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You know what's odd?


shadow460

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It's odd when I get to play games like Galaga, BurgerTime, and Ms Pac-Man in the arcade. The controls just feel totally alien to me.

Why? I'm used to the controls I use with the 7800 ports! My nearby laundry place has a classic game machine that I played a little while waiting for my clothes to dry. I wondered why I felt that the games were "off", and that's why. I'm used to a 2600 stick for these games.

 

Anyone else ever notice this?

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You know what's odd?

 

... The number '3'? :D

 

* runs and hides

 

Now shadow will have to get even with you...

 

AX

 

Look on the bright side. If he responds with the number '4', you can just get to the root of the problem by responding with '2', thereby having an odd situation all over again.

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I don't see or play arcade machines very often. I had my first experience with arcade space invaders just a few years ago, and thought the controls were goofy. Same with Asteroids and Defender. Was there a shortage of joysticks back then?

 

There were two versions of the Space Invaders cabinet; Midway and Taito. Taito SI cabinets used a joystick for directional control while Midway used two buttons close together for directional control. The Midway cabinets were the more common of the two in the US.

 

I have no idea why Asteroids didn't use a joystick.

 

I don't know why you mentioned Defender though, given that it did use a joystick. However, they didn't implement the joystick very well IMO. They used a 2-way joystick which only went up or down and used buttons for thrust and changing direction. They should have used a 4-way joystick, with the left and right directions controlling thrust and the direction you want to fly in; the same way Atari did it for the 2600 port. In some versions of MAME you can configure the controls to work like the controls of the Atari 2600 version.

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I don't know why you mentioned Defender though, given that it did use a joystick. However, they didn't implement the joystick very well IMO. They used a 2-way joystick which only went up or down and used buttons for thrust and changing direction. They should have used a 4-way joystick, with the left and right directions controlling thrust and the direction you want to fly in; the same way Atari did it for the 2600 port. In some versions of MAME you can configure the controls to work like the controls of the Atari 2600 version.

I found it so impossible to play that I had little time to remember what the controls were like. :) I guess it has a joystick then, but like you say it doesn't do very much.

I couldn't handle using buttons for so much stuff and decided not to put any more money in it.

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Functionally, a joystick would have worked on Asteroids but I believe it would have been a disadvantage. I think it is faster to move left/right using buttons versus a joystick. Most players rested either index or ring finger along with THE finger on top of the buttons and could quickly change direction. Some would use fingertips and others around the midway point of the respective finger's sensitive underside. I have never heard any player complain about the controls, actually.

 

Space Invaders is a no-brainer for joystick control. But, it was 1978 and I can appreciate how the controls were different back in the day versus Galaxian, Galaga et al.

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