html
http://www.gamespot....up/arcade1.html

[MattG/Snyper2099]

I have a few "good" ones in mind:

Mad Planets
Satan's Hollow
Tron

These all had the flight stick type controller with a trigger. Mad Planets is simply insane as well since you have to control the movement of the ship as well as the direction of the ship at the same time using the stick AND a spinner. Other "good" trackball ones include Marble Madness and Crystal Castles of Atari Fame.

Another off the wall "bad" setup was "Wacko". What the hell were they thinking there? I never really liked the star wars flight yoke either.

[Rocko]

Marble madness has cool controllers. The trackball is fun to use. That and the original atari football.

[Ralph3]

MattG/Snyper2099 said:

Another off the wall "bad" setup was "Wacko".  What the hell were they thinking there?  I never really liked the star wars flight yoke either.

I was racking my brain trying to remember the name of this game. Now I can relax!

[Gregory DG]

The one I always thought was weird was Pac-Land. It had Move Left and Move Right buttons instead of a joystick and a Jump Button. Thankfully, the Lynx version used the joypad!

[JB]

When I first met Arkanoid, I thought it was broken because the joystick wouldn't work. I was also like 5.
...
Much later I found out it used a spinner knob.

[Adrian M]

At Funspot (Weirs Beach, NH), there's a Food Fight cabinet that's had a flawed joystick ever since I can remember.

How is it flawed? Well, apparently these analog-type arcade joysticks are somewhat rare in that they utililze some sort of bladder system. Unfortunately, this particular unit at Funspot makes gameplay difficult due to the fact that the joystick's bladder is broken/non-functional.

The end result is that you can still play the game, albeit with a NON-CENTERING analog joystick...eerily reminiscent of a stock Atari 5200 joystick!

[liveinabin]

Buck Rogers -Planet of Zoom (or whatever it was) had a really nice grip stick that lit up (kinda like tron)

Star Wars has been mentioned but what a controller!!

I did always hate the key layout for Defender. Would have preferred a stick to the 'change direction' button. Still, I guess it's what you're used to.

Anyone remember the stick for Thunderblade? That must be the longest joystick ever used in an arcade game. Wierd and not responsive at all.

[joeybastard]

Paperboy had that great handlebar setup and 720 had that wierd loose joystick thing. 720 has never felt "right" to me without that stick.

[Adrian M]

liveinabin said:

Anyone remember the stick for Thunderblade?  That must be the longest joystick ever used in an arcade game.  Wierd and not responsive at all.

Yep. The stick for the sit-down version was even longer if I recall. Too much stick travel for a game that requires some rather precise movements (first person cave sequences, for example).

[Ralph3]

Adrian M said:

liveinabin said:

Anyone remember the stick for Thunderblade?  That must be the longest joystick ever used in an arcade game.  Wierd and not responsive at all.

Yep. The stick for the sit-down version was even longer if I recall. Too much stick travel for a game that requires some rather precise movements (first person cave sequences, for example).

The stick was extra long so it would move the setup left to emulate the helicopters movement. It used some wierd pivoting action. It was a cheap alternative to the motors used in some games like the expensive sit down AfterBurner.

[Megamaniac]

How about Keyboardmania (24 piano keys) or

Beatmania (5 keys and a turntable)

Sounds too much like a Beck song.

[Wntermute]

The larger arcade casing for Street Fighter 2.. had 2 huge analog buttons per player.. one for punch and one for kick. How hard you hit the button determined whether it registered as a light, medium, or hard punch/kick.

[Ralph3]

Thought of a couple cool/weird controllers:
Root Beer/Budweiser Tappers-That cool tap control.
Skydiver-You pull a ring up to simulate the opening of the parachuteand move the ring to control the direction.

[bargora]

Spy Hunter wasn't really that weird, but it has never felt right to me using a joystick or joypad. I'm going to have to pick up Midway Arcade Treasures one day and plug in a steering wheel to get back that ooold feeling.

[jedijeff]

Some of the arcade controllers that I think are great (and make playing the mame versions suck!) are:

Marble Madness - that trackball gives you total control

Star Wars - best controller ever!!!!!!

Quarterback - You get to throw the football where YOU want, not where the stupid computer wants!

Tempest - as fast or slow as you want it to go.

Jeff

[Scooterb23]

Alley Master was a great bowling game where you used spring-loaded joysticks...

Wasn't there an Arm Wrestling game where the interface was shaped like a giant arm??

I like the newer Hang Gliding game where you have to kneel down, and manipulate the bar to glide

FInal Furlong with the bouncing horses? I still have bruising in my groinal area from playing that one